The Batman: Arkham Games Kept Getting Better (Instead of Worse)

That moment when you realize that an entire saga could’ve been avoided if Batman just busted through the damn window sooner.

CONTENT WARNING!

This post contains sensitive material that may not be suitable for all readers. The material in question includes:

- Bad language
- Graphic violence
- Frightening imagery
- Flashing imagery (for the epileptic)
- Mental health topics (treatment, delusions, etc.)
- Mentions of abuse and trauma
- Sexual and suggestive content

Just Some More Senseless Nostalgia
Fourth Place Winner: Arkham Asylum
Third Place Winner: Arkham City
Second Place Winner: Arkham Origins
First Place Winner: Arkham Knight
The Perfect Entry For an Imperfect Saga

Just Some More Senseless Nostalgia

My imagination used to go livid with the possibilities of a Suicide Squad game after Batman: Arkham Origins and Arkham Origins: Blackgate teased the possibility. Now, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is on the horizon, and as one would expect from me by now on this blog, I’ve been considerably more enthusiastic about playing as anyone other than Harley Quinn (I was five hundred times more intrigued to know WWE wrestler Samoa Joe was voicing King Shark, and I’m not even a WWE fan!) Despite my relative lack of passion for the Suicide Squad in general, I’ve still had enough good will in the game’s success thanks to the promising gameplay footage and my familiarity with the studio behind it. Of course, my interest waned when each character’s trailer lasted less than fifty seconds, with a fair chunk of that runtime advertising preorder content, and if there was anything I wanted to know ahead of time, it was where the characters have been during and since the Arkham series. Then again, two later developments have only served to drop my anticipation like a rock: the return of the Joker and Poison Ivy. Yes, the latter is reborn as a younger character á la Groot and the former comes from a parallel universe, but it perfectly demonstrates the way that resurrecting characters nullifies the impact of their deaths, especially when they were still deceased by the end of the main timeline.

Plus, as much as I enjoy coming up with Elseworld story ideas for my comic series ElectroNuke, like the old west story arc “The Thunderous Three”, I know to make those brief, fun little asides that don’t interfere with the main timeline—doing so would rid the universe of rules and consequence, as anything could be retconned freely without an ounce of consideration for critical previous story events. In short, anyone who died in the Arkham series should stay dead except for Solomon Grundy because it’s Solomon Grundy, even after Batman ripped his fucking heart out of his open chest cavity. More than anything, it also forces me to circle back to my Joker and Harley post here, as that child-minded crackpot has once again been proven inseparable from her dirtbag of a partner.

Now, at this point, what convinced me to write this post in particular seems pretty obvious… but in actuality, it’s only one of my reasons for doing so. The second factored in around the same time as these worrying revelations about Kill the Justice League, when I decided to replay the Arkham games one-by-one. I started chronologically with Arkham Origins and Cold, Cold Heart (I skipped Blackgate to stick with the main titles only, but also because I’ve never actually played it) before moving onto Arkham Asylum, the latter of which I probably haven’t played so extensively for at least five years. While I found myself thoroughly enjoying Origins and its DLC expansion thanks in part to the free roam menu included with the community patch, which allowed me to wear alternate batsuits before the story was finished, my experience with Asylum was practically tantamount to my first time playing Sonic ’06, as mentioned in my previous Sonic game post here. For reference, the best one-word description of that experience is “deflation”, as in the kind of experience where you’re left feeling indifferent by so much that happens that you’re just sort of waiting for it to end. Of course, even just the prospect of a Batman fan holding anything against Arkham Asylum sounds like a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a lifetime of online harassment, so I feel it’s important to clarify that I by no means hate Arkham Asylum, or even really dislike it for that matter.

Much like Spirited Away in my older post here, I struggle with it in a technical and narrative sense, as it represents yet another unpopular ideology of mine: that each of the Arkham games improved far more in these and other areas than they suffered, namely in regard to their writing, gameplay, and comic accuracy. I suppose we’ll see if Kill the Justice League maintains that upward path or plunges off the edge, but I’m consistently cynical most of the time, so I’m just going to stay optimistic for the time being and get everything about my complicated relationship with Asylum off my chest. Now’s the time for you to decide whether you want to stick around or click off, because the lunatics are ironically about to run the asylum.

Fourth Place Winner: Arkham Asylum

Might as well get any blasphemy out of the way up front. I made sure to describe my relationship with Arkham Asylum as complicated, as it’s in no way purely negative. In fact, I get the innate feeling that my less positive feelings toward it come from the fact that it wasn’t even my first game from this series. See, back in early 2013, I got myself an Xbox 360 shortly after relocating, and I was even able to buy the Game of the Year editions of both Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. Yet, for whatever less-than-sensible reason, I chose to only buy City, thus skipping the first chapter entirely and abandoning the invaluable pre-story (although I did frequently watch playthroughs of Asylum at the time, so I luckily had a sufficient frame of reference). I’ll elaborate more on my connection to that game in the next section, as Asylum was the one I most recently explored and therefore have the most to say about. Just to start out with positives, it’s essentially a classic Batman comic brought to life in a fully 3D-rendered recreation, having taken pretty clear inspiration from story arcs like Joker’s Asylum and A Serious House on Serious Earth, and the gothic exterior of the asylum itself is as beautiful as it is faithful, even in retrospect. After all, this is coming from a fan of that same cryptic autumn atmosphere, as well as musical artists like Pinback who evoke it. It also helps that the story is admittedly streamlined compared to, say, Arkham Knight‘s, even if I honestly prefer the writing in that title—it’s just about Joker breaking out of Arkham and turning men into monsters using an enhanced variant of Bane’s venom, with other supervillains like Scarecrow and Killer Croc being let out.

Speaking of Dr. Crane, his nightmare sequences are the most memorable parts of the game for good reason, slowly and seamlessly transitioning ordinary gameplay into eerie surreal dreamscapes that prey on Batman’s greatest fears (granted, they do all remain stuck on his parents’ deaths as opposed to something more recent, like the murder of Jason Todd or Barbara’s paralysis, both of which are finally covered in detail during Arkham Knight.) I mean, by the time of that third nightmare, it basically becomes the Batman equivalent of Too Many Cooks, starting out with off-putting oddities like the intercom voice asking, “Did anyone catch the game last night?” before fittingly descending into total madness.

