The Batmans: Arkham games on PC or Mr. Crook’s Guide to Fighting Crime like a Gentleman.

I’ve played most of the Batman Arkham games on PC from Asylum to Knight. What’s better than being Batman and punching bad guys in the face after you block their clumsy blows? Maybe the Spider Man games? I don’t know. I haven’t played the PC port of the original yet and I haven’t played a console game in years. Part of the problem is that I never got the hang of controllers. But there’s also an accessibility issue. I can play PC games all the time in my small office. Console games require the big TV in the living room with its surround sound speakers blasting. That’s not really an option with a small toddler in the house. Though I can’t blame the kid for my chronic inability to use thumb sticks.

Does Spider Man punch bad guys in the recent PS2(or whatever it’s up to now) games? I’m assuming he does. Does it feel as martial-artsy as Batman? Probably not. Spider Man has superhuman reflexes but he didn’t spend his angst-ridden youth traveling the world to learn super-secret marital arts from Liam Neeson. All so that he could go back home and punch out small-time crooks hanging out in back alleys. Who designs these cities with all these dark alleys perfect for robbery and other criminal mischiefs? Is there some architectural mastermind at the heart of a sinister plot to make Gotham the perfect city for crime?

That would be a cool Batman villain; The City, a dastardly ne’er-do-well who infiltrated the Gotham planning board decades ago and created an entire metropolis that not only attracts criminals but gives them every opportunity to commit their devious deeds. Every alley and twisted street layout was designed for crime. And over the years, this master of masonry, this asshat of asphalt has taken a commission from every bank robbery, and jewelry store heist that went off without a hitch due to the convoluted nature of Gotham’s labyrinthine layout.

But The City never counted on his diabolical designs creating their perfect foil: The Batman. It was down one of The City’s specially designed “mugging alleys” that the young Wayne heir lost his heritage. In fact, it was the very layout of the city that allowed Batman to fully come into his own. The City made sure the back streets and alleys were narrow enough to allow malign malefactors to avoid the local constabulary. But that also had the unforeseen effect of making Gotham’s rooftops close enough to one another to allow a young would-be crime fighter to make his way across the cityscape with only a little help from some kind of cape-hidden gliding apparatus. 

What happens when Batman realizes that The City is ultimately responsible for his parents’ untimely undoing? He stretches and goes into full beat-up mode. I mean he’s got to stretch at some point, right? If you’re going to fight crime for decades you have to do everything you can to prevent injury.

Anyhow, The City is ready for Batman. He’s had years to prepare, filling every street, and every building in Gotham, with convoluted traps. He’s even rigged whole streets to shift at his whim to create an ever-changing maze of alleys to corral Batman in a lethal labyrinth. Can Batman defeat this ultimate villain—the very city he swore to protect?!?

Given the sheer number of Batman comics out there, it’s probably been done. I can almost imagine the 70s-style cover for this issue and the gaudy costume for The City: maybe a helmet in the shape of a skyscraper? But it would still make for a fun game, punching bad guys as the whole city tries to kill you, walls close in, streets breed spikes, and bridges collapse under your feet.

Of course, every villain in Gotham owes The City so they can all make an appearance and fight Batman. Or rather serve as punching bags for Batman. Just not Deathstroke. I think he’s a cool character and all, but fighting him in one of the Batman games was one of the most annoying sequences I’ve had to try to manage to survive with my terrible video game reflexes. Look, I’ll admit there’s no chance of me surviving 5 minutes in a Dark Souls game. Just let beat up bad guys without too much keyboard mashing. Seriously, I’d rather fight Darkseid as Batman than Deathstroke again.

Which is another idea for a fun Batman game. The hungry hordes of Darkseid’s Dog Soldiers invade Gotham from Apokalips. Batman and the Justice League push them back into their Boom Tubes, but somehow Batman gets dragged through to Apokalips. Trapped on this most inhospitable of worlds in a vast dark dystopian metropolis, can Batman evade Darkseid’s lackeys and somehow find his way home? Well, it is Batman. You put him in a big city where he can hide in the shadows and fly around, he’s going to cause trouble for even the most cosmic of universal tyrants.

I would love to tackle a twisted alien version of a Gotham-like city on Apokalips as Batman, fighting all sorts of strange Jack-Kirbyesque monsters and villains. Just copy-paste that stuff right out of the classic comics, no need for new designs or styles. The colorful imagery would be a welcome change from the chronic dark grays that seep into everywhere Batman seems to go these days. Maybe we can even run into some friends like Mr. Miracle and Big Barda. Plenty to work with it.

