20 Remakes and Remasters That Are Worse Than The Original

Few titles have done more for superhero video gaming than Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham series. Grabbing the look and feel of the Dark Age of comic books with both hands, Arkham went hard from the get, starting out for the Arkham Asylum game with a largely free-roaming space featuring some more restrictive levels on Arkham Island, before moving into a fully open world environment for its sequel, Arkham City.

The combination of exhilarating stealth, seamless combat, an expansive rogue’s gallery of villains and actual detective work set the standard for games of this type, while cleverly ignoring whatever was on the big screen at the time – a move replicated by games like Marvel’s Spider-Man in the years since. The only downside? Both games are seventh-gen console releases.

Return to Arkham promised to remedy this issue by releasing the games in a remastered set with next-gen compatibility and new graphics, following the release of trilogy closer Arkham Knight. But developer Virtuos failed to deliver. The frame rate is capped at just 30 fps; the graphics aren’t any great improvement, with inconsistent textures and oversaturated colours; and there is a pervasive unfinished quality, particularly in City, that makes the whole endeavour meaningless if you have the original releases.