Now, the way I see it, it’s ideal to be more specific and chronologically accurate with the negatives in order to properly explain the broader general issues. For that reason, I will be covering the story from start to finish, but only the strange, problematic, and poorly executed details—the overall structure is solid, but the way it’s written is lacking and even nonsensical at times. It starts out fine, with Joker being brought into Arkham after taking the mayor hostage at city hall (the exact events of which were meant to be told in a cancelled prequel game for the Wii, as described in my older beta content post here). We do get into a recurring problem with the facility of Arkham Asylum in general, though, namely its oftentimes deplorable conditions and more prison-like protocols as opposed to… well… a psychiatric facility devoted to rehabilitation, hence why consciously evil characters like Joker and Penguin should be held at Blackgate, if anywhere. In fact, it unintentionally raises the question of why Batman would send every criminal he apprehends to this facility unless it’s literally the only legal psychiatric facility in Gotham.

Regardless, he is stopped in intensive treatment with the concern that he’ll upset certain patients, which makes perfect sense, but when Joker initiates the breakout with Harley having already taken over security, he strangles one guard to death in front of a single doctor who barely even knows how to respond. Batman punches the window in front of him once during this whole ten-second span, and his full dive through the glass is timed almost perfectly with Joker fleeing the chamber, an electrified gate sealing him off from his mortal foe. Because this triggers the butterfly effect and culminates in every other plot point throughout the series, the subheading of this post wasn’t joking—all Batman needed to do was break the glass a couple seconds sooner, but for some reason, he didn’t. If it were harder to break, like plexiglass, he would’ve been making more attempts to bust through.

He manages to stop Victor Zsasz from electrocuting a security officer to death even though his preferred killing method is cutting, after which we get the more reasonable instance of Batman referring to a mentally disturbed criminal as an “animal”. After he tells another officer that the Joker gas suffocating his colleagues has already sealed their fates, immediately gets asked to help them, and saves his colleagues by clearing the room of gas in a sequence of events that my brain’s still failing to process, we get an inappropriately Sonic ’06-esque cutscene for the most critically acclaimed superhero game of all time. As Joker stands atop a transfer cell in extreme isolation directly in front of him, Batman throws a single batarang and promises to track him down, somehow unable to stop him in the same vein that Sonic and Tails couldn’t chase the Egg Carrier over a mountainous shoreline. By that, I of course mean that they can and simply choose not to. After defeating a hideously mutated patient infected with a substance similar to Bane’s venom and dubbed “Titan” (and by “defeat”, I mean beat him up a little and wait for his goddamn eyeballs to explode), Batman stops himself within moments of listening to Joker and knocking him off the top of the cell to his death, which is perfectly within the nature of a superhero known for never killing under any circumstances. The question is, when is he going to set a criminal on fire with the Batmobile’s exhaust pipe like in Batman Returns?

Ha ha ha… how awkward. Well, after turning poor Bane into roadkill, Batman deduces that venom was extracted from the Central American revolutionary’s bloodstream and used to synthesize Titan by one Dr. Penelope Young, who was weaseled into sharing her research with Joker under his classic alias, Jack White. This is first hinted at when Gordon randomly tries to log into her work computer without her login information the second they step inside her lab. Later, Paul Dini writes it so Dr. Young is roasted alive by his beloved creation Harley Quinn, and following her trail leads Batman to the very tastefully portrayed penitentiary full of very tastefully portrayed mental patients. To be fair, it’s insinuated in Arkham City (and probably confirmed in the comics, which I haven’t read) that they were typical patients who lost all proper brain functioning when Hugo Strange experimented on them, so that certainly saves me an unnecessary rant on the portrayal of mental illness in this series.

Nevertheless, he learns that not only has Poison Ivy produced a spore that can counter the effects of the Titan formula, but the spore is only available growing out of Killer Croc’s lair. It turns out that Croc, a human man named Waylon Jones who was born with a severe skin and growth condition as well as cannibalistic urges, is kept in the sewers beneath Arkham Island, where security captain Aaron Cash says everyone hopes to forget about him (to be fair, Croc did previously devour Cash’s hand in this timeline, but it’s still pretty damn cruel for a man in his position.) On his way to obtain the spores, Batman sets a trap for Croc in case of emergency and claims he’s just an animal that can be baited like any other, thus sparking a hundred and one serious moral debates about Batman and his entire series. Yes, Croc is a deranged killer, but Batman of all people should know better than to use choice language that dehumanizing about a mental patient with such a miserable life story (outside of All-Star Batman, at least, which I thought we’d learned one hell of a valuable lesson from). Hell, we even get to see Croc electrocuted with a steel collar if he so much as verbally threatens Batman, which makes comparing the whole asylum to more modern takes like Arkham State Hospital from Joker and ElectroNuke that much more flabbergasting.

Well, the bait works, and with Poison Ivy now infected with Titan (it only strengthens her plants, though, as a hulking Ivy with truck-sized muscles would be considerably less alluring), it’s time for Batman to synthesize an antidote and stop her as well as Joker… well, that is, until Joker tries to pump Titan into the Gotham River in a brief plot point that really doesn’t need to be there. Upon confronting Joker, who turns out to have kidnapped Gordon at some point after he’d already left the island, the mad clown injects himself with a needle full of Titan, turning himself into a genuinely freaky and gruesome abomination for the final battle on the roof of the asylum. Prior to that, Batman does get himself injected, only to somehow resist its effects and waste the entire antidote on himself, from which I’m sure no disastrous events will occur on a later date as a result. After he knocks Joker out with a fist coated in explosive gel and control over the asylum is reasserted, we get three randomized post-credits stingers of Bane, Croc, or Scarecrow’s hand pulling a tank of Titan down beneath the waters surrounding the island—only one of which actually pays off at any point in the series.

To be fair, I at least made my emotionally conflicting recent playthrough count by donning a modded Zero Year suit and ending it with a literal bang, my three horizontally aligned spots of explosive gel blowing open the secret room in Quincy Sharp’s office that reveals his involvement in the Arkham City project, which worked to keep me hyped for the heavily improved sequel. I find it imperative to discuss the problems with the story, as (a) I’m one of the only players willing to do so, and (b) I can’t help but work my own writing skills into my critiques of examples from different artistic mediums. It’s true that the later games continued to make the gameplay increasingly complex and fluid, and the intellectuals out there have good reason to appreciate a more quaint and stripped-down gameplay experience when coupled with a captivating story and atmosphere. Well, in my case, the atmosphere is the one supremely captivating feature of this game in hindsight, but that’s not to say I can’t appreciate the simpler gameplay. After all, Arkham City was truly unlike anything I’d ever experienced the first time I played it thanks to its slower and more realistic physics—as well as the closer over-the-shoulder FOV—when compared to the loose physics of the platformer games I was used to. Since it benefits from the same weight system, Asylum prioritizes the narrative and cinematic presentation over menial gameplay mechanics by giving the player access to fewer gadgets and upgrades… I mean, it would’ve if the narrative was as strong as the cinematic presentation, which it unfortunately isn’t. Besides, it is just a tad bit strange that Batman would bring his arch-nemesis into Arkham while suspicious of a potential breakout attempt and not think to pack anything aside from his default batarangs.

