Saturn the Wolf

It's the Fourth of July, following the chaotic Christmas and New Years we saw in Arkham Origins. A new band of thugs, the Rats, has shown up in Gotham, along with their leader, the Rat King. Batman, working with Gordon and the new District Attorney, Harvey Dent, to uncover who this mysterious new figure is and stop this supposed "Day of Wrath"

With leads that only lead to dead ends, his investigation leads him into Blackgate Prison - where he dons the persona of Irvin Malone, earning the nickname of Matches. He now has to contend with the security force of TYGER, lead by Lyle Bolton, the inmates following Carmine Falcone, and the Rats

There's a sort of duality to Arkham Shadow, fittingly - you spend one half of the game as Matches, and the other, the more traditional Arkham game where you play as Batman. You'll encounter a lot of figures as both, including Dr. Jonathan Crane and Dr. Harleen Quinzel, who have very different ideas of effective therapy

One particular inmate goes missing, something that Malone ends up being on the hook for - landing him on the stand on a pre-trial hearing. Matches, suffering some injuries from some brutality, is having a competency hearing; Crane attempts to administer a sedative. Unfortunately, Harvey is standing too close as Malone knocks it away, covering half of his body in acid, severely burning him

Narrowly escaping the gas chamber for his crimes, Malone makes his way to a makeshift Batcave underneath the prison, where he follows a series of caves to old docks harboring an old World War II vessel, tracking down the Rat King, who we learn is Harvey Dent, having been slowly corrupted, his recent attack finalizing his transformation

A final confrontation on top of the GCPD leaves Harvey hospitalized, fully becoming Two-Face, but his memory of the events over the game has been slowly eroded

That's the briefest cliffnotes version. There are a lot of other things to pick up on and notice, notably, a significant cameo of one of Batman's other allies and their relationship beginning, but overall, while the story is enjoyable and it's nice to see more of the beginnings of things that would be significant later down the timeline, part of me can't help but feel like the story is a bit rushed and sloppy

The ending and the reveal of the Rat King, in particular, feels a bit haphazard. The mystery leading up to it is incredibly interesting, there's a long list of candidates it could be, but when we learn who it is, it ends up raising far more questions than answers

I say this as someone who has, full disclosure, only completed the main story and not collected all the interview tapes or finished the side missions. But I still felt that, while the story was satisfying, I wish there was a bit more leading up to it

The gameplay is essentially another duality. You spend one half of the game playing detective inside Black Gate as Matches, and the other a more traditional Batman Arkham game as...well, Batman

It feels like it tries to channel a lot more of Arkham Asylum - while you do spend the first half hour or so in the larger Gotham area, the path you're allowed to take is very linear and the rest of the game is spent inside of Black Gate. This gives the game a larger sense of focus, but also makes it feel lesser in some regards

Instead of the previous Riddler trophies, we have instead Rat King propaganda and Rat King statues, all of which you can pick up and smash, and as you'd expect, absolutely everything is done with the motion controllers

For the first few hours, this is really cool - being Batman, being the one beating the snot out of TYGER guards and Blackgate inmates is such a cool feeling. But a lot like the Wii before it, I get tired really, really quickly - this is made even worse with the motion sickness problem I mentioned earlier

Skill issue? Perhaps, but it also leads into the larger, more all-encompassing issue that overshadowed the whole game:

As cool as the game was...I still would've vastly preferred a more traditional, third person Arkham game on PC/Console. Something more like just Asylum again