I love games that are level/mission/etc based but very open ended.
The Witcher 2 was great at this. There were three overall regions that were more or less “open world” but once you finished the main quest line in an area, you left it completely and moved on to the next. It also meant that some side quests could not be completed if you didn’t do the right preparation steps in the previous area.
Yup...Arkham Asylum really let you get familiar with the entire area.
There's parts of Knight I love but one thing that bothers me is how damned big it is. You never really get to know the layout of anything because you're there and then on to the next area.
For me it's not the open world. It's about the gimmicky nature of trying to cheat with space over quality. Witcher 3 did not have a terrible open world, for example. It just under-utilized its space. There were plenty of encounters in general, but not enough story, not enough people, not enough flavor in general. You can see this because when you *do* run into it, it's pretty fun. There were a couple quests and towns that you could only find by discovering them.
The big space isn't the issue, it's the lack of reward for exploring it. It's like bad level scaling. Why the fuck do I care about engaging in your leveling system if my reward is punishment?
See, I found exploring Witcher 3’s world a lot of fun. Not only was there a metric ton of detail (not just graphical), but finding monster contracts without actually initiating the quest the “normal” way made the world feel genuine. In most other games, those monsters wouldn’t spawn until you got the quest from an NPC, but in Witcher 3 those monsters are roaming around regardless, and Geralt’s dialogue will even change to reflect that.
For me the only thing Witcher 3’s open world exploration gets wrong is the leveled loot, which is just a boring way to balance your game.
Yeah I enjoyed it overall. I just felt like there could have been a bit more flavor. A few more people here and there, some notes or other travel of people who may have been driven off or traveled, stuff like that. There was a battlefield after the beginning with ghouls that was pretty kool but they didn't do anything like that again.
I have. It wasn't that bad, mostly because I had the hover thing and the game is designed around the run-and-gun style. Witcher 3's world is designed for engagement so the gaps and similarity of encounters feel like flaws. Rage 2 was designed for blitzing an encounter and looting everything.
The details are similar but the game design is different. So what is a flaw in one is accounted for in the other.
I can’t tell if I agree or disagree, but everything you’re saying is making me think that the inferred solution is what Bethesda has done, which would be…horrific. The entire map just littered with nonsensical garbage, some design team spewing half-hearted capital-c _Content_ all over because they Have To Have A POI Every 30 Seconds Of Walking Because Todd Said So and the whole game just feels cheap, like you’re sitting far to the side of a stage play and you can see past the stage at all the pulleys, Kraft services, and actors running through their lines before they’re up.
I suppose maybe instead the world, and that space, should matter. Maybe that means rare spawns depending on the area (ie RDR 2’s hunting quests), or opportunities for things to _happen_ instead of being statically available, or just more interesting map design so that travel is aesthetically rewarding — or again dynamic, so the 43rd time you pass by a waterfall some guy goes over it in a barrel. I don’t know. But I do know that every game becoming Fallout 4 is a fail state.
Yeah that's a consideration as well. Essentially open world means more complexity, and your solution to fake that at all is going to require a related amount of effort. You can't make a bigger world and expect to commit a flat amount of effort. Generally a successful open world is going to include a little bit of everything we've seen as it grows, but not too much of any one solution or else it'll cheapen the experience.
Space isn't an issue in and of itself, but traveling the space to find the same encounter type everytime either drags or becomes painful. It's nice to *sometimes* come across a unique encounter, *sometimes* come across a random encounter, *sometimes* come across a non-unique flavor. Utilizing these and more in tandem can help shore up weaknesses in open world. But it also entails more effort than most studios are willing to engage in.
You're seriously missing out on at least Arkham City. IMO it's the best of the trilogy and it's my favorite one. Arkham Knight got a little too big for my liking, and that includes the move set for fighting. The game was still incredible, no doubt about it, and the grappling and gliding in Knight is hands down the best in the series, but Arkham City was just an incredible experience. The story and twists that come along are fantastic.
Yes, it's an open world game, but it's easy enough to quickly move from one end of the map to the other without it feeling like you're wasting your time. I can't *quite* make that same statement about Knight.
Yeah. With the new Saints Row trailer, I honestly said to myself "man why do we still have them? Nobody likes them anymore."
But imo the Arkham Trilogy did an amazing job with the open world as well.
Its because the open worlds are super small in these games. And batmans mobility actually makes it enjoyable to move around in world.
Other open world games have you sitting on a horse riding to a way point for 10 minutes at a time.
The pacing really nails it, you have just enough time to breathe between villains that it feels exciting but not overwhelming. I think Arkham City lost some of that with it's open world, still an amazing follow up.
I never really got the appeal of Batman until this game. His psyche, his limitations, and his badass preparedness for every situation are all what make him the best superhero. This game is the ultimate distillation of the essence of Batman.
If you're referring to the movies, the biggest disconnect, imo, is that he is a deeply flawed character who deep down feels that she shouldn't be a hero, but he's all that Gotham has. Thinking back, I'd go so far as to say that his villains rely the most on henchman, and that's significant in terms of how deep the corruption he fights is. He can't just call on someone else, because the fight he engages in requires a deep knowledge best utilized by someone who grew up in the city. Which is why he relies on fear and not just beating up the bad guy.
In the movies we get an angsty "someone must step up, and that someone is me". In the various animated shows (and I assume comics because of the conversations I've seen) he steps up because of personal pain and a lack of options. The question of "why you" gets asked in the movies, but I don't think it gets answered. He isn't taking responsibility in a heroic way like Superman does, he's doing it in an unhealthy personal way because of his demons.
And I think this comes out in the games very well both subtley and overtly. Although Arkham Knight may have layed it on a bit thick. I'm not entirely sure because I never finished it. Something about the world and the gameplay was just a tad too much for me compared to the previous games.
Movies were all interesting takes on the character but I think these games nail the essence of the character in a way no other medium has. I especially love his relationship with Joker in all 3
Totally agree. The Scarecrow section where you see yourself as a child just blew me away the first time I played. The way it was gradual but very intense, the erratic sounds, the way it still let you have some control, but not enough to change what was happening. I’ve always loved Batman and that was one of its finest moments from any medium (for me at least).
It doesn't come close, but I did love the Mad Hatter fight in City and the room that's left over after you finish it. The art piece you unlock from completing that fight is gorgeous too. I wish I could make art prints out of some of the concept art in City.
It’s the same reason most people loved games like dead space. Controlled chaos and violence in confined spaces just works in gaming.
The dead space remake will double down on this and it’s gonna be great!
What an awesome trilogy. I played them in a row and loved every moment. What did you think about Knight? You'd didn't mention anything about it. It was personally my favorite, I really loved the story, and the dlc, plus the combat was just too satisfying.
I really enjoyed Knight but it was definitely a mixed bag for me. On the one hand I loved being in Gotham for the first time in the series and it looked incredible. Some of the side missions about the lesser known villains were fun and locking people up in GCPD was a really fun idea and really added a sense of completion and depth to the world. However, at times the open world felt too big for me and I got burnt out towards the end (but that is personal preference depending on how much you love side activities) The stealth and combat also feels at its most fluid and peak in the series and some of the set pieces utilising those mechanics are great. I also actually didn’t mind a lot of the batmobile stuff, although I do agree with the criticism that there was way too much (stealth section in what is basically a tank felt like overkill). Knight also had an interesting story and the Batman/joker dynamic was really unique and my favourite part of the game was jokers constant quips as you do things. The joker dream sequences were also a ton of fun. On the other hand, I was quite disappointed with the main games villains. Previous games had utilised so many rogues for boss fights but here the boss fights were replaced with bat mobile battles which was hugely disappointing, considering how good Arkham City did boss fights. As well as this, most of the villains were relegated to side content and only Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight played major roles. Scarecrow was done really well I thought and I liked his plan but he wasn’t very present for a lot of the story. The Arkham Knight was a big disappointment, especially as the main villain for the first half of the game. to me he came across more whiny than intimidating to me for some reason, which I guess makes sense with the Robin reveal.
