Review: BATMAN: THE TELLTALE SERIES

The Dark Knight returned (pun not intended) to consoles this year in Batman: The Telltale Series. This game is vastly different from his last outing, Batman: Arkham Knight. We follow Bruce Wayne, he’s a more inexperienced Batman and this is his first real battle. The choices you make impact the story. For instance, having the choice to save one character over the other. This leads to slight changes over the course of the story. Now, don’t expect two completely different experiences. They both lead down the same road, but they’re different enough where you will still get enjoyment out of it.

Batman has to fight Lady Arkham and the Children Arkham. Bruce is being attacked from all sides. We learned that Thomas Wayne did some shady stuff back in the day, and this leads to Bruce having to deal with the backlash from this. You have to clear your family’s name, take down Lady Arkham, and gain Gotham City’s trust. The gameplay is very boring in terms of fighting. It’s mostly pointing and click on objects, then mashing the buttons when the prompts appear. It almost feels like a mobile game at times. Though once you get into the heart of the story you quickly forget about the mediocre gameplay. They also made detective mode a lot more interesting than it has been in previous Batman games. The main gameplay mechanic is the fact that you become the character. You start to feel the stakes and it’s incredibly immersive.

The game was full of bugs at first, but thankfully it was patched right away, sadly episode 5 still has a ton of glitches as I’m writing this. It freezes, crashes, the audio goes in and out, and some background characters disappear from the scenes. Hopefully, they fix these issues in their next update. Getting back to the positives, the voices acting is great. Troy Baker is great as both Bruce Wayne and Batman and the rest of the cast were just as good – most notably; Travis Willingham (Harvey Dent), Laura Bailey, (Catwoman) and Enn Reitel (Alfred Pennyworth). The main villain of the game is someone you’d never expect. If you would’ve told me that [spoiler] would be the main villain of a Batman game, I would’ve laughed in your face. Yet, somehow they made it work.

Overall, Batman: The Telltale Series is another great addition to the Batman mythology. The gameplay can get a bit boring at times, and even a little glitchy. But a combination of story, voice acting, and animation makes up for it. If you want to play a game where you beat up a room full of thugs then this isn’t the game for you. But if you want a game with a great story, great characters, and the ability to play as both the Batman and Bruce Wayne this wants you’ve been looking for.

Batman: The Telltale Series is available now on PS4, PS3, Xbox One, XBOX 360, PC, IOS, and Android devices.