Review [Video Game]: Children of Morta by Dead Mage

Full of heart, but could use a bit more soul.

As the Corruption spreads across the land, infecting animals and terrain alike, it is up to a single family to push back the darkness; the Bergsons. They are tasked with bringing light to fight the shadows that have consumed Mount Morta, and in the process, discover the truth behind the corruption. While seeking the truth, each family member finds that they have something to contribute to the cause and raises their sword (or hammer/daggers/staff) in support.

Children of Morta’s story mode sports hack-and-slash dungeon crawler gameplay with rogue-like elements. Through the course of the game, the player uses different Bergson family members to navigate the beautiful modern pixelated levels. While the levels are procedurally generated, the boss battles for each sector stay the same. The main connection to the rogue-lite genre lies in the game’s random level generator and having to restart an entire area upon death. That said, meta progression is strong and you won't find yourself caught up for too long. For more of a challenge, players can either A) increase the difficulty, or B) play the game’s rogue-lite-specific mode (which cuts most meta progression and is more demanding).

Upon booting up the game, I could see the care and attention that went into the beautifully realized world of Children of Morta. The modernized pixel art is vibrant and elegant. The detail is evident, and the shadow and lighting play is top-notch. Each character's design is distinct, despite their simplicity. And the Bergson's home, which was crafted to exude warmth and comfort, does so with ease. Playing this game puts the player back at the Bergson estate quite frequently between runs (either from death or from completing a dungeon), so it’s nice to feel comforted when I was welcomed home.

The story is narrated much in the same way as a story book, or popular indie darlings like Bastion. Ed Kelly lends his smooth voice to the narrator role and injects just the right amount of balance of emotional investment. He seems to care for this family of heroes, and it helped get me invested, even when I found the writing trite. The attempt to create a gripping tale involving this unique family shows a lot of heart, care, and attention. The writing sometimes does this a disservice, as the narrator’s lines sound like they could be plucked right out of a book titled “Generic Fantasy Mumbo Jumbo 101”. This isn't to say it’s all bad, far from it.

Sometimes when one of the Bergsons comes back from a dungeon, I was greeted with a cutscene. Unfortunately, they never added a pause button during cutscenes, so if someone needed to ask me something in the real world, I would have to ask them if they could wait a few moments. A rather odd oversight. While I generally enjoyed the cutscenes, as they expanded the world and lore, they didn't always feel properly paced. When you first start a dungeon, every time you die or complete a floor, you'll get new cutscenes. Then they dry up for a while, leaving an opening until you get to your next dungeon. Some cutscenes are very short and feel randomly placed. For most of the game, however, they are quite welcome.

The beauty of Children of Morta’s gameplay is in the character variety. Instead of simply having new weapons to unlock over multiple runs, you unlock new characters, each with their own unique abilities and skill trees. My favorite part about these skill trees is that leveling up one Bergson helps all Bergsons. For instance, if you reach a certain level with Lucy, all characters will spawn with a gemstone when they start a run, level her up further and she’ll create a distraction for another character when they’re in a tight spot! This helped me to level up characters that I wasn't initially as fond of (Mark and Kevin) and learn how to use them with less consequence. Mark and Kevin were initially a bit too squishy and needed to be close to damage enemies, so it took a while for me to adapt to them, but in the end, I enjoyed all of the characters. I appreciated that the game gives characters fatigue (which you can clear with a rare egg). This makes it difficult to do too many consecutive runs with a character because their initial health will be reduced (more and more each time). Giving them a break means trying another character. Thankfully they're all enjoyable (though Lucy was always my favorite). The only issue I had with having so many characters was the effect it had on cutscenes. The narrator would always say “the Bergson” (i.e. “The Bergson looked upon the corpse in horror.”) instead of the character’s name, which I understand from a financial and development point of view. But it was at times immersive breaking, especially when playing with the add-on character who wasn't a Bergson.

The game provides a good amount of diversity between its three main levels (which are divided into sub-levels) but doesn't offer much challenge later in the game. For instance, I beat the final boss with almost no effort. While far from being a reason to dislike the game, it did make the end feel less rewarding than it should have been. The enemy and boss battle variety is solid, especially considering the length of the game. I always enjoyed running into a red or yellow-outlined enemy for a higher challenge. The enemies are quite different depending on the biome, and it’s fun to figure out how enemies react to different characters' moves and devise a strategy.

