Because I’m Batman!

Right, well, disappointingly in my opinion — this line was not once uttered throughout the opening episode of Telltale’s 2016 ‘Batman – The Telltale Series’. I’m holding out hope that this oversight will be rectified in the future episodes.

Either way, today I took as a bit of a palate cleanser. I played several hours of the Cube World beta earlier in the day and then ran through the first episode of Batman in the evening. I’ve owned the full season (and season two as well, actually) since shortly after Season 2 wrapped up — I just, uh… Never quite got around to them. Ditto with the Game of Thrones Telltale game, and the Minecraft themed one too.

After quite some time away from the Telltale franchise (I think the last one I finished was Tales from the Borderlands… Or possibly The Wolf Within, whichever of those two came out last), it has been quite refreshing to jump back into the style again.

Yeah, sure, there’s QTEs out the wazoo, but I’ve never really been too turned off by them honestly. (I loved the crap out of Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy, hah.) My only real complaint is that years post release and there are still performance issues with the game. Nominally framerate is hitting the 120hz refresh rate, but it stutters like mad every now and again.

Fortunately, not commonly during a QTE, and not frequently or severely enough to stop me from playing.

Episode One (Realm of Shadows) was very brief with only a handful of scenes really. But it sets the scene nicely for what is to come with a great tension between Bruce Wayne and Batman and the relationships surrounding each. The story treads fairly well known Batman fare, don’t get me wrong. And the surprise twist at the end really isn’t.

But I think there is at least as much to be had in the joy in how the story is being told in Telltale games that rises above whatever the actual story itself may be. I appreciated that the game gives you a lot of flexibility in just how brutal (or not) your rendition of Batman is, too.

In any case, fair bit of fun even coming at it so late in the day that the company responsible ceased to exist. And now looks to be making a comeback of a sort.

And a nice change of pace from yesterday wherein I spent altogether too many hours in Asheron’s Call. Both kids were at friends places on respective friends’ birthday sleepovers so was able to invest near on teen-level hours again. It was a good day for it too, the admins of the server I play on — Levistras — lined up a live event for us replacing the expected scripted event some of us on the server were aiming for with the shattering of the bells to open passage to the Olthoi Queen.

We had two full fellowships (8 people per fellowship) alongside a few others outside these two core groups on the defense. That screenshot is taken just outside Arwic, and is after fighting our way through a huge invasion in the Town Portal Network to stop us from getting here.

Ultimately we couldn’t defeat this Queen, and she retreated after we had slaughtered enough of her brood to send the message that while we may not be able to get her — we weren’t going to let her have the town, either.

So basically: Derethian Justice League.

I was in the presence of super hero level characters, and sure — you might call me crazy for diving into the deep end, right into the thick of it. You might even be inclined to ask why I would do such a thing.

Well…

*takes a breath*

Because I’m Batman!