Why is the Batman Arkham series so fucking boring? It feels like literally nothing is happening plot-wise

Why is the Batman Arkham series so fucking boring? It feels like literally nothing is happening plot-wise

don't know but its batgirl is pretty good

...

As we see in comparison

They're p fun games tho, well asylum and city were.

I played through the whole series for the first time this Christmas. Asylum is kinda 'just another night on the job' tier story. It was ok, aside from the Scarecrow boss fights nothing really blew me away. But it's more like a small, self contained arc rather than a mythos defining event.

City was a bit of a mixed bag, really exciting moments like the activation of Protocol 10 were really undermined by having to immediately search ten helicopters to randomly find a password. The story overall is sorta like a No Man's Land lite.

Origins had a pretty interesting take on the genesis of the Joker's obsession with Batman, the Joker/Harley Quinn therapy scene was preddy gud too that Joker is talking about Batman but Harley thinks it's about her was a little clever. But it didn't have a whole going on otherwise, other being stock standard early Batman.

Arkham Knight was a standout in the series.The story was excellent and the stakes felt real. Fighting robot cars and the Deadstroke boss fight were a bit crap, but the story itself was excellent. After Batman v Superman I never thought I'd get chills hearing Batman say Martha again.

It's a shame that the shitty PC port detracted so much from the overall opinion of the game.

Don't know.

>It's a shame that the shitty PC port detracted so much from the overall opinion of the game.

It's not just that, but how they handled Jason Todd in general ruined a lot of AK's reputation, story-wise. They made it too obvious to comic book fans that it was him, so any pretense of mystery is ruined. However, he also wasn't set-up at all for casuals and Batman newbies, so his reveal is unsatisfying and even made too obvious by the conveniently-placed flashback scenes.

She looks like she has meth hair.

Yeah but today's "gamer" doesn't care about gameplay or fun factor, its all about narrative now. Ripping off movies and shit.

>Why is the Batman Arkham series so fucking boring?
You mean "Why do I think the Batman Arkham series is so fucking boring?".
Because its not.

Origins and Knight were fun too

Anyone else else love this costume?
Asylum is the best imho

Maybe, I'm not sure I'd agree that knowing it was Jason would affect enjoyment of the plot too much. If you were expecting the identity of the Arkham Knight to be a huge part of the plot, then sure the way they handled it wasn't great. But it was really a smaller part of the story, Batman struggling with the reveal was more interesting than the reveal itself imho.

The identity of the Arkham Knight doesn't feel as big as the death Ivy, or the fakeout death of Barbra. What made the story so great is Batman's interactions with his supporting cast, dealing with the whole Joker thing and what is potentially his last night as Batman.

It looks like it was thrown together so nah, I've kept hoping she gets a new one

>Origins
>fun
No, Origins was fucking shit and as far as I'm concerned isn't really part of the series.

>hating on the assassin gimmick
>hating on the shock gloves
Nigga

I liked Origins for the most part; it's a well told origin story. However, I think they made the assassin stuff seem more prominent than it actually was in the advertising and the shock gloves felt like they detracted from the overall Batman feeling.

There's too many cutscenes in Origins and that one bridge in the middle of the city that ages to traverse was boring asf, but the game was fairly solid otherwise.

One of the main complaints I heard about it was that the gameplay was too similar to City, but since it didn't have too many of the "do this thing 3 times and every time has the same long animation", so in some regards it was more fun, especially the bits with the shock gloves.

>and as far as I'm concerned isn't really part of the series.

Rocksteady disagrees with you.

Rocksteady can suck a dick, they didn't even make Origins.

>It feels like literally nothing is happening plot-wise

So, you haven't actually played the series. Good to know.

Arkham Knight was one of the best uses of the Joker I've seen in any medium. Making him literally a part of Batman's psyche was a brilliant metaphor and commentary on a character hack writers just throw in because he's the classic foil to Batman. From the reviews I've read I'll probably like Lego Batman for doing the same.

I didn't like Origins' level design or setup but they briefly skirted with Joker and Batman's love affair and Bruce telling Alfred off was a great scene. Asylum is okay and City just feels like a crazy comic book fan service story which is fine, the game was just long in the tooth.

>After Batman v Superman I never thought I'd get chills hearing Batman say Martha again.

When he said that "I am darkness. I am the night. I am Batman" speech in the hallucination I marked out hard. Instant nostalgia bomb of watching the cartoon as a kid.

>Titan Joker
>Surprise R'as!
>Surprise Joker!
>Riddler shit 2 the Xtreme!

still solid overall but they all have at least one thing that diminishes it.

