Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series
Batman: The Enemy Within is the second season of Telltale’s version of my favourite DC superhero. Obviously this game is mostly focused on story, so I’ll start with my overall recommendation, and then you can skip my detailed analysis if you want to avoid spoilers.
This is an essential must play for any fan of Batman. The story is fantastic, Telltale back to their absolute best form. Voice acting is outstanding throughout the whole cast, headlined by Troy Baker as Batman/Bruce Wayne. I advise playing season 1 first, because some decisions carry forward, which can impact the appearance of some characters, and their relationship with Bruce. It took me 9 hours to finish Enemy Within, which is longer than Telltale’s other recent games, and I think you can justify buying the game for full price or a small discount.
– Real player with 18.0 hrs in game
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Gotham’s Finest
By now almost everybody knows who Batman is and most of the details surrounding him (parents‘ death, enemies and villains, Batman‘s codex etc.). So you would probably think “why should I play another Batman game? Will it be the same old story I already know?“. In case of Batman - Enemy Within you would be nicely surprised because many things are just not as you are used them to be. And this is good because it makes the story much more interesting than still playing the same song over and over again.
– Real player with 17.2 hrs in game
Röki
Röki does everything right and was a real pleasure for me to play. It has an amazing story line with beautiful visuals and sound design and intriguing characters. The game mechanics are exceptionally well executed. Let’s go through these items from end to beginning.
The game is played with a controller which I found incredible since the game is a point-and-click adventure at its core: In order to progress through the story, which is pretty much linear, you have to find/combine certain items. In my opinion, the controller integration works outstandingly well and, in fact, removes the one thing that has me troubled with modern p&c adventures: having played my first p&c game about thirty years ago, the contraints of indirectly moving your avatar through mouse clicks feels “old” and tedious to me by now. Using a controller feels so much more natural and allowed for me to empathise with the game avatar in a much deeper way while still keeping all the other characteristics of a p&c title, mainly progressing through the story in a non-violent way by solving one mini-quest at a time.
– Real player with 26.6 hrs in game
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Step into a magical world of Scandinavian folklore and experience a heartwarming story of a family lost and regained carefully handcrafted by the Polygon Treehouse that will not fail to tug at your heartstrings. Before starting the game, stay on the main menu awhile and just listen.
The visuals are straight out of a fairytale, bold, clear, charming and sweet, but there’s just a slight undercurrent of dread and uneasiness painted in there to make it lean towards the vibe of the original versions of Grimm brother’s popular folk tales, just packed into more child friendly interpretations. The ambience sets itself as magical straight from the start, as the two siblings, Tove and Lars walk home. And it just builds on that first brush with fantasy, combining excellent ambient sounds and a haunting, beatiful soundtrack, becoming really mesmerizing to look at and listen to as it progresses. Characters don’t talk, it’s not needed, but do make sounds at each sentence and it fits the fairytale style. But at times, the sounds seemed just slightly excessive, never to the point of annoying though, but they could still be toned down a little.
– Real player with 22.4 hrs in game
A Plague Tale: Innocence
–-{Graphics}—
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe
—{Gameplay}—
☑Very good
☐ Good
☐ It‘s just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Starring at walls is better
☐ Just don‘t
—{Audio}—
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape
—{Audience}—
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☐ Adults
☑ Human
☐ Lizards
—{PC Requirements}—
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boiiiiii
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
—{Difficulity}—
– Real player with 21.8 hrs in game
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I recommend this for everything except the final boss fight, which makes the majority of what’s learned throughout the game irrelevant. The final fight is more of a you’d better pay super close attention and not make any misstep at all while commanding your brother to use a skill he should be able to use at the appropriate time without you having to command him. And in that final fight, beyond that, you only use two skills. Shouldn’t developing skills matter when it comes to the end, not just two of them? Story is great! Progression is great! Just the last boss fight makes no sense with how the rest of the game plays.
– Real player with 21.2 hrs in game
80 Days
This interactive narrative of the steampunk variety encompases the adventure of Passepartout, a french valet who provides service for his master, Phileas Fogg - of whom has wagered £20,000 that he can travel around the world in 80 Days. This immensely dialogue rich game immerses the player in a world (with a little imagination) not too dissimilar from our own. Set in the 1872 it explores not only the geological but plunges into the philosophical and ethical as you converse with people around the world in every country.
