Batman – The Telltale Series Episode One: Realm of Shadows (PC)

After Rocksteady Studios completed their stellar Arkham trilogy (yes I am omitting the mostly lackluster, cookie-cutter Arkham: Origins) I imagine that most game companies spent their time alternating between desperately hoping to take over the franchise while simultaneously panicking like a teenage girl with no prom date at the prospect of it actually happening. How can anyone top the masterpieces that Rocksteady churned out? No other Batman games are even in the same area code, and it seemed like after Rocksteady stepped away we would once again be doomed to playing terrible Batman movie tie-ins for the foreseeable future. Who would save gamers and Gotham from this horrible fate?

A fresh take on Batman

But just because Telltale doesn’t have to compete with the previous trilogy or exhaustively study the “real” Batman’s Gotham in order to avoid making a continuity mistake, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have their own unique set of challenges to overcome. The main problem with making a “choose your own adventure” game featuring Batman is that almost everyone already knows what Batman would do in a given situation. The point of Batman is that he is more legend than man, more scary story than substance. He does not falter, question, hesitate or show weakness. He’s the goddamn Batman (I hate you sometimes Frank Miller)! On top of that, Batman isn’t a big talker; he’s more of a haymaker-throwing, batarang-chucking, stealth-attacking ninja, and unlike say, Spider-Man, he rarely talks when he’s beating some unlucky punk’s face in. So how is this going to work?

Playing as Bruce Wayne, and also Batman

When you do actually don the cape and cowl, you are generally dishing out punishment in a big way. The combat is the standard Telltale quick-time-event fare with button presses and joystick movements controlling whether or not you land punches and kicks on your enemies’ soft spots. There’s a bat-meter that fills as you correctly input button presses with split second timing, and once it’s filled you can unleash a devastating finishing move on your hapless enemies. Disappointingly, I was only able to fill up the meter once, although the finishing move that it unleashed was brutal and entertaining. Also disappointing is the fact that I don’t think I was struck a single time in my entire play-through, and I never experienced a game-over screen in my two hours of play. It seemed that the only penalty for missing attacks (button presses) was the bat-meter not filling, which took a lot of the impact away from the fighting. Throughout most of the combat sequences I felt that I was kind of just along for the ride without really being able to affect the action, since I didn’t experience any consequences for poor play.

With that said, the combat looks nice, and there are a couple of pretty great combat set pieces that work really well, combining the quick time events with Batman’s ingenuity and detective skills. In addition to the tricks and tech hidden in Batman’s cowl and utility belt, he also has a drone that he uses to great effect. You can use the drone in a variety of ways, including scouting enemies and setting up takedowns and attacks. One such situation takes place on the top floor of an apartment building and you have to choose how you will bludgeon, beat, and generally destroy a football team’s worth of henchmen. It works well and it’s a sadistic thrill to choose which guy to smash through a staircase, which punk to brain with a large piece of modern art, and who to just give a good old fashioned, all-American boot to the mouth. It’s another way that Telltale shows off Batman’s intellect and his brawn working together, and it’s a lot of fun.

The detective parts of the game are good as well, but a bit on the light side. You find a murder scene, click on your detective lenses, and off you go. You look for corpses, link them to environmental clues, and then link them to other points of interest around the crime scene. If you link them in the wrong order you will be notified that the clues don’t add up or make sense, and you’ll have to break the link and try again. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it is decent fun. I wish the puzzles had been a bit more involved or required more actual brain power, but it’s a good start – and besides, this is only the first episode, so hopefully there’s nowhere to go but up.

Telling Tales

The writing is crisp and witty, and it clicks right along. There are a few out-of-place lines, but when a clunky line of dialogue rears its head, it always errs on the side of comic-booky, which is fine by me. Bruce and Alfred have some particularly good dialogue, and it’s fun to see Alfred as even more of a familiar confidant than usual, admonishing and encouraging Bruce in equal measure. Bruce even refers to him as “Al”, and for such a simple thing it really shows how their relationship in this world is closer than in most variations I’ve seen before in comics and games.

Not everything in Gotham is pretty

A huge problem I had (and from reading the forums, many others did as well) was trying to get the game to run in full-screen mode. I couldn’t make it work, and every time I tried to switch to full-screen, I got a white screen where I could hear the audio but not see any video. This was a major bummer. Playing the game in windowed mode when I could be playing it on a 55-inch T.V. screen was very frustrating, and seriously detracted from the overall experience. I didn’t get the frame-rate dips that other gamers have experienced, which was nice, but especially when playing as the Dark Knight, having my white desktop icons and background show up while I was stealth-attacking everyone was a real drag. There’s no excuse for a studio like Telltale to have this kind of problem, especially with a property this large.

But a lot of it does

The sound is similarly well done for the most part. Unfortunately there is no Kevin Conroy as Batman, and honestly, the actor (who has voiced Batman/Bruce before) just does okay. The rest of the characters sound great, from Alfred to Vicki Vale. The music is appropriately ominous and tense depending on the situation, and the first time Batman popped open his blindingly white peepers, I got chills as the music reached a crescendo. The punches, kicks and sound effects all sound as they should, especially a scene with Batman performing an impromptu autopsy that had me cringing from the stellar sound effects.