It's my favorite of the series, by far. The winter/Christmas backdrop remind me of Batman Returns and give me the childlike nostalgia it invokes, I love early/Year One/Long Halloween Bats most of all, so the whole being relatively new to things and establishing his relationship with Gordon was great. Further on this line, the supporting cast is smaller, and Batman is angry and douchy, with no one to rely on but Alfred. We got to see the actual Batcave and wander around it. I enjoyed sneaking through the GCPD, and beating up an entire room full of cops that the game told me was a really bad idea (I'm Batman, bitch), ect. The combat felt as good as ever to me.

Oh, and it felt the 'right' length too. Asylum was too short, though understandably so. City was about right, but I found a lot of the backtracking annoying and blatant padding. Knight was far too fucking long, and I still haven't beaten it yet. I got about half way through before tiring of it.

Origins though has a pretty tight narrative, and an exciting story starting pretty much when the Joker is introduced.

I still need to play Arkham Knight. I have it, but it was literally unplayable because of the shitty PC port.

Is it actually functional now?

>No Suicide Squad game

Sick of DC movies doing so bad they kill corporate interest in the fucking brand name and they drop it like a hot potato.

What style of game would you want to see a potential Suicide Squad game in?

I could see a potential for a tactical "shooter" like Fallout Tactics or Steamworld Heist(at least for Deadshot's trick shooting) working well with it.

Or if you want to go multiplayer, do a Suicide Squad version of Payday, though I can imagine certain things like Deadshot's trick shooting being a little difficult to pull off.

not everybody uses Guns or Projectiles on the squad though

maybe something more like Metal Gear Solid esque gameplay

>maybe something more like Metal Gear Solid esque gameplay
This, sorta.

I want RE5/RE6-style shooting and melee mechanics, with characters having unique special moves.

TOO BAD THAT SHIT'S PROBABLY BEEN CANCELLED ALREADY THOUGH

It's actually one of the few series where Babs isn't a giant cunt and terrible Dickbabs never rears its ugly head. Seriously Arkham Babs is competent but never annoying.

I don't know if they patched it or anything, but it worked fine on my machine (970, i5 6600k, 16gb RAM) when I was playing in December.

Knight was fucking great. I know a lot of people didn't like the vehicle centric missions but the controls on the batmobile were great, and I never felt like using it was a chore.

N2M when it comes to actually navigating gotham I used it pretty much exclusively to launch myself into glides anyway.

Dickbabs is great fuck you

>Maybe, I'm not sure I'd agree that knowing it was Jason would affect enjoyment of the plot too much. If you were expecting the identity of the Arkham Knight to be a huge part of the plot, then sure the way they handled it wasn't great.
They kept insisting in the lead-up to the release "He's NOT Jason, he is a completely original character of our own!" There's misdirection, and then there's flat-out lying.

I got it on sale for 5 bucks during the winter sale and it runs fine.

>It feels like literally nothing is happening plot-wise
If you have said "gameplay-wise", I would understand. Would disagree, but understand.

But "nothing happens in the plot" is blatantly false.

Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to add jump scares in Arkham Knight? You're the goddamn Batman. You don't fucking scare Batman.

>I liked Origins for the most part; it's a well told origin story. However, I think they made the assassin stuff seem more prominent than it actually was in the advertising and the shock gloves felt like they detracted from the overall Batman feeling.
This tbqh. I remember really early on, after Arkham City came out, the rumor was that the next game was going to be a prequel about Batman's first battle with the Joker. Then everyone sorta forgot about that, cuz it was just a rumor... then for some reason, they came up with the "Black Mask hires assassins" plot, and then used it purely as a smokescreen for their actual intent... which was to do the story of Batman v.s the Joker for the first time after all.

The assassins' plot really could've stood on tis own... hell, BANE alone could've supported a whole plot.

Love the "No Man's Land" feel of Arkham City. Especially the gang war between Joker, Two-Face and Penguin. The Arkham series has the best version of Freeze since the DCAU.

have you tried frantically mashing A? that usually helps

I strongly disagree. The Arkhamverse is my favorite version of Batman. I wish they relased more Arkham Episodes for Knight, movies, comics to expand this story.

The first one was fun.

It's weird how your least favorite plots were the ones written by Dini. I love them all the same story wise, but my least favorite game is Origins.

Too bad they just replaced Dickbabs with Timbabs which is even worse because they clearly did it because he was Robin despite Dick already existing and the ship already existing

The Freeze bit of Knight was fucking amazing, I can't believe it wasn't part of the main game. I really like the Arkham version of Penguin too.

Origins is the weakest in the series, but it's not as terrible as some people would say. While I really like the Batman/Joker and Joker/Harley bits, I still would put Origins at the bottom ranking. It was fun to play at Christmas time though.

