Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Bad cops, bad cops! Whatcha gonna do when they… No, I don’t know any more words. I should just stop this spurious introduction right now. Except I can’t. I’m trapped in my own cliche. Help me. Help me.

Ah, that’s better. So: attention, fans of leftfield point and click adventure games. While Hector: Badge of Carnage may be published/distributed by Telltale, it isn’t part of their curiously unchanging formula. It’s a satirical, foul-mouthed and resolutely 2D game starring a bad-intentioned copper, made by a couple of chaps from Northern Ireland, and it allows you to indulge yourself with sociopathic delights such as “hit a tramp with a crowbar, steal a young man’s trousers, kick a heroin addict into a cardboard box, enter a porn shop without embarrassment, carry a designer handbag… all in the name of justice.” It’s a British game too (well, Northern Irish), and on this day of ULTIMATE BRITISHNESS you should show your respect for those posh goons who are all over the telly today by playing this.
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PC Gamer report that Telltale have sent an apologetic letter to everybody who pre-ordered Jurassic Park, stating that the game will not be coming out this month as planned and will instead be arriving this Autumn, together with fallen leaves and a creeping loss of daylight. The slightly funereal missive, which contains such grim strings of words as “This has been a hard choice for us,” “We regret any disappointment” and “We will begin issuing the refunds” can be read in full after the jump. Poor Telltale.
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Lord Jimothy! Johncharlesfrederickathon! Kierovington IV! Quintin! It is I, Alexander Granville Cuthbert Meershire, Earl of Rotheringhampton-under-Thames. Quickly, come hither to me. Something most odd has occured. Some manner of iron box, mounted somehow upon four wheels and adorned with walls of glass, has arrived outside the stables. It is a fearsome thing, bellowing smoke and malodour. As I approach, its side lifted upwards, like the wing of a gull. All manner of unearthly lights are visible within, behind which is a chair of comfort such as I have never even dreamed. Should I… should I enter this machine, if machine it indeed be? There are switches, levers, pedals. As an inquiring mind of Her Majesty’s Elite Journalism Corps, I feel I must explore further. I shall just press this and….
88MPH! >>

The second trailer for Telltale’s Jurassic Park game has come stomping and snorting onto the internet (you can see the first here), and it features a lot of Telltale types confirming that they’re dropping their traditional point’n'click formula like a hot stone for something more action-heavy. A guy totally gets skewered by a horned dinosaur in the trailer below! Top stuff. Triceratops, specifically.

Telltale also talk about the new, never-before-seen dinosaur they’re bringing to Jurassic Park for the first time. What could it be, do you think? I was hoping for the Protarchaeopteryx but was disappointed.
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Not only is episode 2 of Telltale’s Back To The Future out today, but there’s also confirmation that they are indeed working on a game based on the comic/TV show The Walking Dead. The super-glum series focuses on the lives of a group of survivors post-zombie apocalypse, and seems like yet another unlikely choice for the episodic point-n-clickers. Telltale have confirmed a multi-year, multi-platform development deal, made in collaboration with Robert Kirkman. The first installment is due by the end of the year. A brief interview with Kirkman on IGN yields no other information about the game, other than that it will be episodic. Meanwhile, you can find the new BTTF trailer below.

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The first trailer for Telltale’s Jurassic Park game has appeared. This is the first time we’ve seen game footage, albeit seemingly mostly cutscene, of a title that’s certainly surprised people. How will the episodic adventure people handle a license that seems to be so action orientated? Well, for starters, with a look that’s completely new for their projects. This is the first time we’ve seen something that isn’t heavily cartoonish. And for seconders, it’s a third-person adventure.

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Nothing ever goes wrong with speculative posts! In the drafts folder at the moment we have:

Are Codemasters Planning To Blow Up The Sun?

Was Activision Jack The Ripper?

But let’s try this more gentle one for now. It does look likely that amongst the five new projects Telltale will announcing in a month, one will be the comic-turned-TV show.

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Telltale has told Game Informer that its upcoming episodic Jurassic Park game will be a more tense, slower-paced experience than its usual adventures games, and that the team are taking an inspiration from David Cage’s PS3-exclusive Heavy Rain. Specifically, the interview states that Telltale is “going above and beyond to develop something new for Jurassic Park: Episode 1.” The game is set partially during and partially after the first Jurassic Park film, so, mm.

Is that interesting? I thought that might be interesting. More importantly, have you guys all played Trespasser yet? Look, I’ll put a video of the beginning of the game beneath the jump. This 1997 FPS was light-years ahead of its time.
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Happy one-digit calendar change, everyone. I’ve been exploring more dramatic date-tweaking, thanks to Telltale’s surprise jump-starting of Reaganite blockbuster Back To The Future. Reborn as a point and click adventure, it’s been fluxing a fair few 80s-children’s capacitors with a drip-feed of teasing art and videos. Episode 1: It’s About Time landed just before Christmas, and I took a few hours out of a steady diet of booze, cheese and vegetarian turkey substitutes to join its voyage to pop culture’s past…

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Great Scott! The first episode of what’s arguably Telltale’s most anticipated-ever adventure game has landed. TT have pulled their usual trick of only letting folk buy the entire series (5 episodes, $25) at launch, but I don’t need to consult a 1950-2000 sports almanac to be fairly sure they’ll distill it down to individual episodes and hopefully a few demos in the months to come.
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Telltale have dropped a fat update onto the official Back to the Future site, with hot new details on each of the five upcoming episodes, plus voice acting samples from the game’s cast including Christopher “Oh My God It’s Christopher Lloyd” Lloyd. I wasn’t taking too much of an interest in this game previously as I like point’n'click games almost as much as I like eating fiberglass insulation, but hearing Lloyd’s voice has made me come over all conflicted. Hmm. One piece of information that did confuse me was that the synopsis all imply you’ll be doing a lot of time travelling back to the 80s, until I realised that the game’s present is the 80s. Obviously.

You know, I think the more confusing this game is, the more I’ll like it.