There’s no other way I can say it: if you have not been playing Batman – The Telltale Series, you should do so immediately. Following the revelation at the end of Episode One, the success of Episode Two: Children of Arkham hinged on how much Telltale was willing to differ from the established canon. That revelation is expanded in Episode Two, and allows Telltale to do what it does best: fantastic writing, unexpected plot twists and difficult moral decisions.

Children of Arkham demonstrates Telltale Games’ willingness to tell its own story rather than getting stuck in the trap of retelling familiar comic book stories. There were twists I didn’t see coming, and familiar Bat-Lore was turned upside down. Children of Arkham is a story about family and how our personal connection may distort our view of their actions. Following Falcone’s shock reveal at the end of the previous episode, Bruce Wayne is questioning everything he knew about his family and their legacy. Is Falcone telling the truth or is it just a ploy to point the blame elsewhere?

Troy Baker delivers a fantastic performance as Bruce Wayne and Batman, drawing the player into Bruce’s confused emotional state and drawing on that to fuel Batman’s determination. In fact, all of the voice acting in Batman – The Telltale Series has been superbly captivating so far, complemented by entertaining writing.

Telltale laid the foundation of the series last episode when it questioned how far Batman was willing to go to get justice. In Episode Two, the focus shifts to Bruce Wayne’s moral compass and how he should solve issues. Should he rely on the Batman persona, or would Bruce be more suitable? Who do you trust as Bruce Wayne, and who should you be weary of? This are questions I was constantly forced to consider. Telltale is doing the character’s justice, while also allowing players to experiment with the personalities of Bruce and Batman. At times I find myself asking, what would Bruce/ Batman do, but at other times I’m able to branch away and continue to craft my own versions of them.

Children of Arkham is also about choosing how Bruce and Batman will develop relationships with key characters. It’s great to be able to decide how Bruce develops his relationships with franchise mainstays such as Commissioner Gordon, Harvey Dent, Vicki Vale and Selina Kyle. It makes me want to start a new save and to see how they will react to me should I choose a different dialogue response. The mysterious relationship between Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle was a highlight for me this episode, in part thanks to the chemistry between Baker and Bailey.

As with Episode One, the few actions sequences mostly do a great job of controlling the pacing and breaking up the dialogue. The bar fight with Selena Kyle and Bruce Wayne fending off a bunch of henchmen while an acoustic guitar jukebox track plays in the background was a standout. Telltale has mastered the quick time event sequence, and that’s especially evident in this extended sequence.

Children of Arkham feels shorter than other Telltale episodes, and is about 30 minutes shorter than Episode One clocking in at around 90 minutes. As a result, the final act feels rushed and chaotic with too many narrative elements surrounding the action sequence. In the space of what feels like five minutes, a hostage situation takes place, another huge anti-lore plot point is revealed, the titular Children of Arkham make an appearance, and a major decision has to be made (of which I regret my choice). On the one hand, it’s a great depiction of the poise Batman has to have during encounters, but it largely left me flustered.

I have no idea where Batman – The Telltale Series is heading, but I’m excited to find out what other areas of the Batman mythos Telltale is willing to alter and how certain relationships will evolve over the course of the story.

Telltale Games has developed a track record of creating excellent interactive stories, and that’s looking no different with Batman – The Telltale Series. Where Episode One laid the foundation for a unique take on the Batman universe, Episode Two demonstrates Telltale’s willingness to go through with it. Whether you’re a fan of Batman or just a fan of Telltale games, Batman – The Telltale Series is establishing itself as a must play.

The Good

• Narrative that alters well known Batman-lore
• The bar QTE sequence
• Chemistry between characters
• Telltale is allowing the player to craft their own Bruce Wayne/Batman

The Bad

• The conclusion feels rushed

The Score: 9.0

Did you get a chance to play the demo? What did you think?

