Batman - The Telltale Series Episode 5 Review

The fifth and final installment of the Telltale’s Batman series starts off depending on how you finished the last episode. If you went after Two Face you’ll start off against Penguin, faced off against Penguin at the end of episode four you’ll square up to Two Face at the beginning of this episode.

Once the Dent/Cobblepot storylines have been swept aside, it’s time to take care of Vicki Vale, aka Lady Arkham. To find, defeat and save Alfred you must do all the usual Telltale Batman activities; investigate a crime scene, pre plan out your route of rampage against bad guys and, of course, epic quick time events. There are no new mechanics in this episode, much like the other episodes, no new thrills, just the good old formula.

Episode 5 is very much the wrap up episode, all things packaged up in a nice little bow and placed upon the shelf. However this can give the impression of it being a bit rushed. This episode could have been a really powerful one, Vicki Vale’s past is a very emotional and tragic one, making her a sympathetic villain, one who isn’t just manic or evil but you can actually feel sorry for and want to see develop and potentially rise above her tragic past and become a very interesting member of Batman’s rogues gallery. Unfortunately we don’t get this. Her past is presented to us and then pretty much sidelined so we can have an epic quicktime battle, the villain defeated, nothing developed for her, just pushed aside for the villain for the next series of Telltale Batman games to take center stage. Yes, the ending does indicate there’ll be more games in the future. No, you do not get any points for being able to guess who the villain is.

Overall the Telltale Batman series has been quite disappointing. They came up with a villain that had a lot of potential to being interesting, but instead they Spider-Man 3’d it; pumping the series full of villains, meaning none of them really got any great development time beyond a very surface level remake of their characters and motivations. Vicki Vale had the most changed from her comic book appearances, however even her big reveal is rushed out and resolved in double quick time to get the game out, only reaching about an hour and a half in play time. The five episodes all put together will probably take between 8 and 10 hours to play, which isn’t a terrible amount of time, but as I’ve said they’ve spread their time thin, giving very little depth to the story, character or game play. Here’s hoping they’ll put more time and effort into their Guardians of the Galaxy series.