Live Magazine Christmas 2016 Edition

REVIEW
batman: return
There is little doubt that the
Arkham games are some of the
best gaming experiences that last
generation had to offer. With a 92
and 96 on Metacritic respectively,
2009’s Arkham Asylum and 2011’s
Arkham City received widespread
critical acclaim from both gamers
and Batman fans alike, thanks to
developer Rocksteady’s superb
polish and the games’ outstanding
voice cast, storytelling, and combat
system. Last week saw the
release of Return to Arkham; a remastered
collection of these two
games which includes all of their
DLC, and the promise of updated
visuals making use of the superior
specs of current-gen hardware.
The first major update by Virtuos,
the development team behind the
remastered collection, was porting
both games from Unreal Engine 3
over to Unreal Engine 4. This is relatively
uncommon for the remastered
space, as other re-releases
(such as the Bioshock Collection)
continue to use their original engines,
just with updated graphics,
1080p resolution, and an improved
frame rate.
The main changes you will see in
Return to Arkham are favoured
towards improved graphics rather
than improved performance. Updated
character models are the
most notable difference, specifically,
the textures of their clothing
and skin. While their hairstyles are
still pretty stiff and unnatural look-
to arkham
ing, the clothing textures of characters
now show significant detail – a 30fps cap, yet still experiences
60fps. Asylum differs in that it has
you can even identify fabric types performance stuttering at certain
on an insignificant, deceased security
guard. Batman himself looks
points throughout the game.
incredible, with his suit, cowl and
cape all looking their best.
Unreal Engine 4 also brings with
it updated lighting, with noticeable
changes in the colouring of
cutscenes, lighting models, and
the overall mood of both games.
While this lighting is technically
better, its effect can be a little hit
or miss throughout the games.
There are improved shadows and
reflections, but the brighter atmosphere
can reveal other graphical
shortcomings, and at times can be
conflicting with the dark and gritty
aesthetic we’ve come to associate
with the series. Again, this is
most noticeable on the character
models, which are sometimes so
vibrant that they can look out of
place amongst their surroundings.
While overall, the improvements
made to graphics are welcome,
they may have been at an expense
to the games’ performance. Frame
rate looks to be an issue for both
Asylum and City, with City’s performance
on PS4 hovering around
30-35fps, with performance
spikes from around 20fps up to
The increased computing power
of current-gen hardware has at
least improved the loading time for
Asylum. Walking through automatic
doors around the island (particularly
the ones that scan you in the
Penitentiary) used to bring gameplay
to a halt as the game repeated
animations until the next area
loaded. Now, these transitions are
near flawless and Asylum experiences
very minimal loading times.
When a game gets remastered for
a newer console, I think it’s reasonable
to assume that the better
specs will see an improvement
in performance over the original
game running on older hardware.
Unfortunately, this does not appear
to be the case with Return to
Arkham. While there are definitely
improvements in some areas, ultimately
the game runs best in its
original PS3 and Xbox 360 state.
While I’m very thankful for this
rerelease (Asylum is my favourite
game of all time), I’m somewhat
confused why they’ve decided to
remaster the series if it was not
going to reach a decent performance.