Developers Hello Games Publisher Hello Games

No Man’s Sky makes good on its promise to let us explore the vast and infinite reaches of space. The various planet surfaces, animals, and plant life are fascinating and exciting to name and discover. The main issues begin to arise after trudging through your 30th planet as the game gets repetitive and boring. But even after the game becomes a little dull, No Man’s Sky is a great game to play while relaxing, and provides a nice alternative to the first person shooters like Battlefield and/or Call of Duty.

You can retrieve your items if you die in space

As I said in my First Impressions, I hated the first several hours with No Man’s Sky. But only because I didn’t know what I was doing. After spending a lot of time with it, NMS is boiled down into a few key areas. Scavenging, Survival, Trade and Travel. 

Scavenging is the trick to learning your way around the world. Most plants give you the element Carbon, which is used to keep you alive. Certain plants and boulders will give you Plutonium or Platinum, which will help keep you in the air. And other things in the universe will derive all sorts of different elements that can be combined and resold for very high yield at multiple trading depots, or lifeforms you meet along the way.

I have to pay you to sell to you? Can I just shoot you instead?

Survival is dependent on your constant scavenging. You’ve got to use your found items to constantly increase the capacity and abilities of your gear and ship. The main tool you use is called your “muliti-tool.” It essentially fires laser beams at anything in the world to allow you to mine the element. Upgrades to the multi-tool allow grenades, bolts, and different items better suited to help you attack the pretty terrible sentinel defenses that live on each and every planet. I will tell you that I only upgraded my mining functions and scanner because the Sentinels are pretty terrible at their job. Even the most hostile planet that will flip out if you grab anything, will lose interest the second you take orbit and get some distance away from them. And while some combat tools help you raise your accuracy with the mining tool, the combat system is weak enough to where I’d rather take the time running and landing again, as opposed to wasting my time fighting.

The dog fighting mechanic in the ship is slightly better than the multi-tool system. It servers its purpose in letting you attack other ships and take their resources. However, the combat is little more than you rotating your ship 360 degrees and trying to shoot them down, while using your resources to recharge your shield or blasters. Upgraded blaster cannons make you more successful, but the ship is built more for travel than for combat. Which is disappointing because I really wanted to spend a lot of time in awesome space battles.

Trading Console

Trade is where you’ll make must of your money in NMS. There are certain elements you cannot find, and even more that you’ll find too much of. Trading depots are an excellent way to find some extra coin, hard to find gear, and free up some storage spaces as well. One of my favorite parts of the game is finding the “Galatic Average” of an item, and making sure I sold it when it was valuable, and bought or kept it when it was low. Sort of like a miniature stock-market within the game.

Travel is the last thing we’ll touch on since it is the meat and potatoes of NMS. There are no load times what-so-ever- between planet and space travel. Which is a magnificent feat unto itself. When you use your warp to other plants, it puts you in a bit of a loading tunnel you’ll be familiar with, but for the most part, travel is excellent and some of the best parts of the game. Every planet has their own species and lifeforms to discover. And my favorite part is exploring all of the ancient obelisk’s on each planet to discover more about that life-forms history, and to learn their language.

Because when you start NMS, you understand very little. Finding knowledge stones and meeting life-forms will teach you new languages, and for some reason those are my favorite parts of this game. If nothing else kept me wanting to play this game, it would be the constant pursuit of learning every language.

No Man’s Sky was as massive an undertaking for the team at Hello Games, as it is for the people that will play it. With an endless amount of planets to explore, every gamer will have their own experiences. NMS could definitely benefit from tweaks to its combat system, planet defenses, and integrating multiplayer elements into the game. While we are in the first year of NMS and Hello Games is sure to spend a lot of time patching bugs and adding updates, the game stands as a space explorers dream. If grinding for elements, space travel, learning languages, and surviving is your particular brand of vodka, you’ll want to buy this bottle.

