With a recent report from Jason Schreier that dove into the behind-the-scenes turmoil at WB Games and both the cancellation of Wonder Woman and the closure of studios including Player First Games and Monolith Software this week, players shouldn’t be expecting any blockbuster DC video games anytime soon. This stands in stark contrast to the other branches of the DC Comics tree that are bearing some pretty tasty fruit right now. The hype for James Gunn’s Superman is through the roof, and social media accounts explode over announcements of new shows from DC Studios and a first-look at the HBO Max series Lanterns which was just a single image.

On the comics front, veteran Marvel writers Matt Fraction and Dan Slott are taking on new books starring Batman and Superman respectively, and the new Absolute line, effectively DC Comics’ stab at the Ultimate brand from Marvel which reimagines its heroes, is pulling impressive sales numbers. In a recent press event, DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran mentioned having talks with the likes of NetherRealm and Rocksteady about building new DC games. Such projects are years away from being in players hands and potentially matching the output of the other divisions of DC, however.

In 2009, Warner Bros. redefined what a licensed comic book game could be with Batman: Arkham Asylum, and for awhile, WB Games was putting even Marvel to shame with a steady string of Arkham, Injustice and LEGO offerings among others. Lately, however, it’s been a different picture as Marvel’s game division has been juggling huge projects while WB and DC play catch up. Which is why it’s time to issue a report card of sorts to grade the past few years of DC video games.

This report card will measure exactly how well or poorly they’ve been utilizing one of the richest casts of heroes and villains known the world over. As we’re only early into 2025, the starting point will be 2019 and up to the end of 2024. In Jason’s piece, it mentions outgoing executive David Haddad took leadership over WB Games in 2015. By that time, Batman: Arkham Knight would’ve been about done or even out, and other projects like Injustice 2 were presumably already greenlit.

This piece will also only touch on console, PC and VR games and will exclude mobile. That’s not to dismiss the work of the talented people who work within this space, it’s just a world I have little experience with.

2019

BATMAN: THE TELLTALE SERIES/BATMAN THE ENEMY WITHIN SHADOWS EDITION

GRADE: C

The grade doesn’t reflect the quality of the software, as the combined story told in Telltale’s Batman saga is well worth exploring if you want a different take on a legend that has touched everything from games to film, animation and live-action movies. As Telltale closed a year prior in 2018, it was also comforting that Batman: The Telltale Series and its sequel The Enemy Within were still available to play. But the “Shadows Edition”, which launched for Xbox and PC users in late 2019 before coming to other machines in 2020, did little than add a black-and-white Noir filter to both seasons. It gave incentive to replay both, but it’s still the same story just with a new coat of paint. At the very least it was an inexpensive upgrade at around $5 or if you already owned a physical or digital copy.

2020

MORTAL KOMBAT 11 DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT

GRADE: F

Mortal Kombat 11 is a great fighting game. Even if you don’t want to play against other opponents either locally or online, there’s enough within it to keep you occupied for dozens of hours, including the excellent story mode and its epilogue. For DC Comics lovers though, all they got to sink their mechanical prank teeth into in the interactive space for a whole frustrating calendar year was Joker as a DLC character for Mortal Kombat 11. At least he got a cool action figure courtesy of McFarland Toys.

2021

DC SUPER HERO GIRLS: TEEN POWER

GRADE: C+

The Nintendo Switch has been on the market so long that you would be forgiven for not remembering that Nintendo published both a licensed Marvel AND DC game for it within 2 years. Developed by TOYBOX inc., DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power, inspired by the animated property, is very much intended for a younger audience. However, from the unlockable costumes to the great performances from the likes of Tara Strong, Grey DeLisle and Nicole Sullivan, even older players can find things to like about this action game if you come at it with an open mind. Dark Souls or Devil May Cry this is not, but the combat is respectable and works well with the controllable heroes like Batgirl, Wonder Woman and Supergirl. You can add an extra grade if you’re really into customizing your outfits. After years without a new DC Comics game though, this one was little more than an appetizer for a starving fanbase.

