Since Tales so carefully emulates the Borderlands world and tells two stories while doing it, a whole lot of things tend to happen at once. Where previous Telltale adventures like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us are point-and-click affairs with moments of tense action, Tales flips the ratio: much of the game is spent in firefights and dodging psychopaths bearing fire axes and death-cycles. The action is done well, and you can get yourself killed (my Fiona got run over by a truck before the kidnapper reminded her she was alive and demanded she tell the story right), which makes ducking and dodging to the game’s prompts frantic, despite being structurally simple.
This has an interesting effect on your defining choices as well: Tales’ big decisions don’t have the crushing guilt of those in Walking Dead or prompt the careful consideration needed in Wolf Among Us, but they have their own fitting sense of urgency. Instead of choosing who lives and who dies, you decide whether you keep your cool in a black market business deal, or whether to save your last bullet as you escape a firefight. That gives this familiar mechanic a different sort of tension, making it unique and appropriate to Pandora’s established atmosphere.
Unfortunately, that much action makes some of the story’s quieter moments feel comparatively dull. A scene where Rhys and another character bond over his spectacular inability to choke a guard, for instance, is quite funny and character-building, but it’s easy to spend that entire time wondering when you’re going to get back to the explosions. Overall, this one’s a matter of taste: Tales’ action-packed approach might not be for you if you prefer the subtler dramas Telltale has created in the past, but if you like the idea of back-flipping onto a speeding caravan or slicing open a giant dog monster with a katana? This is exactly your speed.
How is Episode 2: Atlus Mugged?
Atlus Mugged picks up immediately where episode 1 left off, and wastes little time launching you headfirst into a perilous high-speed chase. But while episode 1 was a celebration in high-octane bloodletting, episode 2 eases off the gas, instead focusing on shuffling the stakes and building up the basis for the greater plot.
This is a smart step, given events late in the last episode that both change the protagonists’ ultimate goal and give them new and distressing complications to deal with as they go. It also allows time for some honest-to-goodness character development, as the protagonists deal with the emotional fallout of the previous episode’s explosive conclusion and start to evaluate their partnership. While that signature brand of Borderlands humor is turned down some to accommodate that introspection, it’s by no means gone, and there’s plenty of clever mockery and well-placed slapstick – are frying pans ever not funny? – to keep you from forgetting what kind of game this is.
However, traveling at a reasonable speed leads to some pacing issues, especially when some scenes feel like you’re taking the overly long scenic route. While every sequence establishes something that’s clearly going to be important later on (there are four character introductions this episode, for example, and one new name that’s brought up with ominous regularity), it feels like there’s a lot of padding stuffed in between as conversations go on too long or interactions don’t really culminate in anything of substance. A scene in the desert between Rhys and Vaughn comes to mind, where some pretty funny genital-based humor falls flat because the joke drags out too long and ends abruptly so something plot-relevant can happen.
Thankfully this doesn’t define the whole episode, as other scenes are timed just right and have a lot more punch (let’s just say I’ll never be able to look at a spork the same way again), and the actions sequences in particular are expertly realized. Still, one has to hope that the fluff is scaled back in future episodes, especially as the plot starts to thicken.
Supply Gamesradar
Tales from the Borderlands Episode Two review - App Review 4u
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