After nearly two decades, it has become clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that Batman dominates the video game industry regarding adaptations of superhero-inspired characters. Whether that’s to a fault or not is topical, seeing how DC games that do not feature Batman in a playable role have crashed and burned, or been canceled before they ever had a chance to succeed, though it’s also a testament to how influential and popular Batman games have been for many decades.
The Batman: Arkham franchise alone is arresting because each entry is so unique, and thus, they will each have fans who stand in its corner and sing its praises. This is true of many non-Arkham Batman games, also, and fans of the character and his 86-year-old mythology tapestry have a bountiful feast of games to enjoy, which cannot be said of other staple, high-profile DC characters.
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Batman Begins
Batman Begins’ video game adaptation is special, as it marks the final licensed tie-in Warner Bros. Batman game. It captures the movie’s tone wonderfully, features a fascinating Fear mechanic, and brilliantly emphasizes stealth, inheriting Splinter Cell’s core gameplay ethos. Sadly, a video game based on The Dark Knight was canceled, marking the end of an era for these officially licensed movie tie-ins.
9
Batman: The Telltale Series
Batman: The Telltale Series and its sequel, Batman: The Enemy Within, preceded a profoundly tumultuous era for Telltale, one that has affected the studio to this day. Either way, Batman: The Telltale Series is bolstered by classic Telltale’s choice-based storytelling and gameplay affecting characters who would eventually become Batman’s rogues’ gallery.
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LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes
Aside from the widely celebrated Batman: Arkham games, few DC games have reached the same heights as those in Traveller’s Tales’ LEGO Batman franchise. LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes is debatably the best of the trilogy, though there’s an argument to be made that LEGO DC Super-Villains beats all three, and the future is looking remarkably bright for LEGO Batman games now.
7
Batman: Rise Of Sin Tzu
Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu introduces a phenomenal new titular villain in a co-op-centric beat-’em-up game inspired by the designs and portrayals of characters in The New Batman Adventures. Trash cans and other environmental objects are decidedly more overpowered than any gadget hurled by Batman, Batgirl, Robin, and Nightwing (assuming enemies don’t reach them first), and spending XP between levels on skill trees for more attacks and combination strings is exceptionally satisfying (even if all of your XP is spent on various difficulty-locked Tokens for bonus Trophy Room content).
Not unlike Resident Evil 5’s co-op gameplay, Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu is infinitely more fun when played in co-op. Sadly, and somewhat bizarrely, Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu only features two-player co-op, despite there being four playable Bat-Family characters to choose from.
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Batman: Arkham Origins
For a long while, Batman: Arkham Origins—much less its 2.5D Metroidvania companion, Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate—was the black sheep of the Batman: Arkham franchise because it was developed by WB Games Montréal, not Rocksteady. Its tissue and muscle fiber has Batman: Arkham City’s skeletal framework to thank for holding its body together, but Batman: Arkham Origins more than proved its competency and value in the series by presenting the Arkhamverse with its first truly great story.
Having yet another Batman: Arkham game feature Joker as its main villain wasn’t necessarily inspired, and yet Batman: Arkham Origins tells an excellent prequel origin story for Joker and many other characters and villains in the Arkhamverse’s rich lore. This was an unenviable and Herculean feat that it executed surprisingly well, with Batman and Joker actors Roger Craig Smith and Troy Baker, respectively, becoming natural successors to the roles that Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill have played beautifully.
5
LEGO Batman: Legacy Of The Dark Knight
Because the LEGO and Arkham titles are some of the most beloved Batman games of all time, it was a match made in heaven for LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight’s gameplay to not only rest on LEGO games’ completionist and collectible-oriented niche, but also lean heavily on the Batman: Arkham games’ signature and timeless formulas, including FreeFlow combat and Predator stealth encounters, as well as open-world traversal that revolves around grapnel-boosting and cape-gliding.
