Batman: Arkham Trilogy

Genre: Compilation / Open-World Action-RPG / Metroidvania

Players: 1

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Review:

Batman: Arkham Trilogy, released on Nintendo Switch in 2023, is a Compilation of the three Rockstead-developed games in the Batman Arkham series – Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City, and Batman: Arkham Knight, originally released in 2009, 2011, and 2015 on multiple platforms. All DLC content for the three games is included as well.

Originally, it seemed like these games would be released separately, in addition to the collection. However, for a year or so this was not the case, even though buying the collection results in three separate icons on your Nintendo Switch main screen. After a year, WB Games quietly released the three games as separate entities on the eShop as well as the Trilogy bundle.

I do feel like these games all deserve to be addressed separately, because despite featuring the same core gameplay, each of these games brings something different to this collection.

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Seeking Asylum

Before Batman: Arkham Asylum released, people generally had a low opinion of licensed videogames. To be sure, licensed games were occasionally good, sometimes even great, but usually they were trash, and they were rarely something so incredible that the rest of the videogame industry would have to stand up and take notice.

But Arkham Asylum wasn’t just ambitious, it was ambitious in numerous ways, and seemingly everything it attempted, it succeeded at brilliantly. Videogames to this day are still making use of the lessons taught by the brilliant work of art and engineering that is Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Let’s start with the license, because that’s what most people see first when they see a licensed game. Where many Batman games simply slap the characters in an underwhelming plot to justify the gameplay, Arkham Asylum brought aboard Paul Dini of Batman: The Animated Series fame to handle the game’s plot, as well getting voice actors Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and Arleen Sorkin to reprise their Batman: TAS roles as Batman, Joker, and Harley Quinn.

However, this was not an adaptation of the animated series, but something new that pulled inspiration from throughout the Batman mythos, with Easter eggs hidden throughout the game referencing all sorts of Batman minutia from the comics and their adaptations over the years. Every detail of the game seemed to resonate with authenticity, with this game giving us truly excellent depictions of the characters and locations from the comics in a gripping, well-written story about Joker enacting a plot to take over Arkham Asylum and Batman exploring the bowels of the facility and the island it sits on in order to stop him.

Graphically, the game was extremely impressive for the time, although by today’s standards it has aged quite a lot. The detailed 3D character models no longer look quite as they once did, but the game still has superb textures, excellent use of lighting and shadow, and overall looks great, even if the characters themselves don’t look quite as good as they used to.

The sound fares much better here. Arkham Asylum doesn’t have the memorable film score of the Tim Burton movies, nor the excellent music of Batman: The Animated series, but instead seems to take inspiration from the Christopher Nolan films, atmospheric in a way that makes Arkham Asylum come across as dark and foreboding. The voice acting also deserves a lot of credit here – the lead voice actors are all outstanding here, but this game does a great job with even bit parts like convicts sharing gossip about Joker or quaking in fear at the thought of Batman lurking in the shadows.

However, I said this game was revolutionary, and much of that is the gameplay itself. Unlike every other game in the Arkham series, Batman: Arkham Asylum is not an open-World game, but rather plays like a 3D Metroidvania. Players will be exploring all over the island Arkham Asylum is on as the game progresses, responding to new crises as they arise, but also searching for hidden secrets throughout the island. As you progress and gain new gadgets and new abilities, you’ll get access to more of the island, and find additional connecting paths linking areas you’ve been to previously. This game is a master class in 3D Metroidvania design, and one that very few games have been capable of, even to this day.

In addition to exploration, you’ll also be fighting a lot of goons, and Batman: Arkham Asylum’s combat is so smooth and fluid that it truly makes Batman seem like the absolute force to be reckoned with that comics always paint him as, and gives players a wonderful feeling of controlling that powerful force, effortlessly going from combo to counter to stun to dodge to special. Even to this day, you still see videogames with combat that’s just “Arkham Asylum, but with this character instead”.

Stealth is another area where Arkham Asylum absolutely excelled. Prior to this, Stealth in games consisted mainly of trying not to be seen, and scampering to a hiding spot once you were, or possibly taking potshots at enemies from the shadows while trying to avoid discovery. In Arkham Asylum, Stealth is designed to make the player feel like stalking their prey, moving among the shadows and silently picking off enemies one by one as they reveal weaknesses in their formation. Where in other games Stealth is usually about being vulnerable, here Stealth is a source of power.

Another important element here is detective mode. At frequent intervals throughout the game, players will need to track down a fleeing suspect, or search for a clue they need, which involves switching over to a different tech-enabled visor to analyze something or follow a trail. This may seem simple now, but at the time it was a brilliant way of making The World’s Greatest Detective actually do some detective-ing in a videogame, where other Batman games just tend to focus on the fighting, gadgets, and acrobatics.

However, Detective Mode isn’t just for occasional mystery-solving – it also proved to be highly useful in gameplay, enabling players to easily track enemies in an area, even through walls, floors, and ceilings. Yet again, this is one more feature we’ve seen put to use in countless games since this game was released.

