arkham city | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On How “Arkham City” Uses the Language of Video Games to Make the Player Feel Like Batman…

Posted on June 1, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist earleir this week. As part of a Patreon goal, I will be playing through the video game of The Last of Us for the website, but to warm up, I decided to take up playing some video games that I remember from my own childhood: the Arkham games.

Replaying Batman: Arkham City, I was taken at how well the game uses the narrative structures unique to video games to immerse the player in the world and the psychology of the Caped Crusader, beyond what is possible in comics, film or television. The game places the player in an artifical countdown, and gives them sets of competing objectives, forcing them to decide what to prioritise and how best to respond to the immediate crisis as the situation keeps escalating around them. It’s an approach that manages to make Gotham feel like a real and living place, with the Dark Knight caught in the middle of it.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: arkham city, batman, batman: arkham city, comic books, level design, open world, rocksteady, sandbox, the escapist, video game design, video games | Leave a comment »

The Strange Case of Hugo Strange: Robin Williams in the Dark Knight Rises?

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Darren

You’d imagine that the announcement that Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway would play Bane and Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises might have put a bit of dampener of cast speculation for Nolan’s superhero blockbuster. You would have been wrong. The latest rumour coming out is that Robin Williams has been tapped to play Dr. Hugo Strange. I’d normally dismiss this the way that we dismiss all those Joseph Gordon Levitt or Johnny Depp as the Riddler rumours, but I figure it’s an interesting enough idea to merit discussion.

By the way, in case you need an introduction to Hugo Strange, here’s the trailer for the upcoming Batman video game Batman: Arkham City, in which Strange is voiced by Corey Burton “doing a Christopher Lee” and put in a very Nolan-esque setting. Give it a watch.