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The Walking Dead: Episode 1 moseys onto XBLA this Friday
Much like the lumbering, rotted corpses of your former friends and/or family members, some things in life just can't be rushed. The Walking Dead: Episode 1, for instance, came out on PSN last Tuesday, but won't be coming out on XBLA until this Friday, according to Major Nelson.See, the trek from PSN to XBLA takes a couple days longer than usual when most of your nervous system has disintegrated and your skeletal structure has been ravaged by necrosis. When it does show up, it'll set you back a paltry 500 MS Points, which ain't half bad for four stars.
The Walking Dead walks on over to PC, Mac, PS3 tomorrow
Hoard up your supplies and board up your windows, walkers are coming. More specifically, the first episode of Telltale's The Walking Dead, titled "A New Day," will be shuffling its way over to PC, Mac and PlayStation Network (for PS3) tomorrow.PC and Mac users can still pre-order the entire season for $22.49 – 10% off the usual price. As a bonus of sorts, PC and Mac users can bundle The Walking Dead with Telltale's "Almost Everything Pack" – which includes nearly every game in the Telltale catalog and normally sells for $90 – for a total of $42.99. PSN users, meanwhile, can grab the first episode for $4.99, or pre-purchase the entire season for $19.99, shaving $5 off the normal price and receiving a premium PS3 theme to boot.Just remember, if you must point and click zombies, be sure you click them in the head.
Robert Kirkman talks The Walking Dead, shows gameplay, is charming
The third installment of Telltale's The Walking Dead behind-the-scenes interview series, Playing Dead, features Robert Kirkman, writer of The Walking Dead comic series. Kirkman and the guy who voiced Marty McFly in Back to the Future talk art style, writing the game and why it isn't an open-world shooter, among other interesting tidbits.This episode also features a good chunk of gameplay footage (7:02 and 11:50) involving batteries, why there aren't more female mechanical engineers, and of course, zombies.
The Walking Dead shambles into certification this week
The Walking Dead is getting closer -- grab the shotgun! -- and is expected to be submitted for certification on XBLA and PSN this week, with a release soon after, Telltale CEO Dan Connors told Digital Trend at GDC. Connors expects the certification process to take about six weeks, with the launch soon after, placing it in late April or May. He didn't specify the launch process for other platforms, including PC.Telltale wants to capitalize on the "popularity" of the TV show, whose second season ends March 18, Digital Trend wrote. "Popularity" is of course a loaded term, but personally we've come to enjoy the show with a drinking game -- take a drink every time Lori is mad for a ridiculous reason; take two drinks every time an awkward silence lasts longer than four seconds; finish your drink every time someone shoots more bullets than their gun actually holds.That said, we're looking forward to Telltale's adaptation; either we'll finally get to enjoy the comic in a new form, or we'll have to buy some more beer.
The Walking Dead gets new life with dev webseries, Playing Dead
Telltale's video game adaptation of The Walking Dead is making slow, shuffling, possibly even moaning progress into reality, at least from our perspective. Luckily for us, Telltale has created a new web show, Playing Dead, in which developers and designers talk about the tone and progress of the game, instead of taking that time to actually make it.Don't get us wrong, we love hearing details about a game based on one of our favorite comic series in recent memory, but we won't be responsible for our actions if we don't see a gameplay video soon. We might write letters.Playing Dead launches alongside a new website for Telltale's The Walking Dead, and the first episode is watchable above. In it, lead designers Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman discuss the timeline of their Walking Dead, which runs parallel to the beginning of Rick's canonical story, and the authentic approach they're taking to original writer Robert Kirkman's lore.Rodkin and Vanaman reveal that players will interact with established characters such as Glenn and Hershel, and the video offers some in-game screenshots, one featuring a woman that could be Lori. We have provided the screens below for closer inspection.Choices players make, such as saving a character's life, will carry through the month-to-month episodes, Rodkin and Vanaman say, affecting later decisions and gameplay options. Vanaman notes that the game is five episodes, spread over five months.Supplementing all the new Walking Dead info, The Book of Eli writer Gary Whitta announced today that he is working with Telltale on their adaptation.%Gallery-147727%
Telltale holiday sale knocks iOS games to $2.99
Telltale has announced a holiday sale for many of its iOS games. Several titles, including Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, Puzzle Agent, Tales of Monkey Island and more have been marked down to a measly $2.99. Because nothing says Christmas like ignoring your loved ones while fiddling with an iPhone or iPad. See the complete list of discounted titles after the break. The sale runs until January 2.
Jurassic Park review: Dinosaur's Lair
Jurassic Park: The Game is brilliant in exactly one way. It is so respectful and contiguous to the film, it becomes an elaborate enactment of John Hammond's dubious blueprint. Telltale has created a disastrous theme park ride, and you never stop running away from it. It's tempting to dismiss the whole thing as a shallow quick-time event -- a drawn out, press-x-to-hold-on-to-your-butts marathon with a John Williams Lite soundtrack -- but Jurassic Park's crime isn't one of carelessness. There's a clear love for the film on display, and a wink at the player who knows just how many times you have to pump the primer handle before rebooting the park's power.
