Batman: Arkham Shadow takes place six months after Batman: Arkham Origins and three months after Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate. This is paramount regarding what may be relevant lore-wise but it’s also quite revealing about what gameplay should look like considering what capabilities, technology, or gadgetry Batman would have in his arsenal at the time of Batman: Arkham Shadow. Thankfully, that picture has recently become far clearer.
Camouflaj and Meta held a closed-doors, hands-on preview event the week before Gamescom’s Batman: Arkham Shadow gameplay reveal trailer aired for an early-game deep-dive that The Best War Games attended and was given roughly an hour with. The demo landed me near the beginning of the game—following an expository prologue we weren’t privy to—and guided me through a gameplay basics tutorial in a sewer infested with the Rat King’s goons and their strewn-about memorabilia, including a handful of rodent-themed collectibles. Guiding us through the event were head of studio and game director Ryan Payton, design director Ryan Darcey, and director of production Matt Walker.
19 Villains In Batman: Arkham Shadow
The lore of the Arkhamverse continues to expand, with Batman: Arkham Shadow not only introducing new villains but exploring familiar ones as well.
Batman: Arkham Shadow’s Combat and Predator Encounters are Its Bread and Butter
Most notably, Batman: Arkham Shadow’s combat is rhythmic and elegant, adapting Rocksteady’s freeflow system tremendously well. In particular, how Camouflaj has iterated on the iconic counter mechanic allows players to parry incoming attacks from assailants behind them via a classic blue warning prompt.
Players move their arm in the prompted direction and out of the Meta Quest 3 visor’s frame to have their POV spin, center on the countered attacker, and begin laying into them with consecutive strikes until players are inevitably interrupted again and must counter someone else. This series of enemies and punches thrown is made even more engaging due to the fact that players can have Batman leap toward enemies with a single punch from great distances and chain their combos together or initiate combat with instantaneous momentum.
Stealth is intuitive, especially if players are familiar with how they are able to take foes out in other Arkham games. As Batman, players lunge toward unsuspecting enemies, pull them into a chokehold, and wrestle left and right with them a few times to subdue them, which already makes for one of the quickest stealth takedowns in the series depending on how fast players flail side to side.
This is all aided with motion action prompts for predator and combat maneuvers allowing each movement to be interactive, such as when a finisher ends by hammer-fisting an enemy rather than punching into them for an ordinary ground takedown. It’s these motion prompts and their depth of interactivity that already seem to give combat and stealth a high skill ceiling while immersively representing Batman’s actions across all Arkham games.
An intriguing highlight of Shadow’s preview demo was the interpretation of Batman’s cape because the intimate POV of Meta Quest 3 doesn’t lend itself to showing cape physics as often or as prominently as in flatscreen, over-the-shoulder Arkham installments. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there, though; Batman’s cape stun and glide are certainly reprised and both instances give unique opportunities to see the cape billow into frame from around the player—much less when a cape glide gives them a glance at their imposing, pointy-eared silhouette on nearby surfaces.
Batman also has an evasive dash this time around, letting players side-step attacks as developer Camouflaj’s interpretation of the Caped Crusader’s traditional dodge roll.
Arkham Shadow’s Gadgets are Inspired and Immersive to the Batman Experience
This demo sequence gradually tutorialized three gadgets: the batarang, smoke bomb, and grapnel gun. Forgoing the seemingly limitless amount of batarangs Batman appeared to have stashed in his utility belt to throw out rapidly, Arkham Shadow implements a single batarang that players detach from Batman’s chest—a la Matt Reeves’ The Batman. When thrown at a target the batarang needs to be tossed generally in that area, but the reticle is fairly forgiving as the batarang curves generously toward the target when flung anyhow. Interestingly, the batarang behaves like a literal boomerang and returns to the player.
The smoke bomb, primarily employed as a means of fleeing impromptu gunfire, is manually retrieved from the inside of Batman’s left gauntlet. However, similar to how Batman can drop a smoke pellet in City, Origins, and Knight via a panicked prompt when armed enemies suddenly catch a glimpse of him, players can also do the same in Shadow rather than having to frantically grab a smoke bomb from their arm in the heat of the moment. I didn’t try it myself, but I’d assume anyone who is especially strategic, experienced with VR functionality, and balancing available gadgets well could have chosen to drop a smoke bomb on multiple gunmen in a predator encounter to liberally administer stealth takedowns and clear the room in seconds.