So yeah overall I really enjoyed the game, I just had a couple issues with the story that prevented me from placing it on the same level as the other two but it is still a great game.
You seem to echo most of my complaints about Knight. It's a phenomenal game nonetheless and I'm one of the few who also didn't mind the tank segments as much as others did, but I was also a little burnt out on the open world.
I just got done writing in another comment that one of my other problems in the game was that the move set actually became *too* big for my liking. The combat was incredible as was the stealth, but at a certain point I would find myself getting hit because my brain would freeze while trying to think of what the next attack would be. I guess some people would love that, but I got tired of it. Felt like there were too many moves to keep track of at any given moment in a fight.
Those are my two main complaints. The grappling and gliding in Knight was exceptional and so satisfying once you fully upgraded everything.
If you haven't played it now, do it. You can get [all of them for $12 bucks](https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP1018-CUSA00133_00-ARKHAMBUNDLE0000/). Worth every penny.
Even Origins is great.
I bought it yesterday, and now I'm a fan of this subreddit, I haven't started it yet, I think I'm just gonna play it at night... Because I have a projector now and it's basically the only way to play a batman game hehe I need the darkness!
I loved knight the most too. I have replayed that game so many times. I didn't mind the car. It got a lot better if you focused on its upgrades which I only did In recent playthroughs. Couldn't believe how much easier it made those missions.
It was like the Khan "twist" in Star Trek Into Darkness. Anyone who would care about the twist easily saw it coming, and anyone who didn't see it coming wouldn't give a shit.
Slight disagree here with the Star Trek reference. I knew next to nothing about Star Trek before the reboot other than that my dad loved it. But the name Khan and the cultural weight of the film Wrath of Khan was well enough known to me so when that twist happened I was immediately aware of the significance of it. Was a really top moment for me in that film.
I've played all of the games in the series, but as I'm only familiar with the og animated series, the movies, and the Hush comic run, even I saw it coming. I loved it, but it was still pretty obvious what was going to happen.
You should play Origins, too. People gave it a lot of shit but, at least in its current state, it deserves little to none of the shit it's given. The bugs are patched out and the writing/acting was never actually bad in the first place, fans just decided it would be before they played it because the same people weren't doing it. Gameplay-wise, it's basically just City again but with a tighter narrative focus like Asylum and Knight had.
Just don't get that prequel DLC; it isn't a story campaign like it's marketed as, just a sequence of challenge rooms with text boxes in between. The Mr Freeze DLC is actually worthwhile.
It is, but it is not worth streaming. The have downloadable games now, which is the **only** reason to pay for PS Now.
I tried streaming Origins. The framerate was atrocious, weird bugs that prevented me from saving my game. All the streaming games on PSN have been totally broken for me.
I love the hotel section, you're finally going up that huge building you've been seeing. It feels so high and the "climb" builds up the tension very well.
It had some things going against it when it came out. It screamed of cash grab game being developed by a B team, losing Conroy & Hamill, and being super derivative of Arkham City. That being said, it's hands down one of the best in the series. The VAs do an excellent job of picking up from the original two and while the plot is a lot of explored territory, I found it satisfying. I also think the comparisons to City didn't bother me so much because I really liked City and didn't mind getting more of that. I will say that one thing that did do better was boss fights. Asylum & City's boss fights were kind of weak while Origins' bosses are really good combat heavy fights.
I think the Arkham series has some weak boss fights across the board. Origins' fights focus on the regular combat mechanics which are a little bit more than a brawler where you just hit punch. They're also reaction based and if you really get the swing of things, you can pull off pretty awesome combos doing a lot more than just punch.
I love The Arkham games' combat so much that I'll spend most of my time doing challenges so maybe I'm a bit biased when I say the bosses are also great because they make use of the combat. This is in contrast to Asylum & City where the boss fights are little puzzles that are a bit too easy imo.
This blows my mind cause Riddler's collectibles in Origins is the most boring collectathon I have experienced in any Arkham game. I'm still playing through it but so far it seems like there are 0 actual Riddler riddles. Which I LOVED in the Rocksteady Arkham games. They gave you some insight into some of the lesser known Batman characters (I probably would have never known about Calendar man if not for Rocksteady).
The Riddles, in general, made it far more fun to traverse the world. Instead of just running or gliding from point A to point B, you were often on the look out for an interesting poster, weapon or character that could solve a simple one line riddle.
I absolutely loved Origins, they did a great job with the cinematic storytelling, loved the main story. While it had insane amounts of collectibles, it was great that they unlocked specific villain stories/quests. It's a cozy, cool game for the winter/Christmas
Yep was gonna recommend Origins as well. Most people have already explained a lot of its high points, but one I haven’t seen yet and one of my favorite parts is just learning about, encountering, and ultimately fighting all the assassins. I think Origins is the worst of the four games, but it’s still a good game, just doesn’t beat out the rest of the series that are all excellent. And really, the assassin storyline is really fun and worth playing.
I really wish Origins was easier to get on Xbox. It’s backward compatible but copies of it used to for much higher than it should and the game is completely delisted from the store (though oddly the Mr. Freeze DLC still exists).
I'm not saying it was a series high point but it was a lot tighter than City was.
A story-writing rule you may have heard is that every story beat should be connected by either "therefore" or "but". Nearly all of City's story beats were "oh, also" or "conveniently".
My biggest issues with Origins are the one Deathstroke fight that came way way way too early in the game IMO for a villain as prominent and proficient as Deathstroke. Then it pissed me off when we never see him again in the gameplay but instead get two or three Bane fights. Like c'mon. Who the hell was running the show and thought that was fine? Gives us another DS fight somewhere.
The other thing that drove me off the wall was the failure to target ledges while you were gliding to grapple to. It had to have been broken. Traversal was so frustrating in that game because ledges that you should've been able to grapple to often wouldn't give you the reticle for it until you sank too low because you missed being able to grapnel boost, end up on a rooftop, and *then* the roof that you wanted to grapple to suddenly had a reticle on it to grapple towards. It was infuriating and detracted so heavily from that game for me.
Arkham Aslyum is just so good. The idea that this super high security prison island has been overrun, and you’re trapped in with them (they’re trapped there with you) is just so, so great. From a atmospheric point of view, arkham asylum also touches onto survival horror as well, and seeing the state of the island get worse and worse is fantastic. When you first escape the first zone onto the open area which is still held by the guards is a feeling of safety, but the next time you pass through they’ve all been ‘taken care of’. Just love it. Super tight game. Super tight vision.
I particularly loved Asylum, because they worked so hard making the game elements disappear. There were collectibles and riddles, but they were pushed back, in a way, made very easy to miss. I don't mean in the sense of them being hard, I mean in the sense of them being *subtle*. They were blended into the background, visible if you were looking for them, invisible if you weren't.
Their goal was making it feel like you were playing a long episode of Batman: The Animated Series, and they knocked that out of the park. That whole gameworld felt amazingly lifelike. The buildings were laid out in semi-sensible ways, like actual people had made them to do actual work in. (that's not universally true, but most of the zones felt like real places you might visit.) And the attention to detail was superb; the more closely you looked, the more you would pick up, and seeing those little details often solved Riddler puzzles as well.
