With Telltale Games putting in so much effort into making a grand finale for Batman: The Enemy Within, it never felt so heavy and heartbreaking just before the credits start to roll in. You get to see the birth of the Joker and the Same Stitch is pointing at you in every direction that you created the evil that you’ve tried so hard to prevent or to stop.
The Same Stitch, the season finale, is an action-packed and enthralling ender, which still has a lot of opportunities, that closes the curtains of The Enemy Within.
Platform Reviewed: PS4 (PS4 Pro)
Platforms Available: Xbox One, PC, PS4
Publisher: Telltale Games
Developer: Telltale Games
Release Date: March 27, 2018
MSRP: $19.99 (Season Pass)
This review is based on a Season Pass code provided by Telltale Games.
When the episode begins, you get to witness how badass the Clown Prince can be when he’s in his long purple coat with a matching pointy brush-up hair-style that almost looks like Batman’s cowl. This is the particular path I’ve chosen, so be cautious as you go through since there will be minor spoilers ahead when you read the review.
Now, with that out of the way, the Joker becomes more obsessed with becoming his idol and wanting to do more than justice that Batman wouldn’t dare to cross. With the golden Batman code that everyone is familiar with, Joker tries to bend that rule as he attempts to strike The Agency operatives with his impressive boomerang-esque Batarang. I’ve decided to prevent operatives from getting hit, and while the scene progressed, a surprising reveal has been thrown onto the screen.
Who would’ve imagined that Task Force X has made its relatively short debut in this episode? While it’s clear that people speculated that this would happen when Amanda Waller came into the fray, I still can’t stop from criticizing the poor attempt of showcasing the most deadly squad in the finale of Batman: The Enemy Within. As always, you get to see the Pact back together again, this time without Mr. Freeze who’s apparently replaced by Catwoman, but under the grasp of Amanda Waller.
It was a necessary decision to leave Mr. Freeze out from the episode since there were already too many characters rounded up in the season finale. Even if the screentime for the Pact was short, it was fairly executed especially when the group of deadly villains attacked both Batman and the Joker in an intense fist-fight simultaneously. However, the fight sequences could have been better, even if they were profound, they were uninspired and sort of bland.
Shortly after you begin the episode, you get to face Bane, whose venom injects have been improved, controlled by The Agency by wrapping a deadly collar shocker, in a refined and impressively implemented quick-time events (QTEs) gameplay. You get to press multiple buttons depending on the situation. Fortunately, you get to choose which action you might want to take. You can either pull the Joker away using the Grappler or electrocute the poor bastard. There will be options too if you want to body slam an enemy or hit their head with your knees. It’s a nice addition as it becomes frequent and gives you choices that previous episodes didn’t.
The Same Stitch is not only just about butt-kicking and Batarangs flying. This episode delivers an emotional-driven narrative that brings you to revelations that can either make you regret, sad, or even angry. Telltale Games brought what they’ve had from The Walking Dead; giving Batman: The Enemy Within’s finale a touch of connections to the players and making each choice matter. And I’m glad to say that the voice-actor behind Batman/Bruce Wayne, Troy Baker (who’s known for various roles in games like Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and The Last of Us), finally captured what Kevin Conroy had for the voice of Batman especially in those dramatic sequences.
While the overall game’s performance on the PS4 is still top-notch, the Supersampling Mode is also automatically enabled if you have the feature turned on on your PS4 Pro. It did give a slight improvement to its entire image quality. And to add more to it, having Supersampling Mode on didn’t have any impact on the game’s stable 30FPS.
We may not see another Batman game from Telltale for a long time, but I would like to say “great job” with the season finale. Even if there were no “the edge of the seat” experiences, the emotionally-driven plot overshadowed its flaws. With the freedom of control in how you mold John Doe to be, what the Same Stitch showed is a fantastic way to end the season with, probably, a teardrop.
