Batman: Arkham Knight -used

2013’s Batman: Arkham Origins showed a side of Batman that players hadn’t seen in previous Arkham games, and it wasn’t pretty. Compared to the landmark Arkham Asylum and the open-world insanity of Arkham City, Arkham Origins felt safe, contrived, and very much like a stopgap release.

Over the interim year-and-a-half leading up to the launch of Arkham Knight, Origins‘ failings made me doubt whether the Arkham series formula was worth revisiting. Within its first hour, Arkham Knight squashed my concerns, demonstrating that the creative team at developer Rocksteady (who, it should be pointed out, did not create Arkham Origins) still knows how to innovate within the action genre in meaningful, unexpected ways while delivering a dynamite storyline.