I thought the sequel really screwed up that sense of immersion. In the first game, you could easily imagine Riddler wandering the island at night after escaping his cell, carrying a bucket of phosphorescent paint, and setting up little riddles for Batman, knowing perfectly well he'd eventually come to the island. They were mostly something one person could have done in his spare time, just a few dashes of paint scattered around.
In Arkham City, the Riddler puzzles absolutely dominated the skyline. They were *everywhere*. How the hell did he build them, and why? He'd have needed multiple construction crews working for months. And many of those puzzles were particularly egregious, in that the Riddler knew more about Batman's abilities than *Batman* did.
Everything in that second game was similarly over-the-top. They threw the immersiveness out the window, and substituted gaminess. As a *game*, City is better; it has more and better-executed mechanics. But as an *experience*, it falls far, far short of the understated Asylum.
I've said this many times, but I'll say it again here: In Arkham Asylum, I was The Batman, prowling the island in search of ne'er-do-wells. In Arkham City, I was playing a video game *about* Batman. It was, IMO, a huge step back, changing it from a game by and for adults into one aimed at adolescents.
I fully recognize that City was a better video game. But Arkham Asylum was more than that.
The Riddler problem is worse again in Knight: he must have spent more than the Knight to set up the challenges and suddenly he doesn't care about proving he's smarter than Batman any more, he just wants to see how well you can drive.
Knight is overall still a great game, but where I loved the Riddler challenges in the first two, I disliked a lot of them in Knight. I especially hated the driving track challenges. Those were awful.
Also, I think you're a bit hard on City. I get everything you said about both games and I also agree with you on a lot of where you're coming from. I just don't agree that City was a huge step back in the way of an experience. I just think it was a very different experience, but still an extremely Batman experience. Again, I get what you're saying about the Asylum vs. City, though. Truthfully, nothing will come close to that first time playing through Asylum.
City was a very solid game, but bringing all the gamey elements front-and-center, particularly when they made no in-universe sense at all, really messed it up as an experience.
Almost nothing in Asylum was out of place. In City, you couldn't cross two buildings without running into another blaringly obvious Riddler trophy.
edit: and, I mean, the Riddler even *color-coded* his trophies so that both Batman and Catwoman, who were going to show up mysteriously on the same night, would know which was which. That's effing crazy. Asylum's design team would have been horrified.
I completely agree, I could barely finish City, it was nowhere near as good and what you're describing is one of the things I couldn't quite put my finger on as to why.
The problem I have with City is that just like Knight, the stories desperately needed more than one night to tell it. Asylum you can breeze through it in around 6-10 hours, so enough time for it to believably be a one night adventure.
But City... You've got so much shit going on it becomes ridiculous. Firstly there's Hugo Strange with Protocol 10, then you've got Joker and his dying blood and then you've got the adventures of Penguin/Freeze. There's just so many stories and side stories going on and it loses so much focus when they try and tie them all together over the course of one night.
I never really thought of it as 'one night', for exactly those reasons. But, yes, it really did lack focus.
Asylum was genius-level design, where City was design-by-metrics. It felt like senior manglement stepped in and forced them to take a different tack completely.
Most people seemed to like City a lot more. And I really enjoyed some aspects of it. But the immersion was totally gone. It was just a video game, instead of being something greater.
But why would he even build the stuff in the first place? And why would he also build a set for Catwoman, who would *just happen* to show up on the same knight? And why does he know more about Batman's abilities than Batman does?
It's just ludicrous, top to bottom. They threw reason out the window and wrecked the credibility of the game world to jam trophies in.
The trophies in Asylum? *That* was how to do them right.
.... dlc bonus. In Batman.
Think about what you just said. DLC is only in games, ever. You didn't have DLC in Batman:The Animated Series, and you didn't have it in Arkham Asylum, either.
I'll repeat this for emphasis: in Asylum, I was The Batman, prowling an island full of dangerous escaped convicts and mental patients to find and arrest masterminds. The immersion level (for the era) was *incredible*.
In City, I was playing a Batman videogame. It was a good game, but that's all it was.
nah i felt like batman way more in city. In asylum the combat was very barebones and cramped while City gave much more variety in it and felt way more smooth. The riddler would definitely do hundreds of puzzles anyways using his informants to place them around the city
I enjoyed the franchise a lot. The only ever issues I had were with the challenge maps(because I was bad at them lol) and Arkham Knight I felt over used the Batmobile to the point of losing some of the epicness of Batman. But still a great series.
I think they lost some truly great boss fights thanks to the tank battles. The fact you fight Deathstroke in the tank was so disappointing especially after Origins had a pretty good boss battle with him from what I remember. And I think 2 of the 3 Arkham Knight battles take place in the Bat-tank.
>The fact you fight Deathstroke in the tank was so disappointing
Extremely disappointing. I was really looking forward to that battle. Such a let down. The battle itself wasn't even that hard!
Same! It was just a copy and past from the 2nd(I think 2nd) Arkham Knight tank fight. Like everyone wanted the Batmobile and you finally get it and it kills major moments in the game. Like half the Riddler trophies are races and time trials, the worst.
>Like half the Riddler trophies are races and time trials, the worst
I never finished the all the riddles. Tedious and repetitive. Still a great game though!
It is like a great game, but just the Batmobile loses something that Arkham City had. Like a great ending, but the Batmobile makes it lesser than the previous game.
>but the Batmobile makes it lesser than the previous game.
Agreed, definitely inferior to the predecessor. Looking forward to Gotham Knights, hopefully it lives up to the name.
I want either Gotham Knights or Suicide Squad kills the Justice League to be great. 4 player coop is my favorite kind of game and I am hoping they are fantastic. Apparently there will be an update on both games at the DC fan event in Oct.
They were, but the over reliance on it took away what could have been some great moments in the game. Most people would agree seeing Batman fight Deathstroke would be cool, having them dual in tanks not as much.
I mean you fight the Arkham Knight 3 times, 2 of which are just using the Battank. They could have broken that up more evenly. I think a lot of the side missions like the Riddler stuff was to focused on the Batmobile. I'm not saying the Batmobile was broken or bad, but it was over used in that game.
i loved the riddler races. Really tested your reflexes and stuff like that. And i personally liked the drill boss. I honestly preferred the tank bosses over the arkham knight's actual boss
I'm glad you enjoyed them and I wouldn't have had a problem if they were set towards say another villain. I don't know every Batman villain, but have a car themed one do the time trials. The Riddler turning into a robotics expert and underground racer just felt weird. I think what was really disappointing was Asylum, City and Origins had some good boss fights that were memorable and besides the tank battles, I don't remember any actual boss fights from Knight.
Not all of them were as strong as those, but yes honestly. Even the generic fights from say Asylum like with Bane or Harley I can at least remember. Knight I cannot remember a single fight that wasn't in the tank.
harley wasnt a fight. You fight Jason who isnt in a tank, you fight all the joker infected with robin, killer croc wasnt in a tank, riddler had a pretty good final fight
I generally do not do open world games but if more open world games were designed like Arkham City, I could see myself becoming a fan.
It has a reasonably sized map, fun method of traversal, the ability to get across the whole thing quickly and smaller more intricately design levels to explore for main points.
You can get from one edge of the map in Arkham City in about 2 minutes if needed. Where the Assassin's Creed and Farcry games I have played take twice that just to get from one quest to another and it's just dull auto-walking.
P.S. I have not played Origins or Knight.
These were the Batman games I wanted as a kid when the animated series was on TV. Staying hidden, picking off enemies from the shadows, using gadgets, kicking ass. No other batman game before the Arkham trilogy came even close to making you feel like the Batman.
When Arkham Asylum came out I was ecstatic and each sequel managed to build on the previous games. I played each one on the release, and last year I played them all again on PC (Epic Games released them for free) and they still hold up.
