HomeComics/MangaGAME REVIEW | A New Twist on the Bat-Mythos In Telltale's "BATMAN"

GAME REVIEW | A New Twist on the Bat-Mythos In Telltale's "BATMAN"

GAME REVIEW | A New Twist on the Bat-Mythos In Telltale's "BATMAN"

I reviewed Episode One of Telltale's take on Batman awhile back (which you can read about here), but now that the season is over, I'm ready to put my thoughts out on the rest of the season. While the season had a good story overall, the fact that it still has technical issues -- no matter the platform -- brings it down a bit.

The second episode continues from the revelation that Bruce's family was indeed involved in criminal activity. Bruce has to deal with those consequences as a conspiracy to remove him as CEO of Wayne Enterprises is set into motion. This is brought upon by the machinations of Oswald Cobblepot and a terrorist group called the Children of Arkham, led by Lady Arkham. You'll also choose to work with Catwoman, but regardless of what happens, events are setup for Two-Face to also enter the stage.

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Episode three continues to deal with Harvey's descent into madness, as Batman continues to fight the Children of Arkham. Episodes four and five act more like a two-part conclusion to this storyline. John Doe crops up near the end, hinting at a Season Two featuring the clown prince of crime as a possible antagonist. Overall, the story is well-done, and I'm left wanting more, which is a good thing. But perhaps the rush to get the game out on so many platforms has taken its toll on Telltale.

BATMAN - The Telltale Series suffers from technical issues no matter which version you play, and these seem to only be partially resolved in the last two episodes. The biggest problems I encountered where the fact that on the Xbox One, the lack of optimization means that the framerate can dip below 30 fps. The PC version plays smoothly at 60 frames, when it's not suffering from bad frame pacing (which is pretty often). It also can't seem to handle scene transitions and fast movement, and this will happen no matter how good your rig is. Subtitles also can go out of synch or not display entirely.

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At the end of the day, the technical issues bring a great game down a bit. However, if you are willing to deal with them, there's still a great narrative to experience here. Perhaps, though, maybe you should wait a bit more for Telltale to hopefully resolve these issues before plunking down the cash.

VERDICT:

The Good: The story is an interesting take on the Wayne Family and Bruce.
The Bad: The engine that Telltale is using for it's graphics is showing its age, although it looks the best on PC by far.
The Ugly: The game still suffers from some technical issues that only seem partially fixed depending on which episodes you play.

SUMMARY: BATMAN - The Telltale Series is a very interesting twist on Bruce Wayne, but a few unfortunate technical issues still hold it back a bit.

FINAL GRADE:

Promotional consideration provided by Telltale Games. Reviewed on the PC.

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