Batman - The Telltale Series

I like Telltale's kind of games, which is an interactive movie with limited choices and a lot of quick times event. I like the Batman universe, though I feared yet another origin story. And alas, you do get a flashback to that fateful day Bruce Wayne lost his parents again, (and then Bruce Wayne egregiously manages to remember something new about that event decades later). On the plus side for me, Batman as a character is already etablished. Just the viallains are yet unknown to the Batman himself, which somewhat gives the player a headstart over the character, which made some decision-making rather easy for me. Still a few characters get a refreshing twist added to them In short, the story is solid, and would have earned four stars in my books. Yet it's a game, and games have to perform. This title is the weakest in Telltale's catalog. It doesn't have a language setting, so you have to go out your way to set Windows' system locale to the United states if you want the choice-wheel and subtitles to be in English. I got stuck at the first takedown quick time event until I found out that the XBox One controller (I finished Walking Dead: New Frontier just before with that so this is really weird) is not supported and I had to default to my old Xbox 360 one. And then there is the lag. Once in a while, the game's speed goes down to a painful crawl. And my machine can run Witcher3 so there is no excuse in my book, Restarting did help sometomes, on certain occassations I had to watch events happening frame by frame, I was relucatant to buy it on realease due to technical difficulties. Hence I waited for both the availability of all the episodes and a a discount. This is also what I recommend for this one: Get it when it's on a discount and you know you like Telltale's kind of games. It's no "Wolf among us", yet it'll keep you entertained on a weekend.

After playing the first episode and then replaying it after the patches came out (I was actually lucky, it seems, to avoid all the horrible bugs other people are describing, on day 1 the game only crashed once and then performed flawlessly; but there were minor glitches I hope now are all exterminated) I just love this game. It's the next step after "Wolf Among Us" and "Tales from Borderlands" and shows the progress of Telltale games since "The Walking Dead". Graphics is getting better (and here it gives a nice comics feeling), action scenes are now intense and much more diverse than in earlier games, explorations part of the games doesn't feel empty with logic puzzles (simple but nice) in addition to the usual dialogs. It's too early to say if your decisions will shape a truly unique story - but they sure influence events in my current playthrough. As for the story itself - it reminds of "The Long Halloween" at first, but takes a different turn. You meet familiar characters from the Batman comics, but sometimes their relationship with Batman or Bruce Wayne may surprise you (I wasn't definitely expecting Telltale approach to Oswald Cobblepot - and I think there's an interesting development ahead). The game has a new feature - "Crowd Play". I don't use it myself, but it looks like an nice addition to the decision-making part of the gameplay for people who have more Batman-loving friends.

Choppy frame rates make this game literally unplayable. For a game GOG is asking $25.00 I expected far better quality. Can't even play through the first episode because it simply freezes and lags too much, and the mouse cursor floats across the screen with such a terrible delay. Avoid this game at all costs.

I love TellTale games (or maybe did...) Lately the games have come with a lot of bugs, preventing me to enjoy the stories told. I have an Xbox one controller connected to my PC. Never had any problems with any other games. But when it comes to Batman, buttons did not react in quicktime events, especially the finishing punch, where I had to switch to keyboard to finish a fight... Sometime characters mouths doesn't move in the middle of a dialog! Had a few bugs, where floors dissapeared and then the game crashed to desktop. Also missing sound FX (SPOILER- like the crashing car in the end) The narrative of this game was also a let down too. Below Telltale average. Unpolished I would say...

Pros: - great Story - solid voice acting - still feels like you "tailor" the story (bu you do not) - The batman model looks badass. - Quicktime events are repetitive, long and tedious. Cons: - Soooo easy it's boring. Really. Not a challenge, you don't even have to think, just mindlessly click where it's lit. everything is "Click here and then here. wow! You are a genius!" - Choices tailor little to nothing in the story - Glitches! several updates later, a lot of them. - Overal graphics are mediocre. (I know, graphics don't matter, but since there's little to no adventure involved) Maybe the Telltale way of making games it's starting to get old. I'll try Guardians, but I feel it's a rip-off.