<\/div>One of the problems with Batman is that he’s got one really<\/i> notorious foe and then a whole bunch of guys all fighting over distant second. This is not a knock on those other foes, it’s just that Joker is one of the most recognizable foes in comics history. Like Batman himself, he’s pretty malleable. He can change in tone and outlook to suit the version of Batman he’s antagonizing. Scarecrow wants to scare people, Penguin wants to run his business, and Riddler wants to outsmart Batman, but Joker can be all things to all Batmans. <\/p>\n
If this is a story about violent angry Batman, then we can pit him against sadistic mass-murderer Joker. If we’re dealing with stick-up-his-butt Batman, then Joker’s goal can simply be to cause chaos with a smile. If this is a more cartoony or campy Batman then Joker’s goal can be to pull off a basic for-profit caper. If we’re dealing with stoic emotionless Batman then Joker can be trying to get Batman to laugh at the inherent absurdity of their rivalry. If we’re dealing with Paladin Batman then Joker will work to get him to break him no-kill rule. And so on. You can mix & match these versions of our two leads to suit whatever story you’re trying to tell. <\/p>\n
This isn’t to say that Scarecrow, Penguin, Riddler and the other second-string foes are one-note rogues. There have been a lot of versions of them over the years. But one of the reasons Joker stands out is that he’s much more explicitly the “anti-Batman”.<\/p>\n
This makes Joker an irresistible villain for anyone trying to turn Batman into a movie or videogame. The folks writing comics year-round have to push the Joker to the background once in a while to avoid wearing him out. But if you’re spending millions of dollars producing a movie or a videogame then you might feel compelled to focus on the “best” villain. When this kind of money is on the line, you want the foe with the best pop-culture brand recognition. You want that clown-faced bastard out there selling tickets, pre-orders, DVDs, DLC, and T-shirts, because he’s going to move more units than the likes of Bane and Mr. Freeze. <\/p>\n
This only reinforces the problem, pushing Joker’s brand to the cultural forefront and further neglecting the alternatives. For years comic fans have been telling us about all the cool stories we could<\/i> be getting if the movie and videogame writers would throttle back on the Joker content. <\/p>\n
The Arkham series suffers from (and thus also perpetuates) this problem. Each game feels like the designer was making a promise: Just let me use Joker this one last time, then swear to God we’ll focus on somebody else.<\/i> But Joker keeps shoving his way to the forefront and dominating the story. It’s like they can’t help themselves.<\/p>\nArkham Asylum<\/h3>\n
<\/div>You can tell they didn’t give much thought to how the sequels would work. They named the game after the location instead of the characters. Is the entire franchise going to be an endless series of disasters at the same insane asylum? That obviously would get pretty old by the time we got to Arkham Asylum 3: Holy Shit what is Wrong With The Locks in This Place and Why is Everyone Escaped Again?<\/i> <\/p>\n
How will they keep from making every game feel like recycled content from the previous installment? Are they going to start adding massive new buildings for the Arkham campus and tearing down the old stuff? That might give players new content, but wouldn’t modern buildings ruin the delicious gothic vibe? Are they going to construct old<\/b> buildings?<\/p>\n
No, this makes no sense. You can’t just set every game in the same modest location without constraining yourself mechanically, thematically, and narratively. But if the sequel isn’t going to take place in the asylum, then why are we naming the game after it?<\/p>\n
As with the movies, they felt they needed to lead off with their “best” villain. And to be fair, it is<\/b> an insane asylum, so it makes sense to have the King of All Crazies presiding over the chaos. <\/p>\n
The story revolves around Joker getting his hands on a chemical that turns people into berzerker hulk monsters. At the end, the Joker injects himself so we can have Batman fight Joker-Hulk. The fight is a total disaster in a character and thematic sense, and illustrates the “gameplay is king” approach the designers favor. <\/p>\n
It’s a fantastic game and was a smash-hit at the time, but I find it really hard to return to Arkham Asylum after playing Arkham City. The combat is a little slow and stiff, and the foes aren’t nearly as interesting. It’s also just a tad too linear for me. <\/p>\n
Arkham City<\/h3>\n
<\/div>The first game is out of the way, so now is our big chance to put the Joker in the background and let one of the other rogues take the spotlight. Except… <\/p>\n
Mark Hamill announced he was retiring from playing the Joker. He’s been voicing the character since the 90’s and has become the gold standard against which all other Joker-voices will be measured. It was obvious the Joker was going to need to be killed off, replaced, retired, or otherwise changed. And you don’t want to relegate such a momentous event to the B-plot. So once again, Joker was placed at the center of the story.<\/p>\n
For me this game hits the magical Goldilocks zone of fun and engagement. The combat is smoother and more varied than the first game, but we haven’t yet fallen into the trap of pointless bloated open-world that the later games fell into. The various Bat-gadgets can now be used in combat to make things more interesting. <\/p>\n