I did experience a few mishaps throughout the game where my character froze or the game froze on the loading screen. When my character froze the few times I died and collected my earnings (though it was annoying because it also added fatigue to a character I wanted to continue using). In the case of the loading screen, I had to reset my system, which meant I lost all progress running through the level. It didn’t happen many times thankfully, but still irritating.

Dead Mage has concocted a neat little title that blends traditional dungeon crawling with a few rogue-lite elements in a beautifully wrapped package. Though Children of Morta's story didn't always grip me due to some generic fantasy writing, it still managed to keep my interest enough with its interesting setting and charm. Even if I found that the writing could sometimes come off as cheesy, it was still a pleasure to hear Ed Kelly narrate it. While by no means the best rogue-lite-inspired game, Children of Morta is still a game worth exploring for its visual beauty and fun gameplay variety. If you've never played the rogue-lite genre, this may be a great entry point. Oh, and it drop in has co-op.

--

The Math

Objective Assessment: 7.5/10

Bonus: +1 for beautifully realized art, world, and lore. +1 for fun character selection.

Penalties: -1 for some trite writing. -1 for occasional bugs.

Nerd Coefficient: 7.5/10

Posted by: Joe DelFranco - Fiction writer and lover of most things video games. On most days you can find him writing at his favorite spot in the little state of Rhode Island.

Review [Video Game]: Concrete Genie by Pixelopus

Paint some murals, save some lives.

Concrete Genie follows protagonist Ash as he tries to rid his old hometown of Denska of an encroaching darkness that threatens to pervade all. It is evident that the darkness is tied to the negativity that the old fishing village has had to endure over the last number of years, and despite its ugliness, Ash still waxes nostalgic over Denska. And then there are the bullies. In the opening moments of the game, Ash’s binder of drawings is scattered by a bunch of mischievous kids who torture him for no reason. Despite his parents’ warnings about the dangers of the town, Ash still tempts fate and finds himself in a pickle.

Concrete Genie is one of those unique “indie” games in that it isn’t indie at all. With the backing of Sony, Pixelopus released a smaller-scale title that feels like an upscale indie game. In combination with Media Molecule’s Dreams technology, Pixelopus set out to create something unique, and for the most part, they did.

The gameplay could best be described as a puzzle platformer, where you have to solve simple puzzles to proceed. There’s never much difficulty in the game and I never found myself stuck on any part for too long. It doesn't hurt that the platforming works well, so you don’t have to struggle with those controls. You can summon genies at specific parts of the map and it’s up to you to appease them with the help of your trusty paintbrush. The game gives you a preset number of designs (which you can find more of as you play through the game). You use these to create murals and bypass certain areas. These are the main forms of puzzles you will encounter, and while they don’t present much of a challenge, they are dazzling and unique. The colors and combinations can delight the senses, and it’s fun to watch your genies play with your paintings. Using your art to light up a district and bring color back to the town is an enjoyable treat. In tandem with the already striking claymation/stop motion visual feel, the game is visually entrancing.

For a game about being an artist, there isn’t much in the way of personal artistic expression due to the exclusive use of pre-selected designs. Don’t get me wrong, the options given are better than anything I could personally create, but it would be wonderful to see what other people could do with the tools, especially considering Pixelopus used Dreams tech to help create the game. It seems like a bit of a missed opportunity.

The “painting” is done with the Dualshock 4 or DualSense (depending on which platform you're on) controller’s motion sensor. While the sensor works well for what they want to do, it sometimes goes out of whack, which pulls me out of the game for a moment so I can recalibrate. Sometimes traditional controls work just fine, and in most cases, are even more precise. Despite this, there are no strict specifics that the player needs to adhere to when creating art (the closest things are the murals that you have to recreate), so the pressure to be extremely accurate doesn’t exist. This doesn't completely alleviate the occasional break in immersion due to the motion controls, but it does ameliorate it for the most part.

