The Wolf Among Us

An otherwise excellent 5 star game is, unfortunately, brought down by one single design decision: the dialog response timer. OK, I understand the decision to have a dialog timer to force you to make hastier "gut choices", but the timer is WAY too short. I've played through the toad/woodsman scenes at the beginning of the game, and, so far, the timer often ends right as the characters finish speaking, without giving you any time to answer afterwards! If I didn't have subtitle text turn on, making liberal use of the pause key in order to read their dialog before they finish speaking, there is no way I could listen to their dialog, read all 3-4 response options, then move the mouse and click on my choice before the timer runs out. The pause key (space bar) isn't even documented, since the settings menu claims that pause is the ESC key (which actually brings up the menu instead). Pausing the game fades everything (including the text I'm trying to read), cuts out the background music and sounds, and completely removes the sense of immersion, but there is no good way for me to play the game without it. Had the developers added an option to disable the dialog timer, or even set a 2x/3x/4x multiplier for its length, this would easily be a 5-star game. Unfortunately, the way-too-short timer and poor pause-key work-around ruin the experience and make for frustrating gameplay :(

I bought this game because I like the visual novels that Telltales makes and it had very good ratings. I was extremely surprised by the universe I just entered and I loved it. I won’t say anything else about it because if more people can be surprised by it, it’s well worth it. Like all other Telltale games the engine fells old and choices don’t really matter, but at least you can pause it whenever you want. The story is OK but it’s the setting that really makes this game. The only real complaint I have is that the “next season” spoilers are unskippable. Rating: Insanity Wolf. Recommendation: This is definitely one of the better visual novel games out there. http://pixelloot.com

This game most certainly has good and interesting story. As a fan of The Walking Dead season 1 I might have expected too much going into this one. My main problems with this game are that it's mostly big chunks of dialogue, choices that don't matter much, amount of QTEs (quick-time events) and lack of puzzles. Gameplay consists of huge amount of dialogue with some unnecessary lines, fake drama and extended conversation points. 99% of the choices in this game are with which sentence are you going to answer the question or continue the conversation which result in minor frown or a smile and nothing more. All action scenes are quick-time events which is to be expected of a Telltale game. They were a bit too drawn out at some times. The lack of puzzles and exploration wasn't to my liking and I expected a bit more here. They did awesome job with The Walking Dead balancing balancing between exploration, puzzles, action and story. The Wolf Among us seems more like a movie or slideshow compared to The Walking Dead. Other than that the game looks good and has interesting story.

TellTale games are great but just I haven't been fond of the source materials they use and as a result I've never finished any of their games before. Wolf however is one of the best noire stories in a game ever - a noir, adult story where the Little Mermaid is a prostitute, the woodsman from RRH is a drunk, and where you hear lots of swearwords and see lots of violence. But the best point is the storytelling, the characters and how well it's suited to the TTG format. Basically, if you like other TTG games (especially the serious ones like TWD), you need to play this one too. I only have some slight criticism: the episodes after the 2nd one aren't as great as the first 2, and combat consisting of quick time events and button mashing could honestly just be left out completely, fortunately there's not much of it. I wish there would be more games with such adult noir themes which don't turn into stupid shooters or pixel hunting puzzles. Also, now I'm particularly looking forward to TTG's Batman game.

To be honest, I don't really like the art style of this game. It's not ugly. It's just not my taste. And I still give it 5 stars. It's that good. In this game you'll encounter murder, suicide, prostitution, black market magic, etc. You'll find characters from beloved fables struggle just to make a living, even though they used to be princes/princesses. It's quite dark for a fable-themed video game and it's definitely not for children. If you're not those gamers who complain about how choices in Telltale games doesn't really matter, then this game is perfect for you. Story, voice-acting, characters, etc are done really well. And you choices do, in fact, matter. Just not in a way that hugely impact the consequences. It's more about experience and how the story is told. If you love interactive fiction, then just buy this and fall in love with the Big Bad Wolf, Snow white, and many others. You won't regret it.