As far as general annoyances go, too, I found the relatively sluggish freeflow system bothersome at times, as even when I attempted to counter a nearby attacking enemy, that enemy would be just too out-of-reach for the counter to register, thus causing me to unfairly lose the combo I’d been building up. I found it just as easy to lose my combo due to the limited range of the quickfire batarang and batclaw (although I’ll admit that it would’ve been nice to see the ultra batclaw used in the later games), but I can cherry-pick minor gripes with the stealth, freeflow combat, and other minuscule gameplay mechanics all day—it’s the enemy and boss variety that needs addressing before we move onto Arkham City. Again, it’s something that I’ve come to appreciate more with the subsequent entries, but Asylum is severely lacking in unique NPCs, with ordinary enemies isolated to the same copy-pasted thugs, high security henchmen, and lunatics (there are Ivy’s possessed guards and the skeletons in the Scarecrow nightmares, but they function the exact same way with the exact same weapons.) Each game after this one seemed to add a plethora of new enemy classes—just take the armored goons and League Assassins from City, the enforcers and martial artists from Origins, and the brutes and combat specialists from Knight. Besides, as my beta content post mentioned, there was meant to be more variety in this game, like the straight jacket henchman who, in hindsight, raises yet another damning moral question about the asylum thanks in part to his severed head floating inside a jar in the final game.

Regardless of which enemy classes made it in and which ones didn’t, however, I find it… interesting… that people have taken such issue with the amount of Batmobile gameplay in Arkham Knight, as the staggering amount of Titan bosses in this game truly grated on me after a certain point during my recent playthrough. Even Bane, one of Batman’s most menacing and influential nemeses, is fought using the exact same method as every other Titan boss: wait for him to charge, toss a batarang at him, dodge him as he hits the wall, and attack him while he’s dizzy. This time, though, he tosses boulders instead of fallen thugs! They pulled all the stops with this boss fight!

Okay, my cynic-o-meter is officially bubbling over. It’s time to move onto something I have a much stronger fondness for… but that’s not to say it’s by any means perfect, either.

Third Place Winner: Arkham City

This ain’t no place for a hero… but it sure as hell was the place for twelve-year-old me. Much like Sonic Adventure 2, I would call Arkham City the perfect sequel as far as building upon the initial formula goes, even if certain story and character issues arise and persist. Like I said, the first time I played this game, I’d never played anything quite like it before, and it’s ultimately what sparked my interest in both the Arkham series and Batman in general. Aside from totally overhauling the freeflow combat, predator stealth mechanics, and traversal methods from its predecessor, it was unique in that its story was less traditional than just, say, Joker leading a mass breakout and creating an army of giant mutants. Asylum can be given credit for taking creative liberties from bleak and unconventional stories like A Serious House on Serious Earth—for which David McKean provided one of the grimmest and most unsettling comic art styles I’ve ever seen—but Arkham City was far more random and selective when it came to its own sources of inspiration, as it’s actually very hard to pin down what inspired it. From what I’ve been able to tell, the most likely sources include No Man’s Land, the Batman story arc about Gotham being cut off from the rest of the state following a catastrophic earthquake, and John Carpenter’s Escape From New York. Before you ask, the basis for these games does get even weirder, and I’m a-okay with that. The premise accomplishes something that certainly isn’t common in Batman’s lore, too, which is giving a villain (or villains) a more integral role than the Joker… although saying that Joker plays a key role in this game would be quite the understatement, as Arkham Knight would turn out to be a much stronger example of the subversion. Ultimately, there is a bit of unexpected nostalgia that comes with this game, and while there’s still so much to appreciate about it, it has failed to overshadow its numerous problems.

Luckily, playing the PC version of Asylum has allowed me to play as Joker in challenge maps (and even some of the story using a certain console command) like on the PS3, but you still have to be willing to only play as Batman for the most part. Arkham City, on the other hand, was the first Arkham game to feature not two, not three, but four playable characters including DLC, and on all systems, too. As detailed in my Sonic games post, I enjoy having multiple playable characters with their own movesets due to the extra variety it offers, and much like what they’d done with Joker in his PS3-exclusive DLC (until the Return to Arkham remaster, that is), they arranged the perfect movesets and physics for Catwoman, Robin, and Nightwing in their own respective expansions, even if Arkham Knight took it one major step further by giving them a role in the story and side missions. I’ll get into how I feel about the portrayal of those and other characters a little later, but I do still believe it’s worth leading with the positives. See, it’d be one thing for Batman to infiltrate a sketchy detention center built out of Gotham’s neglected slums, but it starts out grim with not Batman, but plain old Bruce Wayne, getting locked away with the worst offenders in the city’s underworld by a mad doctor who knows his real identity. I’m fairly certain that I connected with the game on a much stronger level during and following that one abusive boarding school experience of mine (see the Max Payne 3 post here for reference), but it’s always been fascinating to see Batman investigate the inner workings of this nightmarish prison environment while locked inside among the very criminals he preys on, even if he could plausibly leave if the Batwing’s able to fly out of range of the gun turrets along the outer perimeter walls.

Sure, it is admittedly predictable that Protocol 10—a plot to systematically annihilate the most sinful of Gotham’s denizens—would turn out to have been orchestrated by an ecoterrorist like Ra’s al Ghul in the end, which is why the eerie, grotesque, and unexpectedly sad manner that Joker fails to cure himself of his Titan-inflicted illness and ultimately pass away certainly makes up for that. It’s honestly the perfect Batman/Joker moment to not involve both parties dying beside one another. The fact that Joker only dies laughing because he realizes how willing Batman was to save his life makes it seem as though he finally feels some sense of remorse in his final moments, which is a level of emotional depth that I honestly don’t expect this series to give an irredeemable control freak like him after The Killing Joke or the Animated Series.

“You want to know something funny? Even after everything you’ve done… I would’ve saved you.”

– The king of gut punches, both verbal and physical.

Now, my decision to move on from the positives isn’t so much due to the game’s problems as it is due to how many good things have already been said about it—it’s certainly surpassed Asylum in terms of sales and popularity. I feel like more light deserves to be shed on the negatives simply because they’re rarely talked about anywhere other than… I don’t know, r/BatmanArkham? Let’s just try to get through that without asking, “Is he stupid?” about the not-so-well-portrayed Batman characters in this game.

