The second season of Telltale Games" Minecraft: Story Mode made its way to a number of gaming platforms last month. We reviewed the premier episode and found it to be a noticeable improvement over episodes from the previous season.
Today, the second episode of Minecraft: Story Mode Season Two has landed - as promised - but does it improve on the first one? Find out in our review below!
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The second episode of Minecraft: Story Mode Season Two is dubbed Giant Consequences, and I admit that based on where Hero in Residence ended, I was fearing that this episode would focus entirely on an uninteresting confrontation in which our characters would duke it out with the Admin.
In the first few minutes of my playthrough, it seemed that Telltale had done exactly that with a barrage of quick-time events (QTEs) in Jesse"s battle with the colossal Admin. I do have to say, after reviewing the premier episode of Batman"s second season, I had completely forgotten that other Telltale titles still use the relatively basic combat system which relies on directional keys, along with "Q" and "E".
As such, the battle was even more unimpressive than I had anticipated, although I do have to say that the Admin did have some rather humorous quips that reminded me a lot of The LEGO Movie. Moreover, the voice acting was quite fantastic and seemed like a mixture of Ultron from Avengers: Age of Ultron, coupled with Dory"s voice impersonation of the whale from Finding Nemo. Together, these made up for the poor combat in some ways.
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Thankfully, Telltale Games wrapped up the battle quite abruptly, which might be jarring for fans of QTEs, but will be a nice change of pace for the rest of us.
However, as was rather expected, the threat of the Admin isn"t over and the colossus just appears to be a vessel that the entity created for "fun". That"s where the interesting bits start; the next vessel for the antagonist is a seemingly harmless snowman.
I mentioned earlier how the voice of the Admin occupying the colossus was quite good, but trust me, the Snowman Admin is way better. For the sake of comparison, I think his voice sounds a lot like Digger from Zack Snyder"s Legend of the Guardians: Owls of Ga"Hoole, with a slight pinch of Heath Ledger"s Joker, which is a really twisted combination well-suited for an antagonist. While he seems like an innocent snowman from the outside, his real motives are quite insidious.
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The Admin sends the main group on a task, which he claims will free them of the "eternal night" that he has brought upon Beacontown and other surrounding areas. While it may sound cliché, it"s necessary to drive the narrative forward, which isn"t an entirely bad thing given that it"s a game aimed primarily at young children and teenagers. I won"t give away the details of this task as it may spoil the episode for potential players, but I do have to note that it isn"t as straight-forward as it initially seems.
It appears that the writers have been hard at work upping the humor as well. There are quite a few jokes thrown around, and they are pretty good. If I"m in a really serious situation and weighing my friendships, and a person comes to me and says "I just want you to be happy, it"s what the little pig would have wanted", trust me, I"m going to laugh out loud; which is exactly what I did playing the game today.
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As I have stated before, I can"t give away more story details as they have the potential to spoil the experience for you. However, I do have to discuss some secondary plot points and other details.
This episode places a lot of focus on Radar. I understand that he"s a new character who needs to be fleshed out, and we are constantly given the opportunity to boost his timid personality and confidence. However, I just can"t help but wonder, perhaps he"s been given so much significance because he has an ulterior motive. I think it"s quite likely that he may be the primary antagonist in this season.
While it hasn"t been hinted at so far, in one particular scene he did go on to blabber about some pent-up rage and darkness similar to what Rick did in Rick and Morty"s season three premier episode. In another instance, he shoots some arrows with pinpoint accuracy in an extremely tense situation in which even Jesse seems to be failing. Lastly, he has a really weird, and at times psychotic, selection of dialog that randomly pops up out of nowhere. Now, I"m not saying that he"s definitely the villain - which is an interesting path for the character which Telltale really should consider - if he is, remember that you heard it here first, folks!
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With that out of the way, some other observations I had regarding this episode is that the diverse cast adds a neat dynamic to the experience. Nearly all characters have a unique personality and skillset which differentiates them from the rest.
Moreover, the environments shown in this episode were once again fantastic. I couldn"t help but marvel at the scenery instead of focusing on the dialog.
All in all, apart from the simplistic combat, my only major gripe with this episode was that it was extremely short. After playing a two-hour premier episode of the same series and a two-and-a-half hour episode of Batman, it was very sudden seeing Giant Consequences end just after 80 minutes of gameplay.
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This likely has to do with the fact that there is little to explore in the episode, and the focus has instead been placed upon interaction between characters and a good chunk of screentime to the Admin, which isn"t an entirely bad thing. I do have to say, though, nothing will prepare you for the twist at the end of this episode, and if you find a particular character likeable, you"ll probably find yourself in pretty bad shape.
Overall, Giant Consequences is even better than the premier episode and Minecraft: Story Mode Season Two just keeps on exceeding my expectations, which is something that I didn"t expect after completing the rather mediocre first season.
You can play the second episode of Minecraft: Story Mode Season Two by purchasing the Season Pass, which unlocks all the episodes, and costs $24.99. You can check out the title on the digital store of your choice below:
- Steam: Season Pass - $24.99
- Windows Store: Episode one - $4.99, Season Pass - $24.99
- GOG (DRM free): Season Pass - $24.99
- Xbox One: Episode one - $4.99, Season Pass - $24.99
- PlayStation 4: Episode one - $4.99, Season Pass - $24.99
- iOS: Episode one - $4.99
- Android: Episode one - $4.99
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Minecraft: Story Mode Season Two, Episode Two was reviewed via a Steam Season Pass provided to the reviewer by Telltale Games. The game was played on a Dell Inspiron 15-5558 with the following specifications:
- Display: 15.6" non-touch, 1366x768 resolution
- OS: Windows 10, 64-bit
- RAM: 8GB
- Processor: Intel Core i5-5200U CPU, ~2.20 GHz
- GPU: Intel HD Graphics 5500, NVIDIA GeForce 920M (2GB VRAM)