What Batman: Arkham Asylum Did Better Than Arkham City

Batman: Arkham Asylum set a new bar for superhero video games, and in nearly every respect its sequel, Batman: Arkham City, improved upon that foundation. The scope of Arkham City is much grander, letting players embody the Batman moniker and soar above the streets of Gotham, introducing a variety of side stories, and adding to Asylum‘s list of bat-gadgets. Asylum‘s limited setting does, however, have its benefits, putting players in a more detailed and atmospheric environment that caters to a streamlined narrative.

In 2009, Batman: Arkham Asylum released to critical acclaim, featuring a compelling story written by Paul Dini, characters voiced by Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, the impressive and influential Freeflow Combat system, and convincing cape physics. All of the above would return in 2011’s Arkham City, which saw the Caped Crusader incarcerated in a new mega-prison that spanned several blocks of Gotham itself. The sequel is still the best Batman: Arkham game, but the transition to an open world left behind a sense of focus which the series would never recapture.

For the entirety of Arkham Alysum, the player is confined to the eponymous sanatorium – a prison housing Gotham’s criminally insane supervillains. The Joker has devised a plot to seize control of Arkham Island, entrapping the Bat there and threatening Gotham with hidden explosives. Asylum‘s two sequels have similar plot devices to isolate Batman in their respective settings, but the original’s playable area is much smaller than either of them, and provides a more tailored experience that the sequel’s open world struggles to match.

Batman: Arkham Asylum Is More Atmospheric Than Arkham City

Although Batman: Arkham‘s character designs have aged poorly, the series’ environments have not, with both Arkham City and Arkham Knight being steeped in beautiful nighttime atmosphere. Even so, Arkham Asylum‘s is still so much more effectively concentrated. City traps Batman inside of the mega-prison with all of its inmates, but feels less confined because of its open-air design. What triumphantly began as Joker’s incarceration at Arkham quickly turned into a nightmare scenario in Asylum, where Batman is forced to sleuth through the island’s various buildings and air vents in a Die Hard-esque set-up. Each gothic asylum structure is intricately designed, offers varying interior aesthetics, and provides a real sense of progression as the player delves into one and conquers the challenges inside. Making it so Batman is unable to freely glide around Gotham makes the atmosphere more oppressive, in turn making the narrative much more focused.

The side content introduced in Rocksteady’s first sequel is generally of a high quality, but the sidetracking is at odds with the game’s story, which invariably leads to a moment in Arkham City that betrays Batman’s character. Fairly early on, Batman is infected with the same mutation-inducing Titan formula as the Joker, which makes the many secondary missions in its open world feel like impertinent distractions. Both games put Batman in similar, incredibly dire situations – trapped with his most notorious enemies with a nefarious plot to thwart – but Batman: Arkham Asylum is designed to almost exclusively revolve around the main conflict. Arkham City boasts a similarly urgent storyline, but it’s not as conducive to its bigger open world.

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