Batman: The Enemy Within - Episode 1 Reviews
When I sat down to play Batman: The Enemy Within – Episode 1: The Enigma, I was glued to my seat until its thrilling conclusion. While lengthier than most Telltale episodes, the time still went by in a flash. In the end I was left on tenterhooks, shocked and eager to get stuck into the second part of the story.
In one of the stronger starts to a Telltale season, Batman: The Enemy Within builds on the new mythos Telltale has created for the classic DC Comics hero. Villains are still villains, but Telltale gives them enough twists to feel new. Great pacing, good tension, and what looks to be an improved engine make for a great Batman adventure. Hopefully they can keep the momentum up for the whole season.
Aside from improvements to the story overall, the first episode looks and feels much better than other Telltale Games I've played recently, with a marked upward shift in dialogue choices, graphics, and quality.
All in all, The Enemy Within starts off strong, even if it does stumble a little here and there. Thankfully, the new story arc seems a lot less bloated and self-involved than the one we got last season, and the new characters are rather well-written, too.
Some of the brief teases point toward a more meaningful story, but this episode mostly hangs its hat on an underwhelming and surprisingly violent Riddler tale
Oh, and you can make all your Bat-Gadgets purple: plus ten points.
Anyone who isn't a fan of the "Telltale interactive story" style will find nothing at all here to change their mind on the genre, but fans of previous games will find themselves thrown into yet another adventure filled with questionable loyalties, tense confrontations, morally-grey decisions and that ever-nagging thought that maybe, just maybe, you should have turned left instead of right.
I wish I'd been given the chance to actually solve more of The Riddler's puzzles on my own – adventure games are traditionally all about that, after all – but the tension and drama that permeate The Enemy Within's first episode make it a winner. This strong start also leaves me very excited to see how John Doe's inevitable transformation into The Joker plays out, and morbidly fascinated to see what scars this version of Gotham City will leave behind on its inhabitants.
Some interesting story developments can't save the first episode of Batman: The Enemy Within from being a tired, simplistic reuse of Telltale's usual techniques.
Don’t go in expecting miracles, but given the expectations of many fans that The Enemy Within was going to be a bit of a phoned-in cash-grab, it’s a genuine surprise to see the IP rebound with one of the company’s very best episodes of any kind in a long time.