My thoughts on Batman Season 1 (spoilers)
Hello there!
So last week, before finally making a start on TWD A New Frontier, I played through Batman Season 1. Once again I had waited until after the entire Season had been released before I played it, not by choice however; I love waiting for new episodes to come out, but I was just so busy with work and life in general that when I finally could get around to it all, it was already over (so to speak)
Anyways, hear is a (long) summary of what I thought of the Season:
For a start, I have to say that the story was excellent. When it comes to a Batman story that is set very early in his career, the potential is near limitless, and this Season really threw in everything it could. The Wayne's being shady criminals, the former friendship with Cobblepot, Harvey Dent's electoral campaign, and even a first encounter with the Joker; all this worked perfectly and I was never once bored or disappointed with the plot choices.
The only thing that got me was the reveal that Vicki Vale was Lady Arkham. I did think to myself that this was a poor decision (given that Vicki is not a major character in the Batman mythos from my understanding) but the tragic/creepy backstory they gave her changed my mind soon enough.
Character wise, Telltale hit the nail on the head. Bruce Wayne/Batman are exactly how I imagined them to be, and I appreciated that you could choose whether to handle certain situations as one or the other (I always chose to handle these moments as Bruce)
The supporting cast are all great, even if I did want characters like Falcone and Mayor Hill to last longer just to see what else they could reveal about the Wayne's past. I also tried in vain to prevent Harvey from becoming Two-Face (yeah I messed it up with Selina, but that's what replaying the Season is for right?) For Telltale to have me be THAT invested in trying to prevent a good guy from becoming a bad guy, is enough of an indication as to how much I liked this game.
The action scenes were top notch, and were very ambitious for Telltale to pull off. Though I have to say that my game would frequently lag during these fight scenes, and I'm playing this on a PS4 Pro! Nonetheless the experience wasn't ruined in any way.
Now I'll talk about what I didn't like:
The action scenes... Well ok, the Bat-meter that appears during the action scenes. Did this thing really have to be a feature? I thought it was silly. I will also add that I have never had such a hard time hitting the button prompts in a Telltale game before! Sometimes I couldn't even properly see which button I had to press before time was up! While the whole "Finisher" move was a cool way to end a battle, the fact that it relied on you successfully hitting all of the prompts, when the prompts are sometimes that hard to hit, is a bad idea...
All in all, excellent job on this one, and I'm looking forward to playing The Enemy Within!
On a final note, I have a question: In Ep.4, you can pick up Selina's cat claw (which I did, and kept it) but I never got the chance to use it later on. Selina brought it up before she left in Ep.5 as something to criticize me for... So I was wondering if there is any point at all to taking it???
Comments
You'll be happy to know that, in Season 2, the Bat-meter is done away with. Glad to hear you enjoyed Season 1 and I hope you enjoy Season 2, which, in my opinion, is even better.
Hey, glad you enjoyed it!
Funny thing about the "Bat-meter" - even if you don't fill it up, you'll be able to perform the finishing move, so that feature was literally useless. But as Metallica mentioned above, it has been removed for the second season, so all's good.
As for Selina's claw, you won't be able to use it, but if you import your saves to the second season, Bruce will keep it in Bat cave as a memento, which is a neat detail.
Since I don't make new threads, I'm going to post my thoughts here(re-post from General Chat).
(When asked about the handling of the mythos)
Of the fixed mythos, it's fine. I'll even say it's pretty good. I religiously followed the 90's cartoon, the 80's-90's comics and the New 52 comics, so I have a strong opinion of who the characters should be. With that, only really Zsasz bothered me. He is a man, whom even in his lucid moments, you know something is terribly wrong with him. That didn't convey really well in the game. His motivations did and were handled well though.
The villain, whom they drastically altered, was never really an interesting character until recently. I was fine with that change too.
As for the choices... Ehhh. I feel some of the options had a bit too much fan service and exactly how many people did you have the option of revealing yourself to? 3? 4? That was a bit crazy. I didn't hate them though as there were very clearly some Batman fans(beyond the Nolan universe) involved with the game. There was almost always an option I agreed with(as to what my idea of Batman would do/say).
Overall, I'd say I liked it.
Starting season 2 today.
Hey man, long time no see
Nice to hear that it'll be gone. I did really enjoy this Season so hopefully the next one will be even better!
Yo man.
I had a hunch that even if you didn't fill it the fight would turn out the same way haha. Nice idea in concept, but in execution it was not :P
In that case I'mm gonna leave it be, I only took it because I thought you could use it later on in the Season...
I've never read any DC or Marvel comics, but I like to think my knowledge is pretty good from what I have read online. Zsasz was such a minor character in this Season that I never really put much thought into him beyond thinking "Oh look it's the killer who marks his body" Sorry to be blunt about it.
Drastically altered? I what way?
See, imo when it comes to revealing your identity to people, that should always be the last resort. Otherwise why would Bruce keep it a secret? Selina figures it out for herself, Vicki is entirely your choice... If there are any others then I wasn't aware of that feature in my playthrough of the game.
Drastically altered as in the character was nothing like how they are in the comics. Like, at all. Vicky Vale is just a reporter in the comics, and her Lady Arkham persona is a completely original idea by Telltale.
I should've known what you were talking about haha