chess

I just want an excuse to play these absolutely amazing games again.

This will do.

GoVegan

I'm a noob. I'll play the higher difficulty levels, but it still seems like I use detective mode half the time.

Adam Tyner

Am I in a tiny minority for loving Arkham Asylum and really not liking Arkham City much at all? Asylum felt tighter, more focused, less repetitive, and had (for me, anyway) a more appealing sense of pacing, progression, and exploration.

kgrogers1979

I like City, but I do prefer Asylum much more for the reasons you said. I love all three Arkham games released so far, but I do feel each one was worse than its predecessor. Asylum > City > Origins. Hopefully that won't mean Origins is better than Knight...

I think the biggest thing for me is that City and Origins were completely open world. I'm not a particularly big fan of open world games. Asylum had some openness, but not that much. Asylum was more like a Metroidvania game.

So I think that's why Asylum was more focused and had a better sense of progression since it was less open and more linear. I felt the story in Asylum was also better than City. I also saw the twist ending in City coming from a mile away since it has been done before in the comics.

The one area that City did better in my opinion was in the boss battles. The Mister Freeze boss battle in particular was awesome. It was like the ultimate stealth predator encounter, especially on hard mode where you had to literally use every single stealth tactic possible.

chess

Very different games, but I enjoyed both equally for different reasons.

Asylum was, to me, very much a Metroid game with Batman...with all of the advantages of that structure. It was tighter and more linear but maybe a bit claustrophobic compared to City.

City was an open world in the vein of Infamous, which gave more of a feeling of exploration and free roaming. And I've gotta say, the free roaming with grappling and gliding was absolutely glorious, and I loved the puzzles. But the open world structure also has inherent disadvantages as you can leave the main story for long periods to do various activities and negatively impact the pacing of the game.

I'm not sure which I like more, but I lean toward City, and I get the feeling Knight is going to be more like City.

Supermallet

I'm with you, Adam. City was a letdown after Asylum. I actually prefer Origins over City. City was also made much worse by the inclusion of the Catwoman sections.

cleaver

Arkham City is the game I'd waited my whole life to play. It was like Clue Haywood to my Ricky Vaughn. That fighting engine was perfection and it and Final Fantasy VII were the 2 games I spent the most time dicking around in. Arkham Asylum is a good game. Origins is a decent game. Blackgate is a game.

DeanoBKN

I'll be down for another play through of these.

MoviePage

Totally with you there. I played through Asylum 4 times, completed Hard mode, and did just about everything there was to do.

I started and then gave up on City about 5 different times when it was a new release. I finally completed a full playthrough just last month because I wanted to finish the story before the new game is released. I had no desire to play through it again or even go on a collectible hunt.

Solid Snake

City had the best gameplay, Origins had the best story, and Asylum was the perfect balance of it all.

Origins fucked up the timing w/ the fighting. The timing was a just a wee bit off and I felt it. I've played enough fighting games to know when the mechanics are off. Patches fixed up it's other fuckups too. But it had a lot of issues. Beyond the fighting.

While City's plot was crazy... I enjoyed it. Shit was bubbling up left and right. Felt like it was really going to be fucked up of a situation.

davidh777

Clearly I'm not doing it right because all these games blur together for me.

fumanstan

Same here, I thought all of them were about the same to me outside of being more enclosed space with Asylum versus City and Origins. I didn't have major issues or problems with any of the actual gameplay in all 3 games.

Adam Tyner

July 26th. Asylum and City have both been ported to Unreal Engine 4. All DLC included. No official price (not in the U.S., anyway) as I write this, but it's rumored as $50.



Some of the early screens look fantastic:

starseed1981

Agreed 100%

maxfisher

For me, the problem with remasters of stuff like this is that it already looks as good as the remastered version in my memory. If I dusted off my 360 and popped in Asylum today, I'm sure it would look dated compared to Knight. But, having thought that Asylum looked great at the time and having somewhat recently completed Knight, my brain just remembers Asylum looking like it does in what we're seeing from the remastered version. I guess it's nice to have the option to have it not look dated if I wanted to play it again, but on it's own, a visual upgrade along these lines isn't an incentive to revisit a game if I wasn't already planning on revisiting it.

Mike86

I'll get this but they really should have included Arkham Origins too. It's not the best of the series and not by Rocksteady but I still enjoy it. I've replayed the games (except Arkham Knight so far) more than once and will gladly do so again so it'll be nice to have them remastered.

fumanstan

$50 is too expensive for me for these games, I'd probably get them again when it's under $30 or even $20.

Adam Tyner

It's strange seeing some screenshot comparisons where the remasters look gorgeous and others where the original game (especially on PC) is actually superior.

gryffinmaster

I really dig the cover artwork for the remasters:

Decker

The nice thing about Next-Gen remasters is that there's no need to play them right away and (except for GTA V) they all drop in price very quickly.

gryffinmaster

If I were a betting man, I'd say the remastered collection would be $30 by Black Friday.

Supermallet

Do we think this will include all the alternate/DLC costumes from the original games?

Adam Tyner

Warner says it includes all DLC, and presumably that means costumes too.

davidh777

Not sure how much of the DLC I played, but that does make the package more appealing. I did like the Catwoman costumes.

Supermallet

I'll probably pick it up on sale then. I'm likely going to be selling my PS3 and games soon so it will be nice to have the first two Arkham games still available to me.