Naw, Arkham 1 and 2 were legit innovators for action games. They’ve just done NOTHING since then to improve the gameplay and lots of games have stolen their shyt so it’s all kinda meh right now.
You're right but Arkham Asylum was the only game that innovated actions games with that combat system (aka killed off the whole high budget hardcore action game genre), The first few Assassins Creed, Spider-Man, etc all took elements from that game with stealth and combat.
Arkham City was just that game 2.0 with a bigger map. Knight was the same thing again but with a tank as a batmobile. But yeah, they haven't done much to add or refine the gameplay like you said.
Arkham Asylum was a great metroidvania. City was an insane prison city taking the metroidvania up to a crazy level. Knight by all means probably still one of the best looking open world game worlds, but there was clear concessions with the gameplay loop.
I know its all the same thing, but I took that as Arkham borrowing more from Bioshock's recent success than trying to intentionally be a metroidvania. We saw Dead Space and other games do the same thing in that era.
And yeah, Knight still looks crazy. I hope the rumors from the Nvidia leak for RTX remasters of Arkham Knight (and Bioshock games) are true.
Cold intro.