First, though, I’d like to point out that Paul Dini was more directly involved in the story of Asylum than this game’s to my understanding, which shouldn’t be hard to tell, given how religiously that game adheres to the Animated Series and the traditional story structure of Batman comics (I actually appreciated what they did with Harley’s backstory in Origins, as it was still lovingly faithful to her original backstory from “Mad Love” without copying it verbatim down to the exact spoken lines.) As far as I know, he only penned the outline for this game’s script. I think fans tend to dislike the writing of Knight more due to Paul’s absence because they all love the guy, but aside from the impression I get that he doesn’t fully understand many of the characters—even characters like Harley that he came up with himself—I feel like the writing actually benefits from a different creative mind at the helm because it gives the Arkham timeline a more unique identity of its own.

Going back to Harley, she might be voiced by Tara Strong instead of Arleen Sorkin (rest in peace, which I feel like I feel like I’ve been saying a lot lately with voice actors I like), but not only is she a solid understudy, but she actually plays the character a lot scarier, more deranged, and more uncomfortably hypersexual than Sorkin did. After all, Sorkin was pretty much mirroring the character she played on Days of Our Lives that Paul Dini basically ripped off for the premise of Harley, so funny enough, Strong makes her sound even more like a real Batman villain. It’s just a shame about all those subtle Joker masturbation references, though. To think I once thought she was simply hinting at Clayface impersonating him. I had a purer state of mind back then.

“Mr. J is really not up for a visit right now. He’s not feeling himself. Well, actually, he was earlier, but that’s not what I meant.”

– That queazy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Fortunately, both Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill return from Asylum as Batman and Joker respectively, and I’m able to notice quite the improvements in their writing as well as their delivery, especially thanks to the devastating medical condition that Mark Hamill has to communicate. As far as the other characters go… well, let’s get into each of them and how sporadically faithful their portrayals are throughout. Those of Ra’s, Talia, and Mr. Freeze are practically perfect, notably the willingness to capture Freeze’s moral ambiguity, and I’ve always loved the decision to introduce Two-Face with a tense debate between the rational and bloodthirsty sides of his personality—the character is at his best and most psychologically complex when his second personality manifests itself in his scarred half, hence why he literally has dissociative identity disorder in the world of ElectroNuke. The other characters, though? Well… Scarecrow isn’t teasing Batman with schoolyard taunts like “You want your mommy?” or “What are you, chicken?” in this game, let alone showing up at all, so that’s already a step-up. I mean, what’s his problem? Is he stupid?

Oh. Uh… okay, you know what? I’m scrapping that rule. Let the reddiquette beginneth!

Making Hugo Strange the lead villain (until the end, that is) is certainly a bold move, given the fact that one of the three original stories from Batman #1 was centered around him, but in hindsight, I will say that I do appreciate his past portrayals as little more than a sadistic psychiatrist who takes pleasure in mutating his patients over what more or less amounts to a terrorist leader in this game, especially given how and why Ra’s al Ghul would consider him a worthy successor makes absolutely no sense (funny enough, in the ElectroVerse, he’s portrayed as a Social Darwinist who uses torture methods like electroshock therapy as a means of conditioning Arkham patients to let go of their symptoms, which is meant to parallel with a school in Canton, Massachusetts that’s somehow allowed to stay open to this day.) One of the most problematic major villain depictions, to the agreement or disagreement of more devoted fans, is that of Penguin, as I don’t necessarily see him as the same clean and old-fashioned gentleman he was in the Silver Age and the Animated Series, but he’s always worked best as more of a traditional and straight-laced mob boss than most of Batman’s other nemeses. For that reason, I can’t say I’ve ever seen him as a filthy, demented tyrant who taxidermies his enemies and holds them in glass display cases, either. Still, that at least makes something unique and intimidating out of him, which certainly doesn’t apply to all the Batman villains in this game.

I suppose I’m grateful that Bane didn’t drown in the Gotham River with a caved-in diaphragm after that little “car accident” on Arkham Island, but he still suffers from the fact that Paul Dini just doesn’t seem to get the character, so he’s unfortunately much closer to the sentence fragment-belting meathead from Batman and Robin than to the ruthless, superiority complex-driven revolutionary he amounted to in Knightfall. Seeing him essentially cry to be released by the end of his side mission in this game… I’ve gotta say, thank the Lord above for Arkham Origins. I mean, what’s with him in this game? Is he stupid?

I feel like my ill feelings toward Bane’s depiction here have to do with the combination of his lackluster treatment in this game compared to his masterful treatment in Arkham Origins, but it all comes from the sheer notoriety he’s earned throughout Batman’s lore since the ’90s. Other villains with side missions based around them are… well, actually, they’re pretty hit-or-miss overall. I’ll be honest, a home run was hit with Hush, who I should say never so much as touches a firearm over the course of his entire mission—I’ve always liked the idea of Hush as a faceless serial killer who uses his crimes as a metaphor for his scorn and jealousy toward his childhood friend than just as a cool-looking supervillain with an impressive arsenal, which is why he’s depicted much closer to how he is this game in the world of ElectroNuke. I can get past the ridiculous notion that he’s been able to combine random people’s facial graft to replicate Bruce’s face over his own with an uncanny accuracy, and in all honesty, I don’t think the way Arkham Knight finished his story was as clever or inventive as it could’ve been, given all the unspeakable ways he’s now able to soil Bruce’s life, career, and reputation. By the way, that’s exactly why his ElectroVerse iteration looks about as much like Liam Neeson in Sam Raimi’s Darkman as Jim Lee’s illustrations for Batman: Hush.

Now, when it comes to Deadshot, though… ummm… well, I sure as hell don’t take any issue with the race-swapping that Kill the Justice League was blamed for, because at least it means he’s not the same Floyd Lawton from this game. Yes, his recklessness and inflated ego are both captured fairly well here, but most of my gripes with him come in the form of his skill level, boss fight, and reaction to his own defeat. For the sake of time and sanity, let’s ignore the fact that he fucks up after pulling off a single ricochet like the top-tier assassin he is, as his boss fight proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he lacks any actual peripheral vision, which, come to think of it, makes it pretty impressive that he’s seen so much success in his line of work. Also, Arkham Origins understood that a man driven primarily by his ego doesn’t accept failure so easily, or at least accepts it without a noticeable drop in his confidence level. You know, as opposed to whining like a schoolgirl that a few too many of the villains in the first two Arkham games seem to do, even those previously known for their resiliency.

Now, because Black Mask only appears in an early cameo and during his respective challenge campaign, I think I’ll delve into his shifting depictions throughout the series in the next section. For now, I’ll only raise one relevant question about his portrayal here. Is he stupid?

