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'Batman: Arkham Knight' never feels too big to play
This article contains spoilers for Batman: Arkham Knight; you've been warned. I didn't want to like Batman: Arkham Knight. In the long run-up to its release, I'd become increasingly disinterested every time developer Rocksteady Studios mentioned how the game had grown compared to its prequels. Twenty times bigger than Arkham Asylum! My eyes glazed over. Drive the Batmobile around Gotham! Yawn. My worry was that Arkham Knight would be a product of the Warner Bros. Interactive marketing department, riddling the series I love with bloat and unnecessary features solely because the PlayStation 4's and Xbox One's more powerful hardware allowed for bigger experiences. It's been a while since I was this happy to be wrong: Arkham Knight's genius is that despite its physical size, the game never feels larger than whatever carefully constructed moment you're in.
Batman glides into Arkham Knight gameplay trailer
Warner Bros. offered the first in a series of three gameplay trailers for Batman: Arkham Knight today, showing the caped superhero rescuing workers from a chemical plant. Found after the break, the video features a healthy dose of gliding and Batmobile action, as well as some good old-fashioned ass-kicking by the dark knight. Batman: Arkham Knight will launch on June 2, 2015 for PS4, Xbox One and PC. The final installment in Rocksteady's Arkham trilogy was delayed this past June. The game is "five times larger," and is set one year after the events of Batman: Arkham City, the developer's 2011 entry in the series. With a little help from the developer, diligent players recently unearthed an Easter egg in Arkham City with a special message from Calendar Man. [Image: WBIE]
Batman Arkham Knight set one year later, 'five times larger' than Arkham City
The recently-revealed final game from Rocksteady in the Arkham series, Batman Arkham Knight, will feature "traffic-friendly streets" in a map that's said to be "roughly five times the size" of Batman Arkham City. Lead AI and combat programmer Tim Hanagan told Game Informer that "at any given time, there are between three and four times the number of thugs active in Gotham City than there were in Arkham City," and that larger riots in the game will have up to 50 characters wreaking havoc. Arkham Knight is set one year after Arkham City, in which Batman's foes have banded together to tear the Dark Knight's attention away from a crumbling Gotham City. The single player-only game will also include an arch-villain created from scratch by Rocksteady and DC Entertainment CCO Geoff Johns. Rocksteady's initial announcement focused on another big addition to the Arkham series: Players will get plenty of time in the driver's seat of the Batmobile, which can be fetched at the press of a button, can handle the jumps and boosts expected of the more reckless drivers among us and will eject Batman out of his seat at times. Kevin Conroy will return to voice Batman after Roger Craig Smith lent his voice to the character in Arkham Origins. Additionally, Nolan North will voice Penguin, Wally Wingert will voice Riddler, Tara Strong will continue as Harley Quinn and Troy Baker will voice Two-Face again. Speaking of Harley Quinn, Joker's popular sidekick will be playable via pre-order bonus content that includes four challenge maps. [Image: Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment]
Armature Studio has non-Arkham game coming 'this Christmas'
Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate developer Armature Studio is developing an additional game to be released "this Christmas," the studio's Twitter feed announced yesterday. Armature's account clarified this morning that the project is "not a phone game" and doesn't involve an HD port of the God of War series for the Vita. Beyond that, however, Armature seems keen to let us wonder what the project could be. With a little under three months left before the day where a magical stranger breaks and enters homes worldwide, there's not much time left for the studio to build hype for their mystery present.
New Batman Arkham game coming this year
A new Batman Arkham game is being released this year, although it's unknown if series developer Rocksteady Studios is behind it. The news comes courtesy of the Time Warner Q4 2012 earnings call, as posted by Yahoo! Finance."And we also have a strong games release this year, which will include the next release in the Batman Arkham franchise," said John K. Martin, Time Warner chief financial officer and chief administrative officer.Warner Bros. Interactive and Rocksteady Studios released Batman: Arkham Asylum in 2009, followed by Arkham City in 2011. In that sense, a new Arkham game in 2013 adds up.According to a Variety report from last year, Rocksteady is developing another Batman game, but it's set in the Silver Age of comic history, and isn't expected to be released until 2014. Maybe Variety and Warner are talking about the same game, but it sounds like they may not be. In any case, we've reached out to Warner Bros. Interactive for more info.
'Arkham Universe,' 14 more Batman domains registered
It looks like Warner Bros. isn't through with Arkham yet. Domain manager MarkMonitor, which handles Warner Bros. properties, has registered a slew of Arkham-related sites, including "Arkham Universe," "Batman Arkham Arises" and "Batman Arkham Legends."There are 15 domains in total, ranging from the standard fare listed above all the way to "DC Arkhamverse." There's no word if these relate to a film endeavor or a game, but considering the previous two Batman games from Warner Bros. were Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, they certainly fit the gaming pattern.Check out the complete list of domains below.
The Perfect Ten: MMO prisons
Chillin' in the clink. Spending time in stoney lonesome. Thrown into the slammer. Checking in to the big house. Doing (perfect) 10 to life in the hole. Learning the ropes in juvie. Prison: The only fun thing about it is the slang that people have come up to describe it. And while you may never actually want to spend any time in the crowbar hotel in real life, chances are you've already done so in MMOs. Jails are an ever-popular locale in online gaming, and they almost always deal with an epidemic of escaped -- yet still milling around casually -- prisoners. So in today's Perfect Ten, we talked to the warden and got you a special glimpse into pixelated pokeys, if only to scare you straight. No more exploits and bots for you, young man or woman!
Batman: Arkham City PC system requirements detected
We may have to wait until the eighteenth of November to get our WASD-lovin' keyboard claws on the PC version of Batman: Arkham City, but the extra weeks have given us ample time to make sure our beefy rigs are up to snuff. Not that we're that worried, mind you: Nvidia has released the minimum and recommended system requirements for the caped crusader's latest romp (after the break), and all told the spec aren't totally outrageous. Maybe we didn't need to spend forty thousand dollars on a replica of Batman: The Animated Series' Batcave supercomputer after all.
