REVIEW – With lots of hype, another Telltale series – probably targeted as a big banger – launched. This time, they took the Batman franchise, and the starting point is hopeful. However, it is yet to be seen how far Telltale can go with Bruce Wayne, even though the first steps are fine.

Recently, Batman only had his line of Arkham games developed by Rocksteady (and I know there was also Origins, but that one is the exception), but now, one of the flagship episodic game developers took him into their hands, and the results are a few additions.

Community

One of the new things is Crowd Play. Before starting each episode, you get the option to turn it on. If you switch it on, you get a six-character code, if I remember correctly. Share that with your friends/viewers, who can then go to cp.telltale.com, type in the code, have a six-letter username, and then, a window appears. You can rate the person’s gameplay with thumbs ups or thumbs downs, which will be visible for him/her on the right side of the screen while he is playing.

If you get the option to choose from four colors, then you have the chance to select the person’s dialogue, and if it’s just two options, it’s decision time. (That kind of decisions that get recapped at the end of the episode.) This Crowd Play is perfect for trolling – that statement is a personal experience. Too bad that we cannot see what he/she is seeing unless you use another browser tab, a different monitor, or a device.

Bruce

We don’t just have to protect Gotham City as Batman; we also have to act as Bruce Wayne, navigating around tough decisions and dialogue options. Here’s a quick recap of the story, hopefully, I can do it without spoilers: a memory of a crime scene, a mayor-campaign event, an uninvited guest, a meeting with an old friend, an investigation, an action scene. There! I didn’t spoil anything major!

Bruce also has his Bat Cave with the high-tech gadgetry, as well as with a supercomputer, where we can look at the Codex, featuring all the important information of the key characters, plus at the social feed, too. Let me tell you that I encountered a glitch here, which made me restart the game. So you have to put a drive into your computer to decrypt its files, but I looked at the Codex first. I quit, and I get stuck in a screen where I can only pick the Codex and the social feed. No backing out. WOW!

Troy

Troy Baker is the voice of Batman. It’s unusual, but you can get used to it, as the voice acting is still supreme. Too bad that there aren’t many background songs to hear. I have to point out another bug here: at the TV cutscenes, sometimes not even a single letter of subtitles was shown. At least the story is fine for now – the past will have a bigger role than before, and I’ll just leave it at that.

Buy it digitally

Yes, I’m serious. Why wait until the middle of September to get only ONE episode on the disc, as the Season Pass disc still forces you to download the other four? It’s ridiculous – don’t wait over a month just because of Telltale’s dumb ideas.

I’d also like to talk a little bit about the PC port, and I’ll also give a separate rating for it here. The port needs a certain Windows update on Windows 7, or the game won’t even launch: it gives a DirectX error. After I installed the update, the frame rate sometimes dropped to single digits, and it couldn’t keep a stable 60. On a PC which could run all Telltale games on max, Batman ran at 50fps. Terrible port, 6 out of 10.

But on the PS4, it’s a 7.5 – there’s no major frame rate issue. True, the graphics could be a bit better, but I hope for the best with the series. At least I didn’t finish the first episode in 70-75 minutes…

-V-

Publisher: Telltale Games

Developer: Telltale Games

Genre: Point-and-click, adventure, episodic

Release date: August 2, 2016 (PS4, PS3)