But how would Batman fight cosmic-level bad guys with just some sweet martial arts moves and batarangs? How about, instead of Waynetech gadgets, you find Apokalitian tools and weapons and learn how to use them, cause hey, it’s Batman? You eventually take over some kind of Wall-Tank vehicle that lets you navigate the treacherous cityscape with relative ease, moving from streets to the sides of buildings like some kind of spider on magnetic wheels. Maybe, Bats even spray paints a giant bat on the tank to raise the theatricality up a notch?

The point of the game would be defeating all of Darkseid’s lieutenants and acquiring the components you need allowing you to construct your own New Genesis Mother Box (ala Triforce). You then use the complete Mother Box to fight Darkseid and stop his invasion of Earth. In the end, it’s you versus Darkseid. The Mother Box can’t defeat Darkseid but it can even the odds, which is all Batman needs. Queue giant cosmic brawl. Even the ultrachampions of Punchalla would turn their heads to witness this one.

This would be a fantastic festival of fisticuffs, and a laudable stop on the road to that cosmic land of marvelous martial matchups. But sadly, I think the next Arkham game is something about the Batman kids fighting over who gets to be the replacement Batman. I don’t really want to play as Nightwing, or Robin, or Batwoman, or Red Hood. It’s just not the same somehow. Maybe if I get to play as Deathstroke… hey, if I get to play as Deathstroke, I don’t have to fight Deathstroke, right? But that, also, would be too cool for school. No, it’s going to be the usual multi-player microtransaction always-online battle-royale thing, isn’t it? I’ll be running around as a sad version of a Batman-wannabe with 3 Nightwings, 2 Robins, 4 Batwomans, and 5 Red Hoods all jumping around and posing with out-of-character emotes that you have to pay more money for. Sigh.

If we can’t be Batman anymore, how about a game in which you get to play as one of the villains? A sort of GTA meets Arkham in which you commit crimes to get more money so you can get better gear to finally take on Batman. Deathstroke would get better weapons, Bane would get better versions of his serum, Joker, more lovely and deadly gadgets, of course! How much fun would that be, running around as Joker, just trying to make people smile!?! The joke would be that when you finally go to confront Batman in the end, he’s already dead. I think the Joker would just die laughing.

And if Batman is really dead in the Arkham universe, make a game about how some villain made a clone of him from a hair that Catwoman stole or something. Maybe they even used some futuretech to copy his brain patterns. But, of course, clone Batman, or Batclone, escapes before the process is complete.

You play as the Batclone, trying to master your copy/pasted engram-based abilities and recover your memories so you can be Batman again. Like every time you defeat a villain, you get to recall some important foundational memory. All sorts of existential questions can be raised as you punch and kick every hoodlum in Gotham to discover not only your identity but the identity of the mysterious villain who brought you back, or created you, depending on your philosophical point of view.

It turns out that it’s all a convoluted conspiracy in which Alfred (disguised as the sinister Mr. Crook) somehow convinced the greatest criminals in Gotham that they needed Batman back to preserve the status quo. Otherwise, Mr. Crook reasoned, the Justice League would take over watching over Gotham. And Penguin, Riddler, and the rest of that crowd realized quickly they would have little chance of going up against the likes of Superman and Wonder Woman. So, the villains marshaled their resources to make a Batclone that would fool the Justice League into thinking that Batman was still around. But this new Batman would secretly work for this new Deep Crime Council.

Of course, the Joker couldn’t resist tearing it all down and was the one to set the Batclone loose. Quote the Joker explaining his rationale to the Batclone; “Oh, Bats what a lovely pair we make! How could I not reboot the franchise? Think of the profit margins, Bats! The merchandise! No? How about the kids? Think of the kids. Who will make them smile when we’re gone? Hahaha…” 

I do love punching the Joker to make him shut up. Any Batman game should have a mini-game in which Joker thinks Bats is tied up or sedated, but really, he’s just holding out to hear Joker spill his latest plan. The mini-game would be to hold out from pressing that punch button as long as you can, as Joker gets more and more annoying. I may be blocking this memory but something like this may have happened in one of the Arkham games. If it did, it scarred me so deeply, I erased the conscious memory of it. Damn you, Joker, even through the seemingly innocent conveyance of a video game you manage to spread your insidious brand of madness. Ah, whatever, it’s pretty funny if you don’t think about it. Aha… Ha… AHaHaaaHaahha!