Reno Reviews - Tales from the Borderlands

[Reno Vantas]

Welcome, welcome to the first of likely many competing reviews against our resident Cold One and his review show. Now, you may be wondering "Reno, why are you going to try competing against an older member?" Good question, random bystander. Now shut up and sit down before I have to shoot you. Okay, without further ado, I shall set this up.

Way back in a time just after The Walking Dead Season 1 gave a boot to the head of a genre that had usually been referred to as deader than disco, Telltale Games and Gearbox met at the Spike VGAs to hash out Claptrap appearing in Poker Night at The Inventory 2. However, another idea was brought up that night. The idea of exploring the world of Borderlands through an adventure game, likely with characters that weren't our usual bevy of badasses and babes. Instead, they would focus and provide much deeper character interaction than the first person shooter format can provide.

Now, speaking frankly, The Walking Dead was a hell of a game. It made adventure games an actual genre after their monopoly on possessing storylines in games was taken away without resorting to the stupidity of the other last few gasps of the genre in its later years. This means there was no stupid inventory system and no standby of simply pick everything in the inventory and click on every pixel until stuff worked. You were forced to make hard choices that felt extremely challenging to find a real answer to and even when it was meaningless, all it took was the simple little pop-up of a character remembering what you said to make you feel like you either did something horrible or something memorable. And it presented you with people who all felt real, even when you didn't really like them. You were given a realistic world and it treated you with some amount of respect. So how has Tales of the Borderlands fared in following on the heels of this and The Wolf Among Us?

Story:

Seeing as how the story is the main reason you will want to play this game, it would be a mite redundant to go into full synopsis mode here. Instead, I'll list the personal story highlights for me from the first and second chapter sections. There is meeting the new boss after he has thrown out the old boss (literally) and finding out he was voiced by Patrick Warburton. Being forced into fighting bandits as a pair of workers from Hyperion and sending a customized Loader against them that you control to reign supreme. Employing a stun stick as Rhys, which apparently has so much kick behind it that it sends people flying. Getting into a locale called World of Oddities and seeing the exhibit of famous dead people on Pandora like Professor Nakayama, Commander Steele, and Shade. The next joke that happens right after seeing this. And oh so much more.

Its obvious from the get go that the writing staff knows how to keep the offbeat sense of humor from the main games alive and kicking with even more insanity and hilarity ensuing the further along the story gets in this episode. The world establishes enough unique characters for it to feel like a standalone project, while enough characters that we know exist on Pandora show up so we understand that its still the same universe. The premise of the story is our two main characters recounting their adventures on Pandora after...no, I'm not telling you. That's spoilers. Well, they are telling their adventures, so obviously each character is going to color the accounts slightly. More than slightly actually, as the other of the duo will call out when the current narrator is embellishing for their own ego, telling a different perspective on the events. The two cases that appear in this episode don't have the usual doubt over who has the right account as is usually seen with this style of story telling, but it will likely keep appearing.

Gameplay:

There really isn't much to say about the gameplay here, since the adventure game format sticks to the guns of brilliant storytelling more than cool mechanics or high octane action you create. This, however, does not mean that Tales from the Borderlands does not possess great moments in its gameplay. Being able to select the loadout of your Loader you call in to assist you and helping craft the encounter you will experience, doing quick time events during extremely tense and frankly awesome looking scenes, and having to debate dialogue choices create great moments in gameplay that make the experience memorable for the player.

Visuals and Audio:

Here are two elements where Tales from the Borderlands really shine, besides the story I mean. The visuals are what might be called standard fare for Telltale Games, the stylized character designs that looked extremely unique compared to the average game. Which is also what the main Borderlands games do, allowing for easy transition for characters between the two companies and allowing for the unique visuals of both to remain vibrant and unique. Even the opening narration, in typical Marcus style, possesses the usual black sketch lines on stained-looking paper. However, this time the visuals appear even more stylized and with greater detail given to them, allowing for the images on the screen to pop even more than they do in Borderlands 2.

The audio is also an extremely fun part of the game, with the music being a cross between the twangy guitars and simple riffs one would hear from things like the Firefly soundtrack or old country music mixed with more modern-sounding electronic beats that add to create a unique flavor to the music. Hell, this game has one of the better introductions into Pandora I've seen in a while with a fitting song behind it just to complete the feel. It probably helps that what its played over looks like the opening scene out of Heavy Metal, but the music is the main thing in this scene.

Side Notes:

I'll be honest, it took about five seconds for this to feel exactly like a normal Borderlands game with the atmosphere and mood set by the game. And that is exactly what I was hoping. It had the moral choices from The Walking Dead with the appropriate weight they would have in the Borderlands universe. It had the references and tongue-in-cheek humor that made Borderlands become a series, rather than stopping at the honestly middling first game. It created drama, crazy awesome scenarios, and the feeling that even though you aren't the biggest badass on the screen that very second, you are still better off than you thought you'd be.

