Batman: Return to Arkham is a decent yet imperfect remastered re-release
Back in 2009, Rocksteady Studios literally changed the way superhero games were perceived when they released “Batman: Arkham Asylum” – a game that literally served as a love letter to fans of the Caped Crusader by immersing them in a pretty faithful recreation of the House of the Criminally Insane and having The Dark Knight trapped and forced to stop The Joker’s takeover of the asylum.
Featuring the voices of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill from Batman: The Animated Series, the game brought to life all things you could expect about playing Batman, including punching bad guys, solving riddles, and unearthing mysteries and getting out of traps using all kinds of gadgets.
The game was a hit, and so a sequel followed in 2011 with “Batman: Arkham City” – which expanded Batman’s horizons and brought him to a cornered off portion of Gotham that served as the new institution for criminals following the destruction of the Asylum in the previous game.
Fastforward to 2016, and Rocksteady has all but finished their time with the Caped Crusader and the storyline they created following the release of “Batman: Arkham Knight” the Playstation 4. With “Batman: Arkham VR” serving as their bonus venture into the world of virtual reality, the studio grants players who have yet to visit or want to experience the events of the first two games a chance to revisit them, as they’ve finally rereleased Arkham Asylum and Arkham City in the dual combo pack called “Batman: Return To Arkham” – which remasters the two Playstation 3 releases and takes them from the Unreal Engine 3 to the much superior Unreal Engine 4.
More than just a simple port of the PS3 originals, Batman: Return to Arkham comes packed with all the bells and whistles you’d expect from two games that are more or less a generation old already.
With the new graphics engine transfer, things are much smoother and lighted better in the first two Arkham games that make it look presentable from face value. Unfortunately, that conversion also takes away some of that “dark gothic presentation” that made Arkham Asylum and Arkham City so intimidating to play when they were initially released.
Noticeable slowdowns and frame rate juggles are especially seen in Asylum, and that’s not to say anything of the random glitches that plague Arkham City as well. That’s probably the rerelease was delayed from its original July 2016 release to October, and while it is serviceable and does a decent job as a rerelease, it is far from being a perfect remaster. Here’s an example of the PS4/ Xbox One remaster being compared side by side with the PC Original:
Bottomline, if you have yet to experience the first two Arkham games, Batman: Return to Arkham will still do the job for current generation consoles. All the extras and Downloadable Content from both games are present, and they’re still some of the best Batman stories to experience in a video game setting. Just don’t expect perfection if you’re looking for it. The game is available for both Playstation 4 and Xbox One. — TJD, GMA News