Batman: Arkham Knight - Ranking All Costumes From Worst To Best

From the Asylum to the streets of Gotham and back again.

by Ewan Paterson

Now that its full rollout of DLC has concluded, Arkham Knight contains one heck of a roster of costumes for users to play around in, and even though they may not have been the things fans demanded the most, it's hard to deny they look pretty damn spectacular.

Rocksteady pulled inspiration from 75 years of classic Batman iconography, and (almost) flawlessly recreated his most famous suits in the Arkham Knight engine. There's enough for fans of every Batman to delight in, which is rather impressive considering just how many times the character has been reinterpreted and reintroduced to audiences over the years.

Some of the fan-favourite suits from Arkham City may have not returned, but the multitude of skins offered in Knight's fairly lacklustre season pass all possess enough variety, detail and aesthetic appeal to keep players occupied between gameplay sessions. One thing that is especially fantastic to see with the evolution of the skin packs of the games is that you can see a clear engagement with the community over which suits they'd like to see most. Asylum only had one alternative outfit to speak of, but both City and Origins all had loads of colourful costumes for players to choose from.

The way they were sold however, does conform to regressive industry trends that, for better or for worse, I'd rather see abandoned as soon as possible, so it's a bit of a double-edged sword I'm afraid.

Despite the fact they don't always mesh with the environment and that certain skins do irritatingly show signs of intersecting design features, the Caped Crusader's wardrobe has never looked quite this good.

--

20. New 52

I've never really cared much for DC's pseudo-comics reboot since it commenced in the backend of 2011, but one of the things I've always appreciated were the design changes.

That being said, they haven't really translated well to Rocksteady's final Arkham title. Robin and Nightwing's New 52-inspired outfits look the part, but there's something about the World's Greatest Detective's that just feels, well...off. It's not the most visually exciting suit to emerge from Knight's hilariously gigantic selection of add-on content, but that speaks more for how poorly it's translated from page to screen, since Greg Capullo's original pencils of the suit all look visually flawless.

Maybe the suit would've worked better with a different art style, but placing it onto Bruce's normal character model just made it look tacky.

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.