The Good

• Excellent Space Travel
  
• Perfect Soundtrack
• Various life forms to name
  
• Great trading system
  
• Grand Scale
• Entire Languages to learn
• Few Load Times

The Bad

• Terrible Tutorial System
  
• Ground Combat is lacking
• Dog fighting is lacking
• No real punishment for death

The Score: 7

This week on Watch. Chat. Play!, we’re talking about Hype. How it is used, how it effects gaming,  and what in our own lives we have experienced as it pertains to hype.

Have you made any purchases or watched any movies recently because there was so much marketing that it made you need to go see it? How did that work out? Did the quality meet the hype built around it?

Realm of Shadows, the first episode of Batman – The Telltale Series, begins with an action packed sequence of Batman taking out a bunch of henchmen trying to break into an office building. There are noticeably more quick time events (QTEs) with less time between them allowing me to feel more in-control of influencing Batman’s actions than in action sequences from other Telltale games. The speed also helps to emphasise Batman’s martial arts training. It’s in this first sequence that were are introduced to some key players in Batman’s life: Jim Gordon, still a Lieutenant, and a first encounter with Catwoman. Telltale’s Batman story is set early in the caped crusader’s career, but it’s smart in assuming the audience already knows who these characters are.

The story then transitions to Bruce Wayne, conversing with Alfred about the limits of Batman while being stitched up. It’s a familiar exchange for Batman representations outside of the comic books, with Alfred not entirely happy that Bruce is Batman. It’s a question I feel is going to be asked to the player a lot during the five episode series: how far are you willing to go as Batman? Telltale presents moral dilemmas so well, especially in The Walking Dead, and that carries over to Realm of Shadows. Already players are being asked what they are willing to do as Batman to protect Gotham. It’s one of the most intriguing parts of the Batman ethos, but errs on the side of repetition across the two hour episode. In fact, it feels like it’s all Alfred does in Realm of Shadows.

Thankfully, Enn Reitel does a fine job of giving emotion to Alfred’s pleas, as do the rest of the voice cast bringing life to the characters. Troy Baker is great as Batman and Bruce Wayne. Having worked together previously on Tales from the Borderlands, the few exchanges between Batman and Catwoman (Laura Bailey) are engaging and capture the playful undertones of their relationship. The rest of the voice cast are great too, adding their own touches to beloved characters.

I also really liked the costume design. Batman’s costume has a nice mix between modern and retro design. Telltale’s signature style has been improved once again, with the night scenes bringing out the glow from Batman’s cowl and his gadgets.

Dialogue is a large portion of Telltale games, and Bruce Wayne has a majority of it in episode one. The middle act slows the pace down a bit as some key characters are introduced. Bruce Wayne meets Harvey Dent, currently running for Mayor, reporter Vicky Vale, Carmine Falcone and pre-penguin Oswald Cobblepot. Being able to determine how Bruce Wayne interacts with certain characters was fun, especially as a fan who’s been stuck reading and watching how others make him interact.

Realm of Shadows exists to set up the story to come, so I hope there are a few more action sequences in future episodes, but the time was split about 50/50 between playing as Batman and Bruce Wayne. As Batman there is the action sequence at the beginning and an action sequence at the end that allows you to choose how to take out four mobsters. There’s also a detective sequence in the middle that requires the player to link pieces of evidence together to work out what happened at a crime scene. It’s a fun sequence, highlighting Batman’s skills as a detective, but I would have preferred another action sequence to keep the pace from slowing too much in the middle.

Realm of Shadows is a solid beginning for Batman – The Telltale Series. Batman’s sequences are mostly action packed and the longer and faster quick time event sequences make you feel like you’re having a greater impact on Batman’s actions. Bruce Wayne takes on the bulk of the dialogue, introducing players to important characters and creating intriguing narrative mysteries at least for the next couple of episodes. Telltale is great at providing players with difficult moral choices, and there are definitely inklings of that here as Alfred constantly asks Bruce how far Batman will go. For the series to stand out, Telltale is going to have to let players answer that question on their own.

