The Status of Batman Games

August 13, 2008 on 3:55 pm | In Column | No Comments

I am excited to play next-gen Batman games. In fact, I’ve been excited to play most every next-gen Batman game since Batman: Vengeance for the Playstation 2….

However, every installment following Vengeance has been a terrible disappointment for me both as a gamer and as a comic book fan.

Batman games traditionally have not been top tier games, never scoring higher than a 7 in most reviews. To be fair, most of Batman’s comic book compatriots have received much worse treatment than the Caped Crusader himself, (Remember Superman 64? [Shudders]) but Batman’s transition to the video game world has never been as smooth as fans would have liked. Bats has gone through several next-gen developers in his life on console, many of which have been criticized for their repetitive nature, or bad AI, or awful storyline…

Despite these previous setbacks, Batman has a chance to gain glory through video games in two upcoming titles: Lego Batman and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

The Lego series has already shown its appeal in a formula that has been proven time and time again to be a veritable gold mine for Traveler’s Tales come its release in September. After four LucasArts games, Warner Brothers has jumped on the bandwagon for a Lego Batman adaption. I have no doubt that the gameplay will be just as compelling and innovative as the other installments in the Lego franchise, but what I am most interested to see is the storyline. Previous Lego games have taken a previously constructed story, like Star Wars or Indiana Jones, and adapted it. Lego Batman is supposed to have an original story, so it may be time to see if a Lego game on a popular franchise can stack up to other titles with an original story.

Batman: Arkham Asylum was just announced for Playstation 3 and XBOX 360, and I have to admit that I’m skeptical. Rocksteady Studios, the developer of the title, have only published a Playstation 2 game called Urban Chaos. While the title got higher reviews than most Batman games, it still lays in the mediocre range of a 6 to 8 score. At the very least, the story has a great chance of being excellent due to Detective Comics’ Paul Dini being involved in the scripting. However, a great (even excellent) story cannot mitigate mediocre gameplay in a title, and Arkham Asylum needs to bring their A-Game for Batman’s first real solo outing on current generation consoles. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to play it, especially since Dini will be writing the story, but with the track record that Batman’s had in video games, it’s hard to get as excited for the game when we know next to nothing about it.

Hopefully, Arkham Asylum will be the game that fans have been waiting for. Otherwise, fans are probably going to be disappointed for another generation of consoles before another developer takes a crack at making a good Batman game.