Many big triple A franchises have made the jump to VR over the years. Assassin’s Creed, Horizon, Half-Life, Resident Evil, and so much more legendary IP have delivered engaging and unique design experiences through a medium that sometimes feels like it’s still finding its feet. One of the first on the original PlayStation VR was Batman: Arkham VR – an adventure game with a focus on puzzle solving and bringing Gotham to life through a lense we’ve not seen before. It’s a fantastic albeit short experience that does feel like it left a lot on the table in retrospect.
In a lot of ways, Batman: Arkham VR feels like it set out to prove that Batman, specifically the Arkham games, can work in a virtual reality framework. If Arkham VR is a thought experiment on whether or not it’s possible to become the Dark Knight, Arkham Shadow is a full realisation of the very same idea. An experience so unrelenting in its efforts to make the player feel the vengeance that drives Bruce to put on the mask, to make you feel like the thing that goes bump in the night. Arkham Shadow isn’t just a fantastic VR game, it also surpasses some of Rocksteady’s own seminal work.
Set after the events of WB Games Montréal’s Batman: Arkham Origins, Arkham Shadow follows a young, more certain Bruce Wayne and Batman during a time of great turmoil in Gotham. After unleashing chaos throughout the city on the fourth of July, the enigmatic Rat King reveals their plans for an imminent day of reckoning. An event that will see Gotham’s public services, namely the GCPD, courts, and prisons, brought to their knees. It falls to Bruce to uncover the true identity of the Rat King and put a stop to the aptly named Day of Wrath before it can eventuate.
It’s a standard setup, but one that sees Bruce infiltrating Blackgate Prison as an inmate going by the alias of Irving Malone. By day, Bruce lays on a thick accent while donning a different kind of mask to infiltrate the rat cult. By night, he steps into the suit to dig deeper into an elaborate conspiracy of lies and red-herrings in hopes of getting to the truth. While the identity of the Rat King is made fairly obvious in the early hours, it’s the way that the eventual reveal is handled that makes the whole thing so engaging.
Even though that core surprise doesn’t come as a huge shock, there are so many great moments here – especially in the third act. These emotionally charged beats hit harder thanks to Arkham Shadow’s strong theming and explorations of Bruce’s inner conflict. You can tell that this isn’t the same Bruce we saw in Arkham Origins, nor is it the same Bruce we saw in Arkham Asylum. He’s stuck in a strange transition phase where he’s less prone to rage, but when the anger does come out, it tends to take over in the moment.
It’s a character flaw that’s been commonly explored in plenty of Batman media. Even the Arkham games themselves have delved into Bruce’s rage, but Arkham Shadow is also concerned with how its other key players struggle with their inner demons. It would be a crying shame to spoil any of that here, but it’s so fascinating to see characters like Harvey Dent, Harleen Quinzel, and Jonathan Crane before their eventual spirals into villainy. It puts them in a spotlight that’s often so occupied by the Joker, and it’s refreshing to see that much focus on these other rogues.
There are just so many highlights here where gameplay and narrative coalesce into a cohesive whole that feels like it would only be possible in virtual reality. A few of these moments are right up there with some of Arkham’s best, one in particular that occurs in the opening few hours that is perhaps my favourite sequence in any Arkham game. Camouflaj don’t just get these characters and the world, they fundamentally understand why Rocksteady’s versions of them are so compelling. It also really helps that Roger Craig Smith gives another knockout performance as Bruce/Irving/Batman and the likes of Troy Baker as Harvey Dent and Elijah Wood as Jonathan Crane are also excellent additions.
If there was one thing that Arkham VR is sorely lacking, it would have to be any form of combat. To be fair, the kind of experience that game was striving for is one very different from Arkham Shadow, and there’s no doubt it would’ve been difficult to translate Rocksteady’s landmark combat system into virtual reality. It’s clear that Camouflaj knew this, and took a careful approach to interpreting Freeflow Combat for VR, because the end result is nothing short of incredible.
Much like Rocksteady’s Arkham games, Arkham Shadow’s combat is rhythmic. Locking onto goons from a distance and physically throwing a punch will see Batman rush up to them, starting a sort of minigame where you need to punch, swing, and dodge based on visual indicators. Counters are similarly intuitive, requiring you to deflect in the direction the counter is coming from, leaving an enemy open to attack. Better yet, is you can jump to almost any enemy from anywhere in the room, which really nails that feeling of darting around the arena as you deliver calculated strike after calculated strike.