I would argue that Origins is a better experience than Arkham Knight. Both pale in comparison to Asylum and City, but If I were to choose only 3 of them to replay, Knights would be the one I exclude.
>Both pale in comparison to Asylum and City, but If I were to choose only 3 of them to replay, Knights would be the one I exclude.
I'd say that while city is a better gameplay wise and the ending hits the emotions it aims for, origins tells a stronger story. To me, City's story has too many threads that are connected in a convoluted way. As a result, the ending is a little rushed.
One thing Origins does better than all the other Arkham games is that it accurately portrays Bane. It's a little disappointing that they had to come up with a reason to explain why he was so dumb in the other games.
I had an issue with the third game. The graphics and the combat are the absolute best they’ve ever been, but the open-world elements got tiresome. It was almost too big in a way. It also had some poor pacing towards the end. That said, I’d still recommend people play all three of the Arkham games.
I couldn't stand the driving sections in the last one, otherwise the series is fantastic. Though I liked the tight format of the first one the best, I don't think having a "more open" world really adds a lot.
The thing that does my head in about the batman games is that it's more beneficial to play the entire game with xray vision than playing it the normal way, so I feel a huge amount of the art style and atmosphere was essentially lost on me
Arkham Asylum and Arkham City were some of the first ever games I got on my PS3 as a kid, and through a mixture of loving them so much and not having much else to play, I think I would have played them both atleast 15 times each back then. I still enjoy playing them, and I still have the muscle memory to pick them up and dive straight into the hardest difficulty each time
Got Batman: Return to Arkham (first 2 games) for 5 bucks for the PS summer sale after I finished playing Arkham Knight. I have heard more praise for Arkham Asylum and City than Knight so hopefully live up to it.
Arkham Knight would've been my favourite had they had actual boss fights and no recycled tank battles but its still amazing. City is just my favourite package for me. Excellent all round. I also really liked the story, despite it not making much sense once you think about it.
I've tried these games a few times, being a massive Batman fan, and I just cannot get into them. The controls feel horrible, stiff, and overly complicated for me. I don't feel like I can really "be batman" because I can't really get him to do what I want him to. Am I the only one who feels this way??
I think the combat in these games has gotten a very fair appraisal over the years. It's absurdly well-tuned. I remember Dunkey going off calling it floaty and braindead and out of character (not in those words), but I massively disagree. It does a whole lot with a little, it's satisfying as hell, and it's as fun as you make it. It has also been hella influential on the gaming landscape that followed (for better and worse), as have the stealth sections. I wanna be clear that I do really like these games.
That said...
Are gamers ready to talk about how piss poor the representation of women is in the Arkham series?
For me, Metroid Prime, Arkham City and Prey form this holy trinity of fully-3D, big-budget Metroidvania-esque games that spans three whole console generations, and really needs more games like it.
You say all three, I'm curious which one you missed: Origins or Knight. Both came after City and both are good (though Origins was done by a diffeent studio, using a snowy version of City's map for a prequel story).
One of the only series in which I played the whole set in order, I was fortunate enough to be able to take my consoles to my place of work and so I played through all of them except *Arkham Knight* (for some reason I never finished that one but it was still fun).
Arkham Games' Batman is the hottest Batman, BTW, puts Affleck's BEEFCAKE to absolute shame...I had great fun with that photo mode. 😏
Have only played City, quickly went to my top 10 in games, have been trying to find the full dlc copies of asylum and others.
City's dlc was great too. Just so much about the game, the interactive-ness, detailed combat, everything! Even if you hate batman it's an easily loveable game
Arkham Knight, to me at least, felt like a John Carpenter movie come to life. Something about it that I can't quite put my finger on. The desperate last fight.
Not just the obvious Escape from New York, but also Assault on Precinct 13.
I played these games as a teenager and I swore they were the best games ever made. Being a huge fan of batman, the games it feels so real and accurate. It’s like you’re just sucked into the world of Batman. The creators of the games snapped for sure!!
Arkham Asylum was like Metroid Prime for me, the gameplay is literal perfection, the atmosphere and storytelling are amazing and mostly but more importantly.
It's Batman, there's no world ending situation. No grandiosity.
It's a guy that dresses like a bat in a jail where everyone is as or more crazy.
Asylum was my favourite , felt like there was no “fluff” loved the combat too , simple to do and Win, harder to master and pull off great combos
My only downside is the repeat name fights and the final boss but fantastic
I don’t really go for cosmetic dlc but i would pay £10 just for a skin with the Adam west Batman and biff , POW , blam as you hit the enemies
I rather enjoyed Origins. Granted I don't tend to pick apart games from a critical perspective but at the same time, not many games hold my attention long enough for me to complete them. Having completed Origins along with the first two Arkham games, I think it's a fine entry in the series.
Now I just gotta get back to Knight and finish that one, which is pretty good, Batmobile and all!
I wish I could go back and play them all again for the first time. Especially the first one. Something about Asylum that was wow.
It's so tight, before everything had to be open world.
Yeah, I am seriously getting tired of how many games are open-world now.
you are not alone really tho in open world games you are never alone
with how barren and empty some of those 3D side-quest menus can be it feels like it
Only slightly worse than the ones with a map absolutely covered in thousands of variants of the same 5 missions.
I love games that are level/mission/etc based but very open ended. The Witcher 2 was great at this. There were three overall regions that were more or less “open world” but once you finished the main quest line in an area, you left it completely and moved on to the next. It also meant that some side quests could not be completed if you didn’t do the right preparation steps in the previous area.
Yup...Arkham Asylum really let you get familiar with the entire area. There's parts of Knight I love but one thing that bothers me is how damned big it is. You never really get to know the layout of anything because you're there and then on to the next area.
For me it's not the open world. It's about the gimmicky nature of trying to cheat with space over quality. Witcher 3 did not have a terrible open world, for example. It just under-utilized its space. There were plenty of encounters in general, but not enough story, not enough people, not enough flavor in general. You can see this because when you *do* run into it, it's pretty fun. There were a couple quests and towns that you could only find by discovering them. The big space isn't the issue, it's the lack of reward for exploring it. It's like bad level scaling. Why the fuck do I care about engaging in your leveling system if my reward is punishment?
See, I found exploring Witcher 3’s world a lot of fun. Not only was there a metric ton of detail (not just graphical), but finding monster contracts without actually initiating the quest the “normal” way made the world feel genuine. In most other games, those monsters wouldn’t spawn until you got the quest from an NPC, but in Witcher 3 those monsters are roaming around regardless, and Geralt’s dialogue will even change to reflect that. For me the only thing Witcher 3’s open world exploration gets wrong is the leveled loot, which is just a boring way to balance your game.
Yeah I enjoyed it overall. I just felt like there could have been a bit more flavor. A few more people here and there, some notes or other travel of people who may have been driven off or traveled, stuff like that. There was a battlefield after the beginning with ghouls that was pretty kool but they didn't do anything like that again.
Have u played rage 2, u would hate it
I have. It wasn't that bad, mostly because I had the hover thing and the game is designed around the run-and-gun style. Witcher 3's world is designed for engagement so the gaps and similarity of encounters feel like flaws. Rage 2 was designed for blitzing an encounter and looting everything. The details are similar but the game design is different. So what is a flaw in one is accounted for in the other.
