Batman Arkham Series and its Impact on Licensed Games

 Batman Arkham Series and its Impact on Licensed Games

The Batman Arkham franchise is a rather interesting series of games. I was not really a Batman fan at all back in the early to mid 00s. I preferred Spider-Man and characters with actual superpowers since it filled my power fantasy as a kid. Whenever I did watch him in anything, it was when the Justice League animated series was on because as previously said, that show had characters with superpowers. When the cartoon series "The Batman" was on, I couldn't help but find him to be lame. At the time, I preferred to watch action shows where the characters had actual abilities. Then Dark Knight came out in 2008 and I did remember liking it if I found the part when Two Face showed up to be dragged out but it did make me slowly change my mind on Batman. Now, I finally get to the thing that made me a Batman fan at the time, Batman Arkham Asylum, I remember really wanting to get the game due to the fact that it came out at a $40 price point for a short period of time and it got "good reviews". I did get it later at the full $60 price point but the game really did change my mind that Batman can be cool.

The game was rather fascinating for its time, it had a combat system based around timed button presses that made you feel fast and cool. It had a stealth system that was about slowly taking guards out and inspiring "fear" into your enemies. The game was a massive hit and won many awards, something a licensed game let alone a superhero game could never do. A few years later, Batman Arkham City would release and while my thoughts on the game overall is more lukewarm than when I first played it, the game was proof that Asylum's success was in fact not a fluke at all. It proved that licensed games can in fact go toe to toe with the best of gaming's original franchises.

This is where things get interesting, Batman Arkham Asylum and City while you can criticize them for their simplistic melee and stealth mechanics and I will genuinely turn into the Hulk if someone mentions the whole "feeling like Batman" argument. It can't be stated how much of a standard both games set for licensed games. Licensed games before Arkham were mostly just awful, mediocre or forgettable with your occasional gems like Hulk Ultimate Destruction, Spider-Man 2 and Ultimate Spider-Man, Ghost Rider, X-Men Origins Wolverine, the Volition Punisher game, X-Men Legends, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Dredd vs. Death, Turok 1 and 2, Ghostbusters the Game and some of the Star Wars games like Jedi Outcast, Academy, Lego Star Wars, KOTOR, Battlefront 1 and 2, Matrix Path of Neo, King Kong, and the Warriors. While my examples of good games can appear to be numerous, with everyone of those games that came out, there was a terrible movie tie in game or something really forgettable. You don't need me to tell you, you can look them on Youtube and find over a dozen terrible licensed games to laugh at and mock.

The thing that separated Arkham especially Asylum from those good games I mentioned is due to three reasons, 1st being production values, 2nd being in how Arkham uses its license to stand out from other games, and 3rd being in how Asylum starts as a game.

I will talk about the 1st reason: Product Values. There is no secret and Warner Brothers proudly shoves into everyone's faces that they love to put a lot of money into their licensed games even their later games like Injustice, Middle Earth, and Mad Max all have has that feel that WB didn't make them as cheap cash grabs and that they were actually putting effort into the game adaptations that they are making. Batman Arkham Asylum was the first time they did this and they pulled no punches in providing Rocksteedy the budget they need to make Asylum the Batman epic they wanted. It's why WB never made games with their other characters like Superman and the Flash. They don't want to sink a ton of money into games they know won't be good. You can make a bad Superman game in the late 90s to mid 00s but certainly not now. Back to my initial point, the visuals look dark and gritty, but they look stylized enough that it can look like a comic book but also realistic enough that it has its own visual flare. Having the voice actors from the Animated Series from the 90s also added a nice degree of fan service while also further cementing how much money WB was putting into the game. Now compare this to other licensed games at the time, Hulk Ultimate Destruction mainly had its story told through audio with no actual cutscenes, and a lot of the other games I mentioned tend to told their stories through CGI cutscenes and the in engine cutscenes tend to lack the directing and composition that Asylum did. To put it simply, even the good licensed games before Asylum never came close to the visuals and cinematic composition that the latter had. Which one big reason why it stood out. That and Asylum not being based on a movie like many of the games I mentioned gave the Rocksteedy more freedom to do want they wanted instead of trying to stick closely to the movie with only occasional leeway.

