Review — Batman: The Telltale Series — Children Of Arkham

Batman: The Telltale Series

We sit down and review Batman: The Telltale Series — Children Of Arkham. This is the second episode of Telltale’s take on the Batman franchise. Here’s our review on how they did

The time has come and the second episode of Batman: The Telltale Series is here and we get to see if the momentum from the first episode keeps going or not. Telltale Games did knock it out of the part with the first episode for me but with the chance that the story could change drastically or the gameplay could falter at any episode there is a chance. None the less this should be when all hell breaks loose in the story and builds toward the true climax in some way just as all Batman comics, games, and films usually do by this point. Without more gilding the lily here, here’s our review of Children Of Arkham.

Story

We just had a bombshell of a twist drop on Bruce and he is still trying to recover from that. Not only that but it looks like the mayoral debates are at hand and all of the conflict from the first episode have made things “complicated” for that. None the less, Bruce is out to figure out the truth of it all as well as keep Gotham safe; both as Batman and as a pillar of the community. The double life looks to be getting a little more difficult here but if anyone is up to the task it should be Bruce.

Hated

I really hate to have something here at all but it looks like this episode may have been rushed by Telltale Games a bit. Not in terms of writing or gameplay but in terms of quality assurance of the final product. I ran into many graphical glitches and had the game freeze and crash a few times during my experience. By graphical glitches I saw multiple characters in the episode lose all shape and detail; almost to the point where I wasn’t certain who the character was outside of the audio clues and dialog dictating who they were. It does seem like something that could be fixed with a patch or something but it popped up too much here and time needs to be taken to ensure that we keep getting the high quality we were given the first time.

Loved

Just as before, Telltale made this part of the story its bitch and didn’t let up. Out of all of their IPs and games so far I think Batman is quickly becoming my top title. It’s rare that a game gets my jaw to drop out of shock and I am not kidding when I say that it happened here twice. Even when it felt like they were about to give us the same old story we get out of the Batman franchise at every turn. Completely spot on and hopefully this will all become cannon at some point as it is something truly inspired in my eyes. I have not yet been let down and I see that fun rolling out with all of the future episodes.

Also like the story, this episode went out of the way to bring us something that we don’t normally get in any of Telltale’s titles. Of course it isn’t something as groundbreaking as other titles can do but for the “choose your own adventure” style we have here even the little things like planning a fight and watching it play out or even flying our drones around to track down a cell phone adds so much to give us the feel of being Batman yet again. I am excited to see if there is anything else like this brought in for the future episodes in terms of the gear. I’m going to guess yes as it is working so well and is one of the better selling points for the overall title.

The last thing that I found an interesting choice, and a great one too boot, was that we were able to choose to go handle things as Batman or as Bruce. A major scene that could play out a bit differently on both sides of the coin and still paid off no matter the choice. That is a difficult task to achieve and Telltale totally did. I actually found playing as Bruce a bit more fun than expected as it gave a great look at the character outside of throwing punches and kicking ass. All the stuff that is usually glossed over in every other version of the character.

Overall

The first episode of Batman: The Telltale Series was an amazing and this one had a lot to live up to. It did so very well in almost all of its aspects short of a few technical issues. None the less it is something that I can fully see coming to an amazing head and, given the release schedule, something that I think you should totally pick up. Even with the episode breaks between them, this episode shows that they are going to have something amazing when it is all done and you’ll want to be on the ground level for it all. Go and get it now.

I give Batman: The Telltale Series — Children Of Arkham 3 Locating Drones on the Locating Drone scale.

Batman: The Telltale Series — Children Of Arkham was developed by Telltale Games. Batman: The Telltale Series — Children Of Arkham was published by Telltale Games for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC on September 20^th 2016. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes.