Topic: Games you've recently beat

I just finished the Walking dead final season. I'm surprised how much I've loved these games. I played the first few a couple weeks ago on game pass but I had to buy this one on eBay and wait for it to arrive.

I don't watch the show but I've seen bits of it so I find it a bit weird how much the games clicked with me. I've always kind of avoided them because I'm not into the show but I am so glad I played through them.

But yeah, definitely some of the better Telltale games but still not as great as Tales from the Borderlands which is my favourite TT game! Funnily enough, I've never played a proper Borderlands game either!

@ralphdibny Yep I agree with @Arugula to give the Batman TT games a go. I wasn't totally on board with some of the story beats of the second season, but still overall really enjoyed them.

@JohnnyShoulder I loved Batman TT. Both TT Batman’s were great, among the best adventure games I’ve ever played. I played them each several times.

@Arugula @JohnnyShoulder I've played the first batman, still haven't got around to number 2. All of the TT games I've played have been at least pretty good!

@ralphdibny I’m playing the [oft forgotten] TT Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s actually not horrible. As a fan of the MCU, I’m probably giving it a slight ‘bump’ because of interest in the licensed property. It’s definitely not on par with Tales of the Borderlands, The Wolf Among Us, or The Walking Dead, but it actually has some decent story beats and I’m having a good time with it. The technical performance is pretty awful though. It plays like a PS3 game, and a poorly optimized one at that. Lots of visual stuttering, inconsistent graphics, inconceivably longer than expected load times, and poor audio performance. The engine is so antiquated and player movement and controls are clunky as all get-out.

Good to hear TWD finishes well. I played the first 3 seasons, so I just need to finish off the final season one day. I’ll probably keep it in my back pocket after finishing GotG since I think it’s the last TT game in my backlog and I like having one to pull out as a palate cleanser.

@Th3solution nice one! I quite like guardians of the galaxy too! I'm struggling to remember what happens in it even though I only played it in 2019 (I think?)

I think technically speaking, most TT games are somewhere between average and bad. I guess the story and characters really make up for it though as I think they are brilliant!

@ralphdibny I quite like the Back to the Future one but that’s way more of a traditional point and click game. The Sam & Max games are brilliant too!

@nessisonett the Sam and Max games were really good. I've got BttF but haven't played it yet. I'd quite like to get the Jurassic Park game too if it ever goes on sale on PS3 again (which seems unlikely at this point). I've played 3 of the CSI games they did too but those were more traditional point and click as well. They were quite good

@ralphdibny I had no idea they did the CSI games, my mum had them back in the day! I remember watching her play them years and years ago on our old PC and being a little spooked by some of the sound effects. I actually still have the discs sitting about.

@nessisonett I had the Wii versions of Hard Evidence, Deadly Intent and Fatal Conspiracy. Sold them all like a numpty about 7 years ago along with Sam and Max for the Wii. I think I got like a fiver for all of them. I don't think they'd be expensive to rebuy though if I wanted to

@ralphdibny I think only one of the ones we had was by Telltale, 3 Dimensions of Murder. The first two were by another company but still published by Ubisoft.

@ralphdibny I agree. For some reason I enjoy most of the TT games. The Back to the Future game is maybe one that I enjoyed the least. It’s still decent enough and worth a go. I think I ended up being a little less pleased with it because I spent the extra effort to get the platinum (it’s actually not automatic for finishing the game like most of theirs are) and there are a couple tricky parts where you’ve got to do something just right to get a trophy. I had to replay a couple sections and it made it drag a little bit for me. But yeah, the character animations are quite janky. 😅

Have you played any of the Life is Strange games, Until Dawn, or any Quantic Dreams games like Detroit Become Human or Heavy Rain? When the TT library is used up those are some games that can fill the void.

@nessisonett ah fair enough, I think there was one on the DS too but I can't remember if it was telltale or not

Bit random but I have a Dr House game for the DS too. It's really not as good when all the dialog is just text without the actors voices though 😅

@Th3solution is back to the future more point and clicky rather than "narrative adventure" anyway? I think it came out around the time Telltale was transitioning from one genre to the other (even though the two genres are closely linked anyway).

