Many gamers understandably felt a rush of excitement when they heard that a new Batman: Arkham game was in development, followed quickly by disappointment after learning that it would be a VR game exclusive to the Meta Quest 3. I get it. VR has been in our lives for the better part of a decade now, and not even a full-blown Half-Life game could get core gamers interested. So what hope does Batman have?
That’s ultimately for the market to decide, but what I can confidently say after playing the first 45 minutes of Batman: Arkham Shadow, out this October from Camouflaj Studios, the folks responsible for Iron Man VR, is that it’s a “real game.” Meaning, it’s not a 90-minute tech demo, like Rocksteady’s 2016 PSVR1 launch game Batman: Arkham VR clearly was (though it was quite enjoyable). And I had a really good time that was just getting interesting when my demo ended.
Arkham Shadow is set between the events of Origins and Asylum, with the latter being the Camouflaj team’s primary inspiration. This extends to the physical structure of the campaign; this isn’t an open-world game like City or Knight, but instead a series of larger but ultimately confined play spaces you can move freely around. Given the technological and gameplay constraints in VR compared to a flat-screen game, this makes sense. But how does it actually play?
Pretty well, it turns out! I’ll be honest: I was skeptical coming into this demo. Though I had fun putting on Batman’s cowl in the aforementioned Arkham VR, there wasn’t much of a real game there. Camouflaj promises that Arkham Shadow is the biggest and longest game they’ve ever made, and thus far I’m inclined to take them at face value there. In fact, if anything, the onboarding takes too long. I get that players have to be taught how to execute the familiar gameplay mechanics of the Arkham series all over again in VR, but I was ready for more freedom in combat sooner than Shadow was ready to let me loose.
I learned how to sneak up on bad guys from behind, how to punch, how to counter, how to do finishing moves, how to throw batarangs, how to glide down from above, how to drop smoke bombs, how to grapple up to ledges, how to activate Detective Mode, how to hang upside down, and how to tie up bad guys from perches. It really is most of the stuff you do in the other Arkham games, but you get to perform the actions yourself, with your hands.
And you know what? It’s pretty fun. At least, once you’re taught all the moves and get to start stringing attacks together. Was I breaking a sweat? No, this is no Beat Saber. But you do get to throw some punches as Batman in a first-person perspective in VR and enjoy the thrill of taking down a mob of bad guys all attacking you at once. It feels cool to jab an arm out to counter a bad guy approaching from the weak side. It feels cool to grapple up to a vantage point. It feels cool to beat the ever-loving tar out of the dredges of Gotham.
But this isn’t just a VR punch-fest. Myriad bat-characters are here, from Jim Gordon to Harvey Dent and many others – and it’s all in service of a story revolving around the Rat King, a new foe in Gotham who wants to bring down the city’s elites. And herein lies my biggest unknown with Arkham Shadow so far: its story. It’s not that the story is bad, it’s that I really didn’t see any of it in the first 45 minutes of the campaign. In fact, my demo ended just as I was about to talk to Commissioner Gordon and really get the plot moving forward. The Camouflaj crew told me that they’d skipped me past a prologue that would’ve helped set things up for me. And I don’t know about you, but when I think of the Arkham games I think of two things primarily responsible for making each one memorable: combat and story. The combat is there in a uniquely VR way, yes, but the jury is still out on the story.
Still, I’ve played enough to call this a real Arkham game. There are tons of collectibles scattered around to find, from Rat King transmitters to rip off the wall and smash to homemade Rat King Statue of Liberty figurines, plus others Camouflaj wouldn’t reveal yet. Unfortunately, as expected, the visuals in the Meta Quest 3 are so-so – they’re nowhere near as pretty as Rocksteady’s Arkham trilogy. That’s to be expected in lower-power tech like this, but it’s nevertheless a bit disappointing. I wouldn’t say Arkham Shadow looks bad, by any stretch, but this isn’t a gorgeous Gotham like we’ve seen in the rest of the series.
So where do I stand after 45 minutes of Arkham Shadow? Besides the other side of the room where I started, I mean, thanks to all of my punches, turns, crouches, and stealth grabs? I’m quite optimistic, honestly. I really wanted to keep playing when they took the Meta Quest off my head, as the campaign really seemed to be just starting to hit its stride. Should you go out and buy a Meta Quest 3 just for this game? It’s too early to make that call, but at the very least, it has the potential to tempt a lot of people.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