The story is a simple tale of bullying. It’s effective though not very unique. Not blaming oneself and forgiving others is a record that’s been played before. The use of the art to move the game forward is where the game’s charm comes in and brings in a different flavor. Though some of the world’s magic rules feel inconsistent or make no sense at times, it isn’t a game that’s meant to be thought on too much. It’s more a game of emotion than one of the mind, so suspending belief within its world was necessary at times to accept certain events.

An interesting change happens later in the game where we go from a puzzle platformer to a straight-up action game. The change is rather abrupt and takes much of what makes the game unique and turns it into a basic action game. It isn’t necessarily poor, but it doesn’t do anything so worthwhile that the shift is warranted. I think it would have been more impressive if the studio used the tools they had to solve the game’s problems without turning to a different genre. That said, getting the paint boots made getting around in the game significantly more enjoyable.

Though I didn’t run into any glitches on my playthrough of the main story, I did encounter a few in my cleanup run. I wanted to get all the collectibles and see Luna’s secret under the lighthouse, but a bug prevented me from doing so. Another bug prevented me from discovering all the genie moments in the game. So while there were no game breakers, there were a few completion ruining incidents, so keep it in mind if you don’t want to play through the game multiple times.

Being Pixelopus’s second game, Concrete Genie showed a lot of promise for future titles. Unfortunately, Sony closed the studio in the summer of 2023, ceasing any thoughts of possible projects from the studio. Despite some of my misgivings with the game, it does what it sets out to do and more; it shows that big publishers should take more small-time risks because they can pay off with quality content. Concrete Genie may only take a handful of hours to complete, but it’s flashy and memorable and shows that we don’t need every game to have a budget of one hundred million dollars to be enjoyable. Painting dazzling landscapes across Deska is an enjoyable experience. Concrete Genie isn’t perfect, but I found it to be endearing and worth a few hours of my time.

--

The Math

Objective Assessment: 7/10

Bonus: +1 for unique gameplay. +1 for visual splendor.

Penalties: -1 for end-game gameplay shift. -1 for genie glitches and bugs.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Posted by: Joe DelFranco - Fiction writer and lover of most things video games. On most days you can find him writing at his favorite spot in the little state of Rhode Island.

Destiny - House of Wolves

Destiny's 2nd Downloadable Content Pack

[Destiny - House of Wolves DLC, Bungie, Activision, 2014]

Wow! A Real Plot!

House of Wolves finally delivers what so many people have been clamoring for in Destiny...a serviceable story line! I know, I know. I was a bit surprised, too. First, some backstory. You knew something was fishy when those Fallen were serving the Queen on the Reef in the original release (For the uninitiated, that's a race of aliens, a matriarch, and an area in space that another race, the Awoken, call home). Well, it turns out your instincts were spot-on. They have started a rebellion against the Queen under a Kell (read: king of a Fallen House, kind of like the Targaryens but much nicer to one another) named Skolas. He has declared himself the Kell of Kells and hopes to overthrow the Awoken and unite the Houses of the Fallen under one banner. Wait, I've seen this before somewhere. It's the Passion and Braveheart mixed up with a smattering of Mass Effect thrown in for that futuristic feel! Sneaky buggers. 

It starts out with the first real mission on Venus. A girl named Petra whose haircut looks like Gary Oldman's from Fifth Element serves as the equivalent of the Awoken Queen's National Security Advisor sends you after the Kell of Kells. Skolas runs from you like a little girl in this mission, but it wouldn't be much of a story if you killed your nemesis and the final boss in the first mission, now would it? Then again, "not very much of a story" has been kind of the theme with Destiny so it wouldn't be a complete shock. Ba-dum-ching! 

From there, you go chasing Skolas around the universe and performing bounties for Petra to earn some pretty worthless junk like shaders and banners. The bounties are actually a pretty nice addition because Skolas' Wolves spawn at certain locations around the galaxy and you don't know exactly when or where they'll show up. When they do, they're tough as nails and require a little help from at least one other player to take down most times. I won't go into spoilers on the rest of the story line, but suffice it to say the plot is significantly better than the paltry offering in the first DLC, The Dark Below, and it's a lot more clear-cut and understandable than the one from the main game. When it comes to the tale they tell, Bungie finally got it right with their new flagship title. 

