Tales from the Borderlands is yet another licensed game by Telltale Games, an episodic adventure set in a world created by someone else, but getting the Telltale treatment with their attention to detail and brilliant writing almost overshadowing the original.
The game is built on Telltale's engine, but this time it's not that much of a fault, since the original games have always been heavy on the style, so this time cell-shading and cartoonish proportions of the characters play into the atmosphere. The five episodes take us on a journey across various regions of the planet Pandora, where you engage in lengthy dialogues with response selection, quick-time events for combat and interactions with objects, simple and intuitive point-and-click puzzles. The gameplay has actually a bit more presence in a Telltale game this time around, but it's still to little for a hardcore gamer's taste.
However, the strengths of the game are not in the gameplay, but in the story and character. Here, Telltale does an amazing job. It would be a crime to spoil the experience, but I can safely say that the crazy jokes, the absurd adventures and constant bickering are some of the best we've seen over the last decade. A cowardly corporate executive named Rhys and a con artist Fiona make the perfect duo of protagonists, accompanied by well-written characters like the office Nerd Vaughn, the "queenpin" Mallory and... Handsome jack, the best villain ever, now surviving through his own hologram. You have to see it to believe it.
Tales from the Borderlands is one of those games anyone can instantly recommend.
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