Batman - The Telltale Series

Second Telltale game I buy, and I am so sad the bankrupted. Those Telltale games are *GREAT*. I found absolutely NO bugs. Does not mean there aren't. There probably are, since many people in the reviews declare they encountered some. Two things that happened to me: * for some reason, the game deducts your system language from a weird registry value. The first times I ran it, it would not be displayed in English (I am not located in an English speaking country, but my locale *is* EN-GB and I use an EN-UK keyboard and my whole system is installed in English. So I had to tamper with that registry value to finally be able to play the game in English. That was annoying for sure. * I experienced some slight hiccups, micro stutters in the game. As I usually set all graphics settings to the maximum, I went back there and lowered them by one rank. After that the game went all smooth. This could be why some people report micro-stutters. I enjoyed all of the game. I am definitely NOT disappointed, and am moving on to "The Enemy Within" very soon. I will also probably take the time to replay the game to see other paths after taking other decisions. I hope you do like it as much as I did.

As entertainment, with each of the 5 episodes running 90 minutes, it's a great value. I won't have a second run but I enjoyed it. This is not a game, but an interactive movie, with some cool options: when you bust into a room, for every lackey you can choose between two different ways to incapacitate them, and then see the action unfold. In other sequences, everything is set and you just have to press the right button when prompted; most of the time you can fail, filling a meter; you lose when it's completely filled, although there are a few insta-death scenes. For detective work, you "link" different things in the scene, and when everything makes sense you can deduce what happened. Simple but nice. You have several dialogue choices, but the main story is set, which is kinda disappointing. I get it's hard to make a really "open" story, but they don't let you miss anything important, so there's no point in a second run. There's this information you can learn -at a huge roleplaying price. If you don't, you'll learn it later anyway. Gone the surprise of learning it in a second run, gone the payoff of getting it in the first. There are more examples like this. Sometimes there's real choice: between two places to be, or being there as Batman or Bruce Wayne. There's replay value in that, but not as much as it could. For people who got into Batman before this was released (2016) there's a few changes to the mythos. Without spoiling things, one villain loses everything but their nickname -it's just a generic baddie. Lastly -after the first two or three episodes, you get an unskippable "Next on..." section that spoils the next episode. When released as episodes it made sense, now it's stupid. What I did was close my eyes and take my headphones out -no kidding. If you are into Batman (because it's not a game but a railroaded multiple-choice story) and can handle some corporate dismantling of his mythos and can afford to play in 90 minute segments, it's an OK buy.

I am not so much a fan of choice games where there is nothing else to do than making choices. I never made it past the intro of the second season of the Walking Dead. This game ist ok, the new interpretation of the charakters is interesting, even if it doesn't really make much of a difference. The choices are quite irrelevant or all too obvious. But ... in some games you get more rewarder. In the Batman games no matter what you do, you always seem to lose. There is a downside for everything you do and that's a bit frustrating. In this game that factor is not as bad as in part2.

This is one of the best games I have played in my life. It takes a great set of characters, tells a great story, has fun gameplay, excellent voice acting, well-done music, and enough choices that matter to give the game good replay value. I'm puzzled by the bad and mediocre ratings for this game. It looks, feels and plays like a graphic novel. It tells an original story while still remaining true to the Batman history and universe. Batman is hands down my favorite character, so I know quite a bit about about him. Also the camera work in the game is exceptional. Although technically this is a game and not a movie, the only word I can come up to describe how well this game does gameplay and cutscenes is AAA cinematography. Another thing that amazed me is how realistically emotion was captured in the eyes and faces of the characters. Most PC games do a mediocre job at best, even many AAA titles from big studios. The voice acting is some of the best, if not the best, of any game I've played. I've been playing games since the late 1990's. I've played RPG's, FPS, Survival Horror, Adventure and Puzzle. Over the years I've acquired a game library of over 300 games. So I've heard a lot of voice acting both good and not so good. Complementing the excellent voice acting is very well-done body language. The realistic emotion combined with top notch voice acting, believable body language, and Hollywood-style cinematography just knocked it out of the park for me. The sections where you did "detective" work were interesting and enjoyable while not being frustrating. The quicktime events (QTE) were perfect. They required a decent amount of timing and skill without being too hard or punishing. In short, get this game!!! Yes, the graphics are not the best and not very realistic, but that's the point. This is supposed to feel like you're in a graphic novel where your actions have consequences. And this game knocks it out of the park!!

This is the first Telltale game I've played that wasn't a point-and-click adventure like their Sam and Max or Monkey Island titles, and I'd heard bad things about these later projects, assuming they were lazy cash-ins to make a few quick dollars. This game has really turned that idea around. The gameplay may be simple, consisting of just dialog choices and quicktime events, but it does the absolute most it can within that framework, delivering a strong, well-written story, detailed environments and excellent voice acting. Gone is the janky, often glitchy cheap look of the earlier Telltale games- this one looks immersive and impressive despite what are a few obvious flat backdrops, and the characters are expressive and almost never bugged. The choices you make have about as much impact as they realistically can in a game, ranging from minor dialog changes or different actions in combat to affecting the way characters interact with you, or even opening up alternate gameplay routes in the final two chapters. Best of all is the well-crafted take on the Batman universe, where Bruce Wayne plays an active part and is just as important, if not moreso, than Batman. This duality is reflected in the Batmobile, which, for the first time I'm aware of, is one and the same as Bruce Wayne's personal sports car, and in several areas where you choose whether to face a problem with Batman's fists or Bruce's diplomacy. This isn't the almost superhuman figure from the Arkham games, but a much more vulnerable and fallible Batman, early in his crimefighting career, in a more realistic (but still satisfyingly comic bookish) universe. My one complaint would be that this version of the Joker isn't nearly as disturbing or frightening as the game seems to think he is, relying on our familiarity with the character to give him menace rather than his actions- but hopefully this will be fixed in the sequel, where it seems he plays a more active role.