Topic: Batman: Return to Arkham

Just did a quick search and found we don't have a thread for this collection, so I hope this is alright.

Anyhow, as someone who missed out on these games last gen I decided to nab the collection while it's on sale during the "Retro Sale".

Just started Return to Arkham Asylum last night, and though I'm not too far into it yet (last cleared a part where the game was training me how to stealthily take down gun toting enemies), it looks like it's going to be a solid time (the Metroid influence in map design is noticeable, and as the combat is similar to Spider-Man, since it was influenced by the Arkham games, I've been able to slip into it pretty easily).

What should be my top priority when it comes to upgrades? So far I've played it safe and spent my first two upgrades on Armor/Health enhancement.

First priority is the one that makes combo moves take 5 hits instead of 8, and critical hits even if you get it only 25% of the time.

Despite finishing it twice, I got stuck on hard mode for city, in the ivy fight. Didn’t want to go back to normal difficulty so I moved on

@Mega-Gazz, thanks for the tips. Hopefully I shouldn't have too much trouble as I'm only playing on "Normal", which I do for practically every game, lol.

@RR529 Nothing wrong with normal, I just had finished it twice on normal already.

@Mega-Gazz @RR529 to be fair there is nothing wrong with playing it on easy either, that's what difficulty levels are for so you can tailor the experience for your needs

for example, back on the PS3 i did all the games on hard but when i got the Return to Arkham Collection i went through them on easy because i was just replaying them to get a refresh on the story and so i could enjoy the narrative without much hassle

if anyone says playing on lower difficulties is wrong tell them to get lost, you play it how you want and at a level comfortable for you

@FullbringIchigo I agree, some good points we'll made there.

@RR529 Welcome to the madhouse!

You're on the right track upgrading the batsuit's armour integrity first. I would also agree with @Mega-Gazz in that the x5 combo upgrade is pretty essential. The other tweaks are less important, even some of the gadget combo moves which, whilst cool, won't be needed until much later (especially given your experience with the similar combat mechanics found in Spider-Man).

The game is wonderful at keeping the level of challenge fresh; you'll be encountering new types of enemies, and variations of enemy types, right up to the grand finale. As long as your health is at maximum, you'll be confident enough to try new tactics and take risks because a couple bullets aren't gonna insta-kill you as you escape back into the shadows / grapple to the nearest gargoyle. In other words, once you've got those core couple of upgrades, the rest is personal preference; for example, I hardly ever use batarangs in the Predator sections, so all of their special variants tend to stay in my utility belt, except when a select few platforming puzzles demand them.

There won't be a point where you'll be thinking "gee, wish I'd upgraded this sooner" as your arsenal will naturally expand in line with the situations you're faced with.

Other than that? I envy you. You've got so much awesome ahead of you! Enjoy!

Progessing pretty well I think. In my last play session I went back to the medical facility to get most of the collectables I missed on my first time through (there were still a few I can't get), then I had to stealthily take out snipers on guard towers, and I just entered the mansion.

A Damian Wayne Batman game would have been so good. It would have been just enough of a breath of fresh air the series needed. Especially if Damian would have still been in his younger years. Everything else they can come up with is a worse idea than this - except for a Batman Beyond game maybe.

@Kidfried Hnng... that concept art is so good, and now I miss something I never knew I wanted.

I have hope for the WB Montreal game, as it's apparently an adaptation of The Court of Owls and that, if done right, could be fantastic (rumour has it you can return to the Batcave and switch between all members of the bat-family and their various vehicles, furthering the investigation with whomever you prefer).

So maybe you'll get the chance to play as Damian Wayne anyway, if they place it at the right point in the timeline (him as Robin, then Nightwing, Red Hood, Batgirl and Batwoman).

@RogerRoger I hope. Damian is pretty special to me. I got into Batman in 2006, with Batman and Don (the birth of Damian).

