Wallace & Gromit & Indy take on consoles, Macs get a Vampyre Attack

It's been a while since I updated this page, so I'll catch up a bit. :)

First, the biggest news is that Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures will be coming to the PC and Xbox Live Arcade this spring. This is the first time a Telltale Game has been available on the Xbox Live Arcade service (although this is not the first Telltale game to appear on the Xbox 360). Telltale's blog also hinted that future game announcements for the Xbox Live Arcade will be coming later on!

In Autumn Moon news, MacOS X gamers can now play A Vampyre Story. You can buy the download version at Deliver2Mac.

And, lastly, I certainly didn't see this coming. The new Indiana Jones action-adventure Tomb-Raideresque game Staff of Kings will have Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis available as an unlockable. According to Amazon, the game will be available for Playstation 2, PSP, Wii, and Nintendo DS. It is not known if all of these systems will be getting Fate of Atlantis, or if this is the action game or the better-known and better-recieved adventure game. If this is the adventure game, I'll be very surprised. I never expected LucasArts to rerelease their adventure games for PC, let alone port them to consoles. I hope it is the classic SCUMM game, and I hope that it's a sign of more classic game rereleases to come. Fingers crossed.

Fright of the Bumblebees Review

Fright of the Bumblebees is the first episode of Telltale's new episodic series based on the misadventures of the inventor Wallace and his faithful dog Gromit. Telltale is quickly becoming the number one developer of licensed games. They now have games for five very different licensed properties (Bone, Sam & Max, CSI, Homestar Runner, and now Wallace & Gromit), and they have managed to bring out the strengths in each property, which brings a slightly unique gaming experience to each of their games.

The humour in Wallace & Gromit is much more subdued than in Sam & Max and Homestar Runner, and even more so than Bone. Much of the comedy in the Wallace & Gromit films comes through facial expressions. The expressions and movements of the characters in the Telltale Tool have seemed kind of wooden in previous installments, so I was worried if Telltale's engine could handle it. Thankfully, the movements and expressions are just as expressive in Fright of the Bumblebees as they are in the films. This game is the best looking game Telltale has released to date, and it comes with slightly higher system requirements. I am using an older Radeon on a computer with only 512MB of RAM. I encountered graphical glitches when I first played the game, but this was remedied by playing the game as soon as I started my computer with nothing else running, and playing on the lowest graphic setting in the options menu.

In order to set up a more cinematic framing of characters, Telltale has changed the traditional control scheme of pointing and clicking with a mouse, to a control scheme that gives players direct control of the characters. There are three options available for control on the PC. The default option is using a keyboard and mouse. The arrow keys (or WASD) on the keyboard controls the character, and the mouse selects a hotspot. The next option is to use just the keyboard, and play similar to how LucasArts' last two adventure games, Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island, played. The third option is using a gamepad, but only Logitech and corded Microsoft Xbox 360 controllers are supported. My gamepad wasn't supported, so I could only play the game with a keyboard and mouse, but I found this option very comfortable and easy to use.

The plot of this first episode follows the Wallace & Gromit formula to a tee. Wallace has just invented a machine that will harvest honey from bees in a mechanical hive. He starts a new business, "From Bee to You", to sell honey to the residents of his town. Of course, Wallace being Wallace, things don't go exactly as planned.

Both Wallace and Gromit are playable at different points in the game. Wallace talks a lot more than he ever did in the films, as he comments on everything that is clickable. Gromit doesn't talk at all, but he will make facial expressions when you click on clickable items. I have always enjoyed Gromit's expressions in the film, so I found myself clicking on different objects as Gromit just to see how he would react.

The music is once again wonderfully composed by Jared Emerson-Johnson. The Wallace & Gromit theme is present, of course, but there is an all new arrangement used in the game. The other music is completely new, and fits the series perfectly. Andrew Langley and Jared Emerson-Johnson worked to add a engine controlled music changing feature to the Telltale Tool. This can be experienced while in the town square. The music will change as the character walks around. It helps add to the cinematic feel of the game.

The voices are well done as well. Wallace isn't voiced by his regular actor, Peter Sallis, but instead is voiced by Aardman Animation's official back up voice actor who has done the role before for merchandise and television commercials. The change in actors is slightly noticable, but if I hadn't known it wasn't Peter Sallis I would never had guessed. The voice is slightly deeper, so I would probably have thought the change in tone was due to Peter Sallis' age much like Mel Blanc in his later years. The voice really is that close. The other voices are well done as well, and are all performed by British actors. I particularly enjoyed the voice of the woman who ran the news stand.