Telltale devs caught juking Metacritic user reviews, studio stands behind them
When Telltale employees aren't busy getting into protracted online arguments over the handling of promotional Jeeps, they're apparently artificially boosting the user review score of the studio's latest release, Jurassic Park: The Game. GameSpot spotted as much this week after the game launched, pointing out that few reviewers (if any) received the game early for review, and that the only user reviews on Metacritic were notoriously high (10s), featuring "gushing" praise for the title. As it turns out, after some quick Googling, the user reviews belonged to Telltale Games employees -- a user interface artist and a cinematic artist, according to GameSpot. Telltale, however, stands behind the two offenders. "Telltale Games do not censor or muzzle its employees in what they post on the internet," studio reps said. "It is being communicated internally that anyone who posts in an industry forum will acknowledge that they are a Telltale employee. In this instance, two people who were proud of the game they worked on, posted positively on Metacritic under recognizable online forum and XBLA account names." In other words, if you had Googled the user names attached to the positive user reviews from Metacritic, you could discover their true identities, which, as we all know, most internet forum users are wont to do. No one on the internet ever bases their reactions off of what they see without looking deeper first. Nope. Never.
Jurassic Park: The Game promo Jeep deal causes dino-sized kerfuffle on Reddit
Yesterday, we received a flood of tips from Redditors and other folks urging us to report on a post at the community site, titled, "I let TellTale borrow my Jurassic Park Jeep and all I got was this lousy Dino-Damage." Written by Jurassic Park-themed Jeep Wrangler owner Kevin "Boomerjinks" Henry of the Jurassic Jeep group, he recounts the events that transpired upon arranging a deal with Telltale Games to use his vehicle for promotion at this past September's PAX, where the studio was showing attendees its upcoming Jurassic Park game. Henry alleges that a variety of communication issues transpired prior to shipment of the Jeep from his location in Colorado to the convention in Washington, and that upon arrival, the vehicle itself had been damaged (scuffs and chips, mostly). Though he says he was assured that he'd be compensated for the damages, the company apparently went dark on him after several exchanges in the weeks following PAX. So he took to Reddit, but we'd only heard one side of the story. But after a minor uproar ensued, Telltale head Kevin Bruner took to Reddit himself to air his company's side of things, even agreeing to pay the damages in full out of pocket immediately. While he says he doesn't like "the circumstances this is going down in," he'd rather move things along. "This way we won't need to hash this out publicly any longer." As Telltale has been going through the vehicle transport's insurance holder, things haven't been speeding along for Henry's Jeep fix, Bruner claims. Meanwhile, as a fallout from the initial report, the ex-Telltale employee who organized the Jeep deal with Henry has been virtually mobbed by angry Redditors -- one of which posted the former employee's name, which resulted in "83 phone calls (according to Google voice), 41 Facebook messages, and 19 emails." Also, Jurassic Park: The Game is out today, in case you were wondering. Update: Apparently Henry himself outed the former Telltale employee, according to this Reddit comment.
Telltale: Episodic drop-off 'substantially less' on iOS
That stack of semi-completed games on your coffee table is either a reminder of how you habitually abandon good entertainment, or a teetering celebration of your healthy, well-prioritized life. (But this is a video game blog, so we think it's the first thing.) In the case of Telltale's episodic downloads, you don't even have the haunting benefit of physical leftovers. "In episodic games, usually the first episode ends up selling the most and it's one of the key reasons we have come to sell our game series primarily in the 'Season Pass' format where you get all the episodes for one purchase price," Telltale Games Producer Dave Felton told Gamasutra. While the practice offers no guarantee that you'll play every episode, Telltale can at least ensure that you purchase all of them -- except on the iPhone, where a "Season Pass" has yet to be implemented within the company's lineup. (In comparison, season passes exist on PSN, but not on Xbox Live.) Felton suggests that iOS devices are unique in that episodic drop-off is "substantially less than we have seen on any other platform to date," and suspects that the synergy between Apple's devices and its App Store "work together to drive that difference." Unlike Xbox Live Arcade, for instance, games on the App Store can easily be pushed into visibility by customer reviews and feedback. Telltale found that Hector: Badge of Carnage, its first externally developed series, even saw sales rise between episodes. It's Telltale's job to curb player ennui in their game design, but Hector's momentum indicates that a fluid marketplace can be just as important for bite-sized content.
Great Scott! Back to the Future for $10 on Steam
It appears our timeline has been skewed, as Steam is currently offering the first season of Back to the Future for only $10. It's not clear what caused this temporal shift, though Steam plans to correct it (i.e. the sale will end) this Thursday at 4pm specific. We assume lightning will be involved.
Jurassic Park's dinos wanna say hello
We can't help but imagine the dinosaurs of Telltale's Jurassic Park: The Game with slightly ... different voice casting. We've got high hopes that one of you sound prodigies will interpret that as a challenge.
