Batman has been an icon of comic books since his creation by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1939. Detective Comics found one of its flagship superheroes and he burst onto the video screen in 1966, 1989 and finally Arkham Asylum graced the video game shelves in 2009. This was literally a game changer for 3D beat'em ups, as it encorporated so many amazing game elements that made you really feel as if you were playing out a great Batman comic book in video game form.
The combat will always be the real highlight for this game and for very good reason. The control is very smooth and easy to learn while also keeping up a good challenge when there is a great number of thugs to take down. It allows you to fight criminals en masse and even let's you use his gadgets like his batarangs and his taser. If you find the chance, you can also escape into the scaffolding and hide on randomly placed gargoyles.
Anywhere there is a large room with gargoyles, you may as well be ready for stealth. This is very well implimented, surprisingly. This is coming from someone who is lukewarm on stealth in the first place. With the x-ray detective vision, you can keep up with where the criminals are and which ones have weapons that you should be aware of. If there are too many assault rifles and/or shotguns, stealth will be your safest option. This will make you take down criminals one by one or with as few as possible.
The Joker has let loose a nafarious scheme to release all of the inmates of Arkham Asylum, both the henchmen and the high level rogues from Batman's lengthy gallery. The game is especially praised for its inclusion of so many badguys in such a way that it doesn't feel crowded or overly difficult. It would go on to become a blueprint for the future games in the Rocksteady Arkham franchise that it spawned.
At the time of its making, The Dark Knight was at the height of its popularity and it catapulted the game into sequels. The greatest thing to note about these games is that they feature both Animated Series amumni, Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill reprising their respective roles as Batman and Joker. Although Hamill wouldn't come back for the oddity of the series, Origins, he would come back for the arguably inferior, Arkham Knight.
How much of this series will be covered here remains to be seen. These reviews have been a long time coming and this was before all of the controversy with Suicide Squad (2024). These articles will be mainly to cover the greatness of these games and not highlight the problems it's facing in modern day. What that means for future articles will depend on the atmosphere. Either way, the original four games are not without their faults, but they are mainly remembered for greatness and there will be no stopping that. No, really, it's Batman, he's about to ram the batmobile through the door and we can't stop him. Until next time, same Bat time, same Bat channel. Virtua Crash.