Unlike the batarang and smoke bomb, the grapnel gun is not a gadget players physically grab from their person. Instead, as it is in the Arkham games (a nostalgic pattern has obviously formed and been reinforced at this point), players simply need to have the grapple reticle in sight before pressing ‘A’ and grappling.
Grappling to a normal ledge in ordinary traversal even gives players the ability to hang there, potentially to prepare for a subsequent ledge takedown before literally hoisting themselves up, or immediately land atop the ledge. Moreover, the interactions and transitions between combat and gadget usage are impactfully responsive, though this was mainly apparent when maneuvering between a beatdown and several successive gargoyle perch grapples thereafter in a predator encounter stage that gives players a diverse range of options between inverted and floor grate takedowns.
Speaking of, Shadow’s inverted takedowns are surprisingly and satisfyingly elaborate: players move forward and hang below the gargoyle they’re perched on, lunge out at an unsuspecting nearby enemy, yank them up to the gargoyle, and shove them away to incapacitate them as they shriek and dangle from a cable (that players can then cut with batarang, of course). In turn, enemies are immediately alerted to players’ perched positions following an inverted takedown and essential gargoyle-to-gargoyle grappling is entirely fluid on Meta Quest 3.
Batman: Arkham Shadow’s Detective Vision and Collectibles Tease a Wealth of Exploration
Shadow’s adaptation of Detective Mode is one-to-one and gifts players with the blue lens filter and NPC skeletons they’d expect to see. That said, no crime scene investigations or related activities were in the demo but Detective Vision could be switched on freely to locate points of interest with their own distinguishing colors and has a brief tutorial for stealth purposes.
On Meta Quest 3, Detective Mode is activated and deactivated at will by pressing the right trigger with the player’s hand up somewhat close to their head. I had Detective Vision enabled for quite a while in the preview demo as I enjoy searching for anything that may be hidden to the naked eye in an Arkham game’s environments, and was rewarded for that effort by discovering optional paths and collectibles.
Shadow reportedly has an enormous suite of well over 100 overall collectibles players can find that, at least regarding several we found in this hands-on demo, consist of breakable Rat King idol statues and radios.
Batman: Arkham Shadow’s Gameplay Should Put to Rest Any VR-Related Woes
The preview demo had me emerge on Gotham City’s surface, breathe in the same gloomy atmosphere that Origins elicited with familiar neon signage, and glide down into a street below. This street resembled Origins and even City with impeccable detail punctuated by advertisements that have either all been seen before or reference previously seen and visited locations. The draw distance decorates the skyline with a GCR tower, Soder Cola sign, and bat signal, and even more to stare out at in the final moments of the demo on a separate rooftop.
One of the most trivial yet gratifying experiences in Shadow’s tutorial demo slice was something any Arkham veteran will be able to attest to doing countless times: grabbing vent covers, ripping them from a wall, and gingerly sliding them away to the left or right of the duct. If the rest of exploration and gameplay in general in Batman: Arkham Shadow is even half as atmospheric as this opening tutorial section it will undoubtedly be impressive.
Batman: Arkham Shadow is a natural and immersive extension of the Arkhamverse and the transition from flatscreen to Meta Quest 3 is iterative and adaptive in ways that may be incredibly comforting for players who’ve retained muscle memory from any of the Arkham games prior. The last Arkham game launched nearly 10 years ago and Shadow is doing phenomenal work to not only stew in reverent reminiscence but also provide a meaningful, fully-fledged entry in the Arkhamverse that should more than earn its welcome.
Batman: Arkham Shadow is scheduled to launch in October for the Meta Quest 3. The Best War Games was provided travel accommodations for this preview.
Batman: Arkham Shadow
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 86 /100 Critics Rec: 100%
- Released
- October 21, 2024
- ESRB
- T For Teen // Violence, Mild Blood, Language
- Developer(s)
- Camouflaj
- Publisher(s)
- Oculus
- Engine
- Unity
- Franchise
- Batman: Arkham
- PC Release Date
- October 21, 2024
- Platform(s)
- Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest 3S
- Genre(s)
- Action, Virtual Reality
