It’s no secret that I really, really love Batman. Like, a lot. It’s also not really a secret that I love video games. So, what happens when there’s a Batman video game? I throw my money at it.
For a previous generation of consoles, developer Rocksteady created two Batman games, “Batman: Arkham Asylum” and “Batman: Arkham City.” These two games became some of the most lauded video games of all time, especially for games involving superheroes. Taking disparate elements of Batman’s decades-long existence with stellar voice acting (especially Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as Batman and the Joker, respectively, roles they have voiced since the early 90’s) and some brilliant design, these games are some of my favorite video games of all time. However, we have a new generation of consoles (Xbox One/Xbox One S and the PlayStation 4), and those two games were no longer playable; beyond that, the concluding game of the trilogy, “Batman: Arkham Knight” was released exclusively on those current generation consoles (I even bought an Xbox One just so I could play it). Because of money discrepancy, “Asylum” and “City” were remastered for the current generation of consoles. The collection, entitled “Batman: Return to Arkham,” was released with every piece of downloadable content for both games recently, and it’s pretty stinking awesome.
The actual content of the games are the same – nothing has been taken away or added. Some visual elements are different (for example, in the original “Arkham City,” the Joker is dying of poison and has bald patches, blotchy skin, and a cough; in the remaster, he has all that and an additional blood clot in his eye), but the games remain almost entirely unchanged. They play in the same way, combat has been unchanged, and the dialogue, music, and sound effects are all precisely as they were before.
What has changed, however, are the graphic, and, wow, are they improved. A few months back, a comparison video was released showing the original and the remaster side-by-side that emphasized how drastically improved the remaster is. “Arkham Asylum” in particular is especially gorgeous; it’s raining in the game, a new addition that wasn’t possible in the original, and the way it reflects off of both the environment and Batman is especially beautiful. Honestly, having played both the original and the remaster, the remaster of “Arkham Asylum” looks and feels like an entirely new game. “Arkham City,” on the other hand, was already a beautiful game, but even it has been improved; the remaster is not as noticeable graphically in it as in “Asylum,” but it is still certainly improved.
Having said that, there are some drawbacks, as some things simply just look better in the original games than in the remasters (though this is pretty exclusive to “City”). One sequence, in particular, involving a partially frozen lake stood out. The ice juxtaposed with the water of the lake was just cleaner in the original than it was in the remaster. These occurrences, however, are very few and very, very far between.
Beyond that, I have also rarely encountered any bugs in the game. While there was some stuttering – the game moving more choppily and slowly than it should – that seems to have been resolved in a patch released the day the game was released.
Ultimately, “Batman: Return to Arkham” is an excellent honoring of Rocksteady’s stellar “Arkham Asylum” and “Arkham City.” I encourage fans of the previous games to at least give it a try or for people who never got around to playing either when they were initially released to give them a go. Gotham needs you.
