Tales From The Borderlands: Episode One - Zer0 Sum Reviews
Telltale Games bring their trademark style of adventure gaming to the chaotic wastes of Pandora in Tales for the Borderlands, a surprisingly refreshing take on the world made popular by Gearbox Software's first-person, role-playing series
Overall, this first episode is a fantastic introduction to the genre's take on the Borderlands universe. While there are the occasional long periods of player inactivity, they do little to distract from the engaging story and characters, especially as you'll spend most of this time laughing. If this is what Telltale has to offer for episode one, then I can't wait for the rest of the series.
From jail-breaking a Hyperion Loader Bot to teaming up with a rather familiar-looking vault hunter, this departure from the main franchise is off to an epic and hilarious start!
The comedy, the story choices, the setup - it's all done well in Tales from the Borderlands: Episode One - Zer0 Sum. The next episodes can't come quick enough! Grab the season pass and enjoy waiting with baited breath for each episode to be released. The team here at Cubed3 certainly will be!
Zer0 Sum tells the best story and introduces the best characters in the Borderlands series. As a Telltale game, the humor tends to fall a bit flat at times, and it lacks the drama Telltale do so well.
When Tales from the Borderlands was announced, I honestly wasn't sure what to anticipate, but with one (quite long, but well-paced) episode, Telltale have sold me on another one of their ideas. It's shares a lot of DNA with both Borderlands and the usual Telltale adventure games, and yet it's nothing like them at all. It's one of their best offerings, and a refreshing new direction for both a game series that had begun to go stale and a gameplay formula which had started to feel repetitive.
Although Tales From The Borderlands is a humorous and well written opening to the series, it often struggles to run at a decent framerate and suffers largely at the hands of an outdated engine.
Predictable and glitchy as all get out, it's still fun
With three episodes still to go, Tales from the Borderlands has plenty of time to inject extra thrills into the story and hopefully introduce some more compelling gameplay elements. All the same, I'm looking forward to getting stuck into episode three, thanks to the compelling characters and hilarious dialogue.
Zer0 sum is like an impressive pilot to greenlight a TV show. Hopefully the rest of the season is just as good.
Admittedly, the QTE portions won't be for everybody. I've also noticed minor glitches like character lips not moving sometimes during dialogue. If you like point-and-click adventures, however, Tales from the Borderlands is another solid and entertaining addition to Telltales' lineup of games.
Tales from the Borderlands – Episode One: Zer0 Sum does a brilliant job of drawing the player into the world of Pandora. Both fans of the franchise, and players being introduced for the first time, will appreciate the engaging characters and their story.
