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‘Batman: Return To Arkham’ Release Date Has Arrived, But Reviews Say It May Be Worth It To Wait Or Play The Originals

By David Cornell
Published on: 06:35 PST, Oct 18, 2016

Greetings, Gothamites, the Batman: Return to Arkham release date has arrived. However, it may be worth your time to hold off on this remaster for a few months.

One issue with nearly every game released in the past few years is that publishers often let the game go to store shelves without fully playtesting it. As a result, some games are released in unplayable forms, such as the Batman: Arkham Knight launch on PC. It performed poorly on a platform that is supposed to be superior to consoles, and Rocksteady decided to refund all copies and re-release the game after fixing it.

The ultimate decision on Rocksteady’s part was to always playtest their games before releasing them from then on, since Arkham Knight’s PC release was just unacceptable.

Even supposed remasters or ports can suffer from the transition. Prototype 2 was one infamous (pardon the pun) example, as the PS4 port was considered an insult to the original. For a superior console compared with the PS3, it actually performed horribly.

Saints Row IV’s PS4 remaster was another example of somewhat lazy playtesting, as it was ported with all of the same glitches the original versions launched with, and it hasn’t been patched once. Perhaps they put all of that time into the spin-off Gat Out of Hell?

That said, the Batman: Return to Arkham release date has delivered what is being considered a basic port by IGN. They say that part of the charm of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City was the darkness and faded colors that gave the games their overall mood, ironically countering Mark Hamill’s Joker lines throughout both.

The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One remasters appear to have brightened the games up and given the color more prominence, making them feel more like a theme park than a dark and brooding Gotham City in turmoil. The darkness also helped mask the details, which didn’t look so great originally, and now those details are more noticeable.

The frame-rate for Return to Arkham appears to have been kept at 30 fps, which is bare minimum on today’s consoles to be considered playable. IGN also states that when Batman runs down a corridor or turns a corner, the games tend to stutter. This could be a bad sign for those looking forward to scoring the Riddler trophies hidden throughout Arkham City. Some of them require precision gliding and turning, and it could be problematic if the framerate is fighting you all the way.

Hopefully, Virtuos will patch the game to help eliminate the chugging, which could break the game for many.

Missing is Batman: Arkham Origins, which contained what some gamers have called some of the best boss fights in the series. However, it was also the weakest game in the series and the only one produced by Warner Bros. Games themselves, and not Rocksteady.

The general consensus, for now, is that if you’ve already played the originals, it might be worthwhile to stick with them. If you no longer own a previous-gen console for some reason, it might be worth your money to return to Arkham on PS4 or Xbox One.

Included with Batman: Return to Arkham are remastered versions of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, as well as all of the DLC such as the extra missions and story expansions. You can also make the dark knight look like his Adam West counterpart or the Animated Series version, so there can be some graphical variety without paying extra now.

Again, it might be worth waiting on Batman: Return to Arkham so that its release date hiccups can be patched before you play.

[Featured Image by Warner Bros. Games]

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