The best Batman video games are led by Rocksteady’s Arkham trilogy, with Batman: Arkham City topping most rankings after a 96 Metacritic score on PS3. The full list below spans all four Arkham entries, the LEGO Batman series, Telltale’s choice-driven adventure, the non-Arkham Gotham Knights, and the now-discontinued live-service Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Last updated: September 3, 2026. Metacritic scores and live-service status can change, so this ranking is revisited periodically.
How This Ranking Works
This list covers every mainline Batman video game with a real critical record, not just the three everyone remembers. Ranking is based on Metacritic critic scores (verified directly on Metacritic’s live pages for each platform, not a search summary), sales and cultural impact where documented, and how well each game’s core systems have held up. Mobile-only and VR-only spinoffs like Batman: Arkham Underworld and Batman: Arkham VR are left out of the main ranking since neither has a comparable critical record to weigh against the console and PC releases below; both are mentioned briefly at the end instead.
One distinction matters before the list starts: not every Batman game here is an Arkham game. Rocksteady’s four numbered entries — Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Arkham Origins, and Arkham Knight — make up the Arkham series proper. Gotham Knights (2022) is frequently mistaken for an Arkham game because it’s also made by a WB Games studio and set in Gotham, but WB Games Montréal built it as a separate continuity on purpose. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024) is closer to Arkham in lineage — Rocksteady built it as a narrative follow-up set in the same fictional universe — but it was never branded or sold as an Arkham title, and its design (a four-player, loot-driven shooter) has almost nothing in common with the single-player Arkham games.
Every Batman Video Game Compared
The table below lists the highest Metacritic score each game reached on any platform at launch, verified directly on Metacritic’s pages for each title in September 2026, including the lowest-scoring end of the list on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s Metacritic page.
| Rank | Game | Year | Developer | Metacritic | Original Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Batman: Arkham City | 2011 | Rocksteady Studios | 96 (PS3) | PS3, Xbox 360, PC |
| 2 | Batman: Arkham Asylum | 2009 | Rocksteady Studios | 92 (Xbox 360) | PS3, Xbox 360, PC |
| 3 | Batman: Arkham Knight | 2015 | Rocksteady Studios | 87 (PS4) | PS4, Xbox One, PC |
| 4 | LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes | 2012 | TT Games | 81 (PS3/PC) | PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, 3DS, DS, PC |
| 5 | Batman: Arkham Origins | 2013 | WB Games Montréal | 76 (PS3) | PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii U |
| 6 | Batman: The Telltale Series | 2016 | Telltale Games | 72 (Switch) | PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS3, Xbox 360, mobile |
| 7 | Gotham Knights | 2022 | WB Games Montréal | 67 (PS5) | PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC |
| 8 | Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League | 2024 | Rocksteady Studios | 63 (PC) | PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC |
The scale of the Arkham series specifically is well documented: according to a former Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment global franchise marketing manager’s account, reported by GameRant on July 26, 2020, Batman: Arkham City alone had sold roughly 12.5 million copies and generated about $600 million in revenue by 2012, a year after launch. That single game outsold most superhero movies’ opening runs many times over, and it’s a big part of why the Arkham name still gets attached to every new Batman game announcement, warranted or not.
The Full Ranking, Game by Game
1. Batman: Arkham City
2011 · Rocksteady Studios · PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Arkham City is the series’ critical peak: 96 on Metacritic for the PS3 version, with the Xbox 360 (94) and PC (91) releases not far behind. Rocksteady traded Arkham Asylum’s single building for a walled-off slice of Gotham, which let Catwoman, Two-Face, the Penguin, Mr. Freeze, and Ra’s al Ghul all get real, self-contained plots instead of cameo appearances. The FreeFlow combat system from Arkham Asylum carried over largely unchanged, but the open map gave predator-mode stealth sections and gadget puzzles far more room to breathe.
2. Batman: Arkham Asylum
2009 · Rocksteady Studios · PS3, Xbox 360, PC
The game that invented the modern Batman action formula, and the reason every superhero game made since has been compared to it. Arkham Asylum scored 92 on Xbox 360 and 91 on both PS3 and PC, all rated Universal Acclaim. Confining the story to Arkham Asylum itself, over one night, gave the game a tightness the more sprawling sequels never quite matched, and Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy’s performances as Joker and Batman became the reference versions of both characters for a generation of players.