However, it’s unfortunate that one player always has to be Batman, while the other player can swap freely beyond Jim Gordon, Catwoman, Robin, Nightwing, and Talia al Ghul. Likewise, Robin essentially becomes obsolete as a character once Nightwing is unlocked, and Talia only becoming playable near the end of the story leaves a lot to be desired, especially considering how little she is needed to complete all side content in Gotham City’s neighboring islands. Still, it’s a crowning achievement for LEGO Batman games.
4
Batman: Vengeance
Batman: Vengeance is immersed in The New Batman Adventures’ iconic art direction, and its atmosphere is phenomenally somber, and its original soundtrack is sublime. Its narrative takes countless twists and turns, beginning with a woman named Mary (who is actually Harley Quinn in disguise), her son Toby (who is not real), and Joker’s alleged death, and has a great villain roster.
Batman: Vengeance’s biggest moments of friction come from firing gadgets from a first-person perspective, particularly during Mister Freeze’s boss fight, but it’s rewarding having to fully incapacitate enemies by handcuffing them when they’re downed.
3
Batman: Arkham City
Without committing wholly to an open-world Gotham City, the eponymous compound erected to envelop Old Gotham in Batman: Arkham City makes for an astonishing open world, and what it lacks in its condensed size, it makes up for in having Riddler trophies or side content saturating almost every dark, snow-blanketed alleyway. Batman: Arkham City’s true zenith, though, is its boss fights, with Mr. Freeze, Ra’s al Ghul, and Clayface’s being some of the best in the series.
Batman: Arkham City is indecisive about who it wants its main villain to be. Plus, its narrative requires players to suspend their disbelief in the matter of Professor Hugo Strange actually being given the legal authority to dedicate a huge slice of Gotham to serial killers, rapists, and supervillains, allowing them to wreak havoc and organize in villain-led gangs (before Protocol 10 commences, anyway).
2
Batman: Arkham Shadow
Anyone who considers themselves a stalwart fan of the Batman: Arkham games is missing out on one of the best installments if they’ve idly overlooked Batman: Arkham Shadow, the Meta Quest 3/3S-exclusive VR game developed by Camouflaj. Not only is it a genuine Batman: Arkham game that belongs alongside the rest of its mainline prequels and sequels, but its gameplay also inherits every gameplay nuance that fans adore about the flatscreen Batman: Arkham games.
It doesn’t take long for Batman: Arkham enthusiasts’ muscle memories to come flooding back to their synapses when they begin countering unseen enemies’ attacks, administering rapid-punch beatdowns, or performing inverted takedowns from gargoyle perches before grappling to another gargoyle and planning how they’ll dismantle the rest of the enemies in a room. Batman: Arkham Shadow also takes immense care to tether its own original lore to what is already established in the Arkhamverse, has the best, most heartbreaking story of any Batman: Arkham game, and does for Blackgate Penitentiary what Batman: Arkham Asylum does for Arkham Asylum concerning its worldbuilding.
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Batman: Arkham Asylum
Atmosphere and worldbuilding are all Batman: Arkham Asylum was responsible for in the Batman: Arkham franchise’s first entry, and what it achieved has obviously been unimaginably seminal. It certainly helps that it was hoisted onto Batman: The Animated Series/The New Batman Adventures’ shoulders and had the animated show’s acting talent to reinforce its performances; perhaps Batman: Arkham Asylum’s smartest decision, though, was taking place entirely on the enigmatic and harrowing Arkham Island.
Batman: Arkham Asylum is more or less a portrait of this new continuity’s interpretations of classic Batman villains. The Batman: Arkham franchise’s villains are the definitive iterations of the characters, especially due to how significant and memorable Riddler is throughout, and Batman: Arkham Asylum introduces a handful of them sensationally as players navigate archaic and haunting architecture.
Some fans may prefer the later Batman: Arkham games due to their open-world gameplay and side missions. That said, Batman: Arkham Asylum is so singular, claustrophobic, and refined, and there is a low likelihood that any new Batman game arriving in the future, whether it’s part of the Batman: Arkham franchise or not, will ever amount to what Batman: Arkham Asylum has accomplished.
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Bob Kane, Bill Finger
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The Batman
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