Have You Played...The Wolf Among Us?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

The Wolf Among Us [official site] remains one of the only games my wife and I have bonded over. She just doesn't really care for them, but that doesn't stop me for always keeping an eye out for something that she might be willing to try. When I pitched The Wolf Among Us, I knew she'd bite (Boo - Ed). An urban fantasy game about fairy tale creatures? Who wouldn't like that premise!

It might sound foolish, but what I love about The Wolf Among Us is how very little of it could actually be described as a game, and the few elements that remain cleverly hidden. Our arrangement had me manning the controller with my wife deciding what decisions to make, though I admit to more than once disobeying her in favor of a choice I thought was better. Everyone has their flaws.

But that setup worked beautifully for us because we both had equal input into the game; she was Bigby's brain and I was his fists. And The Wolf Among Us balances those two aspects of rather well. We always felt whisked away to the next action scene or important decision. When we later decided to give The Walking Dead a try, we abandoned it after only two episodes because it had the exact opposite problem. Instead of being two equal participants in an unfolding story, The Walking Dead was pitched with such long winded moments of "game" that she might as well have been watching me play Doom. She was bored, and I unable to enjoy myself because of it.

And that's why, despite having a pretty great library, The Wolf Among Us will always be my favorite Telltale game. Sure, there are better told stories, but The Wolf Among Us was perfect for us instead of just being perfect.