The Good

• Craft your own Batman/ Bruce Wayne
• Solid voice acting from most of the cast
• Batman action sequences

The Bad

• Alfred’s nagging of Bruce failed to engage
• Slower pacing during the middle acts

The Score: 8.0

Though the internet did not exist in 1868, the new 19th Century Search Engine showcases a representation of what an internet search engine may have looked like back in this time. The search engine features hundreds of piece of original content, and uses real illustrations from the era.

The 19th Century Search Engine has been created to allow fans to brush up on their 19th century knowledge before Assassin’s Creed Syndicate launches later this month. Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will take place in London in 1868, during the peak of the Industrial Revolution, as players control sibling assassins, Jacob and Evie Frye.

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will launch October 23 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, while PC owners will have to wait a little more, before it becomes available November 19. Ubisoft also recently announced DLC for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, featuring the infamous Jack The Ripper.

The Prototype Biohazard Bundle is now available on the Xbox One Digital Store, though the details regarding what this next generation re-release contains are more than scarce. Simply by viewing the screens provided on the Xbox One Digital Store, it is hard to determine if there are any visual upgrades of any kind, and no official announcement regarding the release has been made at this time.

The Prototype Biohazard Bundle is currently available for $69.95AUD and $49.99USD, which seems a steep price for a re-release that doesn’t seem to be boasting any improvements of any kind. Analog Addiction has now reached out to Activision in hopes of further information and we will update this post when we hear more.

Recently leaked trophies for a PlayStation version of Prototype 2 were found on Exophase, which could point to the Prototype Biohazard Bundle coming to PlayStation 4 consoles in the future.

The Wii U release will feature all the improvements that have been made to Never Alone since the original release. Players will also be able to play the entire game on the Wii U Gamepad, enjoy local co-op and view all Cultural Inside Videos, which are documentary-quality video interviews. Nintendo Wii U owners will also be able to collect over 40 unique stylised Miiverse stamps, which will feature Nuna, Fox, Manslayer, Ukpik and many more.

“We’ve talked before about the decision to make Never Alone a puzzle platformer, and how the platformer is a genre with a long, storied history in the world of video games,” the announcement reads. “That history wouldn’t exist without Nintendo games. From the first Super Mario Bros. through Super Mario 3D World, the word “Nintendo” has been synonymous with “great platformer” for 30 years now.”

Never Alone was originally released in late 2014 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Analog Addiction reviewed the original release, stating we couldn’t “wait to see what else the studio will come up with in the future.”

More specifically, the bundle is called the “Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Fox Edition.” It’s available on Sony Japan’s website for 46980 yen, which translates to around 460 U.S. dollars. From what we can tell, the bundle comes with the basic PlayStation 4 condiments, a physical copy of Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and, on the top part of the console, a FOX emblem embedded in gold alongside the Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes logo. Though it does not specify how much internal memory it has, it’s safe to assume the console comes with the standard 500 GB since the pricing is about the same as it is everywhere else when converted.

Sounds fantastic for someone who may not have the PlayStation 4, right? It is, but only if you’re in Japan, as it’s currently the only announced region where it will be made available. Keep it here on Analog Addiction for any announcements pertaining to bundle’s will be availability  outside Japan.

According to IGN user NickoMcBrain, the 2:42 mark in the video above displays still art in the background featuring characters not fitting in the Last of Us, which is in a post-apocalyptic 21st century setting where society has not functioned for two decades. Instead, McBrain theorizes their attire could be from the “17th/18th century… maybe even pirates.” He doesn’t seem too far off.

Below are the pictures from IGN’s article with zoomed in shots of the still art.

Then again, for all we know, these could be characters for Last of Us’ multiplayer, which is still a mystery as to how it is going to play.

Human versus human? Human versus Infected? Infected versus Infected? Maybe with this discovery, Pirates versus Human versus Infected?

What do you think? Could this in fact be still art from Naughty Dog’s next game? Perhaps it has to do with Last of Us’ cryptic multiplayer? Or, or… maybe it’s an Uncharted game about one of Nathan Drake’s ancestors?! Let us know what you think in the comments section below.