If the game can be faulted for anything, it would have to be the lack of separate volume controls for voice and music. I started the game without subtitles, but had to turn them on since the music seemed to drown out the speech. I couldn't understand what the characters were saying at times. Telltale stated on their forum after the feedback of the demo that they are looking into this issue. I hope it is rectified by the second episode, as it slightly detracts from an otherwise excellent gaming experience.

Fans of the films will enjoy this episode. It is Telltale's most cinematic adventure to date, and captures the look and feel of the Wallace & Gromit films perfectly. The control scheme will take most gamers some time to get used to, but with three options for control it should please everyone except those most resistant to change. The lack of separate volume controls for voice and music is certainly a bummer, but with subtitles on it shouldn't prove too much of a nuisance. If Telltale can keep up this level of quality and fix the volume control problem, they'll have a real winner on their hands with this series.

Final Verdict:

4 out of 5

AVS in US Shops, Atari to publish S&M Season 2

Wow, news from the whole trifecta of companies covered on this blog! The Adventure Company has released A Vampyre Story to North American retailers, so US and Canadian gamers can finally get the game if they wish to have a nice box on their shelf. The picture at the top of this post is a screenshot sent to The Pumpkin Post of a planned A Vampyre Story easter egg that was cut due to time constraints. It is of an 8-bit version of the game that utilizes a reproduction of the SCUMM interface as seen in Maniac Mansion.

I was wondering what was going to happen with a retail release of Season Two of Sam & Max. True, there is a DVD release for season purchasers at Telltale's website, but Season One got a retail release published for PC and Wii by The Adventure Company. It seems Season Two will see Telltale getting a bigger publishing partner. Atari will be publishing the game for PC retail, and Wii fans will be happy to know that Season Two is getting a Wii release as well, also to be published by Atari.

Don't Mind the Mess

I'm adding quite a bit of content at the moment, so you're likely to see a lot of stuff creep up on the main page for a few weeks. Don't worry, once it's all added in things will get back to normal around here again.

Also, you might have noticed the name change of this blog. When I was adding content to the Games page, I added in Autumn Moon and Double Fine's games because I'm excited to play them and I love them a lot respectively, so I thought it would be best if I let Autumn Moon's and Double Fine's adventure games get covered here too. They don't get released as often as Telltale's episodic games.

So, this blog is now titled Autumn Double Tale. I already made an A Vampyre Story piece of fanart for the news anyway, so might as well go all the way. :)

Grim Fandango 10 Year Anniversary

As of this October, Grim Fandango is 10 years old!

On October 28, 1998, LucasArts' first 3D adventure game was released. Grim Fandango was their most ambitious adventure game project to date, spanning 4 game years over 2 CDs. Tim Schafer got together with most of the Grim team to celebrate the occasion with a cake adjorned with the game's protaganist, Manny Calavara.

Congrats to the Grim Team! It's hard to believe it's been 10 years.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the United States. Enjoy a Homestar Runner 20X6 Thanksgiving cartoon to celebrate the holiday!

If you're in the mood to start your Christmas shopping (and since tomorrow is the start of the holiday shopping season in the US, you should be), Telltale has set up a Gift store where you can purchase items as a gift for your friend or loved one. Even better, they are now offering two new bundles. Bundle one is a Sam and Max Gift Bundle featuring both seasons of the Sam & Max games (that's 11 episodes) on extras-filled DVDs, topped off with a copy of Surfin' the Highway. Bundle two is a Wii Game Gift Pack featuring the Wii versions of Sam & Max Season One and CSI: Hard Evidence. (Region alert: these are the North American versions and won't work in PAL Wii consoles.) They are offering gift wrapping for all purchases (excluding downloadable games of course). And, to sweeten the deal they're also offering free USPS shipping for people who're buying a downloadable game along with physical merchandise! This offer's only good through Wednesday 12/3 though, so don't wait too long.

Oh, and I also feel the need to mention Rob Smith's new book Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts. This book tells the story of LucasArts from it's early days as one of the upstart Lucasfilm computer divisions along side what would become Pixar, to the legacy-forgetting company that it has become today. It contains a lot of concept art on released games, and details a lot of games that were cancelled including Sam & Max Freelance Police. The cancellation of this game was the catalyst that led to the formation of Telltale Games, and eventually led to the creation of the episodic Sam & Max games that we all know and love. It's going to be released sometime in December, but if you live within driving distance of San Francisco and RSVP in time, you can get it early and for a 20% discount at the release party on December 4th.