On to the 2nd reason: How Arkham uses its license to stand out. Licensed games before Asylum for the most part tend to play it safe there were exceptions that had more unique gameplay like Hulk Ultimate Destruction, Jedi Outcast and Academy, Ghostbusters the Game and Spider-Man 2. But here is a big problem with many of them: most of the games tend to play like "knock off" versions of other already existing titles. Here are some examples, Ghost Rider was basically Devil May Cry and God of War, Pirates of the Caribbean At World's End was Ubisoft Prince of Persia, Dragon Ball Z Budokai was Tekken and Soul Calibur, Star Wars Battlefront was Battlefield, X-Men Origins Wolverine was God of War, the Transformers movie tie in game was an awkward third person shooter and brawler, X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance were typical top down action RPGs, and Volition Punisher was kind of like Max Payne. What I am trying to say that all these games to varying felt like other games that came out before. Asylum was different in that both combat and stealth were unique at the time. The "free flow" combat while gets bashed excessively now for its simplicity was a novel system. Instead of having button combos like many other games, it used a rhythm game like system of maintaining "flow" to beat your enemies like how a Kung Fu movie is choreographed like a dance. Batman is a martial artist after all so having a system that shows off his martial arts prowess in game form is an example of using the license to stand out. Asylum doesn't just stop there. The stealth was a huge deviation from third person stealth games like Metal Gear Solid, Tenchu and Splinter Cell. Asylum gave you a heightened sense of awareness through the "Detective Vision" it gave the player a level of empowerment that the former never provided, stealth gameplay was about feeling venerable against overwhelming odds but Asylum put a twist on the formula by having the stealth be more about guerrilla warfare and inspiring, "fear" into your enemies rather than avoidance with the occasional knock out. Asylum with the Detective Vision and enemies slowly being "scared" of you also made it different from predator stealth like Tenchu. It's in line with how Batman depending on the comic would handle situations regarding enemies with guns and it's used to make the game stand out from what was on the market.

The 3rd and final reason. This might be the most important reason depending on your point of view. To me, a game has to have a good beginning or something engaging to make want to see the game all the way through to the end. Gaming isn't like say a TV show, where I am expecting it to slowly get better since I am not actively engaging with the latter. A game has to capture my attention right away or I tune out. This is where Asylum succeeds where other licensed games even those I like, fail. Asylum uses the original Half Life's opening tram ride sequence as an on the nose inspiration to ease the player into the world. It uses mystery and intrigue to capture the player's attention and the Valve inspirations don't stop there. Asylum like Half Life 2, slowly eases the player using into the various mechanics throughout the game. Asylum has simple melee combat encounters, simple traversal puzzles and simple stealth encounters all early into the game and slow ramps up the difficulty after each section, the player slowly starts to understand all the underlying mechanics of the game. It might be annoying for some people who like to replay games constantly but as a starting point for a new game series, Asylum's opening works very well for what it tries to do. I am now going to compare this to a game I really like but I can't deny that the way it opens isn't nearly as effective as Batman Arkham Asylum. That is Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Outcast. This opening has a number of problems, first it's a typical first person shooter where the guns are projectiles that take awhile to hit their target, then there is the level design that can annoy many who aren't used to 90s and early 00s game design and even then has some rather obtuse parts, even if you get past all of this, these sections tend to last way longer than they should and for a game that sells itself on its lightsaber combat, taking this long to get the weapon will irritate many. These early sections does do a decent enough job at empowering the player when the lightsaber is finally awarded but it's quite a road to get there. When you get the saber after an okay tutorial on the weapon, the player is already thrown into the heat of things and probably aren't used to combat yet. I do love Jedi Outcast but there is a reason why Arkham Asylum set such a high bar for video game adaptations.

Overall, I made this write up because while I am not a big Batman fan or as big of a fan of the Arkham games as I used to be, Asylum and City did help mostly destroy the cash grab licensed tie in game and I want to give the games the massive credit where credit is due.