It's not been a good year for amphibians in games and the Wolf Among Us had another annoying one in the form of Mr. Toad. I'm constantly singing the praises of the recent crop of Telltale Games productions so I won't bore you again with more. All I will say is that episode 1 of The Wolf Among Us is a great start to the series based on Fables that we'll hopefully see more of soon. In a world full of oddball characters, it's hard to find the right balance when introducing fantasy characters to real world scenarios. For the most part they got it right but there is one portion of the game that bored me to tears. We first meet Mr. Toad in passing at the start of the game when you visit his apartment block to deal with the Woodsman. Later though, he becomes essential to your investigation when he calls you looking for help. When you get there though, he is instead just standing around like nothing happened even though his house is destroyed. You then have to start the tedious process of looking at all of Toad's broken furniture pieces one by one and then going back and asking him why it's broken. Forget all that slow deduction, you're an intimidating Wolfman, why would you even have to ask twice? When you finally catch all three pieces of evidence you can catch Toad in a lie and get the information that you need. Thing is, if you don't ask the right questions you just end up resorting to intimidation anyway making the whole interrogation pointless to begin with. Instead you're forced to go through each piece of amphibian furniture individually. By the time you finish the Mr. Toad portion of the investigation you'll no doubt wish there was an option to stomp on him. I mean, he's no Amazing Frog.
