From everything that we’ve seen and heard so far, it looks like gaming companies are doing just the same, as an arms race to acquire as many indie games as possible is about to get very heated. Just like there is still some studio executive who is kicking himself for missing out on The Blair Witch Project’s profits, no gaming company wants to be the one who turned down the chance to have the next Minecraft solely on their system. Perhaps more than ever, the power in games belongs to the individual artists.
Even people who passed on gaming in their youth are able to experience that same magic in their adulthood with more mainstream successes like Wii Sports . In fact, this demographic, a group who likely passed on the gaming world as kids, are now realizing a fresh new perspective. They get to see different elements of game design that they might have ignored back then, making the evolution of the medium and the broadening of the market a much more appealing prospect. Specifically, that big moment where a “virgin” gamer (regardless of age) is finally able to have fun when playing a game is a sense of purity and epiphany. It’s all about having fun. As we get more involved in the medium, we begin to take sides. We begin to favor consoles or developers. We begin to look at games with the minds of cynical and judgmental critics. Even as kids, we’d argue at the lunch table as to whether Sega or Nintendo is better, but if you rewind just a few years before that, you didn’t even care who made the console. Perhaps it was the catchy level themes that you remember the most or maybe it’s some iconic environmental hazard that sticks in your mind. Maybe it was similar to my case where it was just the character’s expressive personality that encouraged me to pick up a controller and actually control the character. The moments of realization and involvement vary for everyone, but as fresh faces in the gaming community, we’re never forced to pick a side. We are clean slates for series to enthrall and characters to enlist, and our focus was precisely on the game itself and those subtle moments of appeal.
Each path differs in gameplay as Magnus’s path is a lot more action-oriented with the introduction of Boom Town and ‘griefers.’ Of course, we all know ‘griefers’ from the original game as annoying players who would blow stuff up. Because of this, QTEs (Quick Time Events) are utilized that were so popular in the previous episode to dodge TNT. Ellegaard’s path isn’t as action oriented and focuses more on puzzles and the character focus from the very first episode. There is a lot more dialogue in this path and a lot of it makes up the funnier aspects of this episode. This episode capitalizes on the voice actors that Telltale has gotten together like Corey Feldman (Magnus), who played Mouth in The Goonies, and Grey Griffin (Ellegaard), famous for playing Daphne Blake in the Scooby-Doo cartoon movies that bring the characters to life.
He’s not the only one who thinks so. A quick Google Image search of “Minecraft Wii U” reveals a host of fan made mock ups that make it clear why a Wii U version of Minecraft building guide would not only make sense, but may result in the definitive version of the game.
Editor’s Note: Before reading this review, we highly recommend checking out our review for Episode One: The Order of the Stone , Episode 2: Assembly Required , and Episode 3: The Last Place You Look as there are spoilers ahead.
The lore also does not seem to be empty at all. In some games, you walk away feeling like you could have lived your whole life not needing to know anything about what just happened. This game, and specifically this episode, doesn’t feel that way and makes sure to utilize all the time in the episode to prove that. Nothing goes unnoticed and everything is important whether it be information that pertains to this game specifically or the base game. Battles are not too long-winded and conversations don’t make you want to skip them. Everything feels as though they are timed just right and you almost forget that you are sitting in front of your television for so long. You don’t really think about what could have happened if you did or said something differently and only look forward to seeing what comes of the decision you’ve just made, which is odd for a game that is meant to be replayed in order to make different decisions. Besides, there are some things that you wouldn’t want to see happen again and are better off just forgetting all of the decisions that you didn’t make.
So if you accept that the Wii U is Nintendo’s system for the foreseeable future, and that the system itself is not going to make any major changes, you considerably narrow down the list of problems that Nintendo can conceivably address in order to improve their console market standing.
Another issue that impacted the episode as a whole were the amount of times that the members of the Order backtracked into flashbacks that told of the argument that disbanded them. While I understand that it’s crucial to the story, it took away completely from the decision making and the story that revolves around Jessie and the Wither Storm. The characters, minus a scene with Petra, receive almost no depth and leave it to the environments and the little bit of dialogue to develop them. With the environments being the main reason to play the episode, the lack of exploration doesn’t help its case. For a game that is meant to develop according to character choices, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of decision-making going to develop the story further. Hopefully, the cliffhanger ending will pose as an entryway to further Jessie and his friend’s role in all of this instead of being focused on the Order.