Batman the Telltale series, Episode 1, brings the best of both worlds of Batman, Bruce Wayne and Batman. In past Batman video game titles most developer focus on the dark stealth and heavy fighting mechanics, very few games bring Bruce Wayne to for forefront. Just like most Telltale games, this game is all about how you, the player, wants to experience the story. Choose the answer that you would be most likely to say, or try and step in the shoes of Batman/Bruce Wayne. Allow yourself to think as Bruce Wayne would, how would he portray himself at a press conference or how would he talk to a friend that is walking the knife's edge between good and evil. These are just some of the opportunities that will be presented to the player in the first episode of the Batman Telltale game series.

What about awesome fights and stealth takedowns?

Fear not my concerned Batman fan, Telltale gives the player opportunities to get close to some awesome fight scenes. Just like in all other Telltale games there are mass amounts of quick-time events during battles. In this episode the developers did a great job fixing one of my personal concerns, the location and size of the command buttons. During some of the previous Telltale games the face buttons on screen would be slightly out of view of the main action shots so I would fumble on the quick-time event, which results in my character's death. In episode 1: Realm of Shadows, the face button issue I struggled with has been fixed, and is brightly colored and placed in the center of the action. Quick-time events is not the only form of action in this game, at one point Batman is scouting out the hideout of Carmine Falcone with his trusty bat-drone. This allows Batman to know what he is facing and what might be the best way to approach the situation. This is where I think the game fell a bit short. When setting up my approach i was really only able to go in from one direction. I was hoping I would be able to do more of a stealth entrance and just kicking in the door with a thugs head.

What story arch is this game following?

Before all the comic nerds blow a gasket, this game does not follow the Batman lore. It takes famous characters from the series and changes some of the relationships. I think this provides a new look at the Batman universe, and also prevents having the concern of getting lore wrong. If there is one thing fans of Batman love to do is break down why movies or games are wrong and could have been better. In Realm of Shadows, Bruce Wayne is helping support Harvey Dent for Mayor of Gotham. This brings Bruce and his family history into the light more than he would like, but he knows more than anyone that he cant stop crime by himself. With Dent's help to replace Mayor Hill there might be a chance that Gotham can be a safe place for everyone. Throughout the game there are appearances of other characters such as; Selina Kyle, Jim Gordon, Carmine Falcone, and maybe some other people will join the list in the following episodes.

Whats your final take away on Ep 1?

After finishing this episode I must say I am enjoying the direction Telltale is taking with this series. Once I realized they were taking the idea of Batman and making their own story I got pretty excited. With most games that take on popular superhero figures, the last thing you want to mess with his the family history. In Realm of Shadows there is a source feeding the news outlet with information that might destroy the family name of the Waynes in the city of Gotham. This brought a lot of questions to where could the story might go and to be honest I'm pretty excited about it.

While playing the game it was hard not to notice some chugging in the frame rate. This is something that Telltale has been struggling with in most of their games, with that being said it is an improvement over some of their previous games. I only noticed some low frame rates during transitional scenes or panning during wide scene shots. There was still a bit of loading between chapters of the game and I believe that is something that really kills the experience at times. I hope in the following chapters they find a way to reduce these load times between chapters.

Overall this game looks amazing, and has some great voice acting that really brings the story to life. Troy Baker does an amazing job as Bruce Wayne and can make you scared stiff as Batman. If you are a Batman fan in any way, this is a game for you. Keep in mind that this is a Telltale game so these are episodes of the whole story, so each one is about 2 hrs.

What do you think of Telltale's Batman? Leave comments below.

Do you have any comments in regards to the technical difficulties that have marred its Steam user reviews?

I enjoyed it. In regards to the wanting to do stealth during the planning phase, Batman does remark that stealth isnt an option. So perhaps in future episodes, stealth will be an option?

I do recall Batman states that stealth is not an option due to a security camera but part of me thinks batman would find a work around but that's just me. I hope they do more stealth opportunities in the later episodes.

@veektarius: since I played this on my Ps4 I am not sure what issues are accusing on Steam. I did hear from a podcast that some users were having issues on the Xbox but nothing about steam.

I experiencing a lot of frame rate inconsistencies and screen tearing on Xbox One.

So it's like every other Telltale game but now with BATMANBATMANBATMAN!!! Talk about a one trick pony.

PS4 I had some random parts where sound fx just completely dropped out (a bug I've seen in pretty much every telltale game) and then the game hard crashed on me 3 chapters into the episode. It is definitely some peak Telltale though, so if you like their games, great, if not, well...

I think the Batman setting lends itself well to the Telltale schematic. Plenty of interesting and heavy choices that can be made here. I liked the detective work and combat-puzzle scene though I wish they'd been a bit more complex. Hoping that this will improve with time as they were little more than tutorials this time around.

