Rocksteady’s Batman Arkham games are widely considered to be some of the best superhero video games ever made, and stand as excellent games in their own right. Like all video games, however, and indeed anything man-made, they are not perfect.
There is nothing in these games that that should deter gamers from playing them, but there are some elements that are just plain annoying. They suffer from the same repetitive dialogue, bland fights, and badly aging graphics as any other game, but also hold some very Batman-specific issues. Here are the ten most annoying things in the Batman Arkham games.
10 Repetitive Fights
For what was initially going to be a rhythm game, the combat system in the Arkham games is actually quite good. The animations are clean, the targeting system (usually) works, and the hits are satisfying. However, the games are fairly lengthy, and even if you only ever engage in fights related to the main story, there are a lot of fights. Even with the introduction of new types of enemies as the games progress, these fights tend to start feeling a bit repetitive after a while.
9 Batman: Flight Risk
The game control are not perfect. However, Batman sometimes seems to have a mind of his own and a penchant for jumping wildly off buildings when you don’t want him to.
Want to get up on the railing? He jumps over it. Want to jump straight off the building? He rolls to the side. Trying to glide across the city? He’ll drop straight down into the middle of a fight. Vigilante crime fighting is dangerous, but Batman seems almost suicidal at times.
8 Body Physics
Have you ever punched someone so hard their leg stretches five feet underground? Batman has. Though usually not a game breaking glitch, and often times a very funny one, literally putting enemies into the ground (or light posts, or walls, or other people) can get a bit annoying. It tends to ruin the immersion when a supposedly unconscious criminal is doing the worm in the middle of the street. With detective mode, the body stretching can be particularly gruesome and you see their bones twitching far underground.
7 The Cape
The cape. Oh, the cape. In all fairness, there was basically just one guy that worked on the cape, but that doesn’t make it any less wonky. Most of the time, it does what you would expect a cap to do in wind, rain, flight, fights, etc. But sometimes it goes absolutely wild: flipping up, clipping through Batman, twisting in on itself, you name it. Clothing physics are notoriously difficult to animate in games, but boy is it ever distracting at times.
6 Target Lock
Have you ever been playing one of the Batman Arkham games, you’re in a fight having a great time, but you go to do a move and Batman simply starts walking? An odd glitch that happens rather often is that the targeting system for enemies seems to just turn off for a second.
Batman will suddenly stop fighting and just stand there eating bullets until he can lock onto an enemy again. It’s not usually too big of an issue, unless he ends up facing away from the fight and takes his sweet time turning back to it (all the while rapidly losing health).
5 Car Mechanics
Who doesn’t dream of driving the Batmobile? Well, in Arkham Knight, that fantasy becomes real. Once you get the hang of it, the car mechanics are super fun. With slides, boosts, and a battle mode, what’s not to love? Learning how to drive it, on the other hand, takes a lot of practice. The controls are not intuitive and driving in constant rain does not help the traction. So, of course, rather than letting you get used to it or giving you a tutorial, the game instantly forces you into a high-speed chase and battle. Thanks.
4 Female Hair
The Batman Arkham games are known for their amazing graphics and in-game physics. The development team shows off amazing skills in all aspects of the games – except one: female hair. Often times looking more like a congealed mass stuck to the backs of their heads, female hair in the Arkham games is by far the ugliest element. Even when the developers learn that updos are a thing and implement them in Arkham Knight, the hair still looks like a bad wig and moves like it has a mind of its own.
3 Game+ Battles
With harder enemies, and fight prompts, fights in the Arkham Game+ modes are already slightly harder, but factor in almost thirty heavily armed enemies in a single brawl-style fight and suddenly it’s damn near impossible. You have to be a true gaming savant to win these fights the first time around. It is exceedingly frustrating to have to retry the same fight dozens of times, especially when you need to win to progress the story. Stay calm. Deep breaths. You can do it.
2 Ambient Chatter
For the most part this issue was fixed in Arkham Knight, but the background dialogue from the early games is extremely limited. Some lines are good, funny even, but not so much after the sixteenth time. Arkham Asylum doesn’t fall victim to this quite as much as it takes place on a secluded island, but Arkham Origin, and especially Arkham City have so few lines of ambient chatter that it’s become annoying long before even the half point of the game.
1 The Riddler
Dear Lord, there are few video game characters more annoying than Rocksteady’s Riddler. He is that person in class that thinks he knows the answer to every question and tries to fight the teacher about facts, but cranked up to eleven.
If his constant remarks about his superior intelligence don’t grate on your nerves, his voice certainly will. Solving the hundreds of riddles in each game is fun, but the real reward is taking the Riddler off his high horse.