I could go on and on about Batman: Arkham Asylum. This is one of my favorite games of all-time, and it still holds up extremely well today, although you can definitely see the seams more now. In addition to the graphics aging somewhat, I can definitely see how the gameplay was refined in later entries in the series, particularly when it comes to mid-air movement.

On that note, I am aware that many consider this game’s successor to be the best in this series. For my part, I’m torn. While the Open-World games that would follow Arkham Asylum are excellent in a different way, I still have a soft spot for this game’s Metroidvania design, something that I think still makes this unique within its series.

Oh, and before continuing, yeah, this game works fine on Nintendo Switch. It doesn’t really improve on the original release, but doesn’t detract from it either. There’s not much to report here, really. Anyway, moving on…

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Moving to the Big City

I’ll try not to rant about Batman: Arkham City the same way I did about Arkham Asylum. Because I already did, when I wrote my review of the Wii U game last year.

In short, everything Asylum did so brilliantly, City does even better, bigger, and more nuanced. Paul Dini and the major voice actors are back and as great as ever here, with a new story where a condemned part of Gotham City has been cordoned off to use as a prison after the events of the first game, letting criminals run free in a plot by the villain Hugo Strange, who knows Batman’s secret identity and has locked Bruce Wayne in with the criminals as a part of his plan.

Where Asylum was a 3D Metroidvania, Arkham City is a full Open World game, with a wide area of a city to navigate explore, with improved character models (that have aged a bit, but not as much as the first game) and a much more detailed and massive world.

To get around this larger area, Batman’s movement has been greatly expanded, most notably with better mid-air controls and the ability to use your grappling hook in mid-flight to soar non-stop from rooftop to rooftop, allowing you to get from one part of the map to the next swiftly. These new movement controls are a huge part of why this game works so well, and the game also does a great job incorporating characters that weren’t seen in the first game, like Catwoman, Two-Face, Penguin, and Mr. Freeze.

In its earlier releases, the Wii U version also had special gameplay added to make use of that platform’s unique features, with an interactive touchscreen map and gyroscopic controls for detective mode. Perhaps it was too much to hope for that these features would be added in to this version, as the Nintendo Switch has both gyroscopic controls and a touchscreen, but alas, this is not the case. It’s no great loss – these were hardly essential features, but it’s still unfortunate to see they haven’t been carried over.

Oh, and before continuing, yeah, this game works fine on Nintendo Switch. It doesn’t really improve on the original release, but doesn’t detract from it either. There’s not much to report here, really. Anyway, moving on…

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Knightfall

When Batman: Arkham Trilogy was announced, it was the third game in the series that had most players wondering whether it would make the jump okay. Both earlier games had originally released on the Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 generation of hardware, and like many games of that generation, their port to Nintendo Switch seemed like it would be pretty straightforward. Arkham Knight, on the other hand, was released on the subsequent generation of hardware, and ports from Xbox One and PlayStation 4 generation platforms to Nintendo Switch can be somewhat tricky.

While I wouldn’t go as far as many others who have called Arkham Knight on Nintendo Switch “unplayable”, wow it is rough. Horrible aliasing, noticeable pop-in, framerates that frequently chug, and sometimes the game will even freeze up for a moment. In addition, the lower resolution on Nintendo Switch really makes it difficult to discern what you’re looking at times, especially when the screen is frequently busy, and when the frequent use of the Batmobile means it’s all blasting by at high-speed. Where the other two games in this collection are solid ports, this is a game that definitely feels like it had to make severe compromises to fit on Nintendo Switch, and even then it absolutely struggles to keep up on a regular basis.

All of this is on top of a game that is widely agreed to be the weakest entry in the series. It’s not all bad – Arkham Knight widens the scope of the Open World we saw in Arkham City multiple times over with its bigger world, expands Batman’s abilities even further, and gives us full control over the Batmobile. That last part is one of the biggest new focuses of this game – you can summon the Batmobile at any time and speed through to your destination, complete with a guiding line to help you find your way through the labyrinthine city, and with the press of a button the Batmobile acts as a versatile tank, strafing and moving freely.

However, as freeing as the Batmobile can be, it’s also a hassle – steering the thing often feels like you’re barely in control, and the focus on the Batmobile takes focus away from the great navigation on rooftops that was so liberating in Arkham City. Furthermore, the Batmobile ties into what is generally seen as one of the worst changes in this game – where prior games had “Riddler Challenges” that required you to search for hidden pickups nestled away in the map, or required you to make clever use of your gadgets, Riddler challenges in this game are just obstacle courses you have to race on in your Batmobile.

It’s an odd choice for a villain who prides himself on his intelligence, and an aggravating element of the game that has little to do with anything else here – you don’t feel like completing these challenges is a sign that you’re growing in your mastery of the environment and of what it is to be Batman, you just feel like you repeatedly did a frustrating thing until you finally completed it.

