Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Dammitall! Here we were, hoping the next Batman game would be a gloriously silly, super-colourful Silver Age tale, but instead it looks to be more grimdark Nolanism. I mean, that’s fine, but we’ve done it twice already. Don’t wear it out, as Michelle Pfeiffer once said about her name to Michael Keaton. ‘Tis not to be – Batman: Arkham Origins is the next game, Rocksteady are no longer at the helm and the calendar has rewound to Bruce Wayne in his youth. Despite my arrogant suppositions a couple of sentences ago, that’s all we really know and it could yet turn out to be anything. Doesn’t seem like they’re avoiding evoking the style and tone of the earlier Arkhams, mind, and they’ll also be using the same engine. It’s “current-gen” so that may mean we don’t get the shiniest of all possible shines, but more positively they’re hinting at depicting Gotham City as a “functional city”, not a mere puzzleplace.
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We may be in for a third Batscapade from the Arkhamverse, according to Warner suits in the company’s latest earnings call, and it’ll probably be this year too.

There’s almost nothing to go on, other than Warner’s Chief Financial Officer John K. Martin letting slip that “and we also have a strong games release this year, which will include the next release in the Batman Arkham franchise.” This means it’s up to us to let slip the dogs of speculation.
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Variety are reporting that the next Batman game will be a prequel to Arkham City set in the 1950s “Silver Era” of DC Comics. They report that a “New, highly stylized title is being developed as a prequel that revolves around Batman’s first meeting with the Joker. It’s based on the Silver Age of DC’s comicbooks from the 1950s when the Caped Crusader teamed with other heroes like Superman and founded the Justice League of America.” I can’t imagine it will be quite like the Silver Era comics, as it seems unlikely that they’ll want to discard contemporary grit for hapless 1950s camp. It could, however, see the game visited with a new visual style, even if the tone remains much the same. It’ll be interesting to see. Man, I need to go back to Gotham, now.

Thanks, Polygon.

With everything else that went on last year I felt like we skipped over Arkham City a bit, which is a shame because it was a great game, with ideas aplenty. Also: Batman. Anyway, consider this your reminder to take a look if you haven’t, because there’s a demo gone up on Steam, giving you limited access to Arkham’s open-world Batman ‘em up. Perhaps them compare those experiences with Adam’s verdict.

Thanks Blue!

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that sidekicks have a purpose. They are, after all, easily kidnapped by arch-nemeses, generally ineffective unless dwelling in their natural habitat of the hero’s shadow, and rarely capable of putting together a costume that doesn’t implicitly beg for a super-powered swirly. I have to say, though, that Batman: Arkham City’s Harley Quinn’s Revenge DLC looks pretty promising. Robin’s doing his best Ezio impression while searching for his missing Batmentor, and Harley Quinn seems to have completely lost it, which has apparently put her in a bit more of a murdering mood than usual. Admittedly, the “Payback’s a bitch” tagline seems a bit ill-advised given Arkham City’s less-than-savory history with the word, but the rest looks rather impressive. Grapple past the break for the full trailer.

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Revenge is a dish best served cold – or at least lukewarm, in this case. On the upside, Batman: Arkham City’s story-concluding DLC-based chapter is en route to PC, Warner told Eurogamer. That, however, is where things take an almost amusingly convoluted turn into asylum-worthy madness. So, first off, the PC version of Arkham City: Game of the Year Edition – to which the DLC’s launch is tethered – has no release date beyond “TBC.” The console versions, meanwhile, appear to have had their releases scheduled by Warner’s executive VP of wearing a blindfold and throwing darts at things. In the US? May 29. Fair enough. Everywhere else, though? September 7 – just in time to get totally buried in the holiday game avalanche. If the PC version follows release tradition, that could see it swinging in to save the day well after the nick of time in October. Catch an incredibly brief glimpse of the DLC in action after the break.

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As roughly 50% of the emails to the wheezing RPS inboxotron over the last week will attest to, Rocksteady and Warner have not exactly displayed willing enthusiasm when it comes to the PC edition of Batman: Arkham City. A long- and mysteriously-delayed launch followed by DirectX 11 performance that was about as smooth as stinging nettle moonshine, then the final insult of the eventual patch screwing up many folks’ savegames despite leaving many of the initial problems unresolved. And then, silence. Months-long silence.

Our own attempts at establishing just what the flipping fudge was going on came to naught, which made the torrent of increasingly florid complaint emails we were copied in on all the more distressing. Now, finally, Rocksteady have put out a patch. It claims to fix all the right things, which you can find below. Let us know here if it has or hasn’t worked. Also, whether or not you’re wearing any manner of headgear right now. We’re always interested in that.
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The British Academy Video Game Awards took place on Friday night and Portal 2 was awarded highest honours, taking home little gold faces not only for Best Game, but also for Story and Design. Congratulations to Valve, who by this point must be making plans to put up some new shelves of award-bearing load strength. The popular vote went to Battlefield 3, which also won awards for Online Multiplayer and Audio Achievement.

The full list is celebrating after the jump.

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Gotham by Gaslight - aka Victorian Batman vs Jack the Ripper – was a big deal for comics back in the early 1990s, what with it both transplanting Bats into a new setting and being a self-contained tale rather than the usual unending episodic fare. Sadly it’s been largely ignored in this modern age of ultra high-tech Batmen and Grant Morrison miring poor ol’ Bruce in endless, obtuse fantasy stories about nothing, but a few years ago Day 1 Studios were set to make a videogame based upon this 19th Century superhero. You’ll know Day 1 from FEThreeR, the Xbox MechAssault games and the upcoming PC multiplayer mech title Reign of Thunder, so their heritage perhaps isn’t really in the vein of the quiet, thoughtful oddness of GbG.

Whether or not they’d have pulled it off is something we’ll never know, as it was canned before development started in earnest – but a leaked proof-of-concept animation trailer does suggest it could have been an especially atmospheric steampunk odyssey.
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The UK Writers’ Guild Awards took place at the end of 2011 but the American guild like to time their ceremonies a little closer to the Oscars so that they can fall into Awards Season, which isn’t actually a season at all. You may remember that a man named Gillen was nominated for the UK award, along with Ed Stern whose script for Brink received a nod. The winners were the writers of Enslaved though and that doesn’t exist on PC so we neglected to mention its victory. A belated round of applause to Alex Garland and Tameem Antoniades. So, who has received a nomination from the American guild? Read on.

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Phew. I was just about to scribble some rot about the release of free challenge maps for Arkham City, which are only downloadable through Games For Windows Live. As I was staring at the error message that greeted my attempt to install them, a tweet landed ‘pon my shoulder and whispered in my ear: “Why all this effort to clobber villains at the Jokers Carnival, and in the Iceberg VIP Lounge and Batcave? Even if you were doing it using the free Batman Incorporated skin it’d just be fisticuffs. Better to take a top-hatted stroll in the snow.”

By jove, what a grand idea that was. You can watch a slightly interactive documentary of my turn around the environs thanks to Winter Walk, which is as pleasant a way to while away a few minutes as you’ll find today. Thanks to Dan Marshall (@danthat).