Bat Bastards: The Left behind Arkham Games – Part 3: Arkham VR Review

Developer: Rocksteady Studios | Platform: PSVR | Playtime: 1:00

This is the game I can understand not being involved in any collection as it is a VR title that released exclusively on VR. That being said, I never actually wrote my PSVR reviews so I want to salvage some of my experiences into new reviews, so here we are.

Due to the nature of the game, I will spoil the entire story in this review. Reader discretion is advised.

So a Batman VR game is the perfect vessel to deliver a really strong detective game, like The Long Halloween (which canonically happens in the Arkhamverse). However this isn’t just a Batman game, it’s a Batman Arkham game which means it needs some trippy element to it. The game has its perfect excuse – set between City and Knight, this is a dark dream of Batman’s, brought on by the growing infection caused by the Joker’s TITAN infused blood. You don’t know this straight away, but considering the game has you partly figuring out who murdered Nightwing (A character who is very much alive), it becomes apparent that whatever happening isn’t as it seems.

To this end, you get to experience the staples – exploring the Batcave, Detective Vision reconstruction, looking around a lab for evidence and even a decent action sequence starring Killer Croc. There’s some fun stuff here, especially that last bit but it all feels so brief, with such little interaction. Of course I’m not saying that the VR title needs to be 50 hours long but the story here ends just as it’s getting good. There’s more to the game with Easter eggs and collectibles but that doesn’t take away from the issue of the story being short. I was also having issues due to my setup which meant I had little intention to go back and explore.

There’s not much else to discuss about the game as is, but I do have to wonder why the game even exists in the first place. If the developers just wanted to make a VR game then you know that’s great, go for it. The setting then becomes weird, as Arkham VR came out after Arkham Knight which establishes and concludes the Joker blood stuff. The game then doesn’t show us anything we don’t know already. I feel like this could have been an alternate “What if?” story or just its own thing entirely, set outside of the Arkhamverse. If I was to design it, you’d play as a nameless cop who one day discovers the Batcave and reads over Batman’s old cases. Each case being an untold story from the Arkhamverse. That has the potential to be really cool. Yet, as it stands the story of Arkham VR it’s an awkward stopgap that exists after the need for stopgap.

Unless you really love this series, you won’t get anything out of playing the game that you wouldn’t get out of a playthrough on YouTube. The short length and expensive barrier to entry means it’s just not worth the Bat paper it’s printed on.