by Mike Favila, Editor

The Wolf Among Us is the newest release from Telltale Games, who made last year’s excellent Walking Dead game. The story is based on the comic Fables, by Bill Willingham. If you aren’t familiar, the story goes as such: a number of story book characters have been forcibly removed from their mythical settings by a villain called “The Adversary”.  They all relocated to various parts of New York, cloaked with magic to prevent regular people (also known as Mundies, or the mundane) from being able to discern their likeness. Those that can’t (or won’t) blend in are forced to live at The Farm, located in upstate New York. If you haven’t read this awesome series, I definitely recommend you give it a spin.  Needless to say, I was pumped to see if the game lived up to the awesome comic.

Even though The Wolf Among Us is a game, it unspools a lot closer like a movie.  From the opening credits opening with a slow walk from our Bigby Wolf, you just know that they really want to set the mood.  The music is decidedly noire in tone, just like the shadowing on all the characters.  I really like the beautiful cel shaded animation, which hasn’t been this well represented since an old Xbox favorite of mine, Jet Set Radio Future.

As for the game play, it reminds me a lot of the Choose Your Own Adventure books from my youth, where you could pick from 3 or so distinct choices, and then the story path would be forever determined by that junction.  The biggest distinction would be that there is a time limit to your responses.  If you don’t pick any of the more combative or empathetic options, the system defaults your response to silence.  This action (or inaction) tends to impar and ambiguity to the conversation that wasn’t there before, depending on the situation.  I was surprised how much I liked this default setup.  Although I do love taking my time, the little timer at the bottom does put a little more urgency into your choices. There’s been a few decisions I made that I instantly wish I would have gone the other way. But, as in life, you often don’t have forever to pick a direction.

Periodically, you will have to get into a fight as sheriff Wolf.  The combat system in The Wolf Among Us is an extended guessing game version of Uncharted.  Like those cliffhanger sequences, you have to hit a specific sequence of buttons in order to duck a punch, or jump over an obstacle in a chase.  At first, I was taking a few hits from my opponents, just because my timing was geared towards Uncharted’s control system.  It’s hard enough to hit the button at the right time, but eventually I got it.

For delicate people, here’s a small warning: there’s TONS of curse words.  This is only jarring if you aren’t used to hearing storybook characters cuss like banshees. I don’t particularly remember the comic being this sailor-like, but I’ve only read the first 10 or 12 issues myself.  It’s definitely helps establish that you’re in a new, original world.  I also thought it was pretty interesting that after you finished the game, the end screen summarized specific choices you made and related how many other players had made the same choices in those situations. I felt a little generic, as I had picked about 80% the same as everybody.

I love the old school nature of The Wolf Among Us, and the point and click style interface. I still have a lot of fond memories of those old Sierra games, and this definitely has some of that DNA.  There is definitely lots of replay value for this little episode, so much so that I immediately started a fresh round after I finished the first go around.   I wholeheartedly recommend The Wolf Among Us, and can’t wait for the next episode to hit.

ComicsOnline.com gives The Wolf Among Us 5 out of 5 piggies!

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