I have a pile of shame of epic proportions and with the recent release of new collectible games and Nintendo offerings this pile of shame has been extended to include my daughter. One night this week at bedtime she informed me that when she came home from school the next afternoon that she was going to play 7 different games! She is definitely her mama’s child, but there was no way she was playing that many games in one day. Two of the new games that she and I did get around to playing this week (5 short of her one day goal) were Super Mario Maker and Telltale’s Minecraft: Story Mode.
Being a hardcore point and click adventure fan I was really excited that she wanted to play the new Telltale game. And if you’ve been wondering how they were going to turn Minecraft into an adventure game and not lose the gazillion kids who play it, it seems to have been possible. Let me start by saying that this game is different from the other Telltale adventure games. This one feels like it’s for kids. The characters are adorable, the bad guys are bad (but not too bad), Jesse has a pet pig named Rueben, and the narrative is simplistic (maybe too much so). Since I’ve been thinking a lot about character creation lately I was really interested to see that you could choose to be male or female and have brown hair/pale skin/green eyes, black hair/brown skin/brown eyes, or black hair/dark skin/brown eyes. This went over well at my house since kiddo couldn’t make a character with with either blonde hair or blue eyes (because she has both). She eventually (after much complaining) just opted for the paler skinned avatar with green eyes and brown hair.
As the game started one of the things that I noticed in the first hour or so of play was that there were fewer Quicktime (action) events than in previous Telltale games and even when they were “failed” it didn’t effect the gameplay much, but (and this is anecdotal) the text choices were a different story. While it was great that the text choices were short and easier to read, the text timer seems to go faster than it does in the other Telltale adventure games which caused us to time out more than a few times before we had time to read the choices, ponder the options, and make a choice. I also note that the choices are difficult to read because the text blends in with the candy colored Minecraft background. Frustratingly, there is no option to adjust the time that the text stays on the screen. Yes, I realize that none of the other games have that option either, but considering the fact that the source material for this game is hugely popular with players as young as 6 or 7 years old, it would have been nice to have seen this as an option. At my house this issue has caused us to have to go back to previous checkpoints and replay sections of the game no less than 3 times because certain (seemingly benign) choices are clearly matters of life and death and can’t be chosen by other folks in the party.
And the party…yes, the party. While you can choose to play as a female or male avatar, the rest of your party is equally split between male and female characters and the main NPC adventurer, who is kind of a badass, is a female character named Petra. Petra is fun and exciting, she feels like she’s half pirate and half ninja in that she is sword wielding, bandana wearing, booty scalping, and simultaneously covert and well hidden in the dangerous woods. And most of the kids that I am interacting with lately are really into pirates and ninjas in a big way (even though pirates are clearly superior).
I think that it’s also important to note that after playing through as a female character and watch Alisha’s son play through as a male character (shhhh, don’t tell her) that the fact that the character skins are just that, skins, leads to some fun and interesting moments when interacting with other characters. Flirty glances and smiles directed at other characters don’t change when you play a male or female avatar, so I thought that it was especially cute that our female Jesse was gazing at Petra lovingly at one moment in the game (and was a little disappointed when I say that male Jesse did the same).
I am really excited to see how the rest of the game unfolds and to talk more about our Super Mario Maker escapades as we are now making challenge levels for one another. Also know that this kid is brutal!