The Good, The Bad, and the Downright Aggravating 

There are four portions to the House of Wolves, and Bungie has made two of them nearly completely unplayable for the solo gamer. Not only that, but without these unplayable portions, you're stuck at level 32 while the rest of the community moves up to the new cap of 34. Have fun playing PvP with first-gen gear while everybody else is running around with weapons that are 30% more powerful, you loser! Most of their other multiplayer options have come with a component called “matchmaking” that automatically hooks you up with the needed number of players (between 2 and 11, depending on the game mode) to take part in whatever multiplayer mode you choose, be it a Strike Mission where you have to face off against some of the biggest bosses in the game, or the Crucible that contains various types of team vs. team games and an every-man-for-himself option. However, for some reason known only to the programmers at Bungie known forever-onward as elitist punks, certain game modes do not offer the option of matchmaking. There is a reason that this is a major issue.

Bungie has changed the weapon upgrade system, again. The exotic weapons, which you can use in only one slot at a time for your weapons and armor, still just take an exotic shard to max out. Those can still be purchased from Xur on the weekends or by disassembling another exotic. Legendary weapons are where the changes have taken place. They require something called Etheric Light, a substance that has not appeared in the game until now, to max out. In order to level up, you have to max out your armor in order to raise your "Light" level. Therein lies the problem. 

There are only four ways to get Etheric Light: Beating the Prison of Elders on levels 34 or 35, winning the Trials of Osiris, finishing the Weekly Nightfall Strike (a level 32 mission with five enemy modifiers, which give them extreme advantages over the average alien), or reaching levels 3 and 5 in the Iron Banner. Only the fourth offers matchmaking, and it has level advantages disabled so players who have gained Etheric Light in the previous three modes are significantly more likely to win the match. 

Due to the lack of matchmaking, unless you have a Rolodex of friends who have been playing this game since it came out, you are essentially finished with it until September when the next add-on comes out. Either that or Bungie will have to add matchmaking to the parts of the game that offer Etheric Light. Sure, you can play the same Crucible and Strike missions some more, but an entire portion of one section of House of Wolves and 3/4ths of another are unplayable since Bungie, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to make the only parts of the game that allow you to level any higher than 32 impossible to reach for the solo gamer. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Even games that were designed from the ground up as multiplayers like Left 4 Dead and its sequel are playable in solo mode. 

Who Are You, My Mom? 

You Should Get Out There and Make More Friends, Brad!

Does Bungie have some investment in my virtual social life? I'm married with plenty of real friends. I honestly don't need someone to force me to meet people online. Actually, I find it pretty insulting, not to mention annoying, that they would create the game add-on in such a way that nearly half of the content is unplayable for me unless I go out and track down some strangers to play with me. Have you used your headset in an online game of Call of Duty lately? The only people you run into are 8-year-olds with mouths like a sailor, loners that somehow still think teabagging you after they kill you is funny, and people who want to quite literally come to your house and fight you. And potheads. Let's not forget the massive number of gamertags with "420" in them. It's got to be the most common three figure combination on all of Xbox Live and the Playstation Network by a 100:1 margin. I paid the same $20 that every lazy parent of the 10-year-olds online kicking my butt did. 

Should I be penalized because I'm an adult with a job and a life outside of gaming? Apparently Bungie says, "Yes," and that's why I'm finished. I'm done. I'm out. I'll freely admit that I've really enjoyed this game up until now, but I've never felt quite so screwed over by a game developer since I bought E.T. for my Atari. I'll have to think long and hard before I buy another game from Bungie unless this strange requirement to find fellow players somewhere other than inside the gamespace is ceased. I bought House of Wolves without reading too much about it. I just knew it was going to be bigger than the first DLC. However, you can bet I'll do my homework before I shell out any money for the rumored Comet: Planet of Darkness expansion in September. As much as I love being purposefully handicapped or forced into playing with some foul-mouthed kid who drops F-bombs like I take breaths, I'd better be able to play the entire package on my own or using matchmaking, or I'll be leaving Destiny alone for good. 