We’ll obviously talk a lot more about all of that as the series goes on.<\/p>\n
Arkham Origins<\/h3>\n
<\/div>I was not a fan of Arkham Origins. I thought the environment design was incoherent<\/a>, the combat was too hard and frustrating until it become too easy and boring<\/a>, and the quicktime-based fights needed to die faster than an Arkham orderly on escape night. <\/p>\n Worst of all, I found Young Angry Thug Batman to be intolerable and uninteresting. Looking back on early Batman could<\/strong> make for a cool story. Maybe show us a Batman back when he was still wearing grey spandex. We could explore a Batman who is unsure of himself. We could see a guy who is discovering how all the training in the world can’t prepare you for the Real Thing™. We could see early prototypes of his gadgets. We could see him start out as an idealist who thinks he can get this job done without hurting anyone, and is slowly obliged to adopt rougher techniques as the stakes go up.<\/p>\n But no. Every single thing is backwards. This Batman has apparently been wearing black tactical armor since day one. He didn’t start out an idealist and was forced to hurt people to get the job done. He started out as a vicious thug who learned to stop shouting all the time. He didn’t gain confidence through overcoming adversity. He began as an arrogant jackass who thought he knew everything, but then had to learn not to be such a jerk to Alfred. <\/p>\n There’s just no way<\/em> this arrogant, undisciplined rage-monkey became the world’s greatest detective, much less the forward-thinking and pragmatic Batman of Arkham Asylum. That’s not “maturity”, that’s a completely different personality. <\/p>\n This game was made by a new team, and once again their lack of confidence compelled them to hobble around on the Joker-crutch. Since this game was a prequel, they wouldn’t need Mark Hamill and they wouldn’t need to deal with the end of Arkham City. Vocal virtuoso Troy Baker<\/a> did an amazing job as the Young Joker, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is the third game in the series where the joker was front and center.<\/p>\n Mark Hamill is retired. Hamill’s Joker is gone forever. The game is all about Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight. Finally we have a game that leaves the Joker behind and allows the other characters to-<\/p>\n Actually, no. <\/p>\n Hamill is reprising the role again for some reason. The Joker is still part of the story. Oh sure, he’s just a phantom, or a hallucination, or a flashback, or whatever, but that doesn’t stop him from being a major driving force in the story and getting far more dialog than either of our supposed “main” villains. Look, I know that nobody stays dead in the comics, but at least when someone dies in the comics they stop showing up for a couple of issues<\/em>.<\/p>\n I disliked this game when I played it the first time, but that dislike grew into hatred when I re-visited Arkham City and realized just how much better that game was.<\/p>\n As I (and many others) have belabored, the Batmobile is a chore<\/a>. You will spend more time driving around in the Bat-Tank blowing shit up than you’ll spend brawling, meaning the car completely eclipsed the core mechanics the series was built around. This wouldn’t be such a terrible sin if the Bat-tank combat wasn’t so much slower, shallower, and less interesting than the brawling mechanics. The character designs shook off the last vestiges of comic stylization and aimed for photorealism. The open world took the game away from its Metroidvania<\/a> roots and towards something more Ubisoft-esque. Batman’s upgrades make thematic sense in terms of the larger stakes this time around, but they also leave him feeling overpowered. The stealth sections were never as satisfying, for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on. The Batmobile was dragged into the puzzle sections of the game, meaning there’s a lot of tedious hopping in and out of the car so you can push a button to open a door so you can get in the car and drive the Batmobile to the next button \/ door. <\/p>\n Arkham Knight is a loud, showy, bloated mess. I suppose it’s better than Arkham Origins, but it was obviously supposed to be the crowning achievement of the franchise and instead it lost its way and staggered under the load as the game designers pulled it in six different directions at once. <\/p>\n That’s four games, all of them with Joker at the center of the story. The series is named after an asylum that only appeared in the first installment. Joker has been in need of a break since the end of the first game, but the writers can’t seem to help themselves. <\/p>\n I don’t know where the series is going to go next, but I don’t see them breaking out of this rut anytime soon. If I had to guess, I suppose I’d put my money on the developers rebooting the series and then repeating all the same mistakes again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Arkham City is the second game in a four-game franchise where the third game was an awkward semi-canon prequel made by a different studio who didn’t quite get what made the series special. I suppose before we jump in and talk about Arkham City, we need to talk about how it fits into the franchise, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[607],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-batman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Arkham Knight<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Anyway<\/h3>\n