The story for Asylum was really solid, iIt did a great job of establishing that universe, it just wasn't anything particularly exceptional imho. It was just let down by some elements of the gameplay undermining the vibe of the story like Batman nearly continually skulking around vents and that detective vision was so ridiculously useful that you could almost go half the game without seeing the Asylum without a blue filter on. The titan Joker fight was pretty naff too.

City was really solid too, I loved the No Man's Land vibe, but as I mentioned above, the padded gameplay sapped drama/excitement out of certain sequences.

Also in none of Asylum, City or Origins did I feel particularly compelled to do the Riddler's riddles.

It's not that I think any of the games are bad, but Knight is definitely my favourite. It had a much bigger Batman story and it handled it well, it did a much better job in story/gameplay pacing and getting me invested in everything. I was really surprised by how well executed the Joker thing was, and my thoughts going in were that I'd hate that part.

Yeah AK was brilliant, yet another batman dies but not really story.

I like to think Dick and was finally free to be a slut. Tim and Babs are both tech, bland, and annoying. They deserved each other

So where does Arkham VR fall into the timeline? Between City and Knight, I assume? Anything particularly interesting happen in it?

It's just a dream Bruce keeps having because of the Joker toxin in his blood

what

True, true.

Actually, thinking about Fallout Tactics, I just realized XCOM:EU style gameplay could work as a good substitute.

>those tank stealth missions
>not a chore

>having to fight like 100 of those basic robot cars at once
>not a chore

The tank sections weren't challenging, fun or interesting in any way, just tedious and time consuming. Added nothing to the game (and that's not even talking about how we were forced to use the car for puzzles and the riddler content was literally reduced to driving through racetracks).

I really love the Arkhamverse Penguin. I think he's underrated.

Opinions, man, i liked the tank battles, but i give you that they were excesive, there should have been no more than 10 of them in the whole game.

Oh yeah, i only dislike the dumb explanation for his bottle monocle (that for medical advice he couldn't remove it). Besides of that he was great, my favorite version of the Penguin.

in the thumbnail her batsymbol looks like massive cleavage

Well its attached to decent cleavage regardless

The Joker toxin is making him hallucinate that he is driven insane by it and ends up killing Dick and Tim. The whole game starts out as a murder mystery where Bruce is figuring out who killed Dick and at the end it's revealed it's a dream.

There's a bunch of hints, both subtle and not, that it's all a dream and none of it is read.

Also, that's why he distances himself so much from everyone else in AK.

A lot of its incarnations of the characters will stick as the best ones for me

Imitation-Saruman was great for Hugo Strange

And Origins' batsuit is my all-time favourite

The padded body-armour and mighty boots/gauntlets is very fitting

Poor writing

Play Origins instead

Origins isn't exactly the gold standard

I agree, the only one they did awfully was Bane (and Origins Bane was actually decent). For most of the others they're my favorite version or close to it.

I wish they gave more of a spotlight on the batfamily to be honest. I felt like they got shafted.

Which is why it was annoying that they made him Ra's al Ghul's bitch and was overshadowed by him and Joker. The plot with Strange and Batman was strong enough as it was.

I still prefer the suit from the beginning of AK as my all-time favorite Arkham suit, but the Origins suit is certainly a close second. He really does seem more powerful with the added bulk and protection the armor provides.

Plot 1 Joker takes over Arkahm

Plot 2 Dr Strange transforms part of Gotham into an open air prison

Plot 3 Black Mask put out a hit on Batman

Plot 4 Scarecrow and Arkahm Knight gas the city

Is your autism satisfied?

>Black and Grey
>Dirty Yellow Belt
>Sleek armor
>Big and Bold symbol
>Abs and "Underwear"
>Ear length medium.
>Original voice actor

Pretty much the perfect batman to 3D suit. Combines classic animated series with realism.

Batfleck was probably my favorite suit in Arkham Knight though

I liked Origins's multiplayer

Instead you get Timbabs where Tim acts like Dick

Also in the Arkham series, Tim has been Robin for like ten of Batman's twelve years

Origins is the best in the series.

How? I don't hate Origins as much as everyone else but I don't see how it exceeds any of the other games in any way, besides having a non-shit Bane.

Asylum and City were bretty gud,
Origins and Arkham were terribly boring though.

Same here, shame the matchmaking took ages to form a group of people. Had a lot of fun though.

See I never felt like the vents in Asylum took away from the vibe. If anything, they underlined how the inmates had took over the Asylum that Batman had to sneak around like a rat.

I agree about City being padded though. Less through gameplay, more through the sidequests not being integrated into the story as well as they could have been. It always takes me out a little when I do a new playthrough when I have to go halfway across the city to find which phone Zsazz is using.

