Thoughts on the Arkham games and their portrayal of the Bat universe?

Thoughts on the Arkham games and their portrayal of the Bat universe?

How would you rank them?

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Everything was downhill from Arkham Asylum, but City was ok.

Batman himself was awfully plain, but they did the other characters pretty well. (Except Bane and Riddler)

Best Story: Origins
Best Gameplay: City
Best Graphics: Knight
Best Character/World Design: Origins
Best Overall: Asylum

It was okay until after Arkham City. They made Bane a dunb brute and Peguin a chav lord, but eveyone else was pretty good. Arkham Origins shit on some villains as well, like Shiva, Deathstroke, Black Mask, and shoved Joker in. Althought the rest of the game is pretty good, Batman has the most character in Origins. Arkham Knight was a technical master piece (at least on console) but the story had little to no redeeming factors.

Arkham knight had the potential to be fucking great. But there's too man sub plots going on and the boss fights were absolute garbage.
Two face, man bat, deathstroke are some I can think of that should have had a much better fight

puke

I liked Cockney Penguin. The Arkham games felt like the only place he could exist. I quite liked Origins also, City felt like it had everything it needed to be a great game, but it tried to do something huge with everything it had and it became bloated. Asylum works out best for its limited scope, while Knight completely shat the bed and repeated the sins of City.

Too many corpses. There was waaaaay too much death.

>They made Bane a dunb brute
He pieced together Bruce's identity on his own

I recently found out about some cut content from Arkham Knight that I think would have made the game more interesting

youtu.be/eGQxQrHLWB4
youtu.be/eMMryHx2XUc
youtu.be/lIg0e_aFg2E

In Origins, but in City he was just a dumb brute. Asylum you don't see enough of him to make that judgement. At least Origins explained why he's like that.

Asylum had the fair reason of him being Venom'd to hell and back.City, he just wanted more Venom because I guess Bane is a Drug Addict now.

Doesn't he just get a concussion and forget? It's bee na while since I played Origins.

Asylum was the best, but I have a soft spot for Knight since it just has so much in it that I love Batman wise

A No Mans Land like story, interesting concept of Scarecrow being the main villain, a great Joker story, incorporating pretty much every member of the Rouges gallery with their own sidequests, using Dick, Jason AND Tim, lots of customization opens, tons of references and callbacks especially to TAS, etc.

I agree with everyone who says that there was too much Batmobile and not enough boss fights, and the "true" ending was dumb,
but to me, Knight just felt like a definitive Batman work

Gonna replay it soon to get myself hyped up for Justice League

In origins he overdosed on a drug that gives him memory loss to get swoler.

Mah nigga
>Captcha asked me to pick out the apartments.
>Every apartment looked like a goddamn crackhouse

I loved how Asylum felt like it was basically set in the comics universe instead of its own proprietary one. Then City ruined that, sadly.

Asylum, City and Knight are all such brilliant pieces of game design, I've spent hundreds of hours in them and could talk all day about how genius they are.

In the story and art department though they really slid backwards after Asylum as it became more about taking elements of the Bat-mythos and "Arkhamizing" them than just drawing directly from the comics. I blame that on how big the games got financially.

Asylum actually felt like Dini wrote it. City did not.

Good games really and I think they're pretty good Batman adaptations. Origins is my favourite one, it gets shat on too much just because it didn't improve on City very much and was a game of similar quality instead.

Also, am I the only one who would love to see "arkham" games with other DC characters? I thoroughly enjoyed playing as Nightwing or Robin.

What I'd love even more though, is a video game series about some new superhero, not based on any existing one. Just developing his character, building up his own mythos etc. Could be pretty sweet.

It looks like the PS4 Spider-Man is seeming Arkham inspired, so there's that at least

If it's literally just Arkham with Spiderman 2 style swinging and a decent story, I'll consider it an absolute 10/10

>with Spiderman 2 style swinging

We're been saying this for literally every Spidey game since Spider-Man 2 and it's never happened.

Asylum: 8/10
City: 7/10
Knight: Batmobile/10

They're enjoyable games. Personally some of my favorite last-gen games. Even Origins which people like to shit on for some reason I consider a solid 8/10. Haven't played Knight yet, but I am looking forward to it. I've also played Blackgate and it was awful -- almost painful at times. Haven't played the mobile game either and don't intend to.

As far as portrayal, there are hits and misses. Probably the best adaptation of the Joker ever. Best Riddler. Best Grundy. Best Black Mask. Didn't like the Penguin because he had an accent for some reason and had a broken bottle for a monocle which just seemed OTT. Same with Ivy and her moans. I didn't mind Bane as a hulking monster until his appearance in Origins which actually looked pretty cool until he took off the mask which is very painful I'm told and got hopped up on goofballs.