Thanks for the second DLC rip-off, Bungie. First they gave us half a story. Now they give us half a game. It just doesn't make sense to me at all. Most developers want to include as many players as possible, but they've managed to get rid of this one, and I suspect a few others along with me. Destiny has already caused as much controversy as Grand Theft Auto used to with its paper-thin plot and $20 mini-DLC, The Dink Below. One would think they would want to be as inclusive as possible so as to justify the game's record-setting $1 billion price tag, but apparently they don't need any more players because they've done an excellent job of turning them off and getting rid of them. Honestly, I feel like Bungie owes me ten bucks since I won't be playing half of this game, not due to a lack of desire, but because of their decisions. When I buy a bad game, I'll take the hit to my wallet. When I'm purposefully excluded from an arguably good game I've spent WAAAY too much time playing (We're talking hundreds of hours here, and I don't mean two hundred, or three, or five. Put it this way, when my wife did the math the other day, she just started laughing at me and didn't stop for several minutes), I don't feel completely out of line saying that. I don't expect it, of course, caveat emptor, but I feel like I just got ripped off by someone I'd grown to trust. It's not cool, Bungie, not cool at all. 

Sure, I have friends with Destiny. I'm a nerd, but I'm not a total loner. I have 35 friends on Xbox Live, but only seven of them bought Destiny. Two sold it back because they didn't like it. Three didn't get the House of Wolves expansion pack, and the one who did isn't enough to make up the necessary three-man team needed to play the Trials of Osiris or the Prison of Elders. We're left with one option, get on message boards and search for a third player. I've tried this several times, to no avail. I've pretty much given up on the game at this point, which is too bad. I've been playing it pretty regularly since its release, but as I can't progress any further there's not much reason to keep playing. 

I Guess I Should Talk About the Game

Since this is a review, I'll quit ranting and discuss the new additions to the game. The four new modes are:

• The story line, which I've already covered. It's tough and flushed out, but unfortunately the only major piece of House of Wolves that really shines for me. You had better have maxed out your character(s) if you want to stand a chance. I already had, so that wasn’t an issue for me, but for players who might have still been working on it in the mid-20s or lower, there’s no way they could make it through without first grinding for a month or so to hit the old level cap of 32.

• The Prison of Elders. This mode opens upon completion of the main story. It takes place in an actual prison under the Reef, home of the Awoken. It contains many wolves of the various Houses, but it also holds Fallen, Vex, and Cabal captives that have supposedly attacked the reef at one time or another. After Skolas' uprising, the Queen decided she wanted to clear it out, so you and two other players get dropped into an airlock that opens up onto the four branches of the prison. Once one of the doors opens, you have to go in and kill everything that moves. It could be any of the races, and they all have guns for some reason despite being imprisoned, or even a large Vex boss. There are level 28, 32, 34, and 35 challenges. The level 28 challenge includes matchmaking. The other three do not, and therein lies the crux of my issue with this game add-on.  

• The third new section is called Trials of Osiris. I would love to tell you about this game mode from personal experience, but unfortunately it doesn't include matchmaking so I haven't been able to play it. However, I've read up on it so at least I can tell you what it's about. It's like Skirmish, where two teams of 3 players each battle, but with several important differences. Unlike most Crucible challenges, level advantages aren't disabled, so you can get spanked by higher-leveled characters. Also, there is no re-spawning so once you're dead, you're dead. You play until you win nine rounds or lose three, whichever comes first. Reaching nine wins is one of the few ways to earn Etheric Light, and it doesn't sound easy. 

• Finally, they’ve added a Level 28 strike mission. Luckily, it has matchmaking. Sadly, it doesn’t offer you a chance at Etheric Light, either. It is fun, as strikes go. It’s somewhat similar to the Cosmodrome strike where you have to take out Sepiks Prime. That's a big, purple ball that's a lot more dangerous than it sounds. In that mission, you and two other players (who were usually combined into a team using matchmaking) have to survive several rounds of attacks from hordes of enemies, then beat a huge robotic walker that looks like a 60-foot beetle, and finally the purple ball itself. In this strike, you must face off against a Kell named Taniks in the first round, another walker in the second, and finish Taniks off in the third because he ran away from you in the first (running away seems to be a thing with these Kells). 

Summary

While I found the story to be wholly satisfying, it wasn't worth the aggravation of being stuck unable to play the other two large portions of the game without lots of online begging and a little luck, one of which I hate and the other I totally lack, apparently. I can only hope that one of the upcoming patches solves this issue, because it's ridiculous not to have matchmaking in all the game modes. They have the technology. They can rebuild it. The question is, after spending a billion dollars making the thing, do they have six million left over? 