– Real player with 78.1 hrs in game
I bought this on a whim in a sale and then didn’t play it for a little while because looking at the screenshots on the store page didn’t make me super enthused for it. I know the description and tags show that it is heavily narrative-based but I just want to emphasise that because if I had seen more narrative screenshots, I probably would have bought and played it sooner.
The things I love the most are the setting and the writing. I don’t normally get very enthused about steampunk but I really liked this universe. Part of what can make me iffy about things taking inspiration from the Victoria era is the colonialism, but this game addresses these issues and doesn’t just hide them away. The world is full of anti-colonial conflicts, revolutions, and discussion of slavery and you can often talk to characters directly impacted. There are also plenty of women in the world doing non-traditional things (which you can choose to be shocked by, usually). The writing is of a very high quality and the narrative choices frequent (with impacts ranging from minimal/non-existent to huge). I can’t even imagine the full extent of the script, although I’m sure it will become apparent if I play it many more times! I really love being Passepartout and I find myself very engaged by the narrative.
– Real player with 42.4 hrs in game
Summerland
Summerland is a slow-paced and linear interactive story. Most walking simulators are, but this game lacked an engaging plot, meaningful characters, or any kind of narrative pay-off, which are the things that make me want to continue playing an interactive-story game. That said, this game was developed by a fairly young student, which explains a lot of the simplistic themes and narrative elements. For someone new to this field, this is not a bad start, and the game has a few impressive elements that I would like to see more of in games. Additionally, for a young person especially, putting your work out on Steam for free and opening yourself up to the critiquing hordes of the internet is bold. For that reason, I will try to keep my criticism constructive.
– Real player with 5.0 hrs in game
I played this game tipsy and on stream.
This game is free and clear about what it is from the description. First person Narrative.
Gameplay is mostly searching for and interacting with the collectables in each level, which I found pretty straightforward and easy though I see some negative reviews talking about how they got stuck. Not sure how they got stuck if they were playing sober.
What it did really well:
The important things for a narrative game. Visuals were nice to look at in most places, sounds were immersive, and voice acting was immaculate. The choices you make in game don’t have an effect on the narrative (as far as I’m aware) because they’re intended to make you think, not score you or make you feel right or wrong, like many philosophical story games do.
– Real player with 2.5 hrs in game
Shenmue I & II
[SHENMUE I]
Shenmue is a strange, gently plodding beast of a game that we’ll never see the likes of again. Even when Shenmue 3 comes out, it will likely focus on different things, different aspects of gameplay. Shenmue is currently gaming’s one and only kung-fu small town life simulator, and that’s commendable.
This makes the fourth time in my life I’ve finished Shenmue 1 and every time I’ve played it I’ve seen different scenes, talked to people and discovered what to do next in different ways. I’ve gotten different toys out of the capsule machines and won different prizes in the lucky-dip draws in the stores. The plot of Shenmue is the same every time, the way you work through that plot is different and organic.
– Real player with 89.2 hrs in game
Shenmue. It was a great game that preceded many other open-world titles. It is still the game with that much immersion from the open-world as you can get in 2021, if we’re not talking about visual details. Every person there, every single NPC has a unique appearance, behavior pattern, and biography defining his/her actions. Additionally, every person involved in fights has his own set of moves. How’s that for starters? For a game released in 2001? Even more, Shenmue is still the great tale of adventures and martial arts.
– Real player with 73.3 hrs in game
Metamorphosis
In the spirit of full disclosure, I have not completed Metamorphosis. However, I have spent enough time with the game that I believe I am safe in writing a review.
Metamorphosis is one of the most unique games I’ve played. It is a first person adventure, played as an insect. Instead of seeing your hands, you see your front legs and instead of footsteps, you ‘skittle’ along surfaces. When you miss a jump and fall to the floor, the sound is unmistakable as the ‘squish’ of an insect death. From this perspective, exploring drawers, crevasses, desks, filing cabinets, and the spaces humans can only imagine is quite a change. Kudos to the development team for crafting such marvelous visuals for a view that they, themselves, have never experienced!
