Hat-trick for the caped crusader

Video games and comic-book superheroes ought to be an irresistible combination, like chocolate and peanut butter, pancakes and maple syrup, anger and Dr Bruce Banner. Instead, comics and games have got along about as well as Superman and Kryptonite.

The greatest exceptions to this rule are Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, two recent games developed by a London studio known as Rocksteady and published by Warner Bros. In Batman lore, Arkham is a psychiatric hospital for supervillains like the Joker that is named in honour of a fictional city in the work of HP Lovecraft. These games made players feel as if they had become the Batman of Christopher Nolan's movies and Frank Miller's comics _ a grim, relentless mash-up of Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and Jack Bauer.

Batman: Arkham Origins, the third and newest instalment, repeats this trick in a Gotham that's bigger than ever. The Dark Knight glides from rooftop to rooftop, using his Batclaw to grapple and fling himself higher and farther. He drops into alleys to brawl with criminals in fights that are rhythmic and brutal, with the snap of bone or the scattering of teeth. He lurks atop gargoyles, descending to sneak behind his enemies for sleeper holds. He wields an array of wonderful toys _ Batarangs, explosive gel, smoke pellets, electric gloves, glue grenades _ and the game grades players on how varied and how well they are deployed, a nudge to discourage the overuse of the duller, more direct Batfist.

Is it ungenerous to respond to this largess by asking, is that all there is?

You would think that a game called Arkham Origins would be interested in the psychology of its main character, but Batman here is all muscle, no meaning. The game is a prequel to Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, but the story looks at how Batman first encountered some of his notable allies and nemeses, not how he invented himself. There is a head-fake premise about a $50 million ransom on Batman's head on Christmas Eve that ends up as a ruse to justify the reintroduction of the Joker and the (okay, evocative) playing of Greensleeves and Carol Of The Bells while Batman dukes it out with his foes.

But Arkham Origins never makes us understand why the trust-fund orphan Bruce Wayne became Batman, how this seemed like a reasonable decision. Sure, the game explains what happened, in ritual genuflections at the altar of his parents' murder on the city streets. But we never feel his motivation, viscerally, thrillingly, the way we feel the flight of the Bat in the night.

Arkham Origins, which was developed by Warner Brothers Games Montreal, is, at minimum, a continuation and in some ways a refinement of the work done by Rocksteady in Arkham City.

Among the improvements, there is now a somewhat coherent explanation for why Batman is tediously tracking down a bunch of stuff locked away behind puzzles devised by the Riddler. Mark Hamill is no longer the Joker, a role he had played since 1992 in Batman: The Animated Series and continued through the first two Arkham games, but Troy Baker's performance is an effective channelling of Hamill's beloved interpretation without descending into mimicry.

After two Arkham games that leapt in a single bound over player expectations for the superhero video game, however, the ability of Arkham Origins to run in place feels, perhaps unfairly, like a step backwards.

In part that's because there is a rich vein of superhero material that these games have yet to mine. Comic books and video games are cousins not merely because they have similar histories as presumed juvenilia and as targets in cultural panics (Fredric Wertham's Seduction Of The Innocent might as well have been written as a rebuke of games instead of comics), nor just because they both live ``midway between icon and story'', to borrow a phrase from Leslie Fiedler's essay in defence of superhero comics, The Middle Against Both Ends.

What's more important, or at least more interesting, is that video games and superhero stories are each examinations of identity, of how we construct ourselves and how we present ourselves to the world. Every player who picks up a controller is, in some way, a caped crusader adopting an alter ego, exploring what it would mean to live a different life. Batman is Bruce Wayne's avatar.

Given this inherent affinity between player and protagonist _ we are pretending to be a man who is pretending to be another man _ it's sad that the Arkham games have so little interest in Gotham's billionaire bachelor. The Bat has been pulled out of the hat three times now. I'm starting to wonder why I'm spending so much time outdoors after midnight.

Nolan turned the Batman mythology into a Sept 11 fable, but a video game that tried to put players into Bruce Wayne's psyche might do better to follow the lead of Tim Burton's films, which emphasised how much of a weirdo our hero is. He's not a space alien, like Superman, or the victim of a nuclear accident, like so many Marvel heroes. He chose this. Here's a guy who could have bankrolled his own run for political office to clean up Gotham. Imagine if New York mayor Michael Bloomberg were to devote his post-mayoral career to cosplay.

Batman: Arkham Origins, developed for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii U and PC, is rated T (Teen) for profanity, murder investigations and prolonged fistfights. 2013

New York Times News Service

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