The winds of winter are bringing with them the first episode in Telltale Game's take on George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire." The time between now and the release of the game should be viewed as an opportunity to catch up on heartrendingly compelling adventure games rather than as a time of waiting.
Little is known about the game's story, though game enthusiasts can expect Telltale to make use of its acclaimed storytelling in a point-and-click game full of difficult choices. In the meantime, here are four games filled with double-bind scenarios and captivating narrative to pass the days by:
The Walking Dead
Telltale fans should jump down a couple of paragraphs, but this list would be incomplete without a nod to the critically acclaimed game that brought millions back to the point-and-click genre. Like Iron from Ice, the Walking Dead: Season One lives in the universe of the work from which it's derived.
The Walking Dead's first season follows a convicted fellow who's thrown into a group of survivors as the walkers take over the world. Who to save and who to trust, questions gamers will never get wrong or feel good about answering in The Walking Dead.
The Wolf Among Us
Propelled by the success of The Walking Dead game, Telltale Games took its formula from Robert Kirkman's post-apocalyptic world and into a land where fairy tale characters live in the mundies (mundane humans).
There's no happy ending in fairytale, only tarnished dreams and a series of murders the Big Bad Wolf, "Bigby," is tasked with solving. Is the Big Bad Wolf as ruthless as they say he is or just fable stuck in a world where there's never a right way to proceed?
Gods will be Watching
A viral infection rages, square meals are few and time is running out. Devolver Digital's Gods Will be Watching follows a desperate group of space explorers, with dilemmas akin to those the Donner Party must have faced and those sure to arise in Iron from Ice.
Mass Effect
Breaking away from the point-and-click genres, the entire Mass Effect series has made gamers fall in and out of love. It's safe to start at the second game in the series, considering the time the games require and the wonky controls of the Mako infantry fighting vehicle that's made mandatory for planetary exploration in the first game.
Between trading plasma rifle fire with other aliens - yes, even humans are aliens here - Mass Effect is filled with moral conundrums. There are several ways to answer each question, players will have to ask crew members to put themselves in grave danger, and not everyone always makes it out alive.