– Real player with 28.2 hrs in game
Introduction
You know how some games claim to be “Kafkaesque”? Well this title is literal Kafka, something which the uncrowned Master of Absurd would definitely have been proud, if not for his crippling shyness and desire to destroy his own writings. More on a that a bit later. For now let’s focus on Metamorphosis, the video game adaptation. As the second Steam project to date for developer Ovid Works, they certainly made a bold choice when compared to their debut, a VR-exclusive that was a rather tame Cold War spoof. “Interkosmos” does share the DNA of absurdity with Metamorphosis, so I regard it as a natural progression towards more mature themes. All In! Games took a chance with this publishing, yet I am certain that it paid off considering the title at hand.
– Real player with 9.7 hrs in game
Batman - The Telltale Series
I have some friends and people-I-know who like to judge me. All these judgement comes from their inability to accept that people can be different and their tastes can vary, it highly depends on what kinda person you are, your lifestyle and your education.
Telltale Games are always a reason for discussions and some weird talks like “what do you exactly call a game in there?” and every time I hear it I start to get mad. Truth be told, I never understood why people like to judge the genres they don’t like and people who play them, ‘cause it’s never been a big problem for me. If I don’t like the game or genre, I just don’t play it, easy as that.
– Real player with 67.9 hrs in game
By now, Batman is a well known character who’s had probably the largest exposure among comic book characters. Across the years there have been many interpretations of the character, some focusing on the hero, others on the darker aspects of his personallity and most of them on his growth. They’ve all been done to death. How does Telltale’s Batman fare? Do you need to know his character to enjoy this game? Is this a cashgrab or is there some worth to it, something that make the game shine ? Telltale’s catalogue is formed of both kinds. Batman season 1 is an interesting one. It starts as the former and ends as the latter. Before I go on with the narrative and technical details, I’ll get something out of the way: If you intend to play it on a low-tier device, better stay away! The engine of the game served as a prototype and therefore not many things could be fixed. To this day, the framerate can drop to the half of your display, there’s some stuttering in few moments on high-end machines, but it’s much worse on lower-ends. With that out, here’s the actual review:
– Real player with 35.3 hrs in game
Dreamfall Chapters
The thing about stories and settings, in modern-day fiction, is that there’s very little room for innovation or unique ideas to craft worlds without feeling like it’s something we’ve seen before but executed differently.
I’m the kinda of person who loves stories that are self-contained without being treated as a brand that inevitably needs to be pumped for money, or more sequels, faster than an OD’ing alcoholic solely for the sake of the former, and not so much for doing something new with the subject matter.
– Real player with 79.8 hrs in game
You know that totally dreamy guy who you really want to get together with, but when you do; it turns out that he just doesn’t meet your expectations of him, and no matter how much you want to love him, he just doesn’t let you? Well, I know his name. He’s called ‘Dreamfall Chapters’.
Overview
Chapters concludes the story which began with the wonderful The Longest Journey, and resolves the cliffhanger left at the end of Dreamfall. We pick up where we left off, taking the part of Zoe Castillo, still in a coma; and will switch control during the game between her, Kian Alvane the “reformed” Apostle, and “Saga” - the girl who walks between worlds and appears to be disconnected from the main story until apparently completely unrelated threads finally intertwine as we approach the climax.
– Real player with 57.2 hrs in game
Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut
TLDR Review:
I recommed this game for it’s wonderful story and characters BUT ONLY buy this game when it’s on sale. This PC port is EXTREMELY buggy even with patches applied and depending on your PC your experience may vary from only experiencing minor crashes now and then to being completely unplayable right from the get go. The hassle to get the game to properly run is not worth the $30 price tag.
Review:
Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut is a 2013 HD upgrade of the “Most Critically Polarizing survival horror game ever made ” Deadly Premonition.
– Real player with 898.4 hrs in game
“Deadly Premonition” is an open-world murder mystery with horror elements. It features an interesting story with bizarre characters, action sequences that play like a slow third-person shooter, occasional easy puzzles. and a fairly large map to explore. Unfortunately the PC port is barely playable due to technical issues.
The game successfully creates a “US small-town” environment with many characters who have their own schedules, and have different things to say depending on the current state of affairs. The murder mystery is exceptionally well designed - lots of people are suspect in one way or another, but there is no obvious culprit. You always feel that there is more to the murders than you already know, and the story ends in a chain of revelations that definitely surprised me. The main plot is very linear, but the game also offers 50 side quests, and you are usually free to decide which tasks you tackle next. The side quests are, however, often completely nonsensical and feel tacked-on.
– Real player with 72.3 hrs in game