Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games, 2K Games
Platform: Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, PC, Mac
Tested on: Xbox One
Batman: The Telltale Series – Episode 1 & 2 – Review
The Batman franchise has seen plenty of reboots over the last few years, as well as spin-offs, or even a series that revolves around Bruce Wayne’s youth. As the Telltale games are no stranger to danger, they decided to try their hand at forming an original Batman tale, which of course runs in its own separate timeline. While many things may seem familiar to true Batman fans, there are many changes in the source material, which creates a new, unique, dark knight experience. Gotham faces a new threat, albeit one under a well-known name.
Story
Unlike most of Batman’s stories, this one will not (solely) revolve around fighting super-villains or many of his well-known enemies, this tale will revolve around the Wayne name being dragged through the mud. Of course, we’ll see enough hints that the Penguin and Harvey Dent will play an important role in this story, but it all begins with Bruce Wayne endorsing Harvey Dent, who is currently running for mayor against the current mayor Hill, who is corrupt to the core. When during a fundraiser for Dent’s campaign at the Wayne manor, mobster boss Falcone turns up uninvited, he hopes to convince Bruce to follow his lead, thus joining his criminal activities. It’s up to you how you respond to this item, but beware, no matter your choice, him showing up will have consequences.
On the other side, Bruce’s nocturnal activities as Batman are widely known, albeit without anyone knowing his secret identity, safe for his butler and surrogate father Alfred. The police is out to get him, and they are not shy to try and gun him down if that’s what it takes to take the masked vigilante down. During a distress call in city hall, he finds Catwoman trying to rob the place, and after a scuffle, Bruce acquires what she was after, a datalog filled with encrypted data. The only question is what is on the actual disk, making it so important for a burglar to want it more than the cash in city hall’s safe.
While this is a vague description, we are trying to keep this story driven experience intact without having to present you with too many spoilers. This story will revolve around a scandal involving the Wayne family, an uprising of a familiar villain, albeit with a new appearance and style, and if we read the signs right, a possible small romance story blossoming on the side. Overall things prove to be a typical Batman story when it comes to the villainous activities, but the scandal story behind all of it make things quite interesting and original.
Graphics
While these games looked reasonably good on the previous generation, it feels as if the graphical quality is stuck in that generation. Granted that the game is a multi-platform release, which still involves the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, there should have been a bit of upscaling involved when it comes to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 version. Nonetheless, the cel shaded graphics are pleasant to look at and grant you a certain comic book-like atmosphere, which works quite well for a game such as this. Overall things look decent, albeit a bit dated at times.
Looking past the not-so-stellar graphical prowess of the game, there’s a hefty amount of problems that show the game isn’t properly optimized for our current wave of consoles. Not only does the game suffer from constant frame drops, especially when the camera pans over a certain area or scene, the loading times are ridiculously long when it comes to loading new scenes, making it feel as if the graphics are too hard to process, while the game looks mediocre by our current generation’s standards.
Sound
As expected of a Telltale game, the music, as well as the voice acting has been properly taken care of. You’ll be treated to a rather cinematic score, very fitting of a Batman movie, making sure the tone is immediately set after booting up the game. The voice acting is done in a realistic fashion, making sure the source material gets respected, albeit with a hint of the older animated series combined with some ‘British’ influences from Gotham, which is currently a very popular series.
Gameplay
Just like all the other Telltale games that have been flooding the market, Batman: The Telltale Series is an episodic story driven game, where you decide how the story goes, at least to a certain extent. This means that the game will pretty much constantly present you with choices, which will actually steer the course of the story, making you the hero you always wanted to be, or an actual dark knight that doesn’t mind breaking a few bones on his ‘road to justice’.
Truth be told, there isn’t that much to tell when it comes to the actual gameplay. During conversations you’ll get to choose between different options, and you’ll only have a short amount of time to actually place your input, thus you’ll have to constantly pay attention. When selecting your option, you’ll influence things around you, by either growing closer to other characters or perhaps even making new enemies by grinding their gears. The combat sections aren’t that different, as you’ll have to respond by pressing the right button at the right time, if you want to walk away with your heart still beating. The commands for battles are not confined to the four normal buttons, they also involve tilting the left or right stick in the right direction, which is a fun way of feeling like you’re actually fighting. Nonetheless, the latter doesn’t always register properly, which can be frustrating from time to time.
The game also presents you with a few segments in which you’ll have to run around, or mark your targets, in a fairly ‘detective’ kind of way. These intermezzos, reminiscent of point-and-click games, are both simplistic, but still fun, as you can do everything as fast or slow as you’d like. During some of these scenes, you’ll also have to link clues to one another, to solve the case, or link bad guys to items you’ll knock them out with, the latter being an amusing way of controlling the battles at hand.
Sometimes, for no apparent reason, the game tends to skip certain scenes when inputting commands, immediately following up with a new command option, making it sometimes hard to follow. It feels like the scene didn’t properly register your command, and thus loads the next segment before it processed the previous command, which can prove to be rather frustrating.
Conclusion
Even with some of the technical difficulties in place, Batman: The Telltale Series is off to a rather good start, as episode 1 and 2 proved to be a very exciting adventure. You’ll be able to experience a fairly unique Batman story with surprising twists and turns, all while feeling rather familiar, thus never kicking diehard fans against the shins. Simple gameplay, many story options and a high replay factor make this game fun to create your own Batman experience, or to have friends over and decide together.
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