Out in the expanded and snow-covered open world, I found Gotham City beautiful but lifeless. In Arkham City, the excuse is that this part of town has been walled off and given to the criminals. Without that (admittedly far-fetched) scenario, the absence of any hint of civilian life makes Gotham feel eerily barren, especially next to Origins’ open-world peers and their populated streets. It may be the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, but streets teeming with nothing but decidedly un-jolly criminals are still weird. Even so, I could live in the challenge rooms for days, trying to string together the ultimate, uninterrupted flow that includes each of the dozen or so moves and gadgets in Batman’s arsenal. With the gamepad in the right hands (which every so often, mine are) it looks like elaborate fight choreography. And Predator still makes me feel like a ninja, particularly when playing in challenge mode where I can disable certain gadgets or enable other handicaps. Overall, the end result is that Arkham Origins is smoother and more consistent on the 360, with the PS3 game delivering a similar experience to Microsoft's console, bar the more inconsistent frame-rate drops during heavy combat and traversal. Both manage to achieve far more stable performance than Nintendo's console, which comes across as erratic, and even occasionally broken when random freezes occur as the engine struggles to stream assets out for display. Instead of redefining the series, Arkham Origins expands upon the open version of Gotham present in the previous Batman title, adding in new locations to the existing hub world while also tweaking other areas of the game - the animation of Batman has been improved, resulting in combat that flows a touch more fluidly than before, with the developers promising a more brutal "year two" Batman who has yet to refine his combat skills. In terms of the game engine itself, we see small changes to the lighting model that add more depth to scenes while reducing the harsh glare present from some of the neon signs and spotlights dotted about the environments. The appearance of reduced levels of texture filtering is a little surprising on Wii U - something which also afflicts the PS3 game but to a lesser extent - as are the inclusion of lower-resolution shadows. Perhaps the developer struggled with overall bandwidth consumption on the platform with regards to texture reads from DDR3 memory (bandwidth-heavy tasks are mostly likely done using the system's 32MB ESRAM), or that they simply didn't have the texture units available. This would certainly help to explain why the appearance of particle effects and heavy alpha have a greater impact on performance than on other formats in many Wii U games - not just in Arkham Origins.

Given its nature as a story-heavy game, we can’t say much here, but if you have access to a VR headset, Arkham VR is certainly worth playing, especially considering its brief ~90-minute runtime. Arkham Knight is set on the night of Halloween, presumably less than a year after the events of City. Scarecrow (voiced by Lord of the Rings' John Noble) is threatening Gotham City with his fear toxin, while a new threat surfaces in the mysterious Arkham Knight. Batman, all the while, is dealing with internal torment as an effect of the previous games. a b Vore, Brian (April 9, 2013). "May Cover Revealed: Batman: Arkham Origins". Game Informer. GameStop. Archived from the original on August 31, 2013 . Retrieved April 9, 2013. Though originally set to release on May 26, 2023, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been delayed to February 2, 2024, with the devs explaining in a statement that they've, "made the tough but necessary decision to take the time needed to work on getting the game to be the best quality experience for players." So far, there has been no announcements of new Batman games in the works after this one.

Batman: Arkham Origins - the Digital Foundry verdict

It's a shame that performance is so poor on the Wii U version of Arkham Origins as the hardware has the potential to deliver the most interesting Batman experience due to the system's unique GamePad controller. Many of Batman's gadgets employ the use of a touchscreen in the game, so are well suited for mapping to the GamePad's use as a second display and touch device. Batman: Arkham Underworld is a mobile game that positions you as Gotham’s newest criminal mastermind, allowing you to command Batman villains such as Harley Quinn, The Riddler, Scarecrow, Mr. Freeze, and Killer Croc. It’s essentially a free-to-play Gotham gang recruiter, in which you build a criminal hideout, recruit henchmen, and do battle. Kevin Conroy reprises his role as Batman following the mainline Arkham trilogy. This younger Batman already has all his signature moves and gear, flies a fancy plane, and is on a first-name basis with pretty much every villain but The Joker. So at the cost of really selling the idea that these events happen prior to the other two games, Origins keeps the foundation of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City’s amazing combat intact, including every gadget in one form or another. (Mr. Freeze’s absence from the rogue’s gallery means the cryo-grenades are now concussion or glue grenades.)

In addition to Scarecrow and Arkham Knight, the supporting cast includes Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Penguin, Riddler, Two-Face, Robin, Commissioner Gordon, and Barbara Gordon. The supporting cast includes Robin, Nightwing, Alfred Pennyworth, Penguin, Killer Croc, and Joker. Arkham VR stars Conroy and Hamill’s Batman and the Joker. Naturally, PC owners get visibly higher-resolution textures and normal maps, although the artwork on Batman's suit and skin doesn't appear quite as detailed compared to Arkham City. The use of higher-resolution depth-of-field and object blur effects are also present over the console versions, along with the inclusion of soft shadows and the addition of extra debris, objects, and alpha-based effects scattered across the environment. The level of ambient occlusion is stronger than the console versions too, with the PC's DirectX 11 enhanced HBAO implementation featuring a wider radius of coverage than the cheaper SSAO variant used on the 360, PS3, and Wii U. Below we’ve outlined two ways to approach the Batman: Arkham games: chronologically by release date or chronologically by narrative. The choice is yours, and both possible paths are outlined below, beginning with the narrative chronology. The changes are largely beneficial and extend across the majority of platforms, with PC owners getting some tasty PhysX-enhanced extras that further improve upon the game's already solid aesthetic. That said, the situation surrounding the Wii U version is somewhat less pleasing: there are a few more graphical compromises compared to 360 and PS3, while performance lags behind the other formats - not something we'd expect to see at this point in the console's life.Phillips, Tom (October 18, 2013). "Batman: Arkham Origins' Wii U and physical PC versions will launch later in Europe". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on October 21, 2013 . Retrieved October 18, 2013. Galletta, Ryan (October 24, 2013). "Batman: Arkham Origins Out Tomorrow on PS3". PlayStation Blog. Archived from the original on October 26, 2013 . Retrieved November 20, 2013.