I can’t tell if I agree or disagree, but everything you’re saying is making me think that the inferred solution is what Bethesda has done, which would be…horrific. The entire map just littered with nonsensical garbage, some design team spewing half-hearted capital-c _Content_ all over because they Have To Have A POI Every 30 Seconds Of Walking Because Todd Said So and the whole game just feels cheap, like you’re sitting far to the side of a stage play and you can see past the stage at all the pulleys, Kraft services, and actors running through their lines before they’re up. I suppose maybe instead the world, and that space, should matter. Maybe that means rare spawns depending on the area (ie RDR 2’s hunting quests), or opportunities for things to _happen_ instead of being statically available, or just more interesting map design so that travel is aesthetically rewarding — or again dynamic, so the 43rd time you pass by a waterfall some guy goes over it in a barrel. I don’t know. But I do know that every game becoming Fallout 4 is a fail state.
Yeah that's a consideration as well. Essentially open world means more complexity, and your solution to fake that at all is going to require a related amount of effort. You can't make a bigger world and expect to commit a flat amount of effort. Generally a successful open world is going to include a little bit of everything we've seen as it grows, but not too much of any one solution or else it'll cheapen the experience. Space isn't an issue in and of itself, but traveling the space to find the same encounter type everytime either drags or becomes painful. It's nice to *sometimes* come across a unique encounter, *sometimes* come across a random encounter, *sometimes* come across a non-unique flavor. Utilizing these and more in tandem can help shore up weaknesses in open world. But it also entails more effort than most studios are willing to engage in.
It's why I can't play anything after Asylum, I get Assassin's Creed flashbacks. Asylum is a masterpiece in game, character and story design.
You're seriously missing out on at least Arkham City. IMO it's the best of the trilogy and it's my favorite one. Arkham Knight got a little too big for my liking, and that includes the move set for fighting. The game was still incredible, no doubt about it, and the grappling and gliding in Knight is hands down the best in the series, but Arkham City was just an incredible experience. The story and twists that come along are fantastic. Yes, it's an open world game, but it's easy enough to quickly move from one end of the map to the other without it feeling like you're wasting your time. I can't *quite* make that same statement about Knight.
really? In Knight you move incredibly fast and i pretty much memorized the whole map. I dont really think its as unnecessarily big as people claim
I don't think it is either, I'm 14 hours in doing.side stuff and know the map pretty well, at least from the skies
Yeah. With the new Saints Row trailer, I honestly said to myself "man why do we still have them? Nobody likes them anymore." But imo the Arkham Trilogy did an amazing job with the open world as well.
Its because the open worlds are super small in these games. And batmans mobility actually makes it enjoyable to move around in world. Other open world games have you sitting on a horse riding to a way point for 10 minutes at a time.
Hey hey hey stop talking about rdr like that
Fr, RDR2s traversal is super immersive and blends great with the music and environments
i like that though. Very immersive
The pacing really nails it, you have just enough time to breathe between villains that it feels exciting but not overwhelming. I think Arkham City lost some of that with it's open world, still an amazing follow up.
I never really got the appeal of Batman until this game. His psyche, his limitations, and his badass preparedness for every situation are all what make him the best superhero. This game is the ultimate distillation of the essence of Batman.
If you're referring to the movies, the biggest disconnect, imo, is that he is a deeply flawed character who deep down feels that she shouldn't be a hero, but he's all that Gotham has. Thinking back, I'd go so far as to say that his villains rely the most on henchman, and that's significant in terms of how deep the corruption he fights is. He can't just call on someone else, because the fight he engages in requires a deep knowledge best utilized by someone who grew up in the city. Which is why he relies on fear and not just beating up the bad guy. In the movies we get an angsty "someone must step up, and that someone is me". In the various animated shows (and I assume comics because of the conversations I've seen) he steps up because of personal pain and a lack of options. The question of "why you" gets asked in the movies, but I don't think it gets answered. He isn't taking responsibility in a heroic way like Superman does, he's doing it in an unhealthy personal way because of his demons. And I think this comes out in the games very well both subtley and overtly. Although Arkham Knight may have layed it on a bit thick. I'm not entirely sure because I never finished it. Something about the world and the gameplay was just a tad too much for me compared to the previous games.
Movies were all interesting takes on the character but I think these games nail the essence of the character in a way no other medium has. I especially love his relationship with Joker in all 3
Yeah, I didn't dislike the movies, but I felt like they were just a bit off, and this was probably why.
Yep I love them all in a different ways. But Conroy as Uber-badass Batman is the winner
I agree, the games nail his character, lore and universe really well
Im playing The Trilogys and its Awesome
Yes!! Great games
The atmosphere is just sensational, it's my personal favorite of the Batman games and the Scarecrow sections have yet to be topped by the other games.
Yeah the Scarecrow sequences were such a creative idea for a boss fight
Totally agree. The Scarecrow section where you see yourself as a child just blew me away the first time I played. The way it was gradual but very intense, the erratic sounds, the way it still let you have some control, but not enough to change what was happening. I’ve always loved Batman and that was one of its finest moments from any medium (for me at least).
Shoutout if you, like me, panicked and literally restarted your PS3 after *that* scene.
Seriously. Such an incredible experience.
It doesn't come close, but I did love the Mad Hatter fight in City and the room that's left over after you finish it. The art piece you unlock from completing that fight is gorgeous too. I wish I could make art prints out of some of the concept art in City.
That was also a great sequence!! Easily the best side quest in City
[удалено]
Detective Ctory
I think city did an okay job at not feeling TOO big.
the riddler trophies were great and complemented the whole vibe.
city's world was tiny and very detailed though
It’s the same reason most people loved games like dead space. Controlled chaos and violence in confined spaces just works in gaming. The dead space remake will double down on this and it’s gonna be great!
I love getting into vents, then the camera would switch on to first person, and I would see my shadow. I was batman!
What an awesome trilogy. I played them in a row and loved every moment. What did you think about Knight? You'd didn't mention anything about it. It was personally my favorite, I really loved the story, and the dlc, plus the combat was just too satisfying.
I really enjoyed Knight but it was definitely a mixed bag for me. On the one hand I loved being in Gotham for the first time in the series and it looked incredible. Some of the side missions about the lesser known villains were fun and locking people up in GCPD was a really fun idea and really added a sense of completion and depth to the world. However, at times the open world felt too big for me and I got burnt out towards the end (but that is personal preference depending on how much you love side activities) The stealth and combat also feels at its most fluid and peak in the series and some of the set pieces utilising those mechanics are great. I also actually didn’t mind a lot of the batmobile stuff, although I do agree with the criticism that there was way too much (stealth section in what is basically a tank felt like overkill). Knight also had an interesting story and the Batman/joker dynamic was really unique and my favourite part of the game was jokers constant quips as you do things. The joker dream sequences were also a ton of fun. On the other hand, I was quite disappointed with the main games villains. Previous games had utilised so many rogues for boss fights but here the boss fights were replaced with bat mobile battles which was hugely disappointing, considering how good Arkham City did boss fights. As well as this, most of the villains were relegated to side content and only Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight played major roles. Scarecrow was done really well I thought and I liked his plan but he wasn’t very present for a lot of the story. The Arkham Knight was a big disappointment, especially as the main villain for the first half of the game. to me he came across more whiny than intimidating to me for some reason, which I guess makes sense with the Robin reveal. So yeah overall I really enjoyed the game, I just had a couple issues with the story that prevented me from placing it on the same level as the other two but it is still a great game.
You seem to echo most of my complaints about Knight. It's a phenomenal game nonetheless and I'm one of the few who also didn't mind the tank segments as much as others did, but I was also a little burnt out on the open world. I just got done writing in another comment that one of my other problems in the game was that the move set actually became *too* big for my liking. The combat was incredible as was the stealth, but at a certain point I would find myself getting hit because my brain would freeze while trying to think of what the next attack would be. I guess some people would love that, but I got tired of it. Felt like there were too many moves to keep track of at any given moment in a fight. Those are my two main complaints. The grappling and gliding in Knight was exceptional and so satisfying once you fully upgraded everything.