Point-and-Click Adventure Game - Sam & Max Save the World - Culture Shock

With Sam & Max Season One finally getting released for the Wii this past October, it's a good time to take a look at the six episodes available on the disc. Culture Shock is the first episode of Season One, and starts things off with a bang.

Sam & Max must investigate a case of hypnotism, where a group of former child stars from a hit television show in the 1970s have been brainwashed to promote the maker of a self-help video. The three former child stars are raising a ruckus on the city street that is home to the office of Sam & Max Freelance Police. Fans of LucasArts' Sam & Max Hit the Road will be happy to see that the street is very familiar, with Bosco's grocery store and the cafe that sells bad food still on the corner. The cafe is not open for business, but we finally get to set foot into Bosco's and even get to meet the man himself.

Bosco is a very interesting character. He is an ultra-paranoid individual who seems to run his grocery store only to finance his various dubious BoscoTech inventions. Bosco's Inconvenience Store is littered with security cameras and various BoscoTech inventions that are present to keep people from stealing from the store. The other store owner on the block is Sybil Pandemic, a licensed therapist, well at least this week. Her sign outside of her shop shows her to have had at least 3 previous jobs. The characters are all full of quirks and unique personalities, and as the game progresses, these quirks become even more evident.

Humor has always been Sam & Max's main selling point, ever since the first comic featuring the duo appeared way back in 1987. Here, the humor is top-notch. The humor is quirky, containing plenty of one-liners, especially from Max.

I'm not a big fan of action sequences in adventure games, so it must be said that there are two action sequences in the game in the form of car chases. It's very reminiscent of the chase scene in Out From Boneville, in that the DeSoto is moved across the screen and there is debris on the road that slows you down. This time around though, since it is a Sam & Max chase, Sam's gun can be used at any time during the chase, and a bullhorn can be used by Max to shout at other drivers.

The voicework in Culture Shock is very good, with three notable exceptions which I will get to at the bottom of this paragraph. Max's voice actor does a great job portraying the character, falling somewhere between the voice of Max in Hit the Road and Max in the animated series. Sam's voice actor chose to stay fairly true to the film noir feel of Sam's voice from Hit the Road rather than the gruff portrayal of Sam found in the animated series. Both voices sound really good, with Max as the standout as his voice is full of energy. Sam's voice actor does a remarkable job with the voice throughout most of the game, but sometimes his portrayal seems a bit stiff and lacking emotion. All in all, though, both main characters' voices are great. Telltale had a tall order to fill to keep fans happy with the voices, and they managed to succeed in my opinion. The supporting characters also mostly have nice voices, with Bosco's gruff voice and Sybil's mid-range voice fitting their characters perfectly. The former child stars known as the Soda Poppers, on the other hand, are quite grating. Their personalities are interesting, but their voices are much too falsetto to be enjoyable. I know exactly where Telltale was going with this, with the grown men trying to keep sounding like the little kids they used to be on TV much like Screech from Saved by the Bell. However, the characters are triplets, and each one of them sounds this way. This gives them a lot of screen time, and their voices quickly become tiresome before the game is over.

The music in the game is great. The jazz intro is wonderful, very reminiscent of the Cheesy Understated Credit Sequence from Hit the Road, but unique enough to stand on its own. The music that plays during car chase sequences is also very catchy. A soundtrack CD is available for Season One, and I recommend purchasing it wholeheartedly. Each subsequent episode has music as good or better than this one, and it really does make for some great listening pleasure.

Culture Shock is a fine return to form for the crime-fighting (and causing) duo. With the exception of the voices of the Soda Poppers, there's not too much that I can say that can count against the quality of the game. Even with the grating characters though, it's still well worth the purchase for the game's many other redeeming qualities. It's really funny, the duo themselves are voiced well, and the music is wonderful.

Update February 4, 2023: There is now another way to play the game. Sam & Max Save the World Remastered by Skunkape games updates the game to the latest version of the Telltale Tool. It also has improved lighting, high-definition graphics, and a remade title song. Because of changing views on various culture-related issues, Bosco has a new voice actor and some of the lines of dialog were changed. Because the new Bosco fits the game well, and the script changes are minor, this is now my favorite way to play the game.

Final Verdict:

4 out of 5

Sam & Max Hit the Road (the first Sam & Max game, by LucasArts) Review

Episode 2 Review