In addition to the mix of good and bad that the Batmobile brings, there were other things I just thought were bad. I don’t like the new mission system – it’s needlessly aimless and confusing in my opinion. While I think that Jonathan Banks’ depiction of Mike Ehrmantraut in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul is superb, I think having him suddenly voicing Commissioner Gordon in this game is a jarring change, as he sounds nothing like the previous voice actors who took up that role. And the fact that Paul Dini wasn’t involved in this game’s story (unlike the prior two games) is noticeable.

This game’s story, taking place after Arkham City’s surprising ending (which I won’t spoil here), Gotham City experiences a period of peace until Scarecrow threatens the city with his fear gas, causing a city-wide evacuation. And… what? Scarecrow is always threatening to unleash his fear gas on the city, why would doing it this time suddenly cause everyone to evacuate?

The answer is, of course, that when you inevitably lose control of the Batmobile and run someone over, you can be rest assured that it’s only one of the criminals that are now the only remaining people in the city and not an innocent pedestrian. You know, as if that’s okay, or something Batman would do because he likes to torment presumed criminals just for kicks. It’s a clunky way to try to twist the story to fit the needs of the gameplay, and it strains credulity.

All of these problems are not to say that Arkham Knight is bad. Despite all the questionable gameplay and story choices, and even the severely lacking port to Nintendo Switch, it’s still an enjoyable game, but most of what makes it enjoyable was already done in Arkham City, and done much better, too.

It’s even more perplexing, because if they wanted to include another game in this bundle to add value, they didn’t need to go with Arkham Knight – Batman: Arkham Origins, while not developed by Rocksteady and generally seen as inferior to Arkham City, was still a solid game and would have been much easier to port to Nintendo Switch than Arkham Knight. Heck, they could have even tossed in Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate as well to make it a four-pack – that game has its own flaws, but it still could have been included in this bundle to add value.

But, that’s not what happened here. Instead, this bundle rounds out this trilogy with a massive disappointment.

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A Bat Batch?

Okay, so now that I’ve gone into all three games in detail, let’s talk about how they all shape up together in this bundle. Here is what I thought of all of the games in this collection:

Game	Genre	# of Players	Score
Batman: Arkham Asylum	Action-RPG / Metroidvania	1	A+
tl;dr Simply put, Batman: Arkham Asylum set the groundwork for this series with an absolute massive success right from the first game, with a perfect blend of exploration, combat, fun gadgets, great story, and lots of variety. While some may prefer the Open-World approach of later games, I feel the more focused Metroidvania level design of this game is every bit as valid. In any case, this is an absolute must-play game for any Bat-fan.
Batman: Arkham City	Open-World Action-RPG	1	A+
tl;dr Everything that Arkham Asylum does well, Arkham City does just as well if not better, as well as bigger and more spectacular. The Open-World game design here is superb, Batman’s expanded moveset and traversal abilities are truly delightful, and the story and world of this game is a thrill to explore. Another must-play for anyone looking for a great Batman game.
Batman: Arkham Knight	Open-World Action-RPG	1	C+
tl;dr In Arkham Knight’s attempt to transform the series’ gameplay by adding the Batmobile, they unfortunately dilute it instead, and multiple other new elements added here simply do not work. Not only is this game already a big disappointment for the series, but the Nintendo Switch port is really rough, with massive graphical problems that affect the gameplay. While there’s still some enjoyable gameplay here, most of what works well here was what already worked, and much better, in Arkham City. Series fans may still want to play this, but be prepared for possibly the worst game in the series, and if at all possible play it on another platform instead.

So, as I’ve made pretty clear at this point, two of these three games are absolutely incredible, must-play experiences. If you’re a Batman fan and you haven’t played these games yet, you’re doing “Batman fan” wrong. And even if you’re not a Batman fan, you still may want to play them. Not only are they immensely good, they’re also highly-influential games that are still to this day inspiring the rest of the games industry.

… and then there’s the third game, which was already a big disappointment in the series, and then made even more so in a terribly rough port to Nintendo Switch.

As mentioned above, as of this writing, you cannot buy these games separately on Nintendo Switch – you’re stuck buying them together. It gets worse. At $60, even if you write off Arkham Knight and just focus on the two good games, this might seem like a decent deal… but only if you deliberately chose not to look at other platforms. There, you can get Batman: Return to Arkham, which includes these same two games and all of their associated content for a mere $20.

I think I have made it clear by this point – I absolutely love Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City. These are two of my favorite games of all-time, and they are both still amazing here. But in order to get these games on Nintendo Switch, you have to pay an additional $40 for this bundle that justifies this price increase with a disappointing and broken port of Arkham Knight. If you have yet to play the first two games and don’t have another gaming platform or want to play them on the go, this may still be worth it, but for the rest of us, getting these two great games at effectively three times the price just feels gross.

tl;dr – Batman: Arkham Trilogy is a Compilation of Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City, and Batman: Arkham Knight. Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are incredible, must-play games, two of the greatest games ever made, and these are solid ports. Unfortunately, Arkham Knight is a disappointing sequel, and this port of it is broken and ugly on top of that. This bundle would still easily be worth getting for the first two incredible games, but the $60 price tag is three times what you’d pay to get these two games on any other platform, which makes it hard to recommend this bundle.

Grade: B

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