Take Revengeance on the Night in the Remastered Batman: Return to Arkham

It's been seven years since Rocksteady Studios' Batman: Arkham Asylum burst onto the scene rewriting the book on what everyone thought was possible with a super hero video game. In fact, if it wasn't for the 2011 sequel Batman: Arkham City, Arkham Asylum might be regarded as the greatest comic book video game ever made. Though the series has been tremendously successful in all its Rocksteady incarnations, a number of potential players who didn't own the previous generation of consoles may have missed out on all the fun. This July, Warner Bros. Interactive aims to rectify that by re-releasing the first two games in the Batman: Arkham series in a remastered package --- Batman: Return to Arkham.

For my money, Arkham City is still the best game in the franchise, despite all the largess of Batman: Arkham Knight. Yeah, it had the Batmobile and looked amazing, but it didn't have nearly as memorable boss fights. Plus this upcoming reworking of the original two games is getting a shiny new coat of paint from Unreal Engine 4. While they might not look quite as unbelievable as Arkham Knight, UE4's graphical prowess will certainly make them look miles better beyond their original incarnations. That's not necessarily an easy feat given how well each of these entries looked at the time of the original release.

Both games will include all the add-ons and DLC originally offered, meaning you'll be getting complete versions of both games. Arkham Asylum didn't have quite as much additional content as Arkham City, but every last little bit of bonus stuff will certainly make fans happy. There's no reason to exclude it now so many years later anyway.

The remastering will be handled not by Rocksteady, but Virtuous, who has dabbled with Warner Interactive mobile properties like Injustice: Gods Among Us, and previously ported the high definition versions of Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2 from the PlayStation 2 to the PlayStation 3.

Batman: Return to Arkham will be available July 26 on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.