I can say with full conviction that the writing of Arkham City is better thought-out than that of Asylum, even if the story is relatively less streamlined. Granted, as faithful as Rocksteady made Catwoman, I feel like the comical level to which she’s sexualized often gets just a little too, uh… I’m not sure what the polite word for it would be, so let’s just say “unzipped” based on her appearance for now, although it’s hard to tell whether that’s a product of the writing or her vocal performance. It could very well be a little of both, and either way, it’s not like the comics never pushed it that far. Moreover, the length of the story is occasionally stretched out in ways that are easy to ignore despite not being necessary, like the three signal jammers that have to be destroyed in order to infiltrate the museum, and it truly began one of these games’ most popular and entertaining qualities: the conversations among random groups of enemies that give so much more personality and even humanity at times (or wickedness at others) to even the pettiest of petty criminals, regardless of how petty the pettiness is in relation to their pettiest personal pettiness. Also, they say she sells sea shells by the sea shore.

Anywho, if it’ll help get your tongue untwisted, I find the smaller background details easier to appreciate, whether that be in reference to the mounting evidence for and against Harley being pregnant, the pathetically incessant voicemails left by Joker, the backhanded memorial for Batman’s parents behind the Monarch Theater, the tiny shipping barge holding potential ingredients for Scarecrow’s grand scheme against Batman’s legacy, Joker creepily singing a classic ’50s love ballad during the end credits as the start of an ongoing trend throughout the series, or the many strong indicators of the same seismic activity seen in No Man’s Land, as I’m admittedly still haunted by the Ra’s al Ghul boss fight about midway through the story. The fantastical hellscapes Batman witnesses beforehand are fine, as they’re basically just hallucinations from drinking the Lazarus, but the battle gets so unbelievable that it crosses into nauseating shōnen anime territory, especially when Batman has to block a rapid barrage of sword strikes. The Deathstroke fight from Origins has a sequence that’s basically identical, but it feels more believable because Batman performs very real and harsh martial arts maneuvers with his angled forearms to deflect each of the strikes as opposed to… well, you know, just sticking his wrists in front of him without any concern for losing both his hands.

This kind of petty detail surely bothers some people more than others, so let’s just pretend I never said any of that and move onto a fresh yet equally pointless spiel on Arkham Origins.

Second Place Winner: Arkham Origins

This… err… very unexpected prequel-spinoff is often referred to as the black sheep of the Arkham series, but then again, I’m the black sheep of my family and virtually every other group I’ve been a part of, so I can actually relate to it if anything. While many people have complained that it could’ve worked fine as a DLC expansion for Arkham City, I couldn’t disagree more—Arkham Origins is not what Shadow the Hedgehog was to Sonic Heroes, or what Saints Row IV was to Saints Row: The Third, as the only real similarities it has to its predecessor are a similar engine and an updated version of Arkham City as half of its open world environment. Moreover, it establishes a wonderful wintery atmosphere of its own, restores the decaying ruins that would comprise Arkham City decades later in the timeline, and crafts a new and supremely underappreciated new island that embodies the more modern metropolitan districts of Gotham. On top of that, it never reuses any of the pre-existing character models like the terrible examples I just provided, as it instead introduces faithful iterations of Batman villains into the series, establishes younger versions of major characters, and completely reimagines others to be both better-written and more comic-accurate. I mean, sure, Riddler’s previous identity Enigma has set up “data packs” across the city that are essentially just non-question mark-shaped Riddler trophies, but at least the solvable riddles are all replaced by Enigma’s network relays… although I suppose those are basically the destroyable CCTV cameras from Arkham City, come to think of it.

I do believe that the new studio behind it was a major contributing factor to the game’s more negative reception, as well as the change in voice cast. Of course, the ways that Warner Bros. Montreal reworked the characters clearly demonstrated a solid understanding of the source material, but still with a willingness to take the series in a drastically different direction. As far as the voice cast goes, they certainly aren’t bad by any means—hell, whoever they cast as Black Mask managed to portray him far better than even vocal talent Nolan North (yes, Deadpool himself) could, as his Black Mask performance in Arkham City‘s game over screens is still painful for me to listen to. Admittedly, I never could’ve expected Roger Craig Smith to transition straight from voicing Sonic to making Kevin Conroy’s Batman sound angrier and more emotionally closed off in his younger years, and I definitely didn’t expect him to nail it as well as he did. Then, of course, we move onto Troy Baker as Joker. You know, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to replicating Mark Hamill’s performance, as he is playing the same character, after all. Then again, he doesn’t exactly make the character sound any younger—as a matter of fact, he practically makes him sound even older. Regardless, he deserves attention for being the Eric Roberts of voice actors, as you’ll get to hear him lend his voice to literally everything under the sun, good or otherwise, and his obvious level of talent shines through in… uh… most cases, let’s say. Again, much like Eric Roberts, that is far from always being the case.

From there, we can segue right into the topic of this game’s creative liberties, as it channels Arkham Asylum by taking heavy inspiration from several memorable yet unusually grim and provocative inspirational sources. To your typical Batman fanatic, the obvious place from which this game’s narrative takes cues is the all-time classic story arc Batman: Year One—a “Batman origin story” with an eighty-eight-percent focus on Gordon and a twelve-percent focus on Batman in actuality—with just a kiss of Knightfall for good measure. While I find it impossible to deny that, I’m not your typical Batman fanatic, so I’m far more impressed by the strong hints of Lee Bermejo, one of my favorite writers and artists in recent years. No work of his exemplifies this more than Batman: Noël, notably the personal transformation of Batman as well as the snowy holiday setting, although Origins still makes sure to leave out characters and elements like Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim that come straight from A Christmas Carol. If that wasn’t already made crystal-clear with Batman’s character development and even traits of his physical appearance (Roger Craig Smith holds a pretty remarkable resemblance to Bruce Wayne in both Origins and Noël), it only rubs in the creative liberties further by featuring the Noël batsuit as a DLC skin.

These choices definitely gave a higher level of depth and complexity to the Dark Knight himself, and yet, that doesn’t mean all the cues taken from Lee Bermejo’s Joker aren’t worthy of mention. For as much immense respect as I have for his brilliant writing, disturbing surrealism, and breathtaking illustrations, his version of Joker from Noël, Batman: Damned, and Joker (no, not that Joker) holds many intentional similarities to Heath Ledger’s, and Lord knows I’ve made my contrarian viewpoints toward that iteration clear. Even then, though, this unfair gripe of mine has actually allowed me to more strongly admire WB Montreal’s take on the character for managing to blend very Bermejo-esque qualities into the mix without sacrificing Mark Hamill’s childlike playfulness. Translation: they balanced it out just a kiss more faithfully than Billy Corgan did in The Batman. That was who played Joker in that, right?

