With their sense of freedom and loving grasp of the Dark Knight's comic universe, 2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum and its 2011 sequel, Batman: Arkham City, are two of the best superhero games ever made. Batman: Return to Arkham brings both games - and all their DLC - to the current generation of consoles, but an unremarkable graphical upgrade doesn’t do them justice.
That’s not to say it’s not noticeable. Textures in Return to Arkham are much sharper: Batman’s suit, for example, looks much more detailed. His cape in particular stands out beautifully, pebbled, catching the light. Virtous, the studio that’s upgraded Rocksteady’s original games, has ported both games to Unreal Engine 4 from Unreal Engine 3, making for a much brighter aesthetic overall.
Batman's cape in particular stands out beautifully, pebbled, catching the light
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But in many instances, ‘brighter’ does not mean ‘better’. The original Arkham games were dark for two reasons: one, because deep blacks add to the atmosphere and two, to disguise the graphical shortcomings of 2009-era consoles. Here, every PS3 plant, rock and puddle of water is thrown into stark relief, and as a result Gotham often feels quite blocky and theme park-esque, which breaks the romantic illusion.
More, some of the detail in faces has been smoothed out in this much lighter version, and some of the intricacies of expression are lost as a result. This isn’t a deal-breaker - characters can still emote - but to remove such nuances is another example of illumination where it’s simply not needed.
The bigger issue is performance. For a remastered version of older games, it’s disappointing that neither Asylum nor City runs at 60 frames per second - they’re both targeting 30. In fact, Asylum suffers from some odd stutters when Batman runs through a corridor or turns a corner. The issues aren’t bad enough to interrupt combat flow, but occasional chugging is a noticeable distraction.Outside of the two campaigns, all the DLC challenge maps and additional skins are here, so you can play as 1970s Batman - or even better, animated Batman - from the get-go. But there’s nothing to differentiate the extra content from what was included in the Game of the Year editions, and the lack of making-ofs or behind-the-scenes details is a missed opportunity.
