Developer: Telltale
Rrp: £11.99 (Gog.com, Humblebundle and Steam) [Both are this price individually]
I think its safe to say that everyone knows who Batman is and at least a few details about him be it his parents being murdered, him being a vigilante or even just a member of his rogues gallery. You’d be hard pushed to find someone who doesn’t know at least SOMETHING about him. Because of this any media that uses the character tends to only put a small amount of emphasis on his origins as it’s so well established. That isn’t the case with the first game, not only does it cover this well trodden ground but it also rehashes some of the facts adding more nuance to the whole affair.
In fact this whole game is about the affect of the death of Bruce Waynes parents, not just on Bruce himself but on Gotham as a whole.
In the second game the focus much more on a character who was instrumental but also appeared only briefly in the last game, one John Doe. For the sake of spoilers I won’t mention who he’s clearly destined to become later but lets just say he’s kinda’ a big deal as are the ‘friends’ he’s surrounded himself with.
Because of the nature of these types of games, I won’t go into specifics about the story or even the characters that appear (beyond that hint just now). But lets just say that anyone who is a fan of Batman will find a lot of interesting twists in the tales of their favourite villains as well as some cameos from the less well known ones.
Of course, like almost every Telltale game the choices you make will have an influence on what happens later in the story. However, one thing this game does that the others don’t is the investigations, Batman is known as ‘The Worlds Greatest Detective’ after all, it would make no sense if all he did was punch the bad guys (he does that too). In these investigative sections you need to try and piece the evidence together in order to make sense of what’s in front of you. Its quite a simple affair, involving looking at an item and selecting it then walking to another and doing the same. If these two items are directly connected in the story then Batman will explain how.
From a graphical and mechanical standpoint both of these games look essentially the same, although there is a ‘shadows mode’ microtransaction you can buy that will change the look. This is a practise I highly disapprove of but if you want to spend an extra £3.99 for what amounts to be a skin change you go for it.
I have to say these games kept me on the hook the whole way, the stories were interesting and had quite a number of twists and hooks that kept me pleasantly surprised.
