Video: Digital Foundry’s Technical Analysis of Batman: Arkham Trilogy

After a Direct announcement earlier this year, Batman: Arkham Trilogy is finally available on Switch. We are still hard at work on our review of the collection (keep your eyes peeled for that one), but in the meantime, the experts over at Digital Foundry have shared their technical analysis of the game for us to check out.

So, how does it hold up under the microscope? In short, not great.

Let’s kick things off with the most demanding title of the three, Arkham Knight, which Digital Foundry calls “an absolute disaster on Switch.” The game regularly sits at sub-30fps, with 20-25fps common when gliding above the city. Expectedly, this drops when driving the Batmobile, though it is sometimes capable of hitting 30fps in indoor sequences. Unfortunately, the game is also subject to 0fps freezes and occasional crashes. Yikes.

As for resolution, Arkham Knight runs at 810p in docked mode and 540p in handheld. Not ideal, though DF does note that the game fares “ever so slightly better as a portable experience”.

But what about Arkham Asylum and City? Those have to be better off, right? Well… kinda. Digital Foundry’s analysis finds that both titles mostly match the 2016 rerelease in terms of visual features, though there remain some issues with texture rendering. Asylum regularly drops frames and often sits in the mid-20fps, while City is capable of more consistently running at 30fps.

Both Asylum and City run at 1080p docked and 720p handheld — so there’s your light at the end of the tunnel, eh?

All in all, it seems to be a rather shoddy package from a technical point of view, with Digital Foundry’s Oliver Mackenzie calling it, “the worst performing game I have reviewed to date at Digital Foundry”. You can check out the outlet’s full video analysis at the top of this article.

Our review of Batman: Arkham Trilogy is still in process. While you wait to hear our thoughts, you can check out some more Asylum gameplay below.