Roll your imaginations back to the weeks proceeding Christmas for this one, folks! This week we’re going to look back at the Die Hard of video game series; the Batman: Arkham Series.
The year is 2009 and Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight movies are at the peak of their popularity, having revitalised Batman after the lacklustre Batman & Robin. At the same time, junior game developers, Rocksteady Studios, and veteran Batman writer, Paul Dini, have something in the works to do the same for Batman’s video game presence. Drawing some inspiration from Grant Morrison‘s A Serious House On Serious Earth and bringing back the voice talent from Batman: The Animated Series, which Dini had previously written for, the end product of their work was something that went beyond simply being a great Batman game. It was one of the greatest games of its generation and it sparked one of the greatest series to ever be made.
Arkham Asylum had everything anyone could want from a game; the story was well put together, every imaginable aspect of the gameplay was solid and the gothic aesthetic style was dark without being too gritty. Among all this perfection there is one thing that stands out in my mind against all else; the level design. Arkham Asylum features many different areas, but despite all these areas feeling very different to each other, the designers managed to make them all fit together incredibly well so that jumping from location to location is never jarring. On top of that, the detail inside each location is superb. Walking the halls of Arkham Asylum is never boring and the different methods Batman has at his disposal for traversing each area are perfectly fitting for the Dark Knight, without ever feeling tacked on. Be it crawling through the shadows, grappling from ledge to ledge, or the sweet freedom of gliding with Batman’s outstretched cape, moving from place to place through each of Rocksteady’s immaculately designed rooms. It certainly does a great job of emulating how it might feel to walk in Batman’s shoes.
On the note of scenes, Arkham Asylum has some great ones, with Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin making each FMV shine. However, despite each of their outstanding performances, there is one set of scenes in the game that outshine all the rest purely because of the quality of the writing and, again, that magnificent level design. Anyone who has played the game will know I’m talking about the Scarecrow sections. These drug induced hallucinations are some of those ‘must play’ sections in gaming.
Moving along from Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady released Arkham City. The developers knew that it wouldn’t be good enough to simply produce more of the same. Anything too similar to Arkham Asylum would only compare negatively to the original, no matter how good it was. With Arkham City, they managed to create something that had a similar tone, but that was different enough to stand on its own. The second instalment of the series ditched Arkham Asylum‘s comparatively closed off world map in favour of a sandboxed section of Gotham City. Along with that, it upped the ante with every other aspect of the game. Arkham City didn’t just throw in more villains for the sake of going bigger, it reasoned out ways to include them. As a result, it avoided falling into the trap that some other series have encountered by cramming in characters for the sake of it.
The biggest improvement that Arkham City brought to the table was in the audio department. The tone seems to borrow from the Tim Burton Batman movies in the same way that Arkham Asylum borrowed from A Serious House on Serious Earth. The design of Gotham matches with a slightly less sanitary vision of Burton‘s Gotham and the game being set during winter adds to that effect. Even Nick Arundel’s ‘Arkham City Theme’ is a fair match for the score that Danny Elfman provided for Burton’s movies. Another unusual addition to the game’s soundtrack was by Panic! At The Disco, a song entitled ‘Mercenary’ which included a sample of one of the most poignant monologues of the entire game.
The monologue in question is triggered if Batman revisits Crime Alley, the scene of his parents’ murder. It’s situated right outside Monarch Theatre, where another of the game’s greatest scenes occurs. Monarch Theatre is home to a scene in which the surprisingly healthy Joker is revealed to actually be Clayface in disguise. I loved this addition to the game because of Clayface’s origin. Before Clayface, he was an actor named Basil Karlo, who was driven mad when one of his pictures was being remade. It felt fitting to go toe-to-toe with him on the stage of Monarch Theatre.
Another set of my favourite sections of the game are those in which the player takes control of Catwoman. I can best describe these moments as ‘the greatest Spider-Man game that was never made’. Selina Kyle’s primary weapon is a whip, one that can stretch seemingly infinite distances and allows her to slip onto the sides of buildings. Once latched onto a surface, she can crawl over it with a large degree of freedom thanks to the cat claws on her suit. These two features come together to do a good job emulating the effect of firing webbing and sticking to a building in a similar fashion to that of your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man.
The final release in the Arkham Series (Until Arkham Knight comes out in just a few weeks) has been Arkham Origins. Origins is the unfortunate little brother in the series and gets caught in many of the pitfalls that Arkham City was smart enough to avoid. It goes bigger again, and adds even more villains, but never really gives any of them enough attention to make them matter. Most end up being discarded as avoidable side stories. The whole game has a sense of trying too hard to be Arkham City. Half the map is taken away; the voice actors, while very good, are just doing their best to sound like Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill. That said, it is still a very good game and well worth playing… Just maybe not directly after playing Arkham City.
The soundtrack for Arkham Origins was composed by Christopher Drake and it has this really cool feature of sampling ‘Carol of the Bells’ at various points throughout it. It really adds to the Christmassy, Die Hard feeling of the series. The soundtrack is one of the ways in which Arkham Origins set itself apart from Arkham City. The addition of a Crime Scene feature, in which the player can look for clues to solve a crime is probably the best new addition in terms of gameplay. The key scenes in the game that I feel are really worth focusing on include two boss fights, namely those with Deathstroke and Electrocutioner. One final, almost throwaway, scene that really stuck with me was a small chat between Bruce and Alfred. While travelling the streets of Gotham this little piece of dialogue will randomly kick in as the bells of Gotham City toll midnight. Alfred calls in to wish Bruce a Merry Christmas. After I first heard, I pulled onto a quiet rooftop and just enjoyed the moment for a while. It was a really nice little touch for developers to throw in.
If you haven’t checkout out the series yet, I advise picking them up now on the cheap, just before Arkham Knight is released.
Don’t forget you can meet Troy Baker, voice of Arkham Origins Joker this summer at ArcadeCon!
