Batman Game With 50% Less Batman

I picked up the first episode in Telltale series Batman game on XBox Live last weekend. Probably should have done some research on the game first, but it was only 5 bucks, which just so happened to be roughly how much money I had on the account. So, impulse buy. It's been a year since I was on XBox Live, cut me some slack.

So, Batman game. As far as Episode One goes, Bats has his first encounter with Catwoman, stealing something from Mayor Hill's office. Bruce is also funding Harvey Dent's mayoral campaign, but has attracted the attention of Carmine Falcone. Also, there are reports Bruce's parents were in bed with Falcone, and someone stole a bunch of psychotropic drugs from a warehouse. Sooooo they're hijacking the plot to Batman Begins? At they establish that Batman's "scary voice" is a voice modulator, rather than him comically trying to do a scary voice himself.

As for the gameplay, the Batman sections are almost all Quick-time Events. You know, pull the control stick left when it says, or hit X on command. So it's my least favorite parts of Resident Evil 4, all the damn time! They make it look like a cut scene movie, so I want to watch, but I can't watch and keep ready for the commands as they pop up, so I don't get to really see what it is I'm making him do.

But a lot of the game is spent as Bruce Wayne talking to people, where you're given responses to choose from. Which you choose can have repercussions later in the game. Like when Falcone came to my fundraiser for Dent, the game let me choose to shake his hand or not. I figured Bruce would be polite, but that meant there were photos of The Handshake to put on TV when the reports about Bruce's parents came out, which means a p.r. hit. Which is kind of an interesting touch to the game play, but unless I shell out for the other episodes, I probably won't know what impact it would have.

The game provides some similar options when you're Batman, but it's about whether to break a guy's arm or not while interrogating him, or what to do with Falcone when you catch him. I opted against arm-breaking, but did impale Falcone on some rebar as part of my  "Save the brutality for the assholes in charge" approach. But I felt bad about it after, so that makes it OK, right?

Anyway, it only took a few hours to play the entire episode, but I can't see myself picking up the rest of the game. It's not what I'd call a fun Batman experience.