In spite of all the positives I have to offer this game, the basic premise is not as airtight as Arkham Asylum‘s, with Black Mask ordering a hit on Batman’s head, a contract that eight fearsome assassins accept with the hope of taking out the Dark Knight and collecting the bounty. While that sounds straightforward enough, it doesn’t necessarily add up when Joker turns out to be the one who ordered the hit unless Batman was, in fact, responsible for his transformation, a fascinating notion that major villains like Hugo Strange and Scarecrow have actually thrown around numerous times throughout the series. The twist diminishes Black Mask’s role to the target of just another side mission, thus further validating the unfortunate belief that no Batman villain can ever live up to Joker’s level of importance, popularity, or magnitude (both Bane and Ra’s al Ghul accomplished that decades ago, but who remembers that anymore?)

In all fairness, though, plenty of legitimately compelling sequences serve to put Batman’s investigative abilities and struggle to earn the GCPD’s respect on display, as well as how strained his and Alfred’s relationship was early on, even if certain moments like their tense exchange after Joker’s arrest feel a tad bit forced. As a matter of fact, I would argue that the improved characterization makes up for the painful blow dealt to Black Mask’s role in the story by (a) giving him a more fittingly mobster-sounding vocal performance, and (b) portraying him more ruthless and higher-class than as some scummy blue-collar crook like Arkham City did. That’s even setting aside the fact that they dressed him up in a classy white pinstripe three-piece suit akin to his apparel from Under the Red Hood as opposed to just stealing the ketchup-stained clothes off an MBTA conductor.

Then, we have the rather interesting subject of how the game handles the other villains involved in the main story and side missions. I will admit that assassins like Deadshot and Shiva being restricted to side missions implies that the writers couldn’t find a way to work them into the main story, and Shiva herself acts as little more than connective tissue for the League of Assassins’s involvement in the rest of the series. Additionally, Firefly’s mad arsonist tendencies are treated more generically evil than anything fetishistic or obsessive-compulsive, which the comics and Arkham Knight certainly seem to get right by comparison (although Arkham Knight still didn’t do him as many favors as it could’ve).

Another… let’s say funky move on the game’s part was done with the character of Bird, Bane’s lieutenant from Vengeance of Bane and Knightfall, as saying he shares little to no resemblance to his original comic interpretation would be very generous. This time around, he’s so burly, clean-shaven, and inked-up that he may as well have shipped out from Peña Dura the night before the game’s events, which allows him to fit right in with the rest of Bane’s militia but also makes him far more generic. Then again, in the comics, he was a blonde American with a Disney princess-style bond with birds and old-fashioned garb straight out of a harlequin romance novel, so at least you’re able to take this version of him seriously.

An equally curious decision was made with the female iteration of Copperhead and her few uncanny similarities to Catwoman, although I would be lying if I said her very snake-like features and the haunting effects of her poison didn’t at least make her threatening in her own right. Furthermore, in spite of my overall mixed feelings toward these interpretations, I appreciate that other villains like Deadshot and Bane were finally given the justice they deserved. Not only does the former’s boss fight confirm that he does, in fact, have peripheral vision, but it also makes it clear that he can follow the trajectory of his laser sight and tell where the end is pointing, even when it’s bouncing off five or six surfaces at once. He may as well be able to follow the laser out of his fictional world, into reality, and onto the back of my head, so excuse me if I go dark before finishing this. As for the latter, the game takes what pretty much amounted to Bane from Batman and Robin and turns him into… well… Bane from TV’s Gotham, in that he actually captures his backstory, his motivations, and the very real threat he poses to Batman and his city for the first time in this whole series. I’m also very glad they don’t whitewash him for a change like Tom Hardy did, but no one ever really cared about that. It even refers to his interpretation of Batman as a physical manifestation of his own childhood fears that Vengeance of Bane established—by breaking Batman, he becomes the man he foresaw himself as back in Peña Dura.

Arkham Origins stands on its own (or did, anyway) by featuring online multiplayer, in which you get to take on the perspective of henchmen for the first time. Of course, official support for that gamemode ended a while ago, and it’s been equally as long since I last played online or competitively—I’m as uncompetitive as you can possibly get, as I believe that games, films, music, and other artistic mediums deserve enjoyment and analysis far more than brash, petty showmanship. For that reason, I’ve found myself exploring its DLC expansions more than anything, namely full campaigns like Cold, Cold Heart (named after the Hank Williams song Joker sings during the end credits in Troy Baker’s very not-so-harmonic singing voice) and Initiation. The former brings its own twist to the classic episode “Heart of Ice” from the Animated Series while lovingly paying tribute to it, not to mention the fantastic design and thermal equipment of the XE suit it introduces, but I do still believe it made Ferris Boyle way more comically evil than he was originally treated as. Generally speaking, it’s more thoughtful for Batman to release the lab footage showing how Boyle wronged Victor Fries to the public like he did in “Heart of Ice” instead of knocking Boyle out with brute force.

Moving on, though, I admire Initiation not just for its usage of complex cinematics in a standard challenge mode campaign, but also for the way it functions as a Batman Begins-inspired training sequence while leaving out the League of Assassins’s involvement (or the League of Shadows, as Christopher Nolan decided to call them), although Shiva does show up at the end of the campaign as a veteran student of Master Kirigi. Granted, the authenticity of a traditional Korean martial arts dojo could use way fewer modern firearms. Even shotguns reskinned as crossbows would’ve done the trick.

First Place Winner: Arkham Knight

At the time of writing this, I haven’t started replaying Arkham City or Harley Quinn’s Revenge, but I know exactly what I’ll be doing once it’s over. I’ll drop down onto that dingy little shipping barge, enter the password “CITY OF TERROR” above the entry hatch where no digital devices are present, and drop inside to find crates full of cockroaches, a sleeping thug hopped up on fear toxin, and a confirmation letter from a property broker named Howard Fine to one Dr. Jonathan Crane. At the time I first played the game—I was thirteen, the same age where film trailers still had a mystifying and exhilarating quality to them—the combination of this barge’s unnerving secrets and the secret messages that can be deciphered from the numbers heard on certain radio frequencies (“I WILL RETURN BATMAN”, “YOU WILL PAY FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO ME”, and “FEAR WILL TEAR GOTHAM CITY TO SHREDS”) left me with no choice but to hypothesize about all the plans Scarecrow might’ve been working on behind the scenes. It’s rare, however, that the spontaneous ideas inside my head actually come to life with the level of pitch-perfect detail that Arkham Knight captured. The best part? It works in general as a fitting conclusion to the Arkham series, even if not everyone is bound to side with me on that. Ranked side-by-side with Origins and Origins: Blackgate, it’s one of the most polarizing games in the series, as few people can decide on whether it’s an ever-shifting rollercoaster ride or a boringly tedious merry-go-round that rotates in the same basic direction over and over again. While I’m as aware of its cons as anyone else, I make no exaggeration when I call it the best Batman game, and to that effect, the best superhero game of all time. Don’t pretend you didn’t see that coming a mile away, you naïve schmuck.