Favorite game is probably Asylum simply because the environment felt ominous and hellish and evolved with the story.

>Probably the best adaptation of the Joker ever. Best Riddler. Best Grundy. Best Black Mask.

Do you read comics? At all?

>best Grundy
This nigga never read Starman or what

Question what's better arkham knight on PS4 or the return to arkham asylum remaster also Ps4

Correct answer.

I actually enjoy Arkham's rogues gallery the most, pound for pound, out of any batman media.

Serious House on Serious Earth is up there tho

Chavlord penguin is amazing dude

The rest of your points check out tho

City>Origins=Asylum>Knight

Asylum is great, City is pretty good, everything after City is shit.

Overall I liked the Arkham versions of characters, they were basically distilled to their "deal" accurately (as expected of Dini). My only gripe is that they left out Cassandra Cain while putting in everyone else including all sorts of less important characters.

If you have a universe where Oracle exists, you should have Cass too IMO.

i don't give a FUCK what patricians taste dictates, Arkham Knight Batsuit is best batsuit

Asylum > City > Origins >>>>> Knight in overall quality.
My comments on the series can be summed up as: dislike the gameplay, love the aesthetics, have very split opinions on the story and portrayal of the cast.

>Batman
He's Batman. That's really it. He doesn't really get much character apart from Origins. It's just Kevin Conroy doing his Batman voice and punching the villains. In fairness at least the series understands that the villains are the appeal of Batman, so he's just serviceable.

>Joker
I actually really liked this version, mostly in City where his physical condition not only made them take him off center stage a little (and thus he wasn't as overused as he was in the other games), but the sickness gave a wonderful restraint for Mark Hamill to work around with.

>Penguin
As someone who adores Penguin and has him as his favorite Batman villain I have very split opinions on him.
On one hand, I like how refreshingly scummy he is and I like that he is not treated as a joke. His levels are some of my favorites in the game.
But goddamnit his voice is so unbearably awful to listen to and the bottle-in-eye will never not be retarded.

>Riddler
Best Riddler we've ever had outside of TAS and the comics (and even the latter has been very lacking as of late). I really like that they made him adequately threatening in a way that didn't push the character too far into Saw territory, and that he was just the right amount of pretentious smugness and foolish arrogance to make him likeable and yet punchable.

>Mr.Freeze
Best goddamn version of Freeze we've had in fifteen years.
Maurice LaMarche was perfect and the writing for the character was just right.

>Mad Hatter
He was okay. Not as good as he was in TAS but we'll likely never see that version again, and certainly much better than he is in the comics.
But he wasn't very memorable. But he was there.

Love the series. All of them except Blackgate and the mobiles.
My only gripe with the characters was that Joker went too much into edgy territory, and some of them werent used to their full potential like Strange and Red Hood. Which reminds me, the "Arkham Knight" character really didnt need to be Jason, for fucks sake Rocksteady.

To me, its Asylum = City > Knight > Origins. Each has its own strength and weakness but I like them all.

>Harley
Even if I liked Harley Quinn, and I don't, I still probably would have hated this version. So unbearably grating and obnoxious. I muted the game everytime she had lines.

>Ras/Hush/Deadshot/Ivy
I really couldn't give a shit about these so there's nothing I can say about them

>Two-Face
He was barely in the series and when he did appear he sucked ass. I feel like they decided to inspire themselves more on Aaron Eckhart and Tommy Lee Jones and they just made him a perpetually angry and fanatical maniac ranting about fate.

>Hugo Strange
Huge props for them to actually take Hugo and make him respectable and intimidating again. He was great, easily the best version of the character in non-comic media (which isn't saying much but it's something).

>Scarecrow
His boss fights were my favorite part of Asylum and I was pretty fond of his design.
Then in Arkham Knight they turned into an overdesigned edgelord who spoke entirely in trailer bait and got sidelined by the Arkham Knight/Joker hallucination stuff.
I was pretty dissapointed because I was into the idea of Scarecrow being the main villain.

Pretty much this.

Also, Rocksteady research work is priceless:

youtube.com/watch?v=tHiC1i608Ok

Then Knight went and shit on Deathstroke even more by not only giving him nothing to do but drive a tank, but then he gets out and jobs to Batman.

Arkham City
Arkham Asylum
Arkham Origins
Arkham Knight

Arkham Asylum Batsuit is the best. Get that greebled shit out of here.

The only thing I hate more than seeing the Batfamily take center stage before the villains, is watching the Batfamily take center stage AS villains.

Everything about Jason's participation in that game was so predictable and stupid that it was the straw that broke the camel's back for me in regards to Arkham Knight.

Not a batfag.

