20 Game Anniversaries Coming In 2026 That'll Age You Mercilessly

Batman: Arkham Asylum felt revolutionary at the time, giving us a Batman action-adventure game which was divorced from the films, true to the Dark Age comics, and managed to capture the excitement of the big guy’s gadgets and rogue’s gallery without getting all “holy rusted metal!” on us. Plus, y’know, it was a killer game to play. But, little did we know, this was just the amuse bouche for Arkham City.

City unleashes the Bat on an open world environment spanning a big ol’ chunk of Gotham City, which has become something of an open-air prison, where the worst of the worst from Batman’s universe stalk the streets, including Joker, Freeze, Penguin, Croc and others, each controlling their own portions of hell. The series truly came into its own with this game by building an all-timer of a combat system, which has you flow between enemies in fluid, combo-building gang fights, while also incorporating a melange of bat-gadgets and detective devices into this and the broader gameplay.

City is quite possibly the best Batman game ever made, with a grand – and devastating – story to match, underpinned by the voice talents of franchise regulars Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill. And, oh yeah, it’s fifteen years old. It shouldn’t be that much of a shock, given the game released to seventh gen consoles, and yet it seems like only yesterday we witnessed the Joker’s final stand.