Like Hitchcock’s films or the writing of Ambrose Bierce, the best scenes play out deliberately and hypnotically, the tension insidiously creeping in and building up to the final horror. The longest (and best) conversations unspool in a fog of tension and ill will, culminating in often shocking bursts of brutality. Even if you play Bigby as the most good of all good cops, everyone else is either talking about, implying, or committing some violence. Other than having Bigby punch a few bothersome Fables in the snout, I can only recall one brief quick-time event and one (incredibly one-sided) fight.īut why it works here is that the dialogue is incredibly loaded in this episode.

Episode 3 has found a reasonable middle ground.Īnd it’s funny that I say that because A Crooked Mile doesn’t have any more fighting than Smoke and Mirrors did. I loved the fight and chase sequences in the first episode of The Wolf Among Us so much that I missed them when Episode 2 focused more on dialogue and investigation.

It’s a bit jaded and mean, and occasionally it has to punch people in the neck to get its point across. Sure, the personality is often unpleasant. The decisions feel weighty and significant, and the world is full of character and personality. So I’ll just briefly recap that the writing, characters, art direction and music are all still among the best you’ll find anywhere. Something about not wanting to pay me twice for the same work. I could just copy and paste the “What you’ll like” section from the first two reviews, but my bosses don’t like that. What you’ll like You know the drill by now It’s probably better that I went in that way, though, because I hate to think of the kind of day I’d have to have before I came to expect the emotional and physical brutality that runs throughout this two-hour game. Well, the third installment, A Crooked Mile, is out now for PC, Mac, and PlayStation 3 (and later this week for Xbox 360 and iOS), and I didn’t know what to expect when I started it up on my 360.

For mac download The Wolf Among Us