Hello, fellow gamers. We are vengeance, we are night, we are Batman! Actually no, but we are reviewing Batman: The Telltale Series. Close enough.

The developers at Telltale Games are the creators of the video game adaptation of the fan favorite, The Walking Dead. This time they bring us the Caped Crusader himself, Batman.

If you know anything about Telltale, you know that they focus deeply on story. True to their form, this game is no different. The graphics have that cartoonish look to it, which is a good thing as it plays like an interactive comic book. The voice acting is important to a game of this style, and we are happy to report that the talent is on point. With voice actors like Troy Baker, who is no stranger to voicing Batman, and Murphy Guyer (Red Dead Redemption) as Gordon, it’s easy to get engrossed into the well-plotted story. For the first time you will actually get to play as both Batman and Bruce Wayne. The Bruce Wayne aspect plays out in a fascinating way; you have to keep up your public persona while gathering information for later use by your alter ego. This really fleshes out the world of Batman in a way that no game has yet to do. (We are looking at you Rocksteady Arkham series).

Unlike the Arkham series, Telltale Batman is not a traditional action combat game. The story and action all play out through quick time events (QTE), meaning you have pop-up inputs of certain buttons that must be pressed on time, which are very responsive. You will have to drag and click cross hairs to pick options of what you want to do and what to interact with. For example, in one instance, you can pick how you approach a combat situation, who to take out, and in what order. However, one issue that we have found is that even if you do not input the right buttons on demand, your errors do not seem to have any detrimental effect to the overall gameplay.

That being said, this mechanism holds your attention as you go through this greatly written episode full of plot twist that we won’t spoil. There is also a full detective aspect that really makes you feel like your in the B-man’s boots. With the above mentioned drag and click mechanism, you have to literally put together the elements of the case in order to make sense of what happened. Then you have to decide what you do with said information.

In one part of the story, you are speaking to Jim Gordon and you get context choices of what you say to Jim and what kind of manner you choose to speak to him. Best of all, the choices that you make impact the story and how characters deal with Bruce Wayne or the Bat respectively. You can also decide what kind of Batman you will be — fear inspiring one or a brutal BvS type, minus the body count (so far). This comes in the form of do you scare criminals or do you brutalize the hell out of them. Again all choices and actions are important to the progression of the story.

One thing to keep in mind is this is only the first episode out of many that will be released in later installments. That’s not to say that this is an incomplete game. With the amount of choices and course of actions that you can make, this has great replay value. Our advice is to definitely look into this game if you are a fan of Telltale and/or Batman. We give this game episode an 8 out of 10.

Happy gaming.