I’m fairly certain that I’ve never anticipated a game’s release so much as I did after watching its two original gameplay trailers in 2014. Running on Unreal Engine 4, it was drop-dead gorgeous, alright, but with zero exaggeration, it could come out this year and it still wouldn’t fail to astound. Now, I mentioned earlier that its story is way deeper and less streamlined than the previous games—especially if you compare it to Asylum‘s—but that’s not to say it’s poorly told, either. It starts up like an atom bomb, with Joker’s corpse being cremated to the sound of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” by Frank Sinatra as a tremendously bold way to set the tone, only to then introduce a police officer waltzing into a diner, confronting a patron smoking indoors, and becoming trapped in a nightmarish hallucination crawling with cockroaches and slimy, black-eyed demons. Now more menacing, calculating, and disfigured than ever before, Scarecrow convinces Gotham’s residents to evacuate, sets off a series of chemical weapons that transform Gotham into a dystopia populated by his panicked test subjects, and works with a mysterious militia commander called the Arkham Knight to overwhelm Batman by occupying every foot of Gotham’s mainland, giving him nowhere to hide and luring his closest allies into the conflict. This essentially forces Batman and the GCPD into a turf war against an enemy who seems to know the Dark Knight all too well. Remember how Arkham City was a walled-off portion of Gotham in which the city’s worst criminals were all freely set loose? Well, here comes Scarecrow, turning Gotham’s entire mainland into that without even so much as an outer perimeter wall.

Much like City and Origins, it really goes all-out in establishing an identity of its own among the Batman franchise, and its sources of inspiration are certainly unexpected, as well. Sure, it does factor in obvious inspirations like A Death in the Family and The Killing Joke, but it reimagines those stories while staying relatively faithful and never complicating the timeline. Joker still tortured and killed Jason Todd, but in this universe, it lasted more than a year and occurred in an abandoned wing deep inside Arkham, therefore justifying Batman’s regret for never being able to save him—he should know the asylum like the palm of his hand. Aside from possibly explaining the eerie children’s wall drawings from the first game of a green-haired stick figure holding a red-hooded stick figure like a marionette puppet, Jason’s also given sufficient reason to isolate and murder Batman as the Arkham Knight, as Joker used to taunt him with the fact that Tim Drake had already replaced him while he was in captivity.

Of course, to my chagrin, and because the Panessa Studios segment features several Jason Todd flashbacks that replicate the torture videos Joker had sent Batman, people have complained time and time again that the reveal of Jason as the Arkham Knight was painfully obvious… even though the mystery of his identity kept people speculating endlessly until the game’s release. This even gave season one of Batman: The Telltale Series enough of a reason to rip off Arkham Knight shamelessly with Lady Arkham and her red-clad militia (no, I’m not making this up), only they made sure to surprise audiences with her identity by revealing her as Vicki Vale. An honest news reporter who’s never once been portrayed as a villain. And who they needed to give a new tragic backstory to make any sense of their own reveal. A backstory that never even involves Arkham Asylum, unlike the Arkham Knight’s.

I feel like I’m giving a mostly well-executed series too hard a time over this, so I’m just going to recall the times RedLetterMedia poked fun at Star Wars: The Last Jedi and its “subversion of expectations”, that surprising your audience is always reasonable regardless of how satisfying it is narratively. I mean, sure, it doesn’t take too much to assume that Jason is the Arkham Knight, but you know what? At least it makes sense!

Ahem. Sorry, I nearly lost the thread just now. I feel like there’s a lot of things going on in the world that deserve getting worked up over more than this. Anywho, in the case of The Killing Joke, a startlingly familiar flashback occurs when Batman and Gordon investigate Oracle’s clocktower, namely of Barbara opening the door for who she things is her friend from yoga class, only to be greeted by a tropical shirt-sporting Joker with a revolver in hand. Aside from the photos he takes, however, the scene is noticeably different, as Gordon isn’t there, Barbara’s never stripped down, and the mad clown simply leaves the house cackling. Honestly, I can’t say what’s more cruel—Joker taking nude pics of poor Barbara to torment her father with, or just leaving her lying down among the glass shards of the shattered coffee table with a hole in her stomach.

Still, in spite of all these integral classic story arcs that I’m either way too sensitive or not nearly sensitive enough about, the primary basis for this game’s story mainly comes from an episode not of the Animated Series, but of The New Batman Adventures (which is technically the title of the same show during the later seasons after transitioning from cel to digital), namely the episode “Over the Edge”. This is basically a “what if?” scenario of Scarecrow murdering Batgirl, and after discovering his daughter under the mask, Gordon turns his back on Batman, thus triggering the start of a police manhunt against the Bat-Family. Scarecrow’s involvement, Barbara’s death (or so you’re supposed to believe at first), and Gordon’s betrayal are all in this game’s story, and in the final act, Dr. Crane even drops Oracle off the roof of the Arkham Knight’s headquarters—the same way he ended her life in “Over the Edge”. The weirdest source of inspiration, though? Reportedly, it’s The Revenger’s Tragedy, a Jacobean play by Thomas Middleton for which a poster can be seen in-game on Grand Avenue. You can’t make this up, people.

On that note, let’s complain about the Batmobile! Okay, that’s a total bluff, because I’ve never once been bothered by its implementation, and definitely not to the same extent as other people. It’s the first time we get to drive the damn thing, it’s legitimately enjoyable, and I think they found just the right balance between on-foot and behind-the-wheel action. Besides, when it comes to boss fights like Deathstroke’s that everyone says should’ve been on-foot, they’re fought from inside the Batmobile because it’s never been done before. Origins had the perfect hand-to-hand Deathstroke fight, so it was actually very wise to not just do the same thing again (the closest they could’ve done was a predator encounter where he tries to snipe you out, but that was exactly what they did with the Red Hood fight, so it was wise not to do that again, either.) Same applies to the PS4-exclusive Scarecrow nightmare challenges. I mean, who would want to see the nightmare sequences from Asylum repeated verbatim? You know, I’m ninety-eight-percent positive the answer to that is “everyone except me”, so let’s just move onto the voice cast.

First thing’s first: it’s a joy to hear Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill again; Tara Strong gives up on making Harley sound scary but does make sure to dial up the “annoying” to five hundred; Catwoman comes off as way more sarcastic and cynical than she does perpetually aroused, which suits me down to the ground; it’s great to hear Nightwing actually talk for once, let alone talk exactly as Nightwing should, not to mention during the main story instead of exclusively within challenge mode; Professor Pyg has one of the best vocal performances I’ve ever heard, like a direct translation of his uneven and unstable dialogue from Grant Morrison’s comic run; not only does the spectacularly regal and chilling voice for Mad Hatter stick around after City and Origins, but in this game, he even rhymes with every sentence in true Lewis Carroll fashion; and Gordon’s voiced by Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and good Lord, is he perfect in that role!

