Batman has become the most sought after hero to adapt, and writers will fight over Batman projects like dogs growling at each other over a pork chop. And that’s no different when it comes to video games. In the 2010s alone, there has been Lego Batman, the Arkham series, and The Telltale Series, three completely different adaptations.
Over the past 30 years, there has been almost 30 games based on the world’s greatest detective, and though many of them are faithful to the source material, other games quite often forget the hero’s roots. There are so many video games that take more liberties than they should, and while sometimes it pays off, other times it makes players wonder what on Earth happened.
10 Like The Comics: Batman: Vengeance
This game was a love letter to Batman: The Animated Series more than anything, as it featured the same art direction and most of the original voice actors including Mark Hamill as The Joker, but because The Animated Series was enormously faithfully the comics, so was Vengeance by extension. The game might not have been great, but it had some of the most loving takes on Batman’s villains to have featured in a video game up to that point.
9 Nothing Like The Comics: Batman Beyond: Return Of The Joker
Though the animated movie Batman Beyond: Return Of The Joker, was a mind-blowing entry in to the world of animated Batman and a fan favorite, the video game tie-in was instantly dated as soon as it hit shelves. The game is a side-scroller, which was a very dated style of game in the year 2000.
And on top of that, the game takes a lot of liberties with what Batman is, as it’s based in the future, has a much younger version of Batman, and many of the NPCs are mutated humans/animals.
8 Like The Comics: LEGO Batman
Though this was long before Will Arnett was voicing the titular character on the big screen, LEGO Batman features a strange mix of every interpretation of Batman since the sixties. It is an amalgam of the 1960s Batman television show and the embarrassingly immature Joel Schumacher movies, both of which are completely unlike anything scene in the comics. Though those Batman interpretations don’t necessarily hold up, they fit perfectly for the tone of the game.
However, the game does pit Batman and the boy Wonder against many of the villains in his Rogues Gallery, and for the most part, the result is surprisingly faithful to the source material. The are several gadgets and loads of different costumes the Bat changes in to that can only be found in the comics too.
7 Nothing Like The C0mics: Batman Returns
If there’s one thing Tim Burton’s Batman is known for, it’s rewriting Batman’s lore and being completely unlike the comics. Burton’s sequel was even more of a smack in the face to the source material, as Catwoman is brought back to life by a group of magical alley cats.
Needless to say that the video game adaptation in not remotely like Batman as seen in the comic books. Though it doesn’t do as much of a disservice to comic fans as the movie does, that’s difficult to do when the games is just a side-scrolling beat ‘em up.
6 Like The Comics: Batman: Arkham Asylum
The first entry in to the Arkham series, Batman: Arkham Asylum did for games what Batman Begins did for movies, by re-inventing the hero for the medium after a barrage of failures. The game is amazing and developers still borrow from the game to this day.
Not only are the Arkham games highly influenced by the comics and take great care in adapting them, going over them with a fine tooth comb, but the series have even spawned a few different comic book runs itself. They have greatly contributed to building a lot of the Batman lore that began in the games.
5 Nothing Like The Comics: Batman: Gotham City Racer
Batman: Gotham City Racer might be not only unlike anything in the comic books, but it’s so outlandish that not even Joel Schumacher would put it in a Batman movie. The idea that Batman would street race around Gotham, which is a crime he would generally put a stop to by beating the boy racers to a bloody pulp, is absolutely unnecessary and doesn’t make any sense. The unlockable Batmobile upon completion of Midnight Club II is where racing in the iconic car should begin and end.
4 Like The Comics: Batman: Arkham City
Most of the games in The Arkham series massively resemble Batman comics, and that’s largely in part because of the way the game is serialized and the narrative continues through each game, but Arkham City is the greatest example of the series’ relation to the comic books. Not only is Arkham City ranked as the greatest Batman game ever made, but the heroes and villains in the game are fully realised as their comic book counterparts.
3 Nothing Like The Comics: Batman:Â Arkham Knight
It doesn’t mean it isn’t a good game, and Arkham Knight does continue interesting narratives laid out in it’s predecessor, but the game takes some leaps and bounds that showed the series might be starting to get too big for it’s boots.
First of all, the game introduced a brand new villain that is completely unrelated to the comics, and then it introduced the Batmobile in to the series. The Batmobile might be fun to drive, but the thing is basically a tank with tons of machine guns attached to each side of it, which goes against one of Batman’s very few rules; no killing.
2 Like The Comics: Batman: The Telltale Series
In a long history of games all of which have tried to make players feel like Batman, a massive, brooding, intimidating vigilante that has an entire city too frightened to commit crimes except for a few theatrical lunatics, Batman: The Telltale Series makes players feel like Bruce Wayne.
There is very little time spent on combat and there aren’t any huge combo patterns, but The Telltale Series focuses on the characters, the conversations Bruce Wayne has, and detective work. Batman as a detective has always been a major focus in the comics but has barely ever been used in games, or even the movies, and that’s why it’s one of the best Batman games of all time.
1 Nothing Like The Comics: Batman Begins
Though Batman Begins is arguably the best Batman movie there has ever been, as the film relishes in the slums of Gotham and gives Batman an origins story that is wholly unique, that is exactly why the video game tie-in is unlike anything in the comics.
Batman Begins is more of a Christopher Nolan movie than a Batman movie, and it says enough that Nolan doesn’t like the villains having comic book sounding names (in The Dark Knight Rises, Catwoman isn’t referred to by her villain name once.) In Batman Begins the video game, most of the playthrough sees players sneaking around in vents and feels more like a Splinter Cell game than a Batman game.