Saturday Morning Gaming: On the Precipice of a New Game

I’ve talked before about Arkham Asylum and Arkham City and Arkham Origins and Arkham Knight. All four of them are really awesome games and I was lucky to have played each when it came out.

Arkham Asylum is a game that begins with a somewhat green Batman taking The Joker to Arkham Asylum at which point everything goes sideways and you’re stuck fighting a huge bunch of enemies and problems in Arkham Asylum (one of which, of course, is that The Riddler has left about 240 “riddles” around the island).

Arkham City is a game that begins with Bruce Wayne standing outside of Arkham City protesting the Burrough-sized penitentiary right before he gets arrested and thrown into it. Right away, he finds himself having to deal with Batman’s Greatest Hits. Black Mask, Two-face, Penguin, Rā’s al Ghūl, Hugo Strange, The Riddler, Deadshot, Mad Hatter… dude, if this were a comic book, you’d point and laugh and call it “try-hard”. But as a video game, you find yourself disappointed that Killer Moth doesn’t show up. (The 440 “riddles” will leave you saying “did this game not have someone who said “let’s not do 440”???)

Arkham Origins was what some might call a “prequel” and others might call a “cash-grab” where they took all of the artifacts from Arkham City, gussied them up a little bit, then gave a game where you were a brand-spanking-new Batman dealing with a bunch of Batman Villains for something around the first time and establishing a bunch of relationships that we took for granted in Arkham Asylum/City. (I think that this might be my sentimental favorite of the Arkham games. Even though it doesn’t really have “riddles”, per se.)

Arkham Knight was the game that tied everything up in a nice little bow. Questions that you had at the end of the first three games? Well, 80 percent of them were answered by Arkham Knight. Plus you finally got to drive the Batmobile!

You can get the “official” games in a bundle for about $20. Given that I paid around $180 for the original games themselves and consider myself to have gotten a bargain, I’d say that THIS IS A STEAL.

Amazing games, each of them. Critics consider these to be the best three games of the four. Play it on your PS4 *OR* your PS5. All of them kick major butt and you will delight at the combat, the stealth, the writing, and the voice acting.

Seriously: These Games Hold Up. If you like Batman at all, you will like these games.

Well, on Friday, October 21st, 2022, a sequel to the Arkham Series came out! Gotham Knights! There were a handful of earth-shattering events that happened at the end of Arkham Knight that might have a less-experienced fan ask “where do they go from here?”

Well, Gotham Knights goes there. Or it promises to, anyway. (Early Steam reviews are “mixed”. While that isn’t a good sign, most of the complaints involve “performance” which pretty much exactly mirrors complaints about Arkham Knight when it came out… and the game was absolutely optimized for the PS4. So, I don’t know.)

Amazon will be delivering mine around noon on Saturday, October 22nd. I can’t wait. I fully intend to beat it twice and review it once.

So… what are you playing?