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It’s really elevated when you bring Batman’s toolset into it. You can grab your cape from behind by holding a trigger and pushing the controller forward, stunning any unlucky goons caught in the sweep, opening them up for a flurry of strikes that emulates the beatdown rather well. Batarangs can be quickly flung to knock an enemy off-balance, the Batclaw can grapple unsuspecting combatants to pull them in for a clothesline-like punch, and Explosive Gel can be quickly sprayed onto the floor to lay your own traps throughout the battlefield.
It is exhilarating stuff in every sense of the word. I played Arkham Shadow standing up, which is undoubtedly the way to go here, and broke a sweat after every major combat encounter – but I kept on coming back for more. Nothing is more satisfying that tearing through a room of guys without taking a single hit, delivering blows with enough force to stack up your combo meter for flashy finishers. There’s even challenge maps that serve as playgrounds for those itching to put their skills and combat expression to the test.
The stealth/Predator sections are treated with a similar level of reverence, adopting Rocksteady’s established formula into a VR framework instead of fundamentally reworking it. You’ll perch atop gargoyles and survey rooms with Detective Vision. Luring enemies into unfavourable circumstances, only for you to swoop down, knock them out, and retreat into the embrace of the shadows. It’s a powerful fantasy that just feels unreal in virtual reality.
Another trademark aspect of Arkham that translates so smoothly into Arkham Shadow, is fantastic boss fights. They are so, so good, combining many different elements of the combat system as you dismantle your foe piece by piece. They’re true spectacles, serving as narrative and gameplay highlights amongst Arkham Shadow’s myriad setpieces. My only real issue with these is that there’s only two true boss fights, leaving the very climax of the game without any real boss encounter.
Arkham Shadow’s general gameplay loop is split in two. During the day, you’ll investigate Blackgate Prison as Irving Malone, collecting information on the prison’s key players and the rat cult’s true plans. By night, you’ll wear the cowl, more thoroughly exploring the prison’s many facilities and getting more hands on with its residents. It’s a nice cadence that helps the pacing and sets Arkham Shadow apart from other games in the series. It also helps that there’s a steady flow of unlocks to shakeup combat and stealth, improving the efficacy of your tools and widening your selection of combo finishers.
The Batman sections even employ some light Metroidvania elements, allowing you to explore the different parts of Blackgate as you unlock new gadgets and tools to solve puzzles and engage with different parts of the environment. Various collectibles are scattered about Blackgate (not Riddler Trophies, thankfully) that you can grab and shatter in protest of the Rat King’s rule. Coupled with the aforementioned challenge maps, and there’s quite a bit to dig into here if you want to see everything Arkham Shadow has to offer.
Another aspect of this world that Arkham Shadow categorically nails is just how good it all looks. The constant mood that emanates throughout Blackgate is something we’ve seen before, but is so elevated in virtual reality that it’s hard to not be in awe of what Camouflaj has achieved here. The opening in Gotham is a real highlight, with strong use of lighting in combination with Gotham’s trademark architecture that serve to bolster the power fantasy that comes with being the Dark Knight. I can only imagine how far this game pushes the Meta Quest 3 and is a true showcase for what the hardware is capable of.
The same can’t be said for the game’s technical state, though. I had a couple of instances where characters simply wouldn’t progress past an idle animation, forcing a restart to the most recent checkpoint. Perhaps most frustrating was frequent freezing during loading screens, requiring a full restart of my headset which pulled me right of out of the immersion. I can only hope these things are patched in the near future, because they pop up just often enough to marr the overall experience. It’s also worth mentioning that Arkham Shadow is fit with all the VR bells and whistles when it comes to customisation for those who’re more prone to motion sickness.
When Arkham Shadow is working, though, it’s firing on all cylinders. It stands with Half-Life: Alyx as one of the most well realised virtual reality titles the industry has seen yet. It’s unwavering in its commitment to Rocksteady’s achievements with their own trilogy, cementing Arkham Shadow as a worthy entry into the series. It makes you feel like Batman in a way you simply never have before – and that’s no small feat when you think about what was achieved with the other games in this legendary series.