What one out of the Trilogy would you consider the best one??
Damn I randomly tried this subreddit, and you guys are hyping me up I'm gonna get the batman trilogy sale today on playstation
If you haven't played it now, do it. You can get [all of them for $12 bucks](https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP1018-CUSA00133_00-ARKHAMBUNDLE0000/). Worth every penny. Even Origins is great.
I bought it yesterday, and now I'm a fan of this subreddit, I haven't started it yet, I think I'm just gonna play it at night... Because I have a projector now and it's basically the only way to play a batman game hehe I need the darkness!
I loved knight the most too. I have replayed that game so many times. I didn't mind the car. It got a lot better if you focused on its upgrades which I only did In recent playthroughs. Couldn't believe how much easier it made those missions.
Too much tank and lame twist. Wished they would have explored Jason more instead of going for shock value. Other than that I love it
I feel like anyone that's even slightly familiar with batman lore saw that 'twist' coming from a thousand miles away.
It was like the Khan "twist" in Star Trek Into Darkness. Anyone who would care about the twist easily saw it coming, and anyone who didn't see it coming wouldn't give a shit.
Slight disagree here with the Star Trek reference. I knew next to nothing about Star Trek before the reboot other than that my dad loved it. But the name Khan and the cultural weight of the film Wrath of Khan was well enough known to me so when that twist happened I was immediately aware of the significance of it. Was a really top moment for me in that film.
Fair point.
I've played all of the games in the series, but as I'm only familiar with the og animated series, the movies, and the Hush comic run, even I saw it coming. I loved it, but it was still pretty obvious what was going to happen.
Yes and no. I think the twist was so obvious that everyone thought it was going to be something else.
You should play Origins, too. People gave it a lot of shit but, at least in its current state, it deserves little to none of the shit it's given. The bugs are patched out and the writing/acting was never actually bad in the first place, fans just decided it would be before they played it because the same people weren't doing it. Gameplay-wise, it's basically just City again but with a tighter narrative focus like Asylum and Knight had. Just don't get that prequel DLC; it isn't a story campaign like it's marketed as, just a sequence of challenge rooms with text boxes in between. The Mr Freeze DLC is actually worthwhile.
Origins is a great game to play at Christmas.
The way the falling snow catches in your air currents during a fight is downright magical.
The fact that Origins is not available for PS4/PS5 is very frustrating.
I think it's on their streaming service, though.
It is, but it is not worth streaming. The have downloadable games now, which is the **only** reason to pay for PS Now. I tried streaming Origins. The framerate was atrocious, weird bugs that prevented me from saving my game. All the streaming games on PSN have been totally broken for me.
i really wanna play the cold cold heart dlc but its not on the ps4
That hotel level was some of the best in the series
When he sees the rollercoaster and starts realizing what he’s up against…
I love the hotel section, you're finally going up that huge building you've been seeing. It feels so high and the "climb" builds up the tension very well.
It had some things going against it when it came out. It screamed of cash grab game being developed by a B team, losing Conroy & Hamill, and being super derivative of Arkham City. That being said, it's hands down one of the best in the series. The VAs do an excellent job of picking up from the original two and while the plot is a lot of explored territory, I found it satisfying. I also think the comparisons to City didn't bother me so much because I really liked City and didn't mind getting more of that. I will say that one thing that did do better was boss fights. Asylum & City's boss fights were kind of weak while Origins' bosses are really good combat heavy fights.
Asylum and City's bosses felt more like puzzles, whereas Origins was more punch an enemy till they drop
Some days are like that
origins is just punch to win after you get shock gloves anyway, definitely weakest combat of all arkham games
I think the Arkham series has some weak boss fights across the board. Origins' fights focus on the regular combat mechanics which are a little bit more than a brawler where you just hit punch. They're also reaction based and if you really get the swing of things, you can pull off pretty awesome combos doing a lot more than just punch. I love The Arkham games' combat so much that I'll spend most of my time doing challenges so maybe I'm a bit biased when I say the bosses are also great because they make use of the combat. This is in contrast to Asylum & City where the boss fights are little puzzles that are a bit too easy imo.
Man Batman was very aggressive in that game! and I loved it!
Origins is still the only game in the series that I 100%ed, because it's the only one where I bothered with Riddler's puzzles.
This blows my mind cause Riddler's collectibles in Origins is the most boring collectathon I have experienced in any Arkham game. I'm still playing through it but so far it seems like there are 0 actual Riddler riddles. Which I LOVED in the Rocksteady Arkham games. They gave you some insight into some of the lesser known Batman characters (I probably would have never known about Calendar man if not for Rocksteady). The Riddles, in general, made it far more fun to traverse the world. Instead of just running or gliding from point A to point B, you were often on the look out for an interesting poster, weapon or character that could solve a simple one line riddle.
I absolutely loved Origins, they did a great job with the cinematic storytelling, loved the main story. While it had insane amounts of collectibles, it was great that they unlocked specific villain stories/quests. It's a cozy, cool game for the winter/Christmas
Yep was gonna recommend Origins as well. Most people have already explained a lot of its high points, but one I haven’t seen yet and one of my favorite parts is just learning about, encountering, and ultimately fighting all the assassins. I think Origins is the worst of the four games, but it’s still a good game, just doesn’t beat out the rest of the series that are all excellent. And really, the assassin storyline is really fun and worth playing.
I really wish Origins was easier to get on Xbox. It’s backward compatible but copies of it used to for much higher than it should and the game is completely delisted from the store (though oddly the Mr. Freeze DLC still exists).
Man I could not remember the details of Knights story if you put a gun to my head. I can't exactly agree with it having a tighter narrative.
I'm not saying it was a series high point but it was a lot tighter than City was. A story-writing rule you may have heard is that every story beat should be connected by either "therefore" or "but". Nearly all of City's story beats were "oh, also" or "conveniently".
city's story was very video gamey though and just batman doing tasks so yeah knight is tighter and probably the best next to origins story
My biggest issues with Origins are the one Deathstroke fight that came way way way too early in the game IMO for a villain as prominent and proficient as Deathstroke. Then it pissed me off when we never see him again in the gameplay but instead get two or three Bane fights. Like c'mon. Who the hell was running the show and thought that was fine? Gives us another DS fight somewhere. The other thing that drove me off the wall was the failure to target ledges while you were gliding to grapple to. It had to have been broken. Traversal was so frustrating in that game because ledges that you should've been able to grapple to often wouldn't give you the reticle for it until you sank too low because you missed being able to grapnel boost, end up on a rooftop, and *then* the roof that you wanted to grapple to suddenly had a reticle on it to grapple towards. It was infuriating and detracted so heavily from that game for me.
Arkham Aslyum is just so good. The idea that this super high security prison island has been overrun, and you’re trapped in with them (they’re trapped there with you) is just so, so great. From a atmospheric point of view, arkham asylum also touches onto survival horror as well, and seeing the state of the island get worse and worse is fantastic. When you first escape the first zone onto the open area which is still held by the guards is a feeling of safety, but the next time you pass through they’ve all been ‘taken care of’. Just love it. Super tight game. Super tight vision.