I think the transition came about because they needed to work out a way to make point and click games work on consoles. Their solution was moving the character with the analog stick and using the character to go up to items to interact.

That and the increase of unconventional licenses they acquired meant most of their games became a bit more than just a point and click game until they became interactive stories.

I've played Until Dawn and Tell me why (which I think is by the life is strange people). I haven't played life is strange or the Quantic dreams games yet. The Quantic dreams games are on my to play list for this year though because I have them all from PS Plus!

Funnily enough, the walking dead the final season isn't a straightforward platinum either! I was shocked! Season 1 has a couple in the epilogue that are missable too (this is the more modern release of season 1, not the PS3/360 one which I think has different achievements)

@ralphdibny Yeah, as I recall BttF is kind of a hybrid where they are making the transition from point and click to narrative adventure so has aspects of both. There are a few more sophisticated puzzles to figure out and takes a little more problem solving than most of the more recent games.

Honestly, the Quantic Dream games and Life is Stranges are more effective and more polished evolution of the narrative driven games that TT was trying for. The complaint has always been that the TT games give just an illusion of control and choice, but all roads lead to the same place. You’ll find that especially with Detroit BH the choices matter quite a bit and a protagonist’s entire narrative thread can be cut short by making certain choices that get them killed. It’s the most well-realized attempt at this style of gameplay and storytelling. It might be wise to save Detroit for last though since it might make other games in the genre feel flat; it’s that well done.
Life is Strange and it’s prequel Before the Storm are the closest to a Telltale feeling game I’ve found, but even those have more impactful narrative and dialogue choices than TT’s games. I still need to play LiS2, but it’s very good by all accounts.

@ralphdibny I've just finished the Final Season of The Walking Dead too. Despite some real frustration with some of the fights with zombies where it felt like the game would pick and choose at random if it was going to register my button inputs, I really enjoyed it. Probably only second to the first one in my opinion.

I really liked how the game played with AJ being shaped by the things you teach him. It's up there with Telltales best (First season, Borderlands, Wolf Among Us) but I've generally enjoyed most if not all of them. I think Guardians of the Galaxy is the only one I've not played. It's a shame they were so mismanaged and we never got their Stranger Things game as that sounded like it was going to change up the formula quite a bit. I'd recommend this Noclip doc to anyone interested in the studio.

When I purchased the Final season my PS4 had only downloaded 2 episodes so I quickly checked online as it seemed short and luckily that lead me to discover about trophies being very different with this one. So now I've got a few saves at certain points to help me mop up the other trophies from different choices.

Also I echo that the Quantic Dreams games are a great evolution of these narrative style games and think Detroit Become Human is the best example of making choice actually matter. Subsequently the Platinum can require multiple playthroughs to get but it's in my backlog to do as I genuinely want to play out some different outcomes. Especially as my ending was pretty bad with multiple deaths.

I ve beat control and actualy playing dlcs. My impression is that it is a 90's game with all its successes and mistakes. Its a good game but not a goty one...

@Th3solution if you get your character killed in Detroit, do you restart from the moment you made th decision that gets them killed or do you have to start again from the beginning?

I've always wondered how different Telltale games would be if I made different choices but I've never made the effort to do a second playthrough. I wonder if due to the nature of the walking dead, whether more choice is affordable in those games because it seems like certain characters can die and be absent. I kind of noticed that whatever characters survived the previous game were immediately dispatched at the beginning of the next game which was what initially made me wonder whether each game could end with different survivors that needed to be written out quickly for the narrative of the next game.