The Verdict:

If you love Borderlands, get this game. If you love The Walking Dead Season 1, Season 2, and/or The Wolf Among Us, get this game. It is the best combination of the above that I've seen in a while, with Telltale going back to its roots of comedic adventure games in the vein of Sam & Max. You will get laughs, you will feel awesome for doing some stuff, and you will get to help create the robot who shall be blowing up your enemies without remorse. Plus, again, the opening credits scene is worth the price of admission for just the first episode. So, to conclude, this game is awesome as hell, but I will never call a game perfect. So, I shall give Tales from the Borderlands Episode 1 a 9/10 and keep my fingers crossed the other episodes are as good as this introduction. So, keep an eye out to see if I alter my review in the coming weeks or months to match my new opinions from the new episodes. This is Reno, signing off after stealing Blizz's ideas. Take that, Frosty!  

[Reno Vantas]

Welcome back to the Reno Review show, where we return to the universe of Borderlands with Episode 2 of Tales from the Borderlands "Atlas Mugged". As now the third of four different series created into the modern style of adventure games, Tales of the Borderlands continues to stand out from the others as the most comical and absolute fun to play with,compared to the heavy intrigue of The Wolf Among Us, the intensity and constant shift between hope and hopelessness of The Walking Dead, and....insert crowning point here once I play the Game of Thrones adventure game.

Don't think just because I call Tales the most humorous of the new Telltale adventure games, it doesn't pack moments as tearing as their other games. As you'll see in this review, even I was left without any real focus for a choice.

Gameplay:

With my last review, my description of the gameplay was...lacking. Well, it was vague, useless, and didn't really elaborate on much. So I shall adjust that here, because then I can actually compare to the frosty mute I called out last time.

The game plays with your usual cursor control, via whatever method your device is capable of to do so. And while most of the events in which you use it are slow paced enough to allow for you to search out the area nearby for whatever secrets are hidden. When the quick time events hit, you need to click certain icons either as they are in motion, you are in motion, or while the thing you need to click on is trying to kill you. Fail, you die and restart from the beginning of the scene to retry your quick clicking or key hitting skills. And occasionally, multiple cursors will appear and force you to decide which action to take, whether its which foaming at the mouth yokel you slug first or which person you save first. These quick time explanations also apply to the dialogue system, where you need to pick one choice in a certain amount of time or default to one of the choices given, typically silence. These things make the story keep a quick pace and make it feel frantic, very much fitting the action occurring on the screen.

Story:

Here it is, the main draw to these games. The impressive, bat-crap crazy story. Like last time, I will not elaborate entirely on the story as it would ruin the hilarity of many of the moments. Just remember Wallethead, bro-bro brobrobro, and be prepared for a strange shirtless scene in the beginning third that just keeps getting better.

Overall, this episode seems to play it safe storywise. Well, compared to the quick beats and high intensity of the first episode. This episode quickly returns to that high intensity that the last episode left out on, but it dies down midway through the first third. This isn't a knock against the pacing, as this slow down in the story pace feels very natural and allows for the characters to build their relationships and elaborate out greatly on certain actions and relationships shown in the first episode. This does not bring in a huge amount of detail or ideas not seen already, but it offers a greater elaboration on them that helps keep the story feeling grounded and personal. The dual narration of the story continues on through this episode,and it offers up some of the better humor and action as one narrator is called out by the other over their imitation of how a scene went or possible embellishments given the narrator currently in action. One extremely noteworthy thing for this entry is that,despite the safeness it plays sometimes with the story, there are two choices in the game where there appears to be literally no better choice. Instead, you are given two choices of equal merit and you are forced to pick them. One is in the first third and its heavy action, while the other is in the last third and caps off the episode as a major cliffhanger. If I am to be completely honest, I did not consider either choice better personally. I was literally forced to go off of faith on what I thought would be the right choice for that area.

I love the change in pace and what it allows for, but it feels like its holding back a bit from the stylistic assault on expectations that the first episode was. So, while the story could have used some beefing up in some areas outside the end bits, where it gets extremely interesting character-wise, I would consider an extremely solid entry in the series and a continuing justification for my love of this new entry into the Borderlands universe.

Visuals and Audio:

Once again, the music and visuals department delivers their best, with the sound effects from Borderlands making their appearances in their full glory, with a soundtrack that continues to deliver the right pace and intensity a scene needs. Of extreme note is the title sequence and the credit sequence, set to *insert track name here once located*. This introduction and the one previous both set the tone greatly of the Borderlands universe, where trust is a rare commodity and destruction is inevitable rather than a choice.

The visuals continue to keep the style of Borderlands in bright and dark colors, with the unique shading to keep things looking interesting. Expressions pop up on all the characters to help show how they feel and help give the player an idea of his character's personalities without making them say anything. However, it is also at this episode Im beginning to notice the game engine is not able to keep up smoothly with what Telltale is trying to make it do, as glitches and weird movements occasionally pop up. But these do not detract from any of the high points of this game, they just make one realize that Telltale is doing great work with something slightly antiquated.

The Verdict:

As of this episode, I am feeling relatively safe in calling this game a necessity for one to play if they are even a slight fan of adventure games, Borderlands, Telltale Games, or just going through a great story that leaves you wanting more. You are grabbed by the intense intrigue and action offered by the first third, kept there by the great character interaction between narrators and their respective allies in the second half, and kept hooked by the growing mysteries and hard choices you are forced to make as this episode closes. I maintain my rating of 9/10 for the series, but I seriously recommend that you check it out and get to work on playing through this. The secrets of Rhys' and Fiona's adventure are sure to keep you wanting more and guaranteeing Telltale sees the gem of a series that they have here.