Recently I had the pleasure of watching the much scorned Batman & Robin with the directors commentary on, and it turned out to be awesome. The director Joel Schumacher is apologizing the entire length of the movie and actually does a fair bit of nitpicking. Also it’s so odd to see George Clooney give such a wooden performance. while I watching it made me ask “whats the best version of batman”? The Christopher Nolan movies are great and have a cohesive story but more focus on Bruce Wayne than on Batman (especially the third), the cartoons are excellent, but there’s one better choice (and coincidentally it has a lot to do with the animated series and the comics).
First off the story of Arkham city is penned by Paul Dini the man who wrote the Batman and Superman animated series in the early ninety’s. These were also the most successful adaptations of comic books at the time (remember this was pre-marvel films). From this animated series we also saw the rise as Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as batman and joker. They would go on to voice these character’s for the next 20 years threw multiple iterations including…. Arkham city (is there any better voice for batman?). So that’s three things that Arkham city stole from the animated series (or four if you include Arleen Sorkin voicing Harley Quinn also) .
Next they took the art from the comics. The Gotham city look and feel can be attributed to Jim Lee, Frank Miller, and Alan Moore. They took the art design of batman, joker, the Gothic architecture, and characters and crafted them into the game. Arkham city looks amazing because of all of this.
The story actually is a really great three way between Batman, Joker and Hugo Strange ( minor spoilers ahead). It involves Bruce Wayne getting thrown into getting thrown into Arkham city by Dr. Strange, who knows he’s batman. Obviously he escapes and is able to get his bat suit. Later on in the story joker also shows backup from the last game and poison’s batman and all of Gotham. Not to give away the ending but theirs a lot of drama between the public finding out who Batman is, how to save Gotham from the virus, stop the joker, and a lot more. Also let me iterate this; Paul Dini wrote the story, so the adding of doctor strange into this world as a villain feels so natural to the established batman lore.
Now if you know Arkham city you probably know its actually a sequel to Arkham asylum. Yes a lot of what I’ve said can apply to asylum as well, but Arkham city is bigger and has life to it. It really feels more like your batman flying around Gotham saving it’s citizens from lurkers and evil doers. You meet all the established villains, (Joker, Two-face, Penguin, Cat woman , Riddler, Harley Quinn, and more) who all reflect a piece of your emotions . By the end you feel like your the worlds greatest crime fighter, cage fighter and detective.
Words As My Weapon 