2022

DC LEAGUE OF SUPER-PETS: THE ADVENTURES OF KRYPTO AND ACE

GRADE: C-

Many, including yours truly, look back on licensed movie tie-in games with rose colored glasses when perhaps they shouldn’t be. For every Batman Begins or Spider-Man 2 after all, you had a Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer or Catwoman based off of the Halle Berry vehicle. DC League of Super Pets: The Adventures of Krypto and Ace, inspired by the film that came out in the summer it was released, is an inoffensive game for younger players, but unlike DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power, there’s not much depth for anyone above the target audience unless you’re into hunting for easy trophies/achievements. It’s not bad per se, but the unchallenging on-rails shooting that makes up the bulk of the package gets tiring quickly, especially as it takes place within the same few environments. Let it also sink in that Krypto the Superdog and Ace the Bat-Hound co-starred in their own game before Wonder Woman.

GOTHAM KNIGHTS

GRADE: B-

Gotham Knights was a game this site was perhaps too harsh on when it launched in the fall of 2022. A lot of that had to do with the pressure placed on this project to be something it simply couldn’t be, namely a baton passing of sorts of the revered Arkham series that in 2022 was effectively dormant for 6 years counting Batman: Arkham VR. You can also feel that, and I’m only speculating of course, that Gotham Knights feels like the first game that was really strong armed by executive oversight. As you hunt for multiple ingredients to craft armor and weapons that are barely better than what you have most of the time, you don’t have to be the world’s greatest detective to know that at one point live-service elements existed before they got pulled out once the tide started turning away from such things.

There’s still fun to be had though in the emotional journeys of Nightwing, Batgirl, Robin and Red Hood as they learn to step up in a Gotham City that’s suffering from the death of Batman. Unfortunately to see some of these story beats you have to effectively repeat a lot of the same content as 4 different characters and the traversal is nowhere near as snappy or enjoyable as the Arkham games. There’s a foundation worth building upon here though, and maybe with the update that WB Games Montreal wanted to do according to the Bloomberg article, whether that was a director’s cut or a Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales spin-off, could’ve ironed out those wrinkles into an interesting franchise in and of itself.

WB Games Montreal deserves to lead their own projects and not just be relegated to supporting others. Like a lot of developers working in the AAA space today, all they really need is to have a buffer between the talent and the executives who think they know better.

2023

DC’S JUSTICE LEAGUE: COSMIC CHAOS

GRADE: B-

Hailing from PHL Collective, the same folks behind DC League of Super Pets: The Adventures of Krypto and Ace, expectations for many, including the author of this piece, were low for this DC project that dropped in the early part of the year.

It’s nice to be proven wrong.

While some may not adore the art direction, DC’s Justice League: Cosmic Chaos is easily one of the best DC Comics video games developed in the past decade. It’s a bummer that you can only control Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, but when DC’s Trinity are placed in a highly enjoyable homage to things like X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance, such things are easy to overlook.

This title was developed not only by a team who clearly adore the above mentioned games, but DC Comics as a whole. Bonus costumes, that you don’t have to pay extra for it should be added, are steeped in DC history, as is the gear you equip to your trio. When you get a trophy for riding a skateboard as Superman – if you know you know – and dialogue voiced by the likes of Diedrich Bader, Nolan North and Vanessa Marshall that references iconic comic stories, you know you’re in for a good time.

If you haven’t added this to your collection yet, change that as soon as possible.

BATMAN: ARKHAM TRILOGY

GRADE: C+

The Nintendo Switch is home to ports that frankly feel like witchcraft that they exist at all. Doom (2016), Alien: Isolation and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt are all things you can play and enjoy on Nintendo’s hybrid console with only a few compromises.

Given that these came to the Switch, it really made you think why it took so long for the likes of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City to show up. In 2023, they finally did, and with Batman: Arkham Knight complete with all its downloadable content for better or worse.

If you don’t have a Steam Deck, or like the myself enjoy the simplicity of consoles, Batman: Arkham Trilogy is an easy way to enjoy 2 of the best comic book games ever created either at home or on the go. But then there’s Arkham Knight which, and credit where credit’s due, it’s amazing that conversion studio Turn Me Up Games got it running at all. But, if this is the trilogy WB Games wanted to go with for this package, it should’ve been held for the Nintendo Switch 2 or came with Batman: Arkham Origins and Blackgate Deluxe instead. Even after several patches, this is simply not the way anyone should experience Batman: Arkham Knight.