Put your Hope in Harvey!

@veektarius said:

Given the volume of reviews which directly reference technical issues, it certainly seem like this one came out of the oven undercooked. One particular gem: “You could have a PC built by Jesus Christ himself and this game still will run at 10fps, a floaty cursor, and be completely unplayable at the LOWEST settings.” Hyperbolic? Sure. Baseless? Doesn't seem like it.

It doesn't seem to be plaguing every user, but that's the nature of the thing, isn't it? PC problems are always non-universal and hard to lock down.

I really hope some day Telltale can figure out why their games struggle on certain systems. I almost stopped playing Tale from the Borderlands due to the drop in frame rate. This developer could make some amazing games if they could find the source of these issues.

I played through Realm of Shadows yesterday and really enjoyed it. The story is reminding me of The Long Halloween a bit, the Bruce and Oz relationship reminds me of Hush but the whole Wayne family mystery feels fresh. I like how the Catwoman relationship is handled, how they kind of let you define it but they cut through the secret identity business right away.

The cast is really strong. I think Troy Baker's augmented Batman voice is a good way to handle that in a post-Christian Bale interpretation. I think Richard McGonagle is the most compelling Carmine Falcone.

The action stuff is well handled, feels improved from what Telltale has done before. It is quicktime events but it takes inspiration from the Rocksteady combat. The investigation mechanic is neat and I hope they push it further in later episodes.

I did run into one weird bit of writing after the torture sequence where I managed to avoid doing any real harm to the merc other than pushing him into the wall once. I got my information just through intimidation and the game registered that Gordon thought I had taken a non-lethal approach but then I got chewed out in the next scene by Alfred for being too violent, which was weird.

From a technical aspect, I played the episode on PC and it ran really smoothly for me. I have a beefy rig that I upgraded recently to be an ideal system for VR but I noted that it ran smoother than other recent Telltale games I had played on the same system (Michonne / Game of Thrones) with some of the notable loading hitches I was used to cleaned up. I did run into one bug where I got stuck in a screen during a batcomputer sequence but that has apparently been patched. I did load the game up after last night's patch and noticed they had added a "Please update your Graphics Drivers" dialog to the main menu. This is the first Telltale game where you have to chose between a Windows 7 and Windows 8+ versions and they are pushing their graphics further than they have ever before so I have to wonder if this was a case where most people are not used to a Telltale game being on the bleeding edge of driver requirements, which I've been keeping up to date due to VR demands.

Overall this is one of the most compelling Batman stories I feel we've had in awhile. At least since Scott Snyder's Zero Year and I can kind of guess where some of the threads are probably going but it is unpredictable in a way Batman stories rarely are.

Yeahhh, same thing happened to me except I didn't even push him into the wall. Apparently twisting the dude's arm a little (and it seemed like I had to do that) was "beating him half to death" and putting him "in the hospital". Gordon didn't even comment on it for me, though.

This is the first TellTale game I have played since the 2nd season of the Walking Dead and it seems like they have streamlined the process a little bit for the better since then. I enjoyed the first episode of Batman and can't wait to see where the story goes from here. That said, I really hope TellTale is planning for a long term approach with the villains in this game and doesn't hamper this and potential future seasons by trying to use every bad guy. With Falcone and Catwoman definitely in this (and most likely the Penguin becoming a threat and a potential foreshadow of the Scarecrow with the stolen chemicals). I wouldn't want the story to get clogged up with all of the other "traditional" batman enemies in this season as well. I hope that Harvey is still Harvey and not Two face until at least the 2nd season. A nice tight story leaving me wanting more for a potential 2nd season is what I want here.

The combat feels good even though it isn't a combat focused game. They made some smart decisions that don't make it seem like it is just there to lengthen the story between plot points.

I have noticed the engine hasn't aged well since the Walking Dead. The frame rate wasn't great and I had the fight sounds drop out like was mentioned above, but the story once again seems good enough to keep me coming back to see this version of the Batman story.

I guess I was surprised by

A) How young this Bruce Wayne is -- Telltale's is a novice Batman that feels less wet behind the ears than Frank Miller's Year One incarnation, and not anywhere near as battle-hardened as your typical Batman archetype. He doesn't know anything, and he even freely admits he doesn't know everything.

B) How ... like ... moralistic Bruce's public persona is? I'm so used to Bruce playing a character when he's outside the Batsuit. The player never really gets the opportunity to be deliberately-smarmy playboy Bruce. You're generally always foisted into conversations where Bruce's best options are to be more, er, Clark Kent-like.

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C) A complete bonus point here, but I might seriously consider the Telltale Batsuit as my favorite in a long, long, long time. It's a wonderful cross between the New 52 suit and the Arkham Origins battlegear.