Now, let’s talk a little about Scarecrow. Notably enough, he’s played by John Noble, the voice of Leland Monroe from L.A. Noire, and… well, he doesn’t ask Batman if he misses his mommy this time. Instead, he’s a very quiet, scientifically minded psychopath who takes his time psychoanalyzing and mentally deconstructing Batman in the most brutal ways imaginable, and while he clearly isn’t the same Scarecrow from Asylum—in fact, he isn’t even as comic-accurate as he was in Asylum—it’s at least less generic and maintains the spirit of the character perfectly. I only wish Gordon would shoot him in the leg Jack Kelso-style so he could scream vulgarities at him while bleeding out.

While the gameplay this time around is so expansive that it’s hard to get into all the neat takedowns and gadget functions it has in store, I find it necessary to appreciate its staggering cast of playable characters compared to its predecessors, although making Joker playable as part of the scrapped Joker’s Mayhem DLC would’ve been the cherry on top. Also important to stress while Joker’s still relevant is that he isn’t the main enemy of this game… well, he technically is in terms of the psychological side of the story, but even that’s triggered by Scarecrow—Joker is less of an actual villain in this game and more of just a premonition of Batman’s worst nightmare coming true. Sure, the Arkham Knight steps down late into the story, leading to Jason returning as Red Hood to save Batman in the end, but the willingness to maintain Scarecrow’s role as the main antagonist the whole way through is pretty admirable, even as the finale to a popular series. The Dark Knight Rises is a perfect example of the antithesis, as Cyborg Dr. Evil… I mean, Bane turns out to be a pawn of Talia al Ghul’s, as if making the League of Assassins… I mean, the League of Shadows the real perpetrators of a major conflict hadn’t been done a thousand and ten times before.

Moreover, a better job than ever is done to give Batman the intellect and insight of an expert detective, even more so than any of the game’s predecessors. For the first time, he utilizes a wide range of real medical terminology, like describing the effects of Joker’s blood in the infected patients as a heavily mutated form of a neurodegenerative prion disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Hell, the premise of Joker’s Titan-contaminated blood mutating the people he infected was a clever and disturbing twist in and of itself, and it gives Scarecrow a perfect fear of Batman’s to exploit: the danger he could pose to those he loves if he remains infected. Furthermore, when investigating crime scenes like those of Professor Pyg’s victims, he uses physical traits exclusive to each of the victims—from tattoos and birth marks to shark bites and artificial voice boxes—to cross-reference the missing persons registry and identify them one-by-one, which is a way higher level of forensic analysis than even Origins had him perform.

Oh, and the Most Wanted mission for Killer Croc is basically his own version of “Heart of Ice” and Cold, Cold Heart, in that he’s the only initial antagonist until the reveal of the real monster—that being Warden Rankin in this case. Plus, in Croc’s evidence locker description, Cash even shows him a little sympathy for the first time. Apparently, Rocksteady realized they treated him too inhumanely in Asylum, and you know what? God bless them for that.

The Perfect Entry For an Imperfect Saga

For all the praise I’ve had to offer Arkham Knight, there are other aspects like the Most Wanted mission for Hush that are still fundamentally flawed. At this rate, I’m well past the point of expecting perfection from anything, even in the case of what other people might refer to as a “perfect game”, or a “perfect movie”, or a “perfect song”. I mean, I’ve heard Spirited Away referred to as a perfect movie, and Lord knows I’ll never be able to fully understand that point of view! Yet, in spite of my capability to identify problems with my favorite… well… example of any artistic medium, I do think the Arkham series needs to be pointed out as a series that’s recognized primarily for being the first legitimately good Batman video game series outside the LEGO games. In other words, all of these games are flawed in ways that just can’t be glossed over entirely, as much as fans have been willing to do that with Asylum and City.

Of course, to be fair, a lot of these problems aren’t with the games themselves, but more so with Batman in general. I went on just a wee little tangent about the representations of the mentally impaired in Asylum, but honestly? Batman‘s always had a very strange and even insensitive history with mental health portrayals, as it’s admittedly fallen into the not-so-progressive trap of treating most of the severely impaired as menaces to society. In fact, while I think the vast majority of the Most Wanted mission for Professor Pyg in Knight is pretty much perfect (no pun intended), I’ve come to notice something after completing it that’s made me (a) half-jokingly question Batman’s understanding of delusional disorders, and (b) recall some of my irritation when reading Knightfall, namely Batman treating the Ventriloquist like a common criminal when he’s completely at the will of all the puppets through which he channels his multiple personalities. The guy has zero independence or self-worth, as he’s entirely controlled by puppets like Scarface—that’s the irony that makes him a complex villain, as he reaches the point of really not even counting as a true villain. Similarly, Pyg is clearly so disconnected from reality that he really does believe that he’s helping his victims, but Batman vows vehemently to keep him locked away for life (in which case, he should be kept away from society, but for rehabilitation, not punishment like Batman insinuates). I love using his conversation with Pyg after the end of the mission under the title “Batman Doesn’t Understand Delusions”, much like the clip from the start of a Red Dead Redemption II side mission with the title on YouTube of “Arthur Doesn’t Understand Racism”—Arthur Morgan of all people should know when a Black man is terrified of getting lynched, just like how Batman of all people should understand when a killer is incognizant enough to be denied moral responsibility.

Something else of note that I’ve been able to discern is that I really need to pick out other topics and artistic mediums to discuss. I’ve been playing video games for just about my whole life, so I’ve naturally developed a strong appreciation for them and their very real artistic potential, but I’ll admit that there is a stigma about the more vapid and brainless side of the medium that’s started wearing on even me (hence why I never want to hear terms like “battle royale” or “visual novel” for the rest of my fucking life). Besides, I’ve already planned out posts devoted to comics, movies, TV episodes, music videos, albums, and even real-world subjects from the lighthearted to the traumatic. I can talk for quite some time about series like Sonic and Batman: Arkham, but even a rambler like me needs a break from time to time. After all, both those posts have mostly just been intended as ways of getting out everything I feel about them in written form so I don’t have to ramble on about them quite as much.

Through it all, though, I suppose the real question is, what does this have to do with the inherent imperfection of the Arkham games?

I… don’t have an immediate answer to that, so for shits and giggles, here’s a brief montage of Batman’s silly and out-of-character movements in the ancient iOS game, Arkham City: Lockdown, set to some peppy comedy tunes.