The Math

Objective Score: 4/10. I'll give them the benefit of calling the new strike mission a fourth section and only half the game unplayable, but it's a stretch. Therefore, I've got to take half their points away from the get-go. 

Bonuses: +1 for finally getting the whole "story thing" right.

Penalties: -1 for, well, if you don't know by now then you haven't been paying attention at all and I'm not going to repeat myself. 

Nerd coefficient: 4/10. Problematic, but has redeeming qualities.

Tales from the Borderlands - Episode 2: Atlas Mugged

[Tales from the Borderlands - Episode 2: Atlas Mugged, Telltale Games, 2K Games, 2015]

The Art of the Cliffhanger

Ah, the lost narrative style of the cliffhanger. I have only just started with Telltale's Game of Thrones series and while Walking Dead is on my playlist, it hasn't made it to my hard drive yet, so I can't tell you if all of their titles contain this type of plot device, but through the first two episodes, it appears to be a staple of the Tales from the Borderlands series. Just as Episode 1 left players with their jaws in their laps, Episode 2 has a similar, "What the frack?" ending that serves to deftly re-employ the ancient, somewhat lost art of the cliffhanger. 

L'Histoire

<Episode 1 Spoiler Alert>

When we last left Ryhs and Fiona, they were trying to get away from Vasquez, Rhys' Hyperion nemesis, fittingly-voiced by Patrick Warburton of David Putty (Seinfeld) fame. Warburton does a fabulous job of playing the part of the scummy, yet somehow amiable corporate ladder-climber who keeps crushing Rhys' dreams of a bigger and better future. Much like his counterpart on the long-running sitcom, while you wouldn't ever want to be seen in public with Vasquez for fear he would say something awful and put everyone in earshot in a state of extreme discomfort, you can't help but enjoy the completeness of the character's persona. 

Anyway, Rhys (and his sidekick Vaughn) and Fiona (plus her partner Sasha) manage to avoid Vasquez's attempts to corral and kill them and end up falling into the Gortys Project, a room full of Atlas tech introduced by the former Hyperion headman and current inhabitant of Rhys' brain, Handsome Jack. All of this takes place as a retelling by Rhys and Fiona to an unknown captor who is holding them hostage and forcing them to recount all the details they know about the mysterious Gortys Project. Some of the more fun parts of both episodes 1 and 2 take place when the two protagonists begin to argue about the details of the story. It also serves to remind the gamer that he is re-playing a story rather than experiencing it first-hand. It is an interesting plot device and one you don't see outside of literature very often, certainly not in video games. 

<Spoiler Complete>

Episode 2

I will go into more detail about this episode in the upcoming review of Episode 3. I hate to spoil the fun for anyone who has yet to play it, but I don't like leaving out major plot-points for the sake of avoiding spoilers, either. I guess that's a prime reason the serial format lends itself to game reviews. By the time the newest episode has been released, you can pretty much assume that 90% of the people who were going to play the last episode have finished it already, so it's spoilers...AWAY!!! Until then, I will just give a brief synopsis while trying not to divulge too many details and stick to telling you what I think of the game. 

Episode 2 finds Rhys still suffering with random appearances of his unwanted AI implant, Handsome Jack. Since Rhys is the only one that can see Jack, he's kind of like Jimmy Stewart stuck with the six-foot rabbit, Harvey, where everyone else believes he's either having some sort of psychotic break or just putting them on. If he could only convince the right people at Hyperion that Handsome Jack's intelligence continues to survive inside his head, it could be his ticket to Easy Street, but unfortunately he's on Pandora and the only people he can tell are his lackey friend Vaughn who is in even less of a position to do anything for him than Rhys himself, and Vasquez, who could care less if the presence of the Almighty himself was inhabiting Rhys' brain so long as he gets his vault key. 

