Review

Batman: Episode 4: Guardian of Gotham

Telltale has become the Samsung of the Adventure genre. They revitalized the genre with their Walking Dead series, properly positioning it to be loved by a more mainstream audience; people who’d never heard of a King’s Quest or Day of the Tentacle were ecstatic for Telltale’s more recent offerings. Then there’s the fact that other developers have started emulating them. One only has to look at titles like Hitman and the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Remake to see how their episodic formula has been influential. Basically, Telltale has been on roll for some time now. And then Batman (the Note 7) came along and started mucking things up…

As you can guess, “Guardian of Gotham” suffers from the same frame rate issues as the previous episodes. Long pauses that cause the dialogue to fall out of synch, stuttering actions that make it difficult to complete quick-timed-events, and missing frames that ruin cutscenes – the game stammers along, tarnishing what could have been an awesome experience. The only solace to be found is that the episode isn’t as bad as the first one, meaning it’s playable.

It’s a shame that this game isn’t running at its best. The story is great. After the cliff hanger from the last episode, Bruce finds himself locked up in Arkham. Apparently, the rage inducing drug he was injected with caused him to lose his composer and attack Oswald Cobblepot. Now the citizens of Gotham believe Bruce to be some sort of lunatic. Making matters worse is the fact that some of the patients in Arkham were wrongly placed there by his father. Stating that they’d have a personal beef with Bruce would be a gross understatement. Thankfully, there’s a familiar face in the crowd of crazies. With his help, Bruce might actually make it out with only a few bumps and bruises.

The road to redemption is a tough path for Bruce to follow. With the Children of Arkham doing their best to tarnish his name and Mayor Dent, having it out for him, things have gone from bad to “WTF just happened?”. Things aren’t looking too good for his alter ego either. As Batman’s investigation uncovers the truth behind what’s going on, he’s forced to make some hard choices. All of which will have long lasting effects on Gotham as a whole. Good times!

Telltale’s Batman series hits all of the right narrative notes. Even if the unspeakable is true, and you aren’t a fan of Batman, if you like a good story and/or Adventure games, this is one to look out for. That said, the PC version still needs to be fully patched before I can recommend it wholeheartedly. It just isn’t worth the hassle; multiple updates, different settings, windowed or not – it isn’t working the way it should. And with one episode remaining, I don’t see things getting better…