5/5 ★ – UpwardBoss's review of Batman: Arkham Shadow.

The Batman: Arkham franchise is in a very, very weird state in 2024. After a nine year long hiatus since the itself-controversial Arkham Knight, the franchise finally returned in February 2024 with what can only be described as an absolute thud. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was so catastrophically bad that it made many people very nervous about the future of not just the Arkhamverse, but WB Games as a whole. Not only was a live-service looter shooter starring the Suicide Squad not what people wanted from an Arkham game, but the narrative was so bad that it had a negative effect on the entire series. It was one of the biggest failures in video game history from a commercial standpoint, with almost universally negative reception. However, in May 2024, WB unexpectedly announced Batman: Arkham Shadow. Finally, a PROPER Batman: Arkham game, except... it was a VR title exclusive to the Meta Quest 3. To say that this announcement went down poorly is an understatement. As of right now (and using the estimate of "Return YouTube Dislike" since dislike counts aren't publicly viewable anymore) IGN's upload of the announcement trailer is sitting at a whopping 96,000 dislikes, as opposed to 35,000 likes. It didn't help that VR games have a reputation for being extremely short glorified tech demos, with many of the highest profile VR games only lasting a few hours, a reputation certainly not helped by 2016's Batman: Arkham VR. This reputation, however, is a bit outdated. There have been a fair few full-length games made exclusively for VR in the past few years, from Half-Life: Alyx to Assassin's Creed Nexus, and I had been interested in trying VR for a while. And the more they showed of the game... the more interested I became. The developers confirmed it would be a full-length Arkham game, the gameplay shown off looked really good, and positioning it as a direct sequel to the excellent Arkham Origins was a great choice. So, I decided to buy a Meta Quest 3S and review this game. So how is it? Batman: Arkham Shadow is absolutely phenomenal. Innovative VR design, fantastic combat, and an exceptional narrative (especially in the final few hours, which are some of the best of the entire series) make this a long-awaited return to form for the Arkhamverse, and an absolute must-play for fans... even if the technical state leaves a *lot* to be desired. Breaking with tradition, let's start off with the narrative this time as that's what elevates Arkham Shadow from a good game into an all-timer (there will be no spoilers in this review). Batman: Arkham Shadow is set soon after Arkham Origins, with a still-relatively inexperienced Batman fighting a cult named the "Rats" who have planned a mysterious "Day of Wrath" soon after the 4th of July. Unlike what you might expect however, after a two hour long intro sequence set on the streets of Gotham, the vast majority of this game actually takes place in Blackgate Prison (in a structure much more similar to Arkham Asylum than the later open-world Arkham games), where Batman goes undercover (under the guise of Matches Malone) to find out who the "Rat King" is, and what the "Day of Wrath" is supposed to be. The game switches between sections of you playing as Matches, talking to inmates and finding information (with the occasional fisticuffs in between), and more traditional Batman sequences where you're taking out inmates and guards either via hand-to-hand combat or stealth. This was a... bold choice, and if handled poorly it could've killed the pacing of the entire game, but I found that the Matches sections were long enough to provide a break from combat while short enough so that you were never out of the Batsuit for too long. I'm not going to go into any more details about the narrative for spoiler reasons, but I will say this: while the story of the first two-thirds of this game is very good, the last few hours are *exceptional*. Some of the most well-written, impactful, and emotionally resonant storytelling of the entire franchise is found in these last few hours, and these last few hours are so phenomenal that I truly wish I could say more here. I won't, because you deserve to experience it for yourself unspoiled. Batman: Arkham Shadow was my first VR game, so naturally I was unfamiliar with both the visual and gameplay design of VR games. Visually, I was quite impressed with how immersive VR *feels*. Being able to turn your head and see the entire area around you does add to immersion. The game itself just looks... okay though. I'm understanding of the limitations of the Meta Quest hardware, but the game looks like an early PS4 game at best, and a late PS3 game at worst. It looks about on par with Arkham City/Origins, so if you're okay with that (which I am) then the visuals will suffice. Don't expect something on the level of Hellblade II though, that's just not possible on a $300 USD headset. Despite that, the visual design is consistent with the other games in the franchise, with a brooding atmosphere that feels quintessentially Batman, which is frankly more important than raw graphical power. Gameplay was always going to be Arkham Shadow's biggest challenge. How do you properly translate the feel of Arkham combat into VR? And... I'm going to be honest, the gameplay of Arkham Shadow left a *hell* of a bad first impression. Controls felt clunky, unresponsive, and unintuitive. There's a real lack of effective tutorials in this game, so if you're new to VR... expect a rocky first two hours or so. But then... it clicked. Arkham Shadow *feels* like an Arkham game, be it bouncing around from enemy to enemy in combat, or stealthily taking out guards from the rafters. I don't even really know what changed, it all just clicked after a while and became intuitive. Combat design itself is actually quite genius. You punch in certain directions to build up combos, physically move your arm towards the enemy to counter, and physically move out of the way to dodge. It took a while for me to get it, but once I did, it's a very good combat system (even if the directional inputs for punches were occasionally a bit unresponsive), and about as close to "Arkham combat in VR" as realistically possible (it's also a bit of a workout, so don't expect to play this game in particularly long bursts). It's cliched, but it... really does make you FEEL like Batman (yes, I said it, are you happy now?) Stealth doesn't fare... quite as well, but it still does alright. You do approach from the rafters and take out enemies one by one, but the controls feel a bit clunkier than in the regular Arkham games, and more than a few times I would get spotted when it really, *really* did not feel like my fault. That's not to say it's bad though, I've always enjoyed Arkham stealth and this is more of that (if slightly clunkier) so I still had a good time. The Matches sections are... mostly pacing mechanisms, and much more focused on story than gameplay, but they serve their purpose. Beyond the main game, there's collectibles to pick up and the classic challenge maps from the old Arkham games return (three for combat, three for stealth) but beyond those, there isn't much in the way of replay value. The game did take 11 hours to complete though, which is pretty decent for a $50 game (that was included with my purchase of the Meta Quest 3S). This review has been glowing up to this point, so there has to be a catch, right? Unfortunately there is. The technical state of this game is... not good at all, and the game feels like it was rushed out before it was ready to try to sell Meta Quest 3 headsets over Christmas. I had numerous severe bugs during my playthrough, including multiple instances of Batman simply getting stuck (requiring a restart), multiple instances of being respawned at a point where I could not progress forward (requiring a restart), falling through the map, some bad frame-rate drops, some very severe pop-in, and 4 crashes in just 11 hours. By far the most severe problem though was that my save file corrupted twice. Fortunately there are backup saves that I could restore, so my playthrough wasn't entirely lost, but that's still... very concerning. None of these bugs were enough to ruin my experience, but they were severe and frequent enough to be very disruptive, and while I do strongly recommend this game, I also think you will have a better experience if you wait a few months. None of these issues seem like issues that can't be fixed with a few patches, so I do think that most of these will be resolved in around six months, but... this launched in a frankly unacceptable state. Despite that though... Batman: Arkham Shadow is excellent, and it's evident both when playing the game and when listening to developer interviews that the developers at Camouflaj really care about this series. Arkham Shadow *feels* like Arkham, and despite its VR format, is a "proper Arkham game" through and through, from combat to atmosphere to its exceptional storytelling. VR or not, this is the Batman: Arkham return I've been waiting for, and while it's not my favourite in the series (I strongly doubt anything will ever top Arkham City for me), it gets very close, and I strongly recommend it. Maybe wait for some patches though. 9.5/10.