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From your first glimpse of the shadow cast by the pointy ears on the ground, Camouflaj wants you to declare “I am Batman.” The 2016 Rocksteady game
was disappointingly short, leaving me longing for a longer-lasting experience. Following Camouflaj’s work on Arkham VR, it’s immediately clear that Arkham Shadow understands the assignment.Iron Man VRThe Facts
: A first-person VR exclusive entry in the Batman: Arkham series.Platforms
: and Quest 3S (reviewed on Quest 3)Quest 3Release Date
: October 22, 2024.Developer
: CamouflajPrice:
$49.99 – free with new Quest 3 or Quest 3S headset purchases until April 30, 2025.What follows is a compelling tale that’s thoroughly gripped me as a Batman fan, and we find Gotham City besieged by the mysterious Rat King, whose followers threaten to execute them in a “Day of Wrath.” While it’s set before Asylum, Shadow can be played without prior knowledge of the series, though long-term fans may be pleased to find a few references to Origins throughout.
Screenshot taken by UploadVR on Quest 3
than some games – Arkham Shadow using one continuous campaign works exceptionally well. The campaign is not a menu where you choose your missions. You are a permanent fixture of this world. The story is well-paced and there are few breaks. You use the laser pointer in the menus to choose conversation topics, which can be a little awkward. However, the overall character interaction is great. The small, but important detail of giving NPCs items directly is one that makes you feel more present in the world. The script is compelling and keeps the suspense high, while the voice actors deliver each character’s line well. The tense, comic-book atmosphere is enhanced by the sound of rats running away, the moody lighting and slow drips of water. Arkham Shadow’s performance is sometimes compromised in order to achieve maximum performance. Flat textures were noticeable across a few environments, and hair looks fuzzy on some characters.othersBatman stories often excel when he’s working as an investigator, and the famous Detective Mode returns in full glory. It feels natural to hold your controller near your headset, and then click the trigger. This highlights potential clues or enemies nearby, as well as interactable items. The search for evidence doesn’t seem to be difficult because the objects that are relevant will clearly stand out. This feels natural and maintains the feel of flatscreen entries. Screenshot by UploadVR taken on Quest. The explosive gel can be used by reaching up to your waist and pressing the trigger. Similarly, items like smoke bombs can be conveniently grabbed from your costume’s forearm, and gliding across environments by holding your cape on both sides feels great.
The next section contains mild story spoilers, so we’ve included that in a collapsible section below
Gameplay is split between two segments that alternate at different points in the campaign, and we’ll keep this as vague as we can. Bruce Wayne must go undercover as an inmate in Blackgate Penitentiary under a new name. You will explore the prison with no weapons. It’s an interesting contrast, which makes it feel as if you are actually in the prison. The wider prison also has some excellent environmental storytelling. Overheard conversations, TV broadcasts, newspapers, and more lean into VR’s immersive strengths well, providing a wider context of what’s happening around Gotham beyond Bruce’s immediate point of view.
Camouflaj clearly paid close attention to the source material and that’s best exemplified in combat. It’s a lot like Arkham Knight, but from the first-person point of view. And incapacitating your enemies by using an inverted attack – that is, taking them down from high and letting them hang upside-down under a viewpoint – works even better in VR. There’s a good rhythm in combat by mixing button presses which is a little flatscreen derivative with responsive motion controls.
Some moments detract from the immersion slightly, like the UI notifications popping up to say enemies will shortly attack you from a specific direction. This could have been accomplished with spatial audio cues that indicate where the attack will come from. This isn’t a big problem. When you’re pulling off satisfying finishers like breaking limbs or pushing them into your knee, this soon becomes an afterthought.
There’s enough enemy variation to keep this interesting. You can’t attack enemies holding stun batons directly. Instead, you need to push the right analog forward and then punch them. Other enemies wielding swords must be avoided by ducking, moving to the left or right and then counterpunching. Heavy armored opponents can be stunned by spinning their cape. That’s capped off by some great boss battles, which I won’t spoil here but these fights are surprising in scale and difficulty and immensely satisfying to overcome.
Batman: Arkham Shadow offers three preset comfort profiles you can select when playing for the first time. The movement is limited to stick-based artificial locomotion. Snap and smooth camera turns are also supported, with angles and speeds that can be adjusted. The vignettes are set to allow for any unintentional motions, including rotation and general movement. The combat can be quite physically demanding at times. By holding the menu button of the left touch controller, you can calibrate the player height at any moment. You can select your dominant hand. The screen shaking effect can be disabled and a 180deg rotation has an option to fade into black. When moving fast, you can disable or enable speed line effects. You can adjust the brightness of your combat widget and choose between yellow or blue. Subtitles can be added, the name of the speaker can also be included and text sizes can vary. The controller vibration can be turned off. Arkham Shadow lets you switch your input for grabbing objects between your palm facing an object and your index finger pointed at it. You can also swap the position on your inventory for items like smoke bombs.
Finally, there’s an option to use Dynamic Resolution. This option is meant to maintain framerates while maintaining optimal resolution. It automatically adjusts resolution “during GPU heavy work” and increases image quality when possible. This setting was enabled during our review, and we noticed the resolution changing in several cases. There’s more to do than the campaign itself, but it’s mostly limited to destruction of sets. There are no Riddler Trophies in Arkham Knight, but you can destroy radios that broadcast the Rat King’s speeches. Rat statues and other objects add to this, so it pays to carefully explore.
You’ve also got Challenges that award up to three stars. Combat allows you to practice over several rounds. You are rated on your fluid movements, how well you vary your attacks and whether or not they hit. Predator Timed Challenges are fun, and they focus on three goals. For example, you can slide into an opponent and knock them out on the ground. I wish that there were more challenges, but Camouflaj has confirmed it will be providing updates for free to the game in the “next few months”, with additional Challenge Maps. I can’t review what’s not in front of me but other promised post-launch updates, namely a Character Viewer and localized voice acting, are also welcome news.
Screenshot taken by UploadVR on Quest 3
It’s unfortunate then that I encountered several performance issues during my review that caused hard crashes, most of which were late-game. Camouflaj has already fixed my major issues with the v1.01 Hotfix. It should be available “in just a few more days.” The game took about 12 hours for me to complete without exhausting all the side quests. That’s roughly on par with Arkham Asylum while keeping you physically fit as the Dark Knight, and Camouflaj’s title never feels overly long or abruptly cut off.
Batman: Arkham Shadow is an impressive entry that feels like the game I’ve been waiting for since 2015. This is a true continuation of my previous statement that
was a demo for what a fully-fledged VR game can do to a large series. Camouflaj has captured the spirit of Rocksteady games so well. Detective Mode is a perfect fit for the first-person experience, and I was captivated by the story throughout. With the flatscreen games, you never stepped into the caped crusader’s shoes but with the VR game, I didn’t want to leave them.
UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our
.