Again, I don't want to go into too much detail, but suffice it to say that Rhys, Fiona, their respective counterparts Vaughn and Sasha, and the ever-loyal Loader Bot who is always there to lend a hand continue on their quest to discover the meaning behind the Gortys Project and, hopefully, uncover a vault key in the process. They are hotly pursued by Vasquez and his lackeys who have all the ethical standards of a Ponzi scheme plotter. Also, this episode ends with an even greater cliffhanger than the first. Not only are you left wondering what's going to happen next, but what the heck just happened. It leaves you hanging with all the skill of the best Saturday morning serial from the movie theatre glory days of old. 

The Mechanic's Shop

One place where this game both shines and leaves something to be desired is in the gameplay mechanics themselves. It's more of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story that takes place in the Borderlands universe than an actual Borderlands game. You have to make dialogue decisions a la Mass Effect that change the way the story goes and can have series-long consequences for your protagonists. Not only that, but the dialogue choices are on a short timer, so you are extremely pressed for time and only given a few seconds to make a decision that could alter the entire game experience. That said, it's not an RPG, it's not an FPS, it's not a looter. Basically it lacks all of the components that made Borderlands so addictive and gave it virtually neverending replayability. 

The only action, controller-wise, in the game is limited to a series of button-mashing commands, controller swipes, and the occasional matching of a hexagon with the indicated spot on-screen before you had to hit right trigger/R2. There are also small portions where Rhys uses his bionic eye to investigate the area, but the solutions are fairly obvious and present little in the way of a challenge. It's not like Borderlands required the complicated melange of button mastery needed to keep from getting constantly annihilated in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, what with its cryosuit boosts, slides, powers, grenades, and the like, but it certainly asked more of a player than smashing down on the X button until a green circle was filled in to keep the play continuing. This lack of anything but the simplest mechanics may be acceptable in the mobile gaming market, but for consoles with controllers boasting ten buttons and three directional controllers, it's just too simplistic. 

I realize that these Telltale Games titles are available on mobile devices, as well, and maybe it was the cross-platform requirements that restricted the controller options on the XBox One, PC, and PS4. However, as a long-time Borderlands fan and addict, it has been somewhat of a letdown, albeit a minor one as the games contain the same brand of off-color humor that make the original and it's pre- and post-sequel some of this reviewer's favorite titles of the last generation. That said, I'll be honest, I'm looking for a little bit more in a Borderlands game. I guess I shouldn't complain given the price and the ability to return to Pandora one more time for just a few bucks. It's well worth the money for any fan of the series. I don't see Tales From The Borderlands bringing in many new fans, though. If you have a miniature ClapTrap sitting on your desk, then these are definitely for you. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you should probably consider looking elsewhere, or just waiting for Elder Scrolls Online to finally hit consoles this summer...maybe. 

The Math

Objective Score: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for showing us a part of the Borderlands universe that was, as yet, unseen. So far, everything has been from the Vault Hunters' perspective. It's nice to see what an average Hyperion employee goes through. 

Penalties: -1 for a control scheme that would leave one of the three buttons on a Sega Genesis controller mostly untouched, nevermind today's complex pieces of ergonomic artwork. 

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10. A mostly enjoyable experience. 

Read about our scoring system here. 

Tales From the Borderlands - Episode I: Zer0 Sum

[Tales From the Borderlands - Episode I: Zer0 Sum, Telltale Games, 2K Games, 11/2014]

What-tale Games?

I'll be honest, until The Walking Dead, I'd never heard of Telltale Games, yet now they seem to be dominating the market on some of the biggest titles in all types of entertainment across the board. From The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us to Borderlands, Game of Thrones, and the upcoming Minecraft series, none of which has yet to receive anything below an 80 on Metacritic, Telltale has put together what may be the most impressive library of titles in recent memory. They're making EA look like a small, indie production company that just figured out how to make Hexic into a high definition game for the PS3. On top of their plethora of quality releases, Episode 1 cost a whopping $2.50, which is quite possibly the best deal in gaming since The Orange Box. 

Choose Your Own Adventure...Wizard or Warrior?

One of the new gameplay additions that makes this Borderlands game different from the others is the ability to affect the outcome through decisions you make throughout the game. Unlike other games where your decisions can alter the plot, your decisions about how to respond to situations immediately effect how other characters feel about you and parts of the story as immediate as the following scene.

Is This REALLY a Borderlands Game? 

