Batman: Return to Arkham – Review (PS4)

Developed By: Rocksteady, Virtuos

Published By: Warner Bros.

Platforms: Xbox One, PS4 (Reviewed)

Release Date: October 21st

Starting late 2005, the previous generation of consoles was defined by amazing games and brand new experiences. Whether it was exploring the wild west in Red Dead Redemption or scaling cliffs with Nathan Drake, gamers enjoyed some of the most amazing digital experiences available. Of course, nothing quite defined the action genre like Batman: Arkham Asylum and its sequel, Arkham City. These two games perfectly captured the feeling of being Batman for the first time and completely changed combat systems for years to come, all while telling a fantastic story.

Sadly, many gamers missed out on this spectacular duo of games before the new generation—and Batman: Arkham Knight—hit store shelves. Rocksteady has released a solution in the form of the ever-popular HD remakes that are gracing the PS4 and Xbox One. This solution, Batman: Return to Arkham, combines both games, all of the available DLC, and pretty new graphics to make an enjoyable return to this grimy and beautiful world.

Sneaking around in my DLC outfit

Set in two different versions of the infamous Arkham Prison, Arkham Asylum and Arkham City tell the story of Batman’s quest to stop Joker (and then Hugo Strange) from destroying Gotham with something called the Titan Formula. Created by Dr. Young with some of Bane’s DNA, this Titan Formula mutates normal baddies into super grotesque, abominations that are extremely powerful yet short-lived. There are other far-reaching effects as well, but I would be a horrible person if I spoiled the story. 

Of course, bigger baddies mean even more fights for Batman. And these encounters provide the opportunity to experiment with Rocksteady’s great combat system. For something so basic as “hit square to punch, triangle to counter,” the combat system offers a surprising amount of depth. All of Batman’s gadgets like Batarangs, shock rifles, and exploding gel can be used to disable enemies, and putting them all together makes you feel like John Williams in front of his orchestra. There isn’t a feeling better than putting together a 23-hit combo in a group of thugs without any of them landing a single hit.

Interestingly enough, playing Arkham Asylum and Arkham City side-by-side was a fascinating experiment. While Asylum features a much slower and methodical combat system, City has Batman jumping around like a ninja on speed; the Dark Knight bounces from enemy to enemy landing punches and disarming thugs without a moment’s hesitation. It’s honestly a little strange at times to jump from game to game seeing how the combat systems are so different, but the changes add just enough difficulty to make it fun.

Only a fraction of the baddie-filled world

Besides, the open worlds provide plenty of opportunities to practice the combat as Batman is exploring. Arkham Asylum is more streamlined and story focused, but the entire island prison is populated with crazy inmates just itching for a fight. Arkham City is a wide open city with a multitude of side missions to tackle, including some stellar moments with Deadshot and Zsasz. The mission offerings are vastly different but serve as fantastic excuses for exploring gorgeous environments.

Speaking of beautiful, Arkham Asylum and Arkham City were both good-looking games even on the PS3 and Xbox 360, but the new versions look even better. Rocksteady, with the help of Virtuos, rebuilt the graphics and added in all manner of new details. The lighting is much better with actual shadows, buildings are covered in rust and grime, and the clouds are hypnotizing as they move through the sky. Even the falling rain and snow drape the world in splendor and at times cover the camera with smudges. This is such a small graphical detail that while forgotten, actually adds so much to the presentation.

Pretty

Ironically, one area that wasn’t helped by the graphical upgrades were the character faces. Batman and Joker look great, along with the Penguin and Mr. Freeze, but the random NPC’s look pretty bad. Prison guards and thugs have some downright frightening faces. Officer Aaron Cash, who appears in both games, is by far one of the creepiest looking characters with his bug eyes and constant-horrified expression. Cash does look better in City, but he’s hard to look at in Asylum.

The less scary version of Cash

The graphics may be better, but Return to Arkham isn’t without faults. Asylum had a few framerate drops while Batman was wandering around the mansion simply examining Riddler Challenges. Strangely, though, the framerate held up extremely well during even the most jam-packed combat arenas and challenge maps. There just didn’t seem to be any reason why the framerate drastically changed during play sessions.

Arkham City, on the other hand, didn’t have the framerate issues of Asylum, but the game did crash to the PS4 dashboard a couple of times, especially during a mission where Batman was chasing down a member of The League of Assassins. Luckily, the gracious checkpoint system came to the rescue so I didn’t lose more than a minute of progress; the crashes were just more frustrating than anything. 

Unfortunately, both Arkham Asylum and Arkham City also had a fair amount of glitches. Sneaking around Arkham usually led me to characters sticking through walls or floating in the sky. Prison guards also occasionally disappeared while walking through walls like Casper the Ghost. Granted, open world experiences generally have a fair amount of jank, for confirmation—but I didn’t expect so many from an updated game.

That looks uncomfortable

All glitches and performance issues aside, Batman: Return to Arkham is still a fantastic package. Rocksteady’s story, open worlds, and combat systems still hold up after all these years, and they are made even better by the graphical improvements. It’s also hard to argue with the fact that this collection features two large games, a bunch of DLC, and a ton of challenge maps for only $50. Not too shabby of a deal. The Joker boss battle is still terrible, but at least it’s better than the tank battles in Batman: Arkham Knight.