Batman: The Enemy Within is the sequel to the first Batman Telltale game. Once again, it is comprised of five episodes which were released over the course of a few months. While the first game is not required, you can import your choices which will affect various scenes, although you can start afresh too. The game is basically an interactive movie, filled with quicktime events during fights, investigative sections and dialogue decision trees.
Your choice of dialogue may affect the story and the impressions that other characters may have of you. What you decide will cause certain events to happen or be skipped entirely. It is too bad that the game doesn't have a skip cutscene function to easily and quickly view all alternate events so you'll have to watch every single scene again. If you end up having to repeat sections, then you'll have to watch the immediately preceding scene again before you can retry what you failed the first time.
There are investigative sections where you walk around, either as Bruce or Batman, interact with items, and then link two together to progress the story. These are extremely simple sections and while it makes it more interactive, they are tedious after a few times. There are more options during fight sequences where you get to pick how you want to dispatch of enemies such as bodyslamming or using a gadget. Furthermore, superficial quicktime events occur in scenes where there was no need, such as one that pauses Bruce to don on his Batman gear until you press a button.
The first episode is The Enigma in which it introduces another well known enemy of Batman, the Riddler. As you'd expect based on the first season, Telltale has strayed away from pre-established views of the mythos and given their own spin on the characters. Riddler is still enamored with riddles though and is an interesting and clever villain as he tests Batman's intelligence. Various characters return including John Doe, whom looks like that he will have a bigger role than last time. Naturally, it ends on a stinger and the revelation that the plot is much bigger than first anticipated.
The second episode is The Pact which is a lot slower paced and can get boring at times (this will become a trend). Due to the nature of the game, when you are just watching people talking about mundane events, you can't help but wish that these parts were cut to get to the good stuff. This episode doesn't move the plot forward too much but it allows Bruce to gain an idea of the new gang of villains that have joined forces. By the end of the episode though, their aim is still unclear which was disappointing considering the huge amount of build up.
Next is Fractured Mask, unfortunately it is like the previous episode where it is once again slow paced. It only becomes excellent near the end when the cliffhanger happens. At least Bruce makes some headway into the objective of The Pact, so you feel like you actually achieved something. The investigative portions remain as intrusive as ever, breaking the flow of the story and in general, feeling like excessive padding. The return of a character was fun, especially if you have played the first game.
The fourth episode is What Ails You and this is where the pacing picks back up and makes it a lot more interesting than the previous two episodes. As the full scale of what everyone wants come into play, you can feel the repercussions and consequences that could occur if it got into the wrong hands. A significant amount of character development goes into the character of John Doe, and there are plenty of points where you know that you have to be careful in how to react to his actions.
The fifth and final episode is Final Stitch and as one would expect of a finale, it is a big and grand one. The best thing about The Enemy Within is the development of the relationship between Batman and John Doe, to the point where good and bad are blurred. Do you go ahead and hurt them or do you stay steadfastly loyal? It presents a great moral dilemma that works really well. The good guys do a lot of bad stuff while the bad guys stay bad, but still, it's not a simple good vs. evil as the original was. On the whole, the story isn't quite as captivating as the first season's.
Each episode takes 2-3 hours to complete, making the game in total around 9-12 hours long. You will notice that it is bloodier and gorier with blood splattering from the mouths of enemies and limbs being torn. Multiple times per chapter, you are forced to make hard decisions where picking one over the other will make one of the characters hate you or harm a hostage. All choices are timed so it adds to the urgency and immersion.
The game has cel-shaded graphics which suit Batman a lot; it's as if it was an animated comic book. The game is quite detailed and looks great, it mostly runs well with all the patches although the frame rate drops from time to time. Overall, Batman: The Enemy Within presents a solid story. While there are pacing issues, especially within episodes two to four, it explores a lot of neat concepts and some decisions are genuinely tough, tearing you both ways.
---------------------------------------------------------
For other PS4 game reviews, have a look at this page.