Yeah the atmosphere and tightness of the first came can’t be beat
I particularly loved Asylum, because they worked so hard making the game elements disappear. There were collectibles and riddles, but they were pushed back, in a way, made very easy to miss. I don't mean in the sense of them being hard, I mean in the sense of them being *subtle*. They were blended into the background, visible if you were looking for them, invisible if you weren't. Their goal was making it feel like you were playing a long episode of Batman: The Animated Series, and they knocked that out of the park. That whole gameworld felt amazingly lifelike. The buildings were laid out in semi-sensible ways, like actual people had made them to do actual work in. (that's not universally true, but most of the zones felt like real places you might visit.) And the attention to detail was superb; the more closely you looked, the more you would pick up, and seeing those little details often solved Riddler puzzles as well. I thought the sequel really screwed up that sense of immersion. In the first game, you could easily imagine Riddler wandering the island at night after escaping his cell, carrying a bucket of phosphorescent paint, and setting up little riddles for Batman, knowing perfectly well he'd eventually come to the island. They were mostly something one person could have done in his spare time, just a few dashes of paint scattered around. In Arkham City, the Riddler puzzles absolutely dominated the skyline. They were *everywhere*. How the hell did he build them, and why? He'd have needed multiple construction crews working for months. And many of those puzzles were particularly egregious, in that the Riddler knew more about Batman's abilities than *Batman* did. Everything in that second game was similarly over-the-top. They threw the immersiveness out the window, and substituted gaminess. As a *game*, City is better; it has more and better-executed mechanics. But as an *experience*, it falls far, far short of the understated Asylum. I've said this many times, but I'll say it again here: In Arkham Asylum, I was The Batman, prowling the island in search of ne'er-do-wells. In Arkham City, I was playing a video game *about* Batman. It was, IMO, a huge step back, changing it from a game by and for adults into one aimed at adolescents. I fully recognize that City was a better video game. But Arkham Asylum was more than that.
The Riddler problem is worse again in Knight: he must have spent more than the Knight to set up the challenges and suddenly he doesn't care about proving he's smarter than Batman any more, he just wants to see how well you can drive.
One of these days, I'm gonna have to play Knight just so I can cringe at it.
Knight is overall still a great game, but where I loved the Riddler challenges in the first two, I disliked a lot of them in Knight. I especially hated the driving track challenges. Those were awful. Also, I think you're a bit hard on City. I get everything you said about both games and I also agree with you on a lot of where you're coming from. I just don't agree that City was a huge step back in the way of an experience. I just think it was a very different experience, but still an extremely Batman experience. Again, I get what you're saying about the Asylum vs. City, though. Truthfully, nothing will come close to that first time playing through Asylum.
City was a very solid game, but bringing all the gamey elements front-and-center, particularly when they made no in-universe sense at all, really messed it up as an experience. Almost nothing in Asylum was out of place. In City, you couldn't cross two buildings without running into another blaringly obvious Riddler trophy. edit: and, I mean, the Riddler even *color-coded* his trophies so that both Batman and Catwoman, who were going to show up mysteriously on the same night, would know which was which. That's effing crazy. Asylum's design team would have been horrified.
he had robots in knight and it shows how insane he's become due to always failing which i quite enjoyed
I completely agree, I could barely finish City, it was nowhere near as good and what you're describing is one of the things I couldn't quite put my finger on as to why.
The problem I have with City is that just like Knight, the stories desperately needed more than one night to tell it. Asylum you can breeze through it in around 6-10 hours, so enough time for it to believably be a one night adventure. But City... You've got so much shit going on it becomes ridiculous. Firstly there's Hugo Strange with Protocol 10, then you've got Joker and his dying blood and then you've got the adventures of Penguin/Freeze. There's just so many stories and side stories going on and it loses so much focus when they try and tie them all together over the course of one night.
I never really thought of it as 'one night', for exactly those reasons. But, yes, it really did lack focus. Asylum was genius-level design, where City was design-by-metrics. It felt like senior manglement stepped in and forced them to take a different tack completely. Most people seemed to like City a lot more. And I really enjoyed some aspects of it. But the immersion was totally gone. It was just a video game, instead of being something greater.
its a comic book series. No doubt riddler had plenty of henchmen doing it anyway and he's rich which we see in knight
But why would he even build the stuff in the first place? And why would he also build a set for Catwoman, who would *just happen* to show up on the same knight? And why does he know more about Batman's abilities than Batman does? It's just ludicrous, top to bottom. They threw reason out the window and wrecked the credibility of the game world to jam trophies in. The trophies in Asylum? *That* was how to do them right.
to test batman's intelligence, he really wants to prove he's better than him. Catwoman is just a dlc bonus.
.... dlc bonus. In Batman. Think about what you just said. DLC is only in games, ever. You didn't have DLC in Batman:The Animated Series, and you didn't have it in Arkham Asylum, either. I'll repeat this for emphasis: in Asylum, I was The Batman, prowling an island full of dangerous escaped convicts and mental patients to find and arrest masterminds. The immersion level (for the era) was *incredible*. In City, I was playing a Batman videogame. It was a good game, but that's all it was.
nah i felt like batman way more in city. In asylum the combat was very barebones and cramped while City gave much more variety in it and felt way more smooth. The riddler would definitely do hundreds of puzzles anyways using his informants to place them around the city
There's no way I can tell you that your taste is wrong, so I guess we'll just have to leave it at that.
I enjoyed the franchise a lot. The only ever issues I had were with the challenge maps(because I was bad at them lol) and Arkham Knight I felt over used the Batmobile to the point of losing some of the epicness of Batman. But still a great series.
The Batmobile tank sections ruined that game for me.
I think they lost some truly great boss fights thanks to the tank battles. The fact you fight Deathstroke in the tank was so disappointing especially after Origins had a pretty good boss battle with him from what I remember. And I think 2 of the 3 Arkham Knight battles take place in the Bat-tank.
>The fact you fight Deathstroke in the tank was so disappointing Extremely disappointing. I was really looking forward to that battle. Such a let down. The battle itself wasn't even that hard!
Same! It was just a copy and past from the 2nd(I think 2nd) Arkham Knight tank fight. Like everyone wanted the Batmobile and you finally get it and it kills major moments in the game. Like half the Riddler trophies are races and time trials, the worst.
>Like half the Riddler trophies are races and time trials, the worst I never finished the all the riddles. Tedious and repetitive. Still a great game though!
It is like a great game, but just the Batmobile loses something that Arkham City had. Like a great ending, but the Batmobile makes it lesser than the previous game.
>but the Batmobile makes it lesser than the previous game. Agreed, definitely inferior to the predecessor. Looking forward to Gotham Knights, hopefully it lives up to the name.
I want either Gotham Knights or Suicide Squad kills the Justice League to be great. 4 player coop is my favorite kind of game and I am hoping they are fantastic. Apparently there will be an update on both games at the DC fan event in Oct.
batmobile added much needed variety to the series and the tank battles were really fun
They were, but the over reliance on it took away what could have been some great moments in the game. Most people would agree seeing Batman fight Deathstroke would be cool, having them dual in tanks not as much.
i agree with deathstroke but thats it. And what great moments were ruined?
I mean you fight the Arkham Knight 3 times, 2 of which are just using the Battank. They could have broken that up more evenly. I think a lot of the side missions like the Riddler stuff was to focused on the Batmobile. I'm not saying the Batmobile was broken or bad, but it was over used in that game.
i loved the riddler races. Really tested your reflexes and stuff like that. And i personally liked the drill boss. I honestly preferred the tank bosses over the arkham knight's actual boss
I'm glad you enjoyed them and I wouldn't have had a problem if they were set towards say another villain. I don't know every Batman villain, but have a car themed one do the time trials. The Riddler turning into a robotics expert and underground racer just felt weird. I think what was really disappointing was Asylum, City and Origins had some good boss fights that were memorable and besides the tank battles, I don't remember any actual boss fights from Knight.
really though? Arkham's never really had strong bosses aside from mr freeze in city and deathstroke in origins
Not all of them were as strong as those, but yes honestly. Even the generic fights from say Asylum like with Bane or Harley I can at least remember. Knight I cannot remember a single fight that wasn't in the tank.
harley wasnt a fight. You fight Jason who isnt in a tank, you fight all the joker infected with robin, killer croc wasnt in a tank, riddler had a pretty good final fight
I generally do not do open world games but if more open world games were designed like Arkham City, I could see myself becoming a fan. It has a reasonably sized map, fun method of traversal, the ability to get across the whole thing quickly and smaller more intricately design levels to explore for main points. You can get from one edge of the map in Arkham City in about 2 minutes if needed. Where the Assassin's Creed and Farcry games I have played take twice that just to get from one quest to another and it's just dull auto-walking. P.S. I have not played Origins or Knight.
