So far I’ve had the delight to try out – for free, if I may add, the defining characteristic of this endeavour – the first and fourth chapters of American McGee’s Grimm, the new episodic series published on GameTap. To get the monkey off my back, both episodes, Puss In Boots and A Boy Learns What Fear Is, have felt perfectly fine to me. In the answers section of his personal forums, McGee writes that
[Grimm] was designed to be played by people who’ve never played a game before. Of course this means that hard core gamers are going to literally *hate* the experience. But that’s OK.
Though I full well understand the defensive attitude, and considering I would probably have to label myself a “hard core” gamer, it’s somewhat surprising that my biggest (sole!) gripe so far would be that I keep on forgetting when a new episode is released. I’ve therefore missed the more platform-oriented, sea-scaped The Fisherman and His Wife and the classic Little Red Riding Hood.
GameTap offers you the possibility of downloading the first episode as a stand-alone installer, subsequent episodes will have to be downloaded via the GameTap interface or through the recently introduced TryGames. The fourth episode racks up around 300mb. Though McGee promises more download services (I’m sure some users are “Steaming” by now) shortly, it remains to be seen what will happen to Grimm and GameTap now that Time Warner have decided to sell off the service.
The basic starting point for the game series is that the team reimagines an old Brothers Grimm story. Check out the pictures and the rest of the review after the jump.