BATMAN: A TellTale Series

So having acquired Skyrim and The Ezio Collection for Christmas and making a new year’s resolution to play games when I get them rather than waiting 18 months before thinking about playing them, I immediately set about getting balls deep into the remastered edition of Skyrim. However, it takes more than half an hour to install Skyrim so I thought I would crack on with one of the more recent Telltale games. Episode 1 of BATMAN was being given away for free so I played while I waited.

Considering the game is titled BATMAN, it should have been called Bruce Wayne – The Telltale Series as you spend very little time actually playing as Batman. You spend most of the time playing as the playboy billionaire and the storyline sees Bruce take on Harvey Dent, Catwoman, the Penguin and a new villain called Lady Arkham.

With all Telltale games, the story is driven by the decisions you make but I was immediately irritated by this in the first episode. There is a scene where you can chose to intimidate a bad guy into giving you some info or beat it out of him. I chose to intimidate him which involved not beating him up with a metal bar. The dialogue later on assumed that I nearly killed him which is so far removed from what I actually did that I stopped caring about the story outcomes from here on out.

The whole ‘story is derived from the choices you make’ has gone progressively downhill since The Wolf Among Us. The choices in this game essentially take you on a different course to the same inevitable outcome.

A further complaint is the loading times. I almost thought that Skyrim would have fully downloaded by the time the main menu initialised and this made me want to complete the game in as few sittings as possible.

What I did like about the game is the original take on Bruce Wayne’s family and the Gotham environment. Seeing the Penguin as a young man the same age as Bruce was very different as was Harvey Dent’s connection to Bruce from the outset. Other positives also relate directly as a comparison to Game of Thrones. This Telltale game felt a lot cleaner and more polished that this last one I played and there were nowhere near as many glitches or crashes. H ere still present but still, an improvement is worth mentioning.

One noticeable difference between this and other Telltale games is the sheer volume of quicktime events. Some sections string between 10 and 20 button presses in a row. These are quite forgiving though, in terms of the time you are given to do them and also there is no punishment for pressing the wrong combo as long as you get the right one before the time runs out.

The music and effects are very much in keeping with the Arkham series so, despite being completely different in terms of story, it doesn’t feel totally removed from the universe.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 30 Achievements

There’s not really a lot to say here. Play the game from start finish making whatever decisions you want and you will net them all. Again, it’s a little disappointing because it would have been nice to try some of the different paths and I don’t have the time or patience to play through the game again, not with so many other games I haven’t even started yet.

All in all it’s a solid narrative gaming experience if a little heavy on the quicktime events. A welcome addition to the Telltale series but further confirmation that nothing will beat The Wolf Among Us.