It’s been a year and a half since Batman: The Batmobile Adventure was released. A lot of positive and mixed reviews, a huge controversy around the PC port that was so broken that it was taken off Steam until more or less fixed. A lot of horrible attitude from Warner Brothers. A lot of separate DLCs most people might’ve ignored, because they were either tired with the main game, or refunded it on PC. I didn’t, though. Despite not liking the game much. And recently bought the Season Pass and decided to check the game again, complete the DLCs and finish up all the things in the main game on PC. Did my opinion change? A bit. Just a bit.
Now, to be fair, the main reason my opinion changed, and for the better, was the fact that I completed most of the batmobile stuff the first time I played the game. I had just most of the puzzles from Riddler left, only a handful of terribly boring batmobile battles and all the DLCs, which mostly didn’t focus on the batmobile much. It was so much more fun to play the parts with mechanics, that were amazingly improved since Arkham Asylum, the mechanics that people played the entire series for. And Riddler’s puzzles… okay “tasks”, are probably the best in the series this time around. Sadly, actual Riddles are few, but in such an open area it wouldn’t have worked to have more of them anyway, and they only worked well in Asylum. But all the tasks and challenges you need to do just feel like the fun use of fun mechanics this time around. Unlike the unfun use of clunky mechanics in most tasks of City and Origins.
And the separate character stories shine so much brighter when revisiting the game too. The main story felt really boring and disappointing the first time around, because, despite the actually good story bits and points, the overall structure, paired with boring gameplay, felt draining and not interesting. But revisiting it, remembering the good bits and playing the DLCs that focus just on that – that was good. There are 4 new missions for the main game, and a lot of separate stories outside the main game. All of them are good. All but one of them are short. And, really, the short part is the only bad part.
The four extra missions for the main game are fun. They all focus on different mechanics, all bring back one of the villains from previous games and bring closure to their stories. To the point, where it’s sad these weren’t part of the main game instead of terribly boring “retake the streets” parts, especially with the mines and batmobile fights. These fit the tone of the game much better and are absolutely worth the time and money.
As for the Arkham Stories, it’s a bit more complicated. Now, all of them are fun to play. They really are. Every character is fun, all try to do something unique with the characters you play as. I’d actually love to see a separate game about Red Hood or Nightwing now, as they feel like unique and fun enough characters to explore. Even if it’s weird to see Red Hood outright murder people, but with no visible blood -_-. But there’s one big issue with every one of them – they are incredibly short. As in – they can take 10 minutes to complete each first time around. Only the prequel story “A Matter of Family” works as a full separate story, like the DLC for City and Origins were. There’s a new location with several things to do, new collectibles and all that stuff. And it’s Joker yet again. Sigh.
But the real problem of this story is that it simply makes all the other story DLCs feel even shorter and unfinished. And crave for more. Even if none of them work as proper sequel hooks. They’re just constant “oh wait, that’s it?” 2-3 room events that simply end, despite often being incredibly fun.
So, are they worth it? If you like the Arkhamverse, if you wanted more closed locations and less Batmobile, this is what you need. Grabbing Season Pass seems like the obvious choice here. If you were already tired with the series? I doubt it will get you back, especially since it’s a prospect of giving WB money.
P.S. Oh and PC version finally works fine on good gaming PCs. It’s hard for me to properly judge how much better, since I upgraded everything since the first time I’ve played, but I’ve seen complaints of people having issues on similar to my current one builds a year ago. And can confirm that those do not exist now. And that the game looks even better now, that all the effects work correctly.