Get Cast In A Dream Role In ‘Batman: Arkham Shadow’ (The NoPro Review)
The new Quest 3/3s pack-in from Camouflaj & Oculus Studios delivers both the promise of VR gaming and a great Batman story


The team at Camouflaj didn’t exactly call an easy shot.
Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum set a new standard for superhero action games in 2009 and put in motion a series that has seen highs and lows, confounding both other development studios and even the originators as they’ve sought to expand on the promise of the first game, which captured all the things that make Batman a phase that millions of kids go through and many never leave.
In 2024 here comes Camouflaj, looking to take everything that works about about those games and translate that into virtual reality.
I’m here to tell you they freakin’ did it.
This comes from someone who has played all the core Arkham games, who still heads down to the comic book store every week, and who is sitting on pins & needles over next week’s episode of The Penguin. Not only did this team take on the nearly impossible task of translating a character action video game to VR and make it invigoratingly embodied, they also produced what is easily the best story in the Arkham franchise so far.

Here’s the lowdown:
Batman: Arkham Shadow is set sometime after the events of 2013’s Batman: Arkham Origins, which I played over a decade ago. This means I wound up spoiling myself on one of the big narrative beats of this game while diving through wikis trying to remember what happened in that one. In truth I didn’t need to, that was just my silly lore completist side coming out.
Like Telltale’s duology of narrative-focused games, Batman: Arkham Shadow takes some liberties with the core Batman mythos for dramatic effect. Certain relationships are given twists that add depth and raise the emotional stakes for good old Bruce Wayne, giving extra weight to when you’re hanging upside down off gargoyles, punching the living daylights out of a dozen prison guards, or dipping into the series’ trademark “detective vision” to piece together clues to unlock the next part of the unfolding mystery of just who “The Rat King” is.
Now I’ve been reading Batman comics for over three decades, and we’ve never heard of a “Rat King” before. We have a Ratcatcher, and Otis Flanagan is here playing a critical role. So too are pre-criminal turns from Dr. Harleen Quinzel (Harley Quinn), Dr. Jonathan Crane (Scarecrow) and Harvey Dent (Two-Face). Indeed, in classic Arkham series fashion, a good chunk of Batman’s Rogues Gallery and allies make their presence known over the course of the story. From a comic’s perspective, these games have always felt like getting to play through the classic Hush storyline that trotted out all the big guns for splashy effect. But this isn’t a case of Marvel cameoitis. Every one of these characters is here with a purpose, and sometimes that purpose is to get your plot sense zigging when it should be zagging.
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Now it would be enough for Arkham Shadow to do the hard work of making the free flow combat of the series work in VR, and it does. In fact it makes it visceral. Thrilling in a way that raises the heart rate and puts you in danger of smashing your hand against the wall if you get a bit too into it. (I might have landed a haymaker on my bookshelf once.)

It would be more than enough for Camouflaj to get the series’ trademark “predator” system to work. That’s the bit where you sneak around in vents and swing around on gargoyles to stalk criminals and guards who have shoot-to-kill orders on the Bat. (You think Bruce Wayne funds Gotham’s Gargoyle Restoration fund?) It would be icing on the cake for detective mode, the simplest of the series’ core mechanics to translate, to just work.
Yet that wasn’t enough for this team.
They had to go and push the drama in the story. They had to bring their own signature perspective. Narrative cut scenes happen from a dreamlike top down perspective that call to mind Camouflaj’s first game, République, which locked its POV to strategically placed surveillance cameras, keeping the player “above it all.” Most of all they had to think through how to get the player to embody the Batman beyond fighting, snooping, and sneaking.
All of the work on that vector pays off with a final act that had me doing that rarest of things: actually feeling something in a video game. More than just having the best story of any of the Arkham games, Camouflaj has a damn good Batman story on its hands here. A damn good story period that has a point of view on the emotions that drive Bruce Wayne and how that ripples out into the world as a whole. It’s that rare Batman story that really is about who Batman is and what that means. Someone who knows the lore and its many variations can see certain beats coming down the line, but how they are played out are effective and thoughtful. Other beats are full-on surprises, at least if you stay off the wikis. (STAY OFF THE WIKIS! I WISH I HAD!)
What makes it work so well is how the team meshes the mechanics of the game into dramatic story beats. They teach you not only how to play the game but how to play the ROLE of Batman. To say more would spoil certain moments, but this kind of thinking is there right from the very first time you have to cross a seemingly impossible chasm.
This doesn’t mean the game is flawless — don’t get me started on the Batclaw — but the pros outweigh the cons at a level we don’t get to see that often these days, sadly.
If the first promise of VR is letting people play make-believe at the highest level then we’ve certainly arrived at that moment with Batman: Arkham Shadow. What’s interesting to me is that with this game Camouflaj points to a deeper promise in VR, the one that is wrapped up in the craft of acting. What happens when you embody a role? How much do you bring to it and how much does it bring to you?
It’s one thing to see a performance and another to give one, and make no doubt. While you might be the only audience here, you’re giving a performance. For a lot of folks, it’s a dream role.
Batman: Arkham Shadow is developed by Camouflaj and Oculus Studios in partnership with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC. It is available now for the Quest Platform (3/3s) for $49.99 and is currently free for those who buy a Quest 3 or 3S between now and April 30, 2025.
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