Can I skip the first 2 games and just play this one?

@mikewhy: return to arkham? I thought the pc versions still looked better then those

I said no but only because Brad and I have the same opinion that is Arkham Asylum is the best in the series and it would be a shame if you skipped it.

The best thing about the batman games is you can skip them all.

This is thanks to one of the worst mechanics ever introduced to the industry; batman combat.

Thing is even if you do play it you kind of aren't really playing anything anyway.

@xanadu: I should mention I haven't seen the remasters in person, I'm just a sucker for better lighting / textures / effects.

You'll miss some story stuff, but just watch all the cutscenes on YouTube and you'll be fine. I think Arkham Knight is actually the best of them all. It takes the best parts of each Arkham game. Asylum was in large part (but not only) special because the asylum was a cool setting. I wasn't a fan of City, but Knight takes the open city setting; where City felt kind of empty, Knight fills its city with detail similar to Asylum. And it has a strong story and soundtrack similar to how Origins does (although, one bit of it is too predictable if you know Batman's stories).

You can also get a lot of suit cosmetics from the history of Batman and Batmobile/Bat tank skins. To me, Spider-Man on PS4 and Arkham Knight are the two best superhero games. The Batmobile/Bat tank stuff I enjoyed, so in that sense, I don't agree with others, but at the same time it's not my favorite part of Knight. I wish there was a PS4 Pro/Xbox One X enhancement, or now, an XSX/PS5 enhancement. The game still looks great, which is a surprise considering even at the time of its release it was a surprise at what could be done with the aging version of that engine.

That said, the true ending being locked behind doing all side quests was kind of bad, and there is no way I'll ever do all those riddler trophies. I'll also say, going back to Asylum when having already played through the series it feels kind of lacking and simplistic.

I’d do the opposite and play asylum and drop this

Thank you everyone for taking the time to post!

Return to Arkham was on sale so I picked it up and will play through them in order.

Cheers!

I am a huge Batman fan and played Asylum 3 times, City 1 time and Knight only played 5hrs before I was done with it. So if you don't play Asylum you will be missing the best Batman game ever made.

I started from the beginning recently, almost done with asylum and that game is in my top 5 for ps3 games easily

The story is so much better when you play it in sequence

Play Asylum and then stop. You have seen the best Rocksteady can do.

If you want it to be the only Arkham game you ever play, sure go for it.

Okay, I've gotta know. What makes it so horrifyingly bad? I mean, it's beat-em-up gameplay with a bit of a rhythm component.

@ntm: I feel the same way. I bought Return to Arkham last fall to finally play Asylum then replay City...but instead I just burned out on Asylum after a few hours and never got around to City. Arkham Asylum has always struck me as one of those games, sort of like Demon's Souls, certain people revere because it was the first of those in a had-to-be-there kind of way but is maybe a little limited compared to what came after.

@shagge: I think Mack from Worth a Buy explains it better than I can in the review below, but I'll give it a go anyway.

Not wanting to have a dig at anyone who likes these games I'm sure they have a lot to offer, but 'batman combat' is shallow to say the least, it is simple button mashing while cool automated animations play on screen, it is as dumbed down as it could be. The ai is absolutly terrible just standing back waiting for their turn to recieve their cool batman takedown animation, it has to be this bad just to account for how automated the whole thing is. This would be ok if it hadn't been so highly praised and subsequently used in a large amount (enough for it to of coined the term batman combat) of AAA games that would of been much better without this pampering style of combat.

To me it is the embodiment of what is wrong with gameplay in modern gaming development, not that it's casual or simple there's nothing wrong with that, it's that it is fake.

Anyway that is enough edge from me, here's Macks take, I think he goes a bit far but he gets the general idea accross. The combat talk starts around 5m:30s.

@sarcasticmudcrab: I don't love Batman combat but it's a relatively small part of the game, especially in Arkham Knight, which has the Batmobile stuff added to stuff that was already in the prior games (like traversal, detective mode, stealth sequences etc...) You probably spend like 15-20% of the game fighting hand to hand in Knight, and if you don't enjoy the base combat you can mix in gadgets and Batmobile tricks to make it even less.

But really the key here is just that the Batman combat isn't meant to be a skill-based challenge like the guy in the video whines obnoxiously about. Some gamers just get super salty when games don't do the thing they want, which is challenge players with carefully designed and precise systems. Batman is designed to empower the player and give them the sense of being a superhero who can easily beat up average thugs. It does that reasonably well, and it's legit not to like that but it's obnoxious to just say it's objectively bad when lots of people clearly do like it.

The combat also can be challenging in its own way (as shown in some of the optional combat challenge content) it's just not in the main game because the developers want people of all skill levels to be able to experience the story and do the other stuff. It's just not designed to be a super tough gatekeeping challenge, which is a legit design decision.

Now personally my issues with the combat have to do more with the way animation priority works and how it wants you to do things in very specific ways, but again a lot of people like it so... It's perfectly possible to not really gel with the combat and still enjoy the games though, especially Arkham Knight, where fighting is less emphasized than in an of the prior games.

@sarcasticmudcrab: Just because a lot of games poorly ripped the mechanic off doesn't make the original system bad. But if you don't like it, you don't like it.

@xanadu: Many of the games that ripped off Batman's combat were critical and commercial successes. Shadow of Mordor and 2018 Spider-Man are probably the clearest examples. But if you watch the embedded video the complaints aren't so much about execution as about design and concept. There's just a philosophical objection to games focusing on flashy empowerment over skill-based challenge.

Yes very well put.

In isolation or as it's own genre even I think it would be fine, but this mentality from developers (and maybe more so publishers) spilled out into a significant amount of the industry, the idea that the player should be made to constantly be achieving something and being rewarded, even if they are not doing anything. It seemed to me like Batmans success led to that being ok, in fact more than ok it became the thing to do for a lot of the bigger games companies. I had a similar gripe with the way Overwatch gives you a bunch of fake positive feedback even if you totally sucked, like 'well done you travelled the furthest this game! have a star!'...ye travelled furthest running back from the spawn room.

Of course Batman and his combat didn't single handedly create this, I think mobile phone games have had a bigger impact on the same problem, but it's all part of it.

also reads as: grumpy old man being grumpy

@sarcasticmudcrab: That's fair! There are certainly widely enjoyed mechanics in games that do nothing for me as well (crafting, for example).

The way I view Batman combat is basically a combat puzzle that's more about knowing when to prioritize which enemies to maximize your XP reward. Basically, you get out of it what you put into it. The challenge isn't in surviving (for the most part), it's in balancing creativity and efficiency. Now, I'm not saying it's perfect, things get pretty silly when you're a Batpinball bouncing from enemy to enemy, taking out 70 guys without a scratch, but I do think there's much more depth to it than a casual playthrough may suggest. I've watched a number of people do blind playthroughs (I *really* love these games, haha), and I don't think I've seen any of them take advantage of the full suite of mechanics, or even the rhythm aspect.

Personally, I think the games really shine on Hard NG+ where it holds your feet to the fire a little more and you can't get away with mashing as easily. None of the games are especially difficult even then, but it does make you work for your reward at least.

Edit: Totally agreed on MP games giving out participation awards, though. Takes away any incentive to get better, which is a detriment in teamwork-heavy games like OW.