I'm not big on replaying medium/long games for different outcomes if the build up is largely similar or the same so I do wonder how much mileage I'll get out of the QD games after an initial playthrough. Obviously I do replay some games, my favouritest of all my favourite games like MGS and Uncharted etc! But if it's a good game but not my favourite then I will finish it and move on

@BearsEatBeets ahh nice one! Yeah I had some trouble with a zombie stuck under a door near the beginning of the game. I did some experimenting and eventually realised I was approaching it from the wrong direction which was getting me killed

I think my favourite was actually season 2 it was a bit slow to start but once I met up with Kenny again, it became really good. I guess he was one of my favourite characters in the first game and I liked how I had a relationship with him as a friend in series 1 which changed to a father figure relationship in series 2. I think because of my fondness for him, his story was the most engrossing. From lopping off his new girlfriends arm, to finding the spark of hope in AJ to everyone turning on him. Despite his erratic behaviour, I did my best to keep him alive and managed to do so and stayed with him even after that town at the end offered to let me stay. So I was a bit gutted (but unsurprised) they Michael Biehn'd him in a flashback in the third game.

In the final season, it was really difficult to raise AJ! It was hard to prep him for the world while also keeping him human. I think I managed it though after a couple of slip ups where he killed Marlon. I had to explain why it was ok to kill Lily but not Marlon (one was evil and the other was just stupid and scared). Unfortunately my firm hand at that point resulted in Violet being killed later on which kind of sucked but I'm guessing the alternative would have been AJ killing Tenn to allow Violet to escape which I couldn't allow AJ to have on his conscience. In terms of the last bit, I was kind of expecting Clem to survive because of how the axe in the barn scene played out. I was sort of waiting for the whole epilogue for her to show up but it went on for so long that I actually thought it might end as they all walk up to the gate without showing Clem. But then we see inside and she's alive and legless!

@ralphdibny It was definitely tricky to balance teaching AJ how to survive and defend himself whilst maintaining kindness and empathy for others. I found that really enjoyable though and something new for the series.
Yeah I got the other outcome on the bridge because despite his shocking confession of enjoying killing, the discussion choices after played out so that I felt it was just his limited way of expressing his relief in removing her threat. So I trusted him and yeah it results in him shooting the naive Tenn so Violet can escape. He handles it really well though so I was happy with my choice and figured it must be the other way round if you don't. Although the way it played out it looked like they both should have died if he didn't shoot. I might look up what happens if you don't tell AJ to shoot Lily as it looked like she was inching towards him. Also with the ending it's kinda far-fetched that she survived having her leg cut off without bleeding to death but I was so happy they made that choice I let it slide.

I mopped up some of the alternate trophies with my other saves last night but I messed up the final one I needed. I still need to kill bunnies without missing on the hunting trip. I loaded up that earlier save but missed one so restarted that save but missed again but unfortunately let the game carry on for a second or two too long and it autosaved after it. so now I have to play from the start to that point again for that trophy. It's probably only about an hour into the first episode but I'll have to make sure I make another duplicate save file when I get there incase I miss again. I prefer the previous games trophy system

@ralphdibny So yeah in Detroit if you get a character killed, then you just keep going, you don’t get to go back, unless you utilize a prior save. But sometimes the decision you made that cooked their goose was made a couple hours before and so it might be hard to go back there. Regardless, the game continues to its conclusion without the character. You do have more than one protagonist in the game so you have other storylines you’re playing (which may or may not intertwine... again, depending on your decisions). You might not even meet certain major characters if your decisions are off.

The good news is the game as a really, really well done decision tree / map thing that lets you look back and see where your decisions branch off toward alternative outcomes, so going back to mop up trophies is much more tolerable that way. It’s finely executed. Personally, I didn’t go back and replay sections or arcs to see the different outcomes and endings, but I was tempted to do so and to get the platinum you’d have to do some of that. Supposedly it’s very reasonably obtainable though. It’s not an enormously long game, but replaying the whole thing would be a sizable commitment, but being able to jump into sections on the map makes it much more realistic.

The structure reminds me of Virtue’s Last Reward from the Nonary Series, if you’ve played that. The pathway map is roughly similar, but a little more fleshed out in Detroit.

“Also I echo that the Quantic Dreams games are a great evolution of these narrative style games and think Detroit Become Human is the best example of making choice actually matter. Subsequently the Platinum can require multiple playthroughs to get but it's in my backlog to do as I genuinely want to play out some different outcomes. Especially as my ending was pretty bad with multiple deaths.”

I could not agree more. I loved this game and played it twice. I’m ready to play it again actually.