I played City and Origins recently due to them being cheap on Steam. I thought they were good games, but I have no desire to replay them or buy any of the others. A lot of the little things just bothered me; tiny bits of verisimilitude that are pretty vital to my enjoyments of the games. I recognize that objectively they're great, but they're just not my cup of tea. Examples:

>Bats punches people in the head repeatedly with gauntlets, smashes their heads into concrete, detonates mines at their feet throwing their bodies around like ragdolls, etc. yet never kills a single person
>Bats relies pretty much solely on his fists for combat even against superpowered foes that he really should be using gadgets on; basic goons can take an infinite amount of explosions or taser shots without being bothered other than being stunned for a couple seconds
>Bats has no problem leaving people knocked out in a city full of murderers and rapists, outside in the winter in the northeastern USA
>Freeze was the only boss fight that really required outside the box thinking, when part of Batman's whole appeal is that he's a thinker who comes up with ways to exploit his opponents' weaknesses
>Bats uses shitty smoke pellets instead of flashbangs that would have a greater range and stun people for longer than a few seconds
>goons are all morons who can't move their heads upwards which is the only reason the sneaking mechanics work at all

A (mostly) non-lethal run of Deus Ex: Human Revolution is closer to what I would consider an ideal Batman game.

As for what I think are more objective bad things: combat is fairly simplistic. The enemy AI is terrible. Batman is depicted as basically a strawman in regards to his no-killing stance. Bosses are same-y. Bane and Ra's got kind of screwed. Joker wears out his welcome and hijacks every plot (Bats should have just let him die). The plot of City is completely absurd even by comic book standards.

Everything about the writing is so fucking video gamey. Even when it's Dini writing it still has to be shallow and one dimensional and juvenile if it's a video game apparently.

The games are directed at people who have never read a Batman comic in their life.

Knight really improves on the stealth. If you take down goons from above multiple times they figure out you're above them and start looking up for you, if you take them down from the grates they start checking all the grates, if you take them out with walls they stay away from walls, and so on.

Similar to the sequel to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided though they took the criticism of the boss fights in City to heart and instead of crafting more that were like Freeze they cut most of them out altogether.

Overall Knight is an incredibly underrated game, people completely ignore how vastly it expanded on both combat and stealth and just focus on complaining about the Tankmobile.

>The Riddler
>Bad
He's one of maybe four characters with an arc in the entire series

My favorite games of all time. My favorite version of Batman, i'm a batfag because of them, i used to prefer Spider-Man. I don't want them to reboot the arkhamverse, i want more movies and games to fill the gaps.

>tfw i can't play Knight thanks to some sort of bug on my PS4, since i can play the other games just fine

Finally a game series where the collectible side content is actually interesting. It helps that it's all Batman themed.

>Complaining about the Batmobile
Git gud.

>interesting concept of Scarecrow being the main villain

and you do mean "concept" right, not execution?

because I am still fucking mad.

Honestly if it wasn't for the heavy reliance on the Batmobile(the car shouldn't have more boss fights than Batman), the story and lack of boss fights it would be GOAT. They improved every aspect of the gameplay that could've introduce new boss fights but they felt that turning the Batmobile into a tank made more sense

Which is more strange cause if Jason or Scarecrow would've just put men in the tanks they could've easily won, they obviously had the man power to do it.

>Huge props for them to actually take Hugo and make him respectable and intimidating again. He was great, easily the best version of the character in non-comic media (which isn't saying much but it's something).

I would agree with this if they hadn't made him Ra's's bitch at the last minute and had him overshadowed by him and Joker.

Tim x Babs feels so wrong.

First DLC I ever bought was to get Tim in a better costume.

Finally played Origins. I can see why some people say it ahs the best overall story, it has a fairly clean narrative and Bruce has actual personality unlike the other games.

I just wish the game didn't sideline Bane at the very end in favor of Joker.

>le git gud XD
Fuck off. Everything batmobile-related was boring tripe and an excuse for Rocksteady to not make good bosses.
>that garbage Deathstroke "fight"

I'll give you the Deathstroke fight.

> and an excuse for Rocksteady to not make good bosses

>that Arkham Knight "fight" at the end

The first is still my favorite. Love the atmosphere and horror elements. City was great, but the ending is completely ruined for me cause of Knight. Origins was exponentially better than Knight. It was kinda repetitive though. Knight was absolutely awful, hated how Scarecrow got pushed aside for another Joker story. The Batmobile was way overused and got old fast. One of the most disappointing games I've ever played.

I only really liked Asylum.
Best atmosphere, best immersion and good mix of superhero and low-key horror elements.
Other games in my opinion seem to not understand that the less is more. They feel too crowded with the characters to cater to fans and too rushed, too many new retarded gadgets that make you feel less immersed because you can't imagine them in a good Batman comic (people may like it because it gives more variety in gameplay, but I personally don't), some pretty shitty villain incarnations (hi, Two-Face)
I give Arkham City that Mr Freeze boss fight was great, though.