Walking Dead game won't retell story of TV and comic series
Telltale Games was staying fairly tight-lipped about its upcoming episodic release based on the Walking Dead TV series and graphic novel. What we do know is that the game won't retell the TV and comic's story of lawman Rick Grimes and his quest to reunite with his family in the wake of the zombie apocalypse. The game will follow Lee Everett, a criminal loosed from his police escort after it runs into an erstwhile zombie. Everett will unite with a seven-year-old girl named Clementine who Telltale says will provide a sort of moral compass for the convict. As Rick Grimes tries to make his way into Atlanta, Lee and Clementine are trying to make their way out, which means they'll cross paths with established series characters like Lilly and Glenn. We know, we know, it's not a lot to go on. But as fans who weren't exactly thrilled at the prospect of watching Rick track down his wife and son yet again, Telltale's approach definitely seems like the right direction. %Gallery-125847%
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Hector: Badge of Carnage
Being a giant, beloved video game site has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk Richard Morss, Straandlooper's co-founder, and development leads Dean Burke and Kevin Beimers about their ribald adventure game, Hector: Badge of Carnage. How did your company get started? Richard: Straandlooper was started by two "veterans," Alastair (Ali) McIlwain and Richard Morss, and a founding team who had been involved with the kid's series Lifeboat Luke: Tim Bryans, Dean Burke, Kevin Beimers, Ciaran Oakes and Colin McCusker -- all of whom have been or will be involved with the production of the Hector games. The mission was to look realistically at the global animation market place and then do what we wanted to do anyway! At a time of niches and no license fees for anything anywhere, content creators may as well be truly independent and see where they get to. Having secured development funding we set about creating a raft of new stuff, including Dean Burke's Hector.
Explore Jurassic Park thoroughly in this trailer
What's that? You were hoping for over ten solid minutes of frantic dino/dino combat today in video form? GameSpot's Hot Spot is here to deliver on just that with a show featuring upcoming action-adventure game Jurassic Park.
April Fools: Telltale puts you in the game with Envelotech
Sure, the totally-fake Envelotech device shown off in Telltale's April Fools' Day video below has terrifying properties -- but was Puzzle Agent really the best way to showcase its potential for terror? We probably would have gone with Jurassic Park, or, at the very least, Torturetown.
Back to the Future's third episode snags Claudia Wells as Jennifer
As if A.J. LoCascio's eerily accurate impression of Marty McFly wasn't haunting enough in-game, how about some live-action joshin' between LoCascio and the original actress who played Marty's love interest, Jennifer? That's just what Telltale has delivered in the latest trailer for the third episode of Back to the Future: The Game, starring multiple versions of Jennifer (played by original Back to the Future actress Claudia Wells, who was replaced by Elisabeth Shue in the sequels). For her part, Wells says she was "thrilled" when LoCascio asked her to reprise her role from the film. "I said, 'I wanna be Jennifer!'" she explains in the latest clip. And that's when things get ... strange. Head past the break and see for yourself.
Back to the Future's third episode 'Citizen Brown' available next week
Back to the Future returns to our relatively recent past (the protagonist's present) in "Citizen Brown," the third episode in the series, available next week for PC and Mac. In the latest episode, Marty and Doc Brown get back to 1986 to find they've mucked up the timeline again ... and not in the fun "Biff washing dad's car" kinda way. Now they must deal with a powerful version of Doc Brown, but will he be friend or foe? BttF Episode 2: "Get Tannen!" will also be available next Tuesday on PSN. An email newsletter sent out by Telltale states that information about the European PSN and iPad launch dates for the second episode is "coming soon."
Telltale's Jurassic Park opening on PC and Mac this April
Telltale Games has updated its website to host the latest tourist-eating attraction, Jurassic Park: The Game. The five-episode series will debut this April on PC and Mac, and can be pre-ordered for $29.99 (representing a $5 discount off the regular price). There's also a brief trailer of the game, which is -- as designer Dave Grossman implied last year -- utterly devoid of talking cartoon animals. It's clearly representative of a darker, more serious approach to storytelling than we've come to expect from Telltale, and isn't likely to be conducive to our usual point-and-click perambulations. "I don't want to have it be a game about hanging around and solving thinky puzzles at your own pace," Grossman said. "It just doesn't seem like the right thing to do for that." You'll hear more about Jurassic Park and how it works later today.
Back to the Future's second episode 'Get Tannen!' available now
Telltale's Back to the Future adventure game series has aligned with our timeline to deliver its second episode, "Get Tannen!" for PC and Mac. While mucking about in Hill Valley during Prohibition, Doc and Marty may have caused -- what time travelers universally consider -- an "oopsie," which prompts the duo to go back in time to fix what went wrong. Isn't this why your mother warned you about time travel? If you're curious about the series, make like a tree and check out our review of episode one ... unless you're chicken. Update: The availability of Episode 2 means that the free copies of Episode 1 are now available! Go here and enter the code 121GIGAWATTS.