While making game-altering decisions is a great new addition to the gameplay in Borderlands, Episode 1 just didn't feel like a Borderlands game without the massive arsenal at your disposal, discovered and earned through hours of tireless grinding and mission completion. Although it's pretty clear the future episodes will contain plenty of the old-style FPS game mechanics that made the first three games so much fun to play, but they were sorely lacking in the first go-around in Telltale's 

Borderlands product. It's good, don't get me wrong, but it just doesn't have the feel of the Pandora we've all come to know and love. 

So If It Doesn't Play Like a Traditional Borderlands Game, How DOES it Play?

It honestly did remind me of those old Choose Your Own Adventure books, except you couldn't go back and switch to the other outcome if you didn't like what happened as you could with the books. Once you'd spent that ammo or made that other character angry, you were stuck with the repercussions. On top of that, you didn't get much time to consider your responses, like maybe five seconds, tops. Not only does this add to the sense of immediacy each time you are presented with a challenge but it raises the replayability significantly. This is due to the fact that you want to find out what would have happened if you had just been nicer to that one character or showed more of a spine with another. Although it felt as though many of the "choices" were just going to end up with you getting insulted no matter what response you chose, there were plenty that definitely affected how the game progressed. It will be interesting to see if they carry over your decisions from the first episode into the next four or if the decision-making effect is limited to each episode. Hopefully it's the former. 

A Little Bedtime Story

As usual, I don't want to get too far into the story line so as not to spoil the game for those who have yet to play it. I have to supply a little bit of backstory, but to give away the ending would probably get my figurative Interwebbian head chopped off by crazed jihadi gamers. To that end, I'll just give you the setup and some critique and let you decide if it's worth a play or not based on that. You start the game as Rhys, a lower-tier suit-and-tie at Hyperion who has dreams of middle management. However, instead of the raise and promotion you were expecting, you quickly learn that your former boss has been "Blown out of the g@&&^m airlock," to borrow a phrase from Aliens, and replaced somehow, repercussion free, with your arch-nemisis Vasquez. 

Needless to say this doesn't do good things for your career, with you ending up as Vice President of Janitors. You and your sidekick, Vaughn, come up with a quick plan to get back at Vasquez by stealing a deal he has set up to purchase a vault key for $10 million. Things get a bit off track from there and you end up trying to salvage what you can from the leftovers. 

At the same time, Fiona is a con artist that lives on Pandora alread. Rhys is lucky enough to at least live on the space station where there are working toilets and people don't eat one-another's eyeballs. Fiona is working with some other shady characters trying to set up the deal for a Vault Key planet-side. However, all hell breaks loose and you're being dragged through the desert that looks strangely like the male version of Princess Leia's bounty hunter from Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi. You know, the one that's holding a thermal detonator and says, "Yoto, yoto." 

"Where am I?"

"Jabba's Palace." 

"Who are you?" 

"Someone who loves you!" 

Anyway, sorry for the Star Wars flashback. Back to the game. While I will admit to being a bit disappointed with the lack of a real control mechanic and firefights, the place where this game really shines is in its story. Whereas Borderlands 1 and 2 seemed to be a bit disjointed at times when you got off on a side quest run for a few hours, Tales From The Borderlands never suffers from such side trips off the main course. Telltale Games was free to focus on creating a top-quality story set within the Borderlands universe, and they squeezed every ounce of goodness out of the opportunity. This game is fraught with the irreverent, sometimes dark humor of its predecessors. Where it lacks in control scheme, it more than makes up for with a hilarious and overwhelmingly engaging tale of Pandora and its unique and often freakish inhabitants. The only real problem I have with this game is waiting for the next installment to come out!

The Math

Objective Score: 9/10

Bonuses: +1 for having possible the best Borderlands story to come out yet and leaving me starving for more.

Penalties: -1 because, come on, Borderlands is a first-person shooter. I can count on one hand the number of times I fired a weapon in this game. Heck, I'd still be able to count the shots on one hand if half my digits got sheared off in a thresher accident at age nine. I know there are guns coming to the series from hints in the story, but I was a bit disappointed in the almost total lack of them in this episode. 

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10. A standout in its category. Very high quality. You should REALLY go buy this game, especially for just $2.50! If you don't like it, I'll personally refund your money. 

(But not really.)