December is here, and that means some of you might be going for video games that are “on your wishlist” or possibly thinking about getting games that you weren’t sure about before but want to take a chance on since there are no big releases across the main systems for this month. There was one release that kicked off December, though, and that’s the Batman Arkham Trilogy for Nintendo Switch. The port of the beloved Rocksteady games had gamers curious, if nothing else, when it was announced. But when you see the comparisons to other systems, it seems the Switch port has once again come up short.
Now, to be clear, the Batman Arkham Trilogy is apparently not a BAD port for the Nintendo Switch, and two of the games apparently run fine on it. But a couple of people have made comparisons for the final game, Batman Arkham Knight, between the Switch version and things like the PS5 version of the trilogy, and as you might have guessed, the gap in quality between them is rather large. Yes, the PS5 version is a more powerful graphical system, but some of the “compromises” that were made for the third title seem a bit too much:
Don’t forget that the trilogy’s final part came out in 2015, and the Switch came out in 2017, with the Switch port of the trilogy arriving in 2023. That’s plenty of time for people to figure out how to put this trilogy on the console safely and functionally. Instead, there were severe drops in visual quality for that third game, and the framerate woes showed themselves many times during the title, including during the infamous Batmobile sections.
Some fans might think this is a “blessing in disguise,” as the first two games in the trilogy were FAR more competent than the final entry, and that’s true. However, that doesn’t excuse the fact that this is a subpar port that didn’t need to be this way. There were titles that came after the trilogy was complete that got a Switch port, and it looked and ran far better than this.
The curiosity that we’re wondering about is how Nintendo will take the case of these numerous “bad ports” and apply it to their new console. We know the Nintendo Switch successor is likely coming late next year, but what it will be like is anyone’s guess. Will Nintendo go for a more powerful graphics system so that issues like this don’t happen again? We’ll have to wait and see.
