What you need to know
- Meta first-party studio Camouflaj revealed the first gameplay trailer for Batman: Arkham Shadow during Gamescom 2024 Opening Night.
- It shows similar combat, enemy stalking, gadgets, and Detective Vision as the previous Arkham games.
- The trailer also shows boss battles, traversing the world using a grappling hook, and familiar faces like Harleen Quinzel and Jim Gordon.
- Batman: Arkham Shadow launches in October 2024, exclusively on Meta Quest 3.
After months of hints and a story trailer, Meta studio Camouflaj has shown off what it'll be like to step into a young Batman's boots and fight the mysterious Rat King. Turns out that a VR Batman LARP should be pretty darn fun!
During opening night at Gamescom 2024, we saw the official Batman: Arkham Shadow gameplay trailer (embedded below). In it, we see a first-person perspective on the traditional Arkham fight formula: Batman must whale on foes while dodging attacks and using gadgets to maintain his combo and earn more XP.
Since you don't have a birds-eye view anymore, Camouflaj shows a flashing arm symbol when Batman senses an attack coming from the side. And to attack foes, you'll have to match your controller attacks to the fist or arrow symbols that appear. You also see colorful flashes after hard punches, as well as tactical moves like the Batarang and grappling foes towards you.
In other words, you're no longer just tapping buttons and feeling invincible; you'll have to move skillfully to keep Batman alive.
Equally exciting, the Arkham Shadow gameplay trailer showcases the series' famous Predator mode, where you lurk above the fray and must silently take out armed enemies one by one. We see glimpses of the player grabbing and choking foes, as well as hogtying and dropping foes off of gargoyles.
In-between battles, it appears you'll be able to freely traverse the world, running and leaping over gaps or grappling to new areas. The world itself doesn't look as open as Arkham City or Knight, matching closer to Asylum in its claustrophobic environment. That probably matches more closely to the Meta Quest 3's processing power.
Despite the mobile VR headset's limitations compared to, say, a PS5 or Xbox Series X, the trailer graphics look fantastic compared to many Quest games. It explains why the game won't work on the older Quest 2, which lacks the hardware power for a game this large and immersive.
Unfortunately for non-VR fans of the franchise, Arkham Shadow — which takes place between Arkham Origins and Arkham Asylum in the series timeline — won't be available on standard consoles. The gameplay is wholly designed for motion controls and VR, so you'll need a Quest 3 headset to experience it.
This has angered some long-time fans of the franchise, especially after Rocksteady's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League turned into a live-service experience. It looks like Arkham Shadow will capture the old single-player, story-driven Arkham Asylum experience far better.
Based on our interview with Arkham Shadow's project leads back in June, the game took inspiration from popular non-fighting Quest games like Beat Saber for its rhythm mechanics and Superhot for its time dilation. The goal is for the player to experience the "flow" of fighting as Batman, leaping from one enemy to the next and never getting caught out.
According to the developers, Batham: Arkham Shadow will be "the longest game Camouflaj has ever made." The gameplay trailer shows plenty of interactive cutscenes with famous Batman characters that will likely pad the runtime, as well as finding collectibles throughout the world.
The trailer ends by commanding you to "Become the Knight" once Arkham Shadow launches in October 2024. Any long-time series fans with a Quest headset will probably obey that command, as the trailer makes the game look extremely fun.
