Batman: Return to Arkham Reviews
Two great games from the last generation, very improved in graphics but sadly still with the same frame rate.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Arkham Asylum ranks up there with the best of the last-generation and is simply a must-play.
It’s been great revisiting two wonderful games, but the framerate drops and lighting changes take away much of the charm of playing them.
Batman: Return to Arkham is a good game but and awful remaster. It should have improved the frame rate, visuals and gameplay, but does none of that leaving the game almost as it was.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City are amazing games, but this collection doesn't stand up to the same quality. The visuals have been improved, but at a loss of the dark ambiance of the originals. The 30 fps frame rate isn't locked, with the occasional stutter marring the experience. Worse, there's no new content available here. If you own either game on PC, there's no reason to get Return to Arkham.
Two of the finest games of the past decade don't quite get the treatment they deserve in Return to Arkham, with Arkham Asylum in particular, suffering more than benefitting from the visual overhaul. The game’s are still magnificent love letters to Gotham’s protector though, even if these remasters don’t give the same level of respect to the pointy-eared one.
Two classic games made to look notably worse than they did over five years ago, which is one villainous masterplan even Batman can’t foil.
Certainly anyone who missed out should prioritize this release. O
Batman: Return to Arkham isn't the greatest ever remaster, but the price offers excellent value and the gameplay of both Asylum and City still hold up. Couple two of the greatest superhero games of all time with their DLC, and you get a lot of bang for your buck here.
Overall, Batman: Return to Arkham is a good purchase if you haven’t picked up the games included before or just want to return to the games and check out the DLC content at a lower price. The graphics could still be improved greatly but they are suffcient for now.
Batman: Return To Arkham is a good way to experience both games if you haven't already played them previously. Returning players and PC gamers will probably be better off sticking to the original releases, which still hold up quite well, despite the technical improvements.
There’s only so much that the excellent Arkham Asylum and Arkham City can do for this remaster collection, however. It should have been an easy slam dunk: port the game over to the Unreal Engine 4, apply some polish, maybe through in some behind-the-scenes features, and profit! Instead, what we end up with is a poorly-optimized port which sees even the older Arkham Asylum stuttering from the game’s first moments, and some odd lighting that cuts into the otherwise excellent ambiance of both games. Then there’s the glaring omission of Batman: Arkham Origins. It all adds up to feeling like an unfinished product. If you already have both Asylum and City on their original platforms, you can safely skip this re-release.
On the one hand, it’s a shame that a little more love and care hasn’t been expended on making Return to Arkham the definitive edition of these two classic games. On the other, both still look fantastic and both richly deserve their existing reputation as classics of the last console generation. In fact, both in serious contention for the title of best superhero game of all time. If you have a PS4 or Xbox One and didn’t play the originals, play these. Just be aware that, if you did, you’re not getting a substantially superior experience.
With Rocksteady turning their back on the caped crusader now that Arkham VR is out in the wild, this is your chance to own the defining titles that put them on the map, now with more clarity and pizazz than ever.
Overall, the Return to Arkham wasn’t quite as welcoming as I’d hoped it would be. The changes to certain character models and environments, be it subtle or blatant, have combined to strip the Asylum of some of its creepy charm, whilst technical issues mar both titles in the collection. It almost feels like the game could do with another few months of development, even after the delay, as the performance is something that could theoretically be tweaked and improved. Hopefully the team at Virtuos can get some patches together and tighten up the frame rate and adjust some of the lighting and colour grading, because if they do? This will be essential. As it stands, though, it’s a collection of two technically underwhelming ports of two incredible games that make some disappointing art style choices.
Batman: Return to Arkham includes the first two episodes of the franchise, of course with all the DLC and content released so far. The graphical improvements are impressive, with new models and animations.
Review in Italian | Read full review
While the underlying games hold up as well as they ever did, Batman: Return to Arkham as a remasterwas very disappointing — especially compared to others that masterfully retouch games like Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection or Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Of the two, only Arkham Ayslum’s remaster is worth playing through; with no additional content beyond both games’ previous DLC, I would only recommend Return to Arkham to either die-hard Batman fans or those who don’t have access to an Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Batman: Return to Arkham is a package of two stellar games and impossible not to recommend to anyone who hasn’t played them yet.
With many recent reissues one may think that Return to Arkham would only be for the true fans of the series.
Batman: Return to Arkham is neither the game that Gotham fanboys deserve or need right now. Not even the dark knight can foil a plot to downgrade the visuals of two video games which defined his legend for a new medium several years ago.