I’m lamenting this a bit. Been playing their games since Sam & Max.
I thought the Sam & Max games were all pretty good adventure games, in the traditional sense. Pretty much a straight line between where LucasArts left off to that whole phase of Telltale’s output.
Besides Sam & Max, I really enjoyed their Strongbad game. Wallace & Gromit was okay. I liked their Monkey Island game. I enjoyed the Puzzle Agent games, too, but I came to those as a Grickle fan. I even played around a little bit with their Poker Night at the Inventory games. They lost me with Back to the Future, though - didn’t like it much and I took a break from their games, when they released Jurassic Park.
Of their second-wave cinematic games, I did pick up the Walking Dead, but played just one episode and didn’t touch it again for years. I’m three episodes in to the first season. What brought me back was Tales from the Borderlands. The trailer looked fun, and it didn’t disappoint. From there I backtracked to Wolf Among Us, which was also really good. I played Minecraft - they hooked me with the free first episode. There were some things that bugged me about it, too much inter-personal friction amongst the characters, but the season pass was a real hoot.
At this point, as they shut down, I’m a bit off of their games again. The Minecraft follow-up wasn’t as good as the first. Guardian’s of the Galaxy focused on character conflict (like a bad reality-tv show) and I found it’s humor flat and the experience unpleasant for the most part. Then there are the other licenses I didn’t play, like Game of Thrones and Batman, and the continuing Walking Dead stuff. There are just more of these games than I can play, especially with the varying quality.
I’ve been reading about Telltale over the last couple years from talent who have left and started other companies, and it’s hard not to think employee retention wasn’t a factor in the quality of their work. Sometime around 2010 or so, I was at a party and chatted a little bit with a Telltale employee. Didn’t seem happy to be working there, and was talking about leaving. Tempered my enthusiasm a bit for the company.
Telltale did some really great work, and I’m watching all these teams that former employees put together. And I’ve played some their games, and I like them, too. It doesn’t really feel like gaming is losing much with Telltale’s closing. They were a good incubator for talent in the narrative gaming space, but these days I’m not sure the industry still needs one - this stuff is here to stay. But I do hope all their employees find new jobs and get to do good work elsewhere.