The tank shit just felt like an excuse to appeal to cawadoody gamers. They really should have just made it a car. I loved solving puzzles with it and driving around the city but tank battles felt so out of place.

They should have taken influence from Burnout Paradise in how to make interesting car chase gameplay, but with tons of gadgets and tricks.

Assassin's Creed reskin, garbage.

i thought asylum was the best one

the others were pretty good gameplay wise but they had so many missed opportunities...

>no co-op where player 2 is robin
>no ability to play the other characters in free roam (mods don't count)
>they were too afraid to have someone other than the joker as the main villain

>Sup Forums
>reading Comics

From all the hype and trailers and press I thought Strange was gonna be a major player. Instead he's in the first cutscene and then reappears towards the end and the rest of the game is about the Joker.

What does penguin sound like to you, Sup Forums? Arkham penguin got me into the idea of a penguin with a more toned down nasal cockney, sort of a combination with BTAS, with maybe a bit of the 60's show.

I liked it, it was really good

I'm still mad about Hush

Throughout Arkham City you're tracking the Identity Thief, wondering (or at least supposed to) who this mysterious killer might be. There's intrigue and suspense and when it's finally revealed to be Tommy Elliot, you really want to see how it pans out in Arkham Knight. It's a great hook. What is Hush's master plan that he needed to steal Bruce Wayne's face? What diabolical plan could he be formulating? What other things might he be up to?

And then it's finally revealed in Knight that he his grand design was......to break into Wayne's office and steal some cash.
That was literally it.

I will never not be mad.

They did the same thing with the Titan barrel tease at the end of Asylum that resulted in hardly anything in City

They kind of did when they had you track down containers of Titan with Bane
But yeah, the payoff was pretty weak

It was just a sidequest user. There was no reason it was gonna get followed up on and expanded in sequels more than any other side quest. Your fanboyism blinded you.

Actually now that I think about it they did it again with Azrael too

>His boss fights were my favorite part of Asylum and I was pretty fond of his design.
>Then in Arkham Knight they turned into an overdesigned edgelord who spoke entirely in trailer bait and got sidelined by the Arkham Knight/Joker hallucination stuff.
>I was pretty dissapointed because I was into the idea of Scarecrow being the main villain.


This x100

Why does everyone praise that version of Scarecrow? He fucking sucked. If there's one thing a scary character shouldn't be, it's dull.

>>that Arkham Knight "fight" at the end
>NO YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND BRUCE
>the real fight is getting through troy baker's whining without pressing the mute button
>linkin park plays softly

The way the suit kept getting more fucked up and torn through the game was incredible.

I like the games, I kinda like the world, but I dislike the Batman. Honestly, he's occasionally kinda OOC, like stealing Electrocutioner's gloves untested, and many weird moments, honestly.

They're good, but if that's your first contact with Batman, you will have very flawed idea of Batman like a character, his personality and stuff.

To be fair, this IS offset by many villains being downright amazing. I think the game has easily the best version of Riddler in history of comics, generally writers have little idea what to do with him, and it turns out he is a PERFECT fit for Batman games.

I don't know, the way he jumped off the rooftop to save Joker and got out of Joker's "kill Bane or I'll die" trap without any deaths were very in character and more memorable I think, which offsets the out of character moments.

I'm not saying it's bad version of Batman, it just has some things that are kind grating.

Because it's EDGY now with a MUTILATED FACE, user.

Because he was in charge and got things done.
He was still criminally underused and I'm annoyed about that, but at least he commanded respect while he was present.

They didn't even do that right.

The whole game I expected him to rip the mask off and show a truly scary face that he had crafted from his own injuries. (based on some of the dialogue from the mooks and also this freaky face that came with the toy)

So imagine how pleased I was when I found out the scary face was just a decoration on a wall near the end of the game and his mask really is his face. Exciting.

Scarecrow didn't pull any actual scary shit in this game.

Seriously, where was the spooky nightmare scarecrow scenes?

DLC only. What a shit show

I don't play a lot of video games but I checked Asylum and City out based on the hype and holy fuck do people have low standards for writing in video games.

People call this the DEFINITIVE take on Batman? Based on what? Every line in the game is an edgy one liner or a contrived set up for a quest. There is no characters or dialogue in the game of any substance.

Still mad Tim was paired with Barbara and no real explanation and very little dick interactions

I really love asylum but city is my favorite. Haven't played knight because I'm a last gen consolefag. Origins is good but I haven't played since I got autosaved in an endless void.

How is Origins? Should I skip it? Are the glitch rumors true if I'm playing on XB360?