News broke yesterday that the next incarnation of the Batman: Arkham (insert extension name here) game will feature characters from the Justice League of America. Now, in principle this doesn’t seem like a bad move, after all the latest Batman Lego game features Supe’s and co and that seems to have gone down quite well.
But, there’s always a but, one of my chief complaints about the previous Arkham titles was the shoe-horning of as many Batman characters as possible into the games. As a result, nobody, except Joker and Harley, got a really good run out in the two titles. So do we really need to see a whole raft of new super heroes and villains drafted into the saga? I can’t help but feel that the third game should maybe focus a little more on some of the under used bad guys from the Batman universe.
One benefit of drafting the JLA in would be to provide a new series of environments, Metrocity, I mean Metropolis for example, rather than just rehashing Gotham maps all over again. So, there we go, one big positive…
However, does the addition of other heroes not detract from the very title of the game? Batman! Unless of course the other characters are NPC’s (non playable characters for you ‘not nerds’ out there) in which case the other super heroes would be just a backdrop to help Bats out of trouble.
I don’t think that the above will be the case however, because of the way they introduced Catwoman into the last one. Microsoft and Sony will probably have Superman and Wonder Woman etc as either unlockable characters or purchasable DLC…which kind of wins the argument really, money always wins!
cynicalcyclical 