Batman: Return to Arkham graphics comparison

Remasters are big business, and developers are very kindly starting to take some of the work out of covering them for us. Once upon a time, we press folk had to splice together videos of the original and new versions for your visual comparative needs – like this one we did for the Uncharted remastered collection – but those kind folks in the press teams of the developers/publishers are starting to do it for us.

You know, out of the kindness of their hearts. Not because they’re trying to shift more units or anything.

First, came the BioShock: The Collection graphics comparison, which is very pretty and has us rather excited for returning to Rapture and Columbia. Incidentally, 2K have been going a bit nuts on the video front, and there’s a lot of material around the Imagining BioShock documentary on their YouTube channel, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Now the good folks over at Warner Bros. Games have put together a Batman: Return to Arkham graphics comparison video, and it’s very dark and rainy. It’s still pretty, admittedly – Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are both being remastered in Unreal Engine 4 by Virtuos – and is comparable in tone, heavy use of water effects, and abject darkness to the first two BioShock games from that remaster. The difference is that the Batman: Return to Arkham collection doesn’t receive the visual lift that BioShock Infinite’s change in setting brings to Ken Levine’s works, because Arkham Knight is already released on current generation hardware and is therefore excluded from the remaster (and also still a bit broken for PC).

But if you like your dark and moody games to have higher resolution textures and more realistic rain, then the Batman: Return to Arkham graphics comparison must be whetting your appetite.

Batman: Return to Arkham launches on October 21, 2016, and includes the first two Arkham games – Arkham Asylum and Arkham City – plus all the DLC for both games. Pre-order it now from Amazon.