Before you go bananas, just hear me out.
Reviewing a game is hard. You need to be very objective about it with only glimpses of subjective thoughts, but that doesn't really happen most of the time. Most of the times the reviewer can go above and beyond the objective thinking, pouring down all his love or hate into the review praising or bashing the game. And that's not good, not good at all.
Going back to Telltale games or better say what has come after The Walking Dead The Game, including it. Reviewing these games is extremely hard. Someone might hate the show and all it stands for so he/she channels all of his/her hate into the review of the game/episode bashing and giving it an abysmal score, should you take it in consideration? I have said it and I will say it again, I am not a fan of the TV Show as I have never seen it, but I know that there are millions of people watching and loving it. Sure there are haters cause haters gonna hate no matter what, but still. So am I the perfect person to review a game which basically is a playable TV Show or better say do you need to read what a person on the internet says about your favorite or not show? This practically goes for every game ever when you think about it, but that's for another article.
What also makes reviewing Telltale games extremely hard is their nature. These games are story-driven graphic adventures or point and click adventure games that are released in an episodic way. So for example the first episode releases today, the next a month or two later and so on. This genre and this way of releasing the game make it practically impossible to review them. Sure you can play the first episode and start reviewing it as a "full game", meaning that you can talk about the story, characters, gameplay and presentation cause mostly all reviews tackle these points. But what happens when you try to review the second and following episodes?
Everything is the same, the same gameplay, the same artstyle, presentation, sound design etc. The only thing that changes is the story and the characters. And explaining why that is good or bad, sure for some might be easy, but to me without spoiling anything is fu*king hard to do. Cause to be honest this is why you play these games, the story, the choices you make and the characters.
So why should you play the game or the episode when a reviewer has spoiled everything for you, what happens, who lives or dies? So is there a point to review these games? I don't think so and I believe Telltale thinks about the same. The following statement is picked up from one of their press release: "Story is a big part of our experience. Heck, it's everything we do! We want players to be unspoiled, and ask that you be mindful of detailing certain characters' names and things that may or may not happen in your review. We trust you to exercise best judgement!"
See? You, as the player, should experience it for yourself and not cause some random dude on the internet said that it's good or bad.How would you feel if I spoiled the ending of the first season, that powerful ending? Or spoiling the fantastic cliffhanger at the end of the first episode of The Wolf Among Us? It doesn't feel right, does it? That's why I have decided to stop writing full reviews for these episodes. Instead I may write a short quick review saying how good it is cause hey, we all know that everything that Telltale releases is amazing. Or follow us on Twitter cause I may post a tweet or two regarding each episode.
That's about it. Thanks for stopping by, now go buy the season pass for both The Wolf Among Us and Second Season of The Walking Dead cause you would do yourself a favor!
