Batman: Arkham VR (PS4)

Throughout his comic book career, Batman has often been called the world’s greatest detective, and as a result many games that adapt the superhero’s adventures try to throw in some investigation segments to reflect that. Even in the highly regarded Batman: Arkham series you’ll find detective work cropping up, but they are still heavily defined by their free-flowing battle system that unfortunately couldn’t cleanly be transferred into Batman: Arkham VR. Because of the limitations of the PlayStation VR peripheral, that detective side gets to take center stage as the costumed vigilante investigates a murder close to home.

In Batman: Arkham VR, the story kicks off with the discovery that one of Batman’s dearest allies has been murdered. What’s worse, his sidekick Robin is also unaccounted for, Batman’s investigation of the death of a close friend also possibly the only way to ensure another ally doesn’t mean a similar fate. Quickly presenting a pretty compelling mystery, it’s much easier to get engrossed in trying to uncover the details of what happened, the absence of true combat not stinging as much as you’re pushing towards a truth that seems to hold some great weight. You do get to encounter a few familiar characters and villains along the way as you play as the caped crusader in first person, such as a moment where you’ll need to protect yourself and Robin from Killer Croc, but you’ll still find yourself engaging with these characters through things like gadgets and puzzle solving rather than trying to attack them directly.

Batman: Arkham VR is unfortunately a rather short story, possible to complete in an hour if you remain focused on forward advancement. Batman’s investigation does take him to quite a few locations and the slow reveals do work well in making you doubt some preconceptions, especially if you have previous knowledge from the broader Batman: Arkham series to pull from or made sure to read some dossiers at the Batcave before starting the plot in earnest. Perhaps most impressively though, while the big reveal at the climax of the plot can be quite a swerve, it also recontextualizes a great amount of actions before then that likely seemed suspicious but couldn’t quite lock into place without the knowledge you finally get when the mystery is solved. There are a lot of nifty details that will dawn on you as you reflect back on the short story’s events and other minor details, but despite putting together a tight tale, when the story does come to an end, it can still feel a bit like a premature conclusion. There’s no time to reflect on the consequences of the truth or resolve the issues it brings up, and instead the game feels a bit like it’s functioning almost as a teaser for Batman: Arkham Knight which was still in development at the time.

The actions you take on your way to a perhaps all-too-quick end do have some appeal at least. Batman has a few gadgets on hand you can use in the small areas you’ll be investigating, the scanner the most important as it allows for the evaluation of clues and actions related to your detective work. Sometimes it is just as simple as scanning some objects until you find the right evidence, but other times it can allow for more complicated actions where it reconstructs a fight scene and you need to identify the points of injury in a victim to help create a profile of the killer. You are given a grappling hook as well, although it’s main purpose is to travel between spots and rarely grab items from afar, but the batarang is a surprisingly effective addition despite having perhaps even fewer moments where its usage is necessary. All gadgets are grabbed from your belt using the PlayStation Move controllers, and there are batarang targeting challenges that really show how this choice can influence how you use the weapon. Quickly grabbing and throwing the weaponized boomerangs to clear as many targets as you can under a timer is a surprisingly physical task as you need to keep grabbing new batarangs and hurling them with some degree of accuracy, even the mild homing they have naturally not always going to pick the target you’re aiming for if you get too sloppy. A few more chances to go all out with batarang throwing would give this game some more entertaining moments of quick action, but the simple gadget use and occasional puzzles to solve still keep you involved so it doesn’t just feel like busywork for sake of continuing a plot.

When the credits do start though, it is tempting to ask “is that it?” at first, but luckily, there is one element that gives the game life beyond the story it is telling. The Riddler appears after the credits roll, informing you he has hidden multiple secrets around all the areas you’ve been before and challenging you to find them. The Riddler does initially sound just like a way to technically claim the game has more content than a quick story, but these challenges are actually interesting gameplay tasks that can play into the VR nature of the game fairly well. Sometimes you’ll need to line objects up perfectly to reveal a question mark, other times The Riddler leaves an actual riddle for you to solve by finding the right object, and special cubes are nestled into spots that require some deep searching to uncover. There are already a fair few secrets in the game to find if you stop to appreciate an environment, but The Riddler’s contributions breathe some extra life into the experience so you don’t feel like you only bought a short story. It certainly helps that after you’ve seen the credits you can freely select old areas to revisit so you can do them in the order you prefer, and while it may be tempting to say The Riddler’s challenges should have been there from the start to find along the way, they would have certainly detracted from the serious nature of the mystery and lead to you puttering around looking for extras instead of progressing the plot at an effective pace.

THE VERDICT: While the actual investigation involved in Batman: Arkham VR’s mystery plot may sometimes be a touch simple, the tale being told still hooks the player with strong intrigue and weaves its short narrative surprisingly well. It can still feel like it comes to a sudden end despite that, but the physicality of things like the batarang target challenges and especially the Riddler’s many post-game contributions bump up the amount of substance in the game so it doesn’t feel like just a teaser for a future title. It definitely could have used more involved detective work so it more often felt like you personally unraveled the truth, but it’s a still alright for a quick ride in the famous brooding superhero’s cowl.

And so, I give Batman: Arkham VR for PlayStation 4…

An OKAY rating. The Riddler is quite a saving throw for a game that might have otherwise been left to lean on its compelling core mystery alone. As fun as it is to throw batarangs there aren’t enough moments to test that feature and even the niftier investigative moments can go by quickly or be somewhat simple in how you interact with them, but it wasn’t necessarily wrong to let the story take center stage since it is the most enticing element of this VR experience. It seems to take a pretty bold direction right from the start as you realize who the murder victim is and the revelations point in directions that seem hard to believe but eventually make perfect sense as you run a mental inventory on most every element since the game began. Lacking a denouement leads to the feeling of abruptness, the strength of the reveal perhaps meant to substitute for any follow-through. It is The Riddler’s sudden appearance outside of the story’s events that helps ease the knee jerk reaction to realizing you’ve hit the finale, his challenges really helping the VR elements of the game shine. There are some fine moments of utilizing your gadgets or manipulating objects on the way through the story, but a lot more life comes from actually needing to search environments and consider where clues or hidden boxes could be. It could have been nice for these elements to more often arise in the story, less cleverness required in the actual detective work, but because that short plot doesn’t really drag things out, it also makes jumping into optional content and engaging with the extras easier to justify. It certainly would be nice to have a more full-bodied initial adventure no doubt, but at least the Riddler doesn’t do all the heavy lifting to justify paying some attention to this VR game.

The price might certainly make the quick tale told sting a bit, but find it for 5 bucks and go in knowing it won’t be a long experience and it’s much easier to meet it on its level. That’s not to say it shouldn’t have tried to be more substantial and there were many simple ways it could have been just by upping the complexity or providing some additional target ranges, but a well-built mystery and some more involved detective work to solve the Riddler’s riddles does mean Batman: Arkham VR can be a decent addition to a PSVR game collection. Just don’t go into it expecting it to be on par with the other Arkham games that it had little chance of matching thanks to its choice to utilize virtual reality.