After our first foray through a Telltale Games adventure series, The Walking Dead: Michonne, we’re excited to bring another Telltale title to you every Wednesday. Welcome to the debut episode of our Let’s Play through Batman: The Telltale Series! The series will update every week on this YouTube playlist, as well as via the “Holy Sue, Batman!” tag.
Let’s dive into the Bat-cave, shall we? This Let’s Play starts off with a brief introduction from TMS’ resident Let’s Player Sam Riedel, who reveals that her favorite Batman is Adam West’s version, because obviously, and also that she rejects any version of Batman who kills people. She’ll be attempting to save as many people as possible in her Let’s Play, just as Bats would want it done.
The game starts off by allowing us to choose our color for “Bat-tech” items. Sam chooses purple, of course!
The opening cut-scene shows us a helicopter descending on Gotham City Hall. Inside the building, the front desk clerk looks up in alarm, then he gets shot in the head by a group of heavily-armored intruders. The criminals sneak through the building, past a huge campaign poster for Harvey Dent (guess he’s not Two-Face yet?), then gather around a locked door and use a circular saw to crack it open.
The Gotham City PD, headed up by the mustached Commissioner Gordon, shows up at city hall in short order. The cops walk right up to the elevator, but before anybody can use it, one of the baddies upstairs cuts the cable and rigs the elevator with an explosive. Once the plummeting elevator hits the first floor, where Gordon and the rest of the cops are waiting, it explodes–but luckily, no one is hurt. Then, Gordon receives a walkie-talkie call from someone with a low voice who says he’s going to head in. That’s Batman, right? Yeah, it’s Batman.
According to Batman, the bad guys are all the way up on the 52nd floor. Gordon shouts at the rest of the cops to take the stairs. That’s a lot of cardio! Cut to Batman, who’s standing on the rooftop across the street; he uses a grappling hook gun to propel himself into city hall. Once he’s smashed his way through the window and gotten inside, he faces towards the bad guys, and then …. smash cut to Wayne Manor, where a beat-up Bruce Wayne stands in front of his fireplace.
Alfred shows up and gives our hero a classic talking-to: “Bruce, you can’t keep doing this.” (Has that ever worked, Alfred?) Bruce shakes off the usual criticism.
Cut back to the building full of bad guys. Apparently, Batman managed to escape them without being noticed, even after the whole smashing-through-the-window-thing. Now he’s sneaking around the darkened hallways, tying up each of the baddies and setting little traps for the others. Several quicktime events later, Batman has taken out most of the criminals; the combat moves slowly in this game, but it does require following instructions rather than finding your own way to win.
Once Batman finally gets through the locked door to see what the bad guys were trying to steal, he finds … Catwoman, a.k.a. Selina Kyle! She’s standing in front of an opened safe full of cash. Turns out she isn’t actually going to take the money, though–she picks up a rectangular piece of plastic that looks like a floppy disk crossed with an 8-track tape. While Batman fights off a couple more baddies sneaking up behind them, Catwoman gets away. He runs after her, but she’s speedy; she uses some sort of device to propel herself up the empty elevator shaft.
Meanwhile, the Gotham PD finds Batman and draws their weapons. Before they can arrest him, Batman uses his grappling gun to propel himself up the elevator shaft after Catwoman. He finds her up on the roof; the two exchange some classic threats/flirtation and then engage in a quick hand-to-hand battle. Catwoman has a whip in this game and she’s not afraid to use it.
At one point, Catwoman tries to make a run for it, but then she’s confronted by another helicopter–not one full of villains, but rather a Gotham City News helicopter. The reporters on board immediately start live-broadcasting the fight between Batman and Catwoman. The pair soon gains an additional audience once Commissioner Gordon and the rest of the cops reach the rooftop, too. The cops want to shoot at the two of them, but of course Gordon tells them to hold their fire.
Finally, Batman manages to steal the mysterious disk back from Selina over the course of their fight. He asks her what’s on it, but she won’t tell him, of course. One of the cops gets trigger-happy and shoots Batman, hitting him in the torso, to Gordon’s dismay. While Batman’s doubled over from the wound, Catwoman makes a run for it yet again. Batman quickly recovers, since he’s probably wearing bulletproof armor of some kind anyway, and he throws an electrocuting explosive at Selina right as she’s jumping off the building to escape. She starts falling, at which point Batman realizes she could die, so he leaps over the edge of the building to catch her and save her.
While the two of them are dangling off the edge of the building together, they exchange some more threats/flirtation, during which time Selina manages to catch Bruce off guard and then escape yet again by jumping onto one of the nearby air-rail cars flying through Gotham City. Batman has failed in his quest to bring Catwoman to heel! But, I mean, this is the beginning of the game. There’s no way he was gonna catch her right away.
The chapter ends with Bruce Wayne back in his manor, talking to Alfred once again and agreeing to go to a party “as Bruce Wayne” tonight. Apparently the party is at his own house, and it’s already started, so it’s a good thing he’s agreeing to go!
What do you think of Telltale’s Batman game so far? This first chapter felt very by-the-books to me, even down to the dialogue choices. Nothing really stood out to me so far, but at least the game does look really cool … and it’s Telltale, so hopefully we can expect some real moral dilemmas coming up, and perhaps even some mystery-solving. We’ll find out next week!
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