Batman: Arkham Shadow VR Review – The Most Physically Demanding Game Yet!

I’m sweating like a wet little field mouse. Sweat drips from the tip of my nose, dripping. I’m also covered in sweat all over my back, and my forehead is covered in beads of sweat. I should be resting instead of sitting here stressing about writing a review. I should sleep for a while after drying the sweat and drinking a glass of water. As far as I know, there is not a single game for any platform or format that is more physically demanding than the recently released Meta Quest 3 Batman: Arkham Shadow. It’s worse than the worst exercises, I’d say.

I’m not a VR nut. The complete opposite. I’m too old to stand with a plastic helmet on my head and wave like a madman in the living room. I want to sit down when I play. I want to be able to sit perfectly still and just move my thumb, and I want to look at my TCL 98′ and not push my old man’s head into a VR headset. That said, I really enjoyed Half-Life: ALyx, Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, and Asgard’s Wrath II. Great VR experiences that, along with Beat Saber, Superhot VR, Tetris Effect and Gran Turismo 7 VR, prove what the format can offer, if the games are developed in the right way by the right people.

Batman: Arkham Shadow Iron Man VR should therefore be placed in the same price category as the games I mentioned above, and this is largely due to the fact that the developers have had a good taste to explore the Batman: Arkham Asylum, which is indeed great. did absolutely right. The studio behind Iron Man VR (Camouflaj) has put together a VR adventure that not only excites and amazes, but also affirms and builds a bridge between Arkham Origins and Rocksteady’s first game in the fantastic trilogy about DC Comics’ greatest detective.

Here’s a hint:

Here, the player picks up the costume right after the events of Origins and just before Arkham Asylum, so to speak. Batman is young, relatively inexperienced, but tough, and when he’s up against the villainous Rat King, who plans to take over Gotham through a cult-like revolution, it’s up to you to stop him. to put an end to the misery and set things right again. Jim Gordon is kidnapped, Blackgate Prison is on fire (at least in reality) thanks to the twisted, sinister Warden Bolton, and the Scarecrow is as dangerous to handle as ever in the poem -this is a hard journey.

It’s clear early on that the main task for the developers behind Arkham Shadow is to try to emulate Arkham Asylum, by reversing the third-person action and detective elements/ stealth to work in a VR-based first-person perspective. I have to admit that this is the part of the development that took the longest to complete, as can be seen from the end result, which I think is much better than I wanted to hope for. There is a claustrophobically successful tight frame here that was missing in Arkham City and Arkham Knight when Rocksteady opened up Gotham perhaps a little too much. I like this. Within the technical confines of the Meta Quest helmet, Camouflaj moves with a skill that’s hard not to love. The feeling of being Batman is well realized here, and the feeling of being able to move relatively freely in environments of the right size, despite the fact that the game is largely too -linear, even better realized.

Just like in Arkham Asylum, you can choose your own approach based on your play style and mood. If you’d rather go past the enemies, maybe pick one or two of them up on the roof and let them hang from the ceiling on a wire, that’s fine. If you want to throw yourself into every fight and let your fists do the talking – that works too. Structurally, like Rocksteady’s first installment in the trilogy, this is a sort of three-dimensional Metroidvania where you move through a maze-like game world, collecting clues, going back to find things you might have missed, and then move on. The atmosphere is great, the level design is great and the pacing is well balanced.

Here’s a hint:

Just as good is the combat system, which I initially thought looked mediocre at best. Handing out bone sandwiches, jumping between various melees, and keeping track of the tough minions from the Rat King’s headquarters is as challenging as it is rewarding, and it rarely gets awkward or unnecessary, as I usually find these types of VR experiences. Due to. It flows well, the punches really feel like they do damage, and it requires you as a player to stand upright in a room with a lot of surface because you turn, a ‘ cranking, punching and ordering like crazy. I wouldn’t say this can be played sitting down, and I wouldn’t say you can get through Arkham Shadow without breaking a sweat. I don’t even think it’s physically possible unless you’re in the best shape ever.

The only thing I don’t really like about this game is the graphics, despite a nice design (same thing here, feels a lot like Arkham Asylum) looks old. Of course, I understand the hardware limitations since the Meta Quest is a standalone headset without the need for a computer, but still. Arkham Shadow looks old and that spoils some of the experience for me. Compared to Half-Life: Alyx in particular, it looks five or maybe even six years older. It is especially the intermediate sequences and the way in which the different characters move, and especially speak, that spoil some of the atmosphere, even if the voice is fine wild (both Troy Baker and Elijah Wood do excellent work as Two Face and Scarecrow).

In the end, it’s great to see big titles like this in VR that are very productive, well-made and successful. Many of these games needed their own format at an earlier stage to reach a wider and larger audience. If you have a Quest headset, you can’t miss Arkham Shadow.