In the ten years that followed I read a lot of comics, pretty much everything in the Bat universe (but also some Marvel and smaller publishers), until the end of New52. That's pretty much the rise and fall of Damian.

So his character is very strongly connected with 'my time' as a superhero comic fanatic.

But I agree that Court of Owls is nice too. It's from that same era, and I've always been a fan of the comic's writer, Scott Snyder.

@RogerRoger @Kidfried Currently reading through the Batman New 52 stuff (just finished Vol 5 Zero Year - Secret City), it's ace and would be cool if that was adapted as a video game. Personally I doubt it will happen though.

The last I heard was that Rocksteady's next game is multiplayer focused. I might just cry if that is true. Lol

@Kidfried With such a strong connection, maybe it's for the best that the Damian Wayne game was cancelled, at least for you. I know a lot of Jason Todd fans were upset with his treatment in Arkham Knight and so there's a chance Rocksteady might've tried to change the nature of his character quite a bit (especially since I'm not sure Bruce and Talia have ever hooked up in the Arkham series, and the whole creepy date rape thing from the Son of Batman animated movie completely ruined that adaptation for me).

@JohnnyShoulder Yeah, I heard that multiplayer rumour, too. Combined with the above stating that they're working on a "superhero creation game" I can see some horrible loot-based MMORPG, a'la DC Universe Online, only with Arkham gameplay... think Destiny with a counter button.

If that's true, then praise be for whatever WB Montreal are working on!

@RogerRoger That one is difficult, really. I might prefer a bad adaptation to no adaptation at all. With DC where it is now, it's looking like we'll never getting anything starring Damian.

Also, I think if they were to do a Damian Wayne game, they should ignore the Arkham storyline. I think that story is kind of at a dead end, so they should just start a new continuity. I liked the Arkham series, but I never really liked their interpretation of the Batman universe.

For instance, I prefer Batgirl over Oracle a million times. Damian should exist, and be like in Batman and Robin. Harley Quinn shouldn't suck. Inspector Gordon and the police should be heroes more, like in Gotham Central comics. And I could give you a long list of what I didn't really like about Arkham, but I think what it comes down to is: Batman should be way more of a hopeful character.

Batman from Arkham was a very calculated character (which fits him of course), but Rocksteady took it to the extreme, and I think Batman lost a lot of character in the process. He didn't struck me as a hero, as someone who inspires. In comics by Snyder, you have a Batman that faces a lot of hardships (a lot of hardships!), but it's a character that remains very human and inspiring through it all. Batman from Arkham was... well, what was he?

So, yea, I get that fans of Todd weren't really happy with their depiction in Arkham Knight, but I didn't really like any of the choices Rocksteady made, and I still really adore those games. So, yea...

And I have nothing against WB Montreal working on the next game. A lot of the stuff they brought to Origins themselves I actually dug a lot.

@Kidfried @RogerRoger Shame WB do not recognise Origins in any way, I missed it on the 360 and would love a remaster.

@Kidfried It's funny that JohnnyShoulder (deliberately not tagging him, as I'm using spoiler tags to discuss a game he's never played and they don't work in email notifications) should mention Arkham Origins because after reading your post, I immediately thought "You're absolutely right, but at least Batman was a hopeful character in Arkham Origins and it's a shame they didn't recognise that."

Not just saying this because I'm an advocate of the game (I think everybody around here knows that by now). One of the stand-out moments of the entire franchise for me is when Bruce returns to the Batcave and resuscitates Alfred, who then reminds him that he isn't alone and doesn't have to shoulder everything himself like he has been until that point. The fact that you actually get to fight alongside Jim Gordon during the finale's Blackgate riot, with Batman commenting that he's brave and a good fighter, also touches upon your point about how the GCPD should be more heroic, and the whole thing ends on quite a hopeful, relatively-upbeat (at least in terms of Arkham games) note... in fact, I think I'd go as far as to call it a triumphant ending.