With the Switch’s successor around the corner, hopefully this will get updated once more or rereleased entirely to allow Arkham Knight to run without having so many corners cut to simply getting it working at all.

2024

SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE

GRADE: Come see me after class.

Where does one even start discussing Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. With no insider insight, it’s a textbook example of how to not make a game that’s going to turn a profit. Whether it was a mandate from on high, or Rocksteady Studios simply wanting to challenge themselves, a team that’s best known for making high-quality, single player games put on a live-service treadmill was maybe not a wise choice.

There are things to like about Kill the Justice League, in particular the moment-to-moment shooting, the way your team goes about traversing Metropolis and some of the story beats, but it’s all in service of a game that’s far behind the curve. By early 2024, there were plenty of games doing what this one did with much bigger communities with a far lower barrier of entry. There was also an overstuffed cemetery of live-service games that had been shut down that sometimes took whole studios with them. If Marvel’s Avengers, a game based on one of the biggest brands couldn’t found continued success, why was there faith put in the Suicide Squad? At least with Marvel’s take the characters acted like they did in the comics and didn’t all fire guns. Guns, it should be noted, that could be traded in and crafted for ones that were barely better than the ones you have been using for a dozen hours.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League died a slow death throughout 2024, failing to really gather any momentum out the gate and losing what little they had throughout the year. It was a cynical game birthed from a mandate than a passion to make it, and that cynicism can be felt in the mean spirited characters and story at times. The world needed hope and heroes, not Captain Boomerang with his trademark shotgun.

This was not the Arkham debut of icons like Green Lantern, Flash, Superman and Wonder Woman deserved.

MULTIVERSUS

GRADE: Incomplete.

MultiVersus launched into beta in 2022, even though it felt like a true launch to the point where people could spend money in its ecosystem. It was then taking offline for its true debut which happened in May of 2004.

Taking Warner Bros. stable of intellectual properties, including characters from DC such as Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, then placing them in a Super Smash Bros. alike on paper sounds like a license to print money. For a time, it felt that way as for a few brief months in 2022, MultiVersus had momentum and a decently high player count. This was helped, of course, by it being a free-to-start game that gave it an extremely low entry point.

Admittedly, I downloaded MultiVersus but barely played it. That’s largely because it’s hard to invest time into a game that in the back of your head you know is not long for this world. That instinct was correct as it was announced in late January that it would shut down just a year after coming back into prime time.

On the first of June, MultiVersus will not be unable to download, and those who have it on their machines will not be able to play with others online. The studio behind it, Player First Games, a studio that WB Games only bought last summer it should be added, has also been shutdown as another causality of this project.

Batman and Joker are voiced by Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill respectively in MultiVersus, making it one of the last projects where the two will play off of one another after the tragic passing of Conroy in late 2022. If WB Games has a soul, they would work on a retail version of this game to preserve Kevin’s work for generations to come.

On a side note, this game has a great art style and it’s criminal that the McDonad’s happy meal for this included puzzles, stickers and cards but no toys.

BATMAN: ARKHAM SHADOW

GRADE: A

2024 started the year with a, to put it kindly, mixed reception of a return to the revered Arkham universe but ended it with one of its best entries, well, ever. Batman: Arkham Shadow from Marvel’s Iron Man VR developer Camouflaj near effortlessly translates the formula established by 2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum to the virtual reality medium. As Batman, you stalk the shadows, fight, glide, and solve puzzles using your array of gadgets with the added bonus that you feel like you’re Batman like no other title starring the Caped Crusader before. You will feel it too, because Arkham Shadow, which relies heavily on motion control inputs, at times will give you a full body workout.

The first-person perspective immerses you in the Arkham world like never before, and Shadow weaves a tale that’s among the best in the series. Roger Craig Smith, who voiced Batman in Arkham Origins, returns here along with Tara Strong, Troy Baker and Elijah Wood in a follow-up to the Origins saga over a decade in the making.

About the only thing keeping this from a coveted A+ is that sadly not everyone can access Batman: Arkham Shadow. As an exclusive to the Meta Quest 3 family of headsets, one has to have the money to buy one – at the very least Arkham Shadow is a pack in until April – and those susceptible to motion sickness may not be able to experience it regardless of their financial status.

If you have the means, and the stomach, Batman: Arkham Shadow is not to be missed.

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