I can definitely see why someone might like the story of Origins more; it's the Arkham game where Batman feels most like a human being, definitely. The interactions between Bruce and Alfred are stellar. A compelling story really can bring a game up in the eyes of some players, even if the gameplay is flawed.

Am I the only one who feels that they changed the whole ending for Arkham City? Or that they left a chunk of it out because of time issues. Like think about it

>Hugo Strange knowing Batman's identity is never a major plot point rather than just an anecdote.
>He leaves a note in Crime Alley saying "It will end where it all began".
>He was presented as the main bad guy in trailers and promotional material.

It's like there was more to his story than what they ended up presenting.

Half the story is in those stupid unlockable bonus files.

I feel like everyone who complained about the driving having bad controls never used the brakes/handbrake. What's more, you can tap the 'turn into tank mode' button and instantly change direction of momentum.
Basically I too had a lot of fun driving around

City's Freeze boss is the best boss in the series due to the fact that you have to use every kind of takedown on him as each time you use any one method he shuts down your possibility of ever using that one again, so you have a really varied boss fight with no phases as you can use the methods of damaging him in any order. It's a really good bossfight.
Arkham's Freeze's story ending was tragic as fuck, it was sad and thus well done.

Yeh it's easy, and i'm not defending it, even on Hard with no indicators it's too easy, but it's still fun if you use all your available moves in fights and not just spam attack and counter.
Or of course you can get a 5x multiplier in 3 hits (1x -> 3x -> 5x due to double multiplier if timing hits right) then quickuse triple batarang, then quickuse aerial takedown. If you've never seen it before, it's hilarious, you can take out 10+ guys in 5 seconds anytime anywhere.

Just a few days ago I finished 100%ing all 4 games in a sort of 2 week marathon of playing all 4 on hard and getting 100%, and although I see its flaws Knight is also my favourite, but, the Joker was anywhere from eh to fuckingwhy, scarecrow as a main villain would have been great, just as origin was fuckingwhy when black mask isn't black mask but joker and all assassins bar joker are less rivals and more sidequests. And Jason in Knight is able to be seen a fucking mile away, seriously even within the Arkham universe how the fuck did Batman not even guess Jason for a second before having it shoved in his face it's Jason.

Also batgirl DLC was great

>He leaves a note in Crime Alley saying "It will end where it all began".

That sort of came true with the final battle taking place in Monarch Theatre, but yeah, it felt very awkward and last-minute.

>Dude
>Joker
>Lmao
Entire Arkham series.

the only bad thing about origins is how generic the artstyle became, the Arkham series always had a solid balance between realism and comicbook accuracy, then Origins decides to go so tacticool that they had to account for it in knight by redesigning batman and the batmobile, Origins desperately needed a rendition of the grey and blue

Tim acting like Dick is an improvement for Tim. Also TomBabs didn't have half the drama. The timeline is really funky though.

You know, I was thinking about that too but I didn't think to pin it on Origins, couldn't Rocksteady have ignored their artistic style?

...

It's just how Rocksteady and WB do things, they can't stop stroking Jokers pale flaccid shaft. Every time they try to prop up a different villain they immediately fall back on Joker because he's the most iconic. It worked once but then in Origins and Knight it just felt tired.

Im pretty sure WB wouldnt agree with silently retconning games

Well the look of Knight is also probably due in part to the move to the next generation of consoles. They probably thought a more realistic style would be more visually impressive. And graphically the game does look great, just a bit bland in some areas.

Rocksteady had nothing to do with Origins. it was just WB Studios reusing assets.

Don't mind me, just posting the best Batsuit of all time, but seriously I don't get the appeal to Batflecks suit can I get some perspective.

>I don't get the appeal to Batflecks suit
your not alone user
i think the suit looks great in Concept art but the actual excecution makes ben look akward. it obviously tries to be TDKR costume by trying to make ben look old and fat but doesnt look like that at all, and the neck is too huge

Maybe, but then it baffles me how they can fuck up a batsuit inspired by TDKR when that one was pretty simple.

Origins was okay, but i felt so tricked by the trailers over promoting Deathstroke, expecting him to be a huge part of the plot, and in the end you get one shitty fight against him and then he's gone.

I know it was because he was playable, but they could've make him important to the plot.

by trying to adapt a comic without understanding the context behind it, Ben should have gotten a sleeker looking batsuit, he doesnt need muscle padding he can pull it off himself

I feel like he should have been this Origins' Vergil. With like three fights
>First fight Batman barely scrapes away with his life
>Second fight is more even
>Thid fight Batman is more than a match for him

>he was playable

Fuck that, he was basically a reskin of Robin from Arkham City.