But I take your point; sometimes it's nice to see something than nothing at all, and I join you in being a fan of Damian Wayne. Fingers crossed he's integrated into the WB Montreal game somehow. I do agree that the Arkham storyline has been played out. Arkham Knight may not have a clean, all-questions-answered ending, but it has an ending, one I'm totally happy with.

Did you ever play the "Batgirl: A Matter of Family" DLC for Arkham Knight, by the way? It's not perfect, but I liked the opportunity to actually see a pre-Oracle Barbara in action.

Having said all of that, there is one brilliant point you made that I have to agree with wholeheartedly, namely that I don't actually like Batman from core Arkham trilogy. I adore that it's Kevin Conroy and he's brilliant, don't get me wrong, but he's a monumental jerk and people often confuse that with being a stoic badass. There's a huge difference but Batman just spends the entire time giving everybody the cold shoulder. Every time a member of the bat-family shows up, he shuns them or tells them to get lost. I get that there's a gameplay necessity inherent to that approach (at least until Arkham Knight introduced character switching in certain sections) but he shows little to no humanity and therefore I kinda don't care about him, beyond the "feels cool to glide and I like this batsuit" surface detail.

In fact, I think the only element Rocksteady ever got right was the Joker, and I think a lot of that is because Mark Hamill ad-libbed a lot of his lines.

@JohnnyShoulder Tagging you below in this spoiler-free post, just in case you wanted to read around the black bars (or don't care about spoilers, in which case go nuts).

@RogerRoger @Kidfried So, forgive my ignorance, but is the Arkham Origins storyline a prequel to Arkham Asylum? And if so, does it do a good job at keeping consistency with the narrative of the Rocksteady trilogy. It’s omission from the PS4 bundle is curious. Perhaps it’s just some contracting business deal that WB has with Sony or some such negotiation gymnastics that my head can’t wrap around, but if it is in fact all part of the same storyline, how integral is it?
As you know, my Arkham experience is this:
-Loved Arkham Asylum on PS3
-Absolutely loved Arkham City on PS3
-Was too turned off by media, critics, and negative buzz concerning Arkham Origins so I never played it (this was in my pre-Push Square days when I just followed sites like IGN and group-think blindly. Fortunately I have discovered more rational and well-rounded minds around here since then)
-Was disappointed by Arkham Knight and so never finished it and have it still on my “Go Back and Finish Eventually” list.
-Never player any of the game ports from PS3 on the PS4

@Th3solution The reason Arkham Origins is overlooked is because it was developed by WB Montreal as a stop-gap release, whilst Rocksteady worked on Arkham Knight.

The story is far enough back in the timeline to be pretty separate from the events of the core trilogy, as it tells the story of Batman's first Christmas when he's still a relative unknown to Gotham City, but it still feels like the same narrative. Most of the main characters have different voice actors (Batman is Roger Craig Smith, the Joker is Troy Baker, etc.) and this further alienated fans, but you never feel a disconnect. It gives extra weight and context to some things that happen in the trilogy, as well as explains comments from villains like Firefly and Deathstroke in Arkham Knight, but it isn't essential and almost works better as a standalone.

With any luck, they'll remaster / re-release it soon, either as a build-up to the new Batman games or as part of their DLC bonus content (like Assassin's Creed III was in the Assassin's Creed Odyssey season pass). Enough time has passed for people to have a better perspective on it, so it'd be foolish for WB to ignore what would essentially be free money.

@RogerRoger It makes me wonder if maybe Arkham Origins would have fared better to be called “Batman Origins” or something else entirely, like “The Dark Knight Begins to Rise” ... or “Gotham: The Game” ... ugh, no - those sound awful. Maybe it was better to tap into the “Arkham” name so as to keep that public consciousness of the insanely popular first two games. But if it stands well on its own as a separate kind of experience, then maybe it was a disservice to link it to the Rocksteady Arkham stuff so tightly.