Started on Wallace And Gromit episode 1, and it's really good! They've got the feel and presentation of it pitch perfect, the models have little sockets in the pupils and fingerprints in the clay and stuff, the music's great, there's lots of little gags and references to past adventures strewn around, and the little Britain atmosphere is just right. It's really fun padding around as Gromit, frowning at stuff. Two tiny quibbles are that it's a shame they couldn't get Peter Sallis in and the soundalike they got is 90% there but not 'Marty soundalike' level, and that they've lowered the frame rate for facial animations to match the original stop-motion which is a great idea but they've taken it a little too far and it looks a little jerky now.
The puzzles are good fun and quite inventive (fittingly), but surprisingly tough! I kind of assumed these would be aimed at a younger audience and relatively easy, but I'm not breezing through it. I may even need to use a walkthrough at some point, though I'm not there yet!
Finished episode 1 (without a walkthrough) and it was excellent! What a pleasant surprise. Some really good puzzles, funny writing and they got all the little things right like doing the VO in England and doing the music with live instruments. Seems like Aardman was fairly heavily involved as well, judging from the credits. Two more tiny quibbles are that the signposting is sometimes a little obtuse (the usual one-click Telltale issue exacerbated by controlling a mute dog!) and there was some minor glitchiness (camera switches acting a bit odd, mostly). I think this is the first game on this playthrough that I've never played before and been this entertained by. Hope the rest of the episodes stack up!
Second episode was really good as well! The biggest compliment I can pay to these is that they really do feel like they could be one of the (good) shorts. Both boss fights have been really good as well.
Finally got round to playing episode 3 of Wallace & Gromit! Sadly, it's taken a bit of a dip. The presentation is still charming and funny, but clearly their monthly schedule started catching up with them as there are a lot more bugs present, and the puzzle design is lazier - a lot of riddles and sliding tile puzzles. Worst is the signposting is a lot weaker, so I often wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing or what my options were. For the first time with this series I resorted to a walkthrough, partly because one puzzle was a 'you have three golf clubs and two starting positions, and each combination has a different effect, and you need to get the effects in order' thing that I couldn't be bothered to get a notepad out for, and partly because a combination of bugs and bad signposting made it very unclear what club-swapping I could and couldn't do, what was and wasn't having an effect etc. Even after I'd used the walkthrough to get through a section there were a couple of puzzles that I didn't understand the logic for. Half the puzzles were still fun, though - I really enjoyed getting a golfball to the right hole by putting an address sticker on it and whacking it into a postbox!
So, bit of a shame, but I'm hoping that they rushed this one to spend more time on the finale...
Finished episode 4, and it was really good again! Phew! Perhaps a tiny bit easy, but it did ramp up a little as it went and had a fun 'murder mystery' structure where you had to find a motive, weapon and witness for someone getting bonked lightly on the head. I think this may genuinely be the best thing Telltale ever made. (I did enjoy Borderlands ep 1 but never got round to playing the rest, and it felt more like a series of entertaining QTEs with the occasional pointless 'walk along for one minute and look at stuff' interactive section to break them up. Also, I haven't played most of the post TWD S1 stuff, but I didn't hear good things!)
Rating: Very good
