Yes. This is still going.
You had your 5 bundled together. Now for the low price of £10.99 you can access the next three adventures across however long it takes.
Laden that with as much sarcasm as you want Episode 6 is pushing itself strong out of the gate. Rather than the usual people management Telltale have added a crafty (excuse the pun) little mystery adventure inside a haunted mansion to welcome you into the bundle. The adventure continues on strong and hopefully is a good indicator of the calibre of the following two episodes.
What separates this adventure even more than before is the inclusion of an all-star YouTube Minecraft cast. Youtubers including CaptainSparklez, Stampy and TheDiamondMinecart all play their Minecraft alter egos in this episode, populating the mansions you spend most of the adventure in and causing rather humorous conversations with the ‘real’ cast of your team (Petra and Ivor’s conversation with CaptainSparklez is laden with insults about pronouncing the Z and how he should be respected ‘as he is a captain.’)
Thus continues a rather familiar sting we’ve seen in the previous five episodes. Gameplay is still split between walking around collecting items to solve puzzles as well as conversations with cast and crew to piece together the mystery of ‘The White Pumpkin.’ While you may be worried adding a YouTube cast would drown the episode in cheese credit must be given for how well they play their roles, even as little as some of those roles are. Careful thought will let you realise that the story has been somewhat tailored around who to use for longest, with well-known voice actor Stampy being used the most across the whole episode because of this.
Despite this big cast the episode felt rather hard split between quick time events and conversation with very little in between them. Indeed the first 10 minutes of the episode, as well as the last 15 seem to be only quick time events. It feels like action is trying to be levied into the story, and the only mechanic available to do such sadly is the quick time mechanic. This draws away from the more person-oriented first set of adventures and moves into more set piece to set piece style gameplay.
Overall the experience is still a good solid piece. The story is one of the more intriguing ones and the cast adds on to the style with which is delivered. The quick time niggle which has slowly been growing across the episodes does not seem set to go away any time soon. Previous graphical errors seem quite well stamped out however, with only one minor noticeable visual jitter through the whole experience.
If the £10.99 asking price covers two more episodes of this quality then I will say it is a good price for a good product. There is risk purchasing the pass as there is nothing showing us what the next two episodes may hold as the end of this episode is just CaptainSparklez lamenting about his role in the adventure. This episode on its own though earns itself a solid 7, managing to keep this game alive a little longer, and hopefully for the better.
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