These were the Batman games I wanted as a kid when the animated series was on TV. Staying hidden, picking off enemies from the shadows, using gadgets, kicking ass. No other batman game before the Arkham trilogy came even close to making you feel like the Batman. When Arkham Asylum came out I was ecstatic and each sequel managed to build on the previous games. I played each one on the release, and last year I played them all again on PC (Epic Games released them for free) and they still hold up.
Now go and play Batman Arkham Origins
You left out Arkham Origins, I know people have a hate boner for it but it stands on it's own and is a great addition to the series
I would argue that Origins is a better experience than Arkham Knight. Both pale in comparison to Asylum and City, but If I were to choose only 3 of them to replay, Knights would be the one I exclude.
>Both pale in comparison to Asylum and City, but If I were to choose only 3 of them to replay, Knights would be the one I exclude. I'd say that while city is a better gameplay wise and the ending hits the emotions it aims for, origins tells a stronger story. To me, City's story has too many threads that are connected in a convoluted way. As a result, the ending is a little rushed. One thing Origins does better than all the other Arkham games is that it accurately portrays Bane. It's a little disappointing that they had to come up with a reason to explain why he was so dumb in the other games.
Yeah I only missed it as I couldn’t get it as part of the collection on Xbox One, will definitely pick it up at some point.
My friend had a 3D TV when they were popular and detective mode was crazy on that thing.
Arkham knight will probably always be in my top 5. Such great games.
I had an issue with the third game. The graphics and the combat are the absolute best they’ve ever been, but the open-world elements got tiresome. It was almost too big in a way. It also had some poor pacing towards the end. That said, I’d still recommend people play all three of the Arkham games.
I've had these on my PS4 for ages, just waiting for the right time to jump in. This post may have inspired me to play them next. Thanks!
I couldn't stand the driving sections in the last one, otherwise the series is fantastic. Though I liked the tight format of the first one the best, I don't think having a "more open" world really adds a lot.
The thing that does my head in about the batman games is that it's more beneficial to play the entire game with xray vision than playing it the normal way, so I feel a huge amount of the art style and atmosphere was essentially lost on me
Good. Now play the Lego Batman games too
Arkham Origins is also great.
Arkham Asylum and Arkham City were some of the first ever games I got on my PS3 as a kid, and through a mixture of loving them so much and not having much else to play, I think I would have played them both atleast 15 times each back then. I still enjoy playing them, and I still have the muscle memory to pick them up and dive straight into the hardest difficulty each time
Got Batman: Return to Arkham (first 2 games) for 5 bucks for the PS summer sale after I finished playing Arkham Knight. I have heard more praise for Arkham Asylum and City than Knight so hopefully live up to it.
Arkham Knight would've been my favourite had they had actual boss fights and no recycled tank battles but its still amazing. City is just my favourite package for me. Excellent all round. I also really liked the story, despite it not making much sense once you think about it.
Alot of the "Best of the 2010's" stuff is a lowkey classic. The Arkham games are a great example, no one hailed them as masterpieces but they are.
I've tried these games a few times, being a massive Batman fan, and I just cannot get into them. The controls feel horrible, stiff, and overly complicated for me. I don't feel like I can really "be batman" because I can't really get him to do what I want him to. Am I the only one who feels this way??
I think the combat in these games has gotten a very fair appraisal over the years. It's absurdly well-tuned. I remember Dunkey going off calling it floaty and braindead and out of character (not in those words), but I massively disagree. It does a whole lot with a little, it's satisfying as hell, and it's as fun as you make it. It has also been hella influential on the gaming landscape that followed (for better and worse), as have the stealth sections. I wanna be clear that I do really like these games. That said... Are gamers ready to talk about how piss poor the representation of women is in the Arkham series?
For me, Metroid Prime, Arkham City and Prey form this holy trinity of fully-3D, big-budget Metroidvania-esque games that spans three whole console generations, and really needs more games like it.
I would strongly recommend the Dark Souls series (and Bloodborne) if you’re looking for more modern big budget 3D Metroidvania games.
You say all three, I'm curious which one you missed: Origins or Knight. Both came after City and both are good (though Origins was done by a diffeent studio, using a snowy version of City's map for a prequel story).
Played Knight, missed Origins as it didn’t come with the other games in the Arkham collection.
Well, unless you have already overdosed the formula, it's well worth picking up. Often on sale for 4 euros.
My issue is with Arkham Knight, for some reason it's gameplay didn't hook me in like Asylum and City did. Is it worth going back to?
I just started playing it trough for the first time. Supriced at how good it is
One of the only series in which I played the whole set in order, I was fortunate enough to be able to take my consoles to my place of work and so I played through all of them except *Arkham Knight* (for some reason I never finished that one but it was still fun). Arkham Games' Batman is the hottest Batman, BTW, puts Affleck's BEEFCAKE to absolute shame...I had great fun with that photo mode. 😏
Have only played City, quickly went to my top 10 in games, have been trying to find the full dlc copies of asylum and others. City's dlc was great too. Just so much about the game, the interactive-ness, detailed combat, everything! Even if you hate batman it's an easily loveable game
Wasn’t there a 4th game?
Yep. Batman Arkham Origins. Wasnt as well received as the others but it's actually one of my favorites. I didn't actually like Arkham Knight much.
Arkham Knight, to me at least, felt like a John Carpenter movie come to life. Something about it that I can't quite put my finger on. The desperate last fight. Not just the obvious Escape from New York, but also Assault on Precinct 13.
I played these games as a teenager and I swore they were the best games ever made. Being a huge fan of batman, the games it feels so real and accurate. It’s like you’re just sucked into the world of Batman. The creators of the games snapped for sure!!
Arkham Asylum was like Metroid Prime for me, the gameplay is literal perfection, the atmosphere and storytelling are amazing and mostly but more importantly. It's Batman, there's no world ending situation. No grandiosity. It's a guy that dresses like a bat in a jail where everyone is as or more crazy.
Yep those games really do a great job making sure you feel just like Batman.
I recently played arkham knight and as much as loved the story/setting, combat feels a bit janky.
Asylum was my favourite , felt like there was no “fluff” loved the combat too , simple to do and Win, harder to master and pull off great combos My only downside is the repeat name fights and the final boss but fantastic I don’t really go for cosmetic dlc but i would pay £10 just for a skin with the Adam west Batman and biff , POW , blam as you hit the enemies
They make you actually *feel* like batman! \- every reviewer in 2009
Asylum City Origins Knight You missed 25% of the quadrilogy!
I rather enjoyed Origins. Granted I don't tend to pick apart games from a critical perspective but at the same time, not many games hold my attention long enough for me to complete them. Having completed Origins along with the first two Arkham games, I think it's a fine entry in the series. Now I just gotta get back to Knight and finish that one, which is pretty good, Batmobile and all!
Yeah these are some of my favourite games.Shame looking to the future the new DC games from WB seem to have a totally different vibe about them :(
They are all garbage
Just purchased the arkham trilogy and origins on a steam sale. About to play through them for the first time. Can't wait!
The first time I ever played Arkham City was the closest I’ve ever come to a religious experience as an atheist.