Rocksteady’s own team later said the game’s X-ray-style Detective Vision was overtuned. Art director Dave Hego told Game Informer, “It was a gameplay decision to make detective vision so strong … we’re going to try not to do that mistake again,” after noticing players were leaving it on for the entire game and missing the hand-built art the team had spent years on. That’s a rare case of a developer naming their own design regret on the record, and it shaped how detective/scan vision was dialed back and re-balanced across City, Origins, and Knight.
3. Batman: Arkham Knight
2015 · Rocksteady Studios · PS4, Xbox One, PC
Arkham Knight closed Rocksteady’s trilogy with the series’ biggest scope: a full open-world Gotham, a drivable Batmobile woven into combat and puzzles, and a story built around unmasking the title character. Console reviews were strong — 87 on PS4, 85 on Xbox One — but the PC version launched so broken that Warner Bros. pulled it from sale for four months, and it still sits at just 70 on Metacritic. That platform split is worth knowing before buying: the same game earned a near-masterpiece score on console and a mixed one on PC for reasons that had nothing to do with the writing or combat.
4. LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes
2012 · TT Games · PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, Wii U, 3DS, DS, PC
The LEGO Batman series is a different genre entirely — family-friendly action-adventure with humor instead of horror — and LEGO Batman 2 is its best-reviewed entry, hitting 81 on both PS3 and PC. It was also the first LEGO Batman game to open the map up to the wider DC universe, adding Superman, a full voice cast (Traveller’s Tales’ earlier LEGO games used gibberish sound effects instead of dialogue), and free-roam Gotham exploration on top of the level-based structure. Its two sequels, LEGO Batman: The Videogame (2008, 80 on PC) and LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham (2014, 74 on Xbox One), are both worth playing but never matched this entry’s scores.
5. Batman: Arkham Origins
2013 · WB Games Montréal · PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Wii U
Origins is an Arkham game, but not a Rocksteady one — developed primarily by WB Games Montréal, with the multiplayer mode built separately by the UK studio Splash Damage. It’s a prequel set on Christmas Eve, years before Arkham Asylum, with a young Batman facing eight assassins sent by Black Mask. Reception was noticeably cooler than the Rocksteady trilogy: 76 on PS3, 74 on Xbox 360 and PC, 68 on Wii U, with critics citing bugs and a story that leaned too hard on the established formula without adding much to it.
6. Batman: The Telltale Series
2016 · Telltale Games · PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS3, Xbox 360, mobile
A complete break from the Arkham combat formula: five episodes of dialogue choices and quick-time events in Telltale’s signature branching-narrative style, with player decisions changing which characters live, die, or turn on Batman. Scores were mixed and varied by platform — 64 on PC up to 72 on Switch — reflecting Telltale’s engine performance issues more than the writing, which leaned into morally gray choices (including letting players push Harvey Dent toward becoming Two-Face) that the action-focused Arkham games never touched. A second season, Batman: The Enemy Within, followed in 2017.
7. Gotham Knights
2022 · WB Games Montréal · PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Not an Arkham game, and WB Games Montréal has said so directly. Creative director Patrick Redding told ComicBook.com the studio deliberately moved away from Arkham’s continuity: “The Arkham series is amazing, and it really stands as this amazing opus that people love … I think for us, we saw an opportunity … to start something new and take a fresh look at … the full range and scope of characters and heroes.” Batman is dead before the story starts; Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood, and Robin run Gotham instead, playable solo or in two-player co-op. Reviews were mixed — 67 on PS5, 66 on PC, 64 on Xbox Series X — with the co-op-driven RPG loot systems drawing the most criticism.
8. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
2024 · Rocksteady Studios · PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Rocksteady’s first game since Arkham Knight swapped Batman for a squad of villains and swapped the single-player structure for a live-service looter-shooter, and critics were unconvinced: 63 on PC, 61 on Xbox Series X, 60 on PS5. It’s the lowest-scoring entry on this list. The game is explicitly tied to the Arkhamverse continuity — the plot follows a mind-controlled Justice League after the events of Arkham Knight — but that connection didn’t translate into Arkham-level reviews.
Its live-service life has already ended. Rocksteady confirmed in a December 2024 announcement, reported by TheGamer, that post-launch content support would stop after Episode 8 in January 2025, less than a year after release. An offline mode shipped in that final update so the campaign stays playable without a live connection, and no full server shutdown has been announced as of this writing, but no new content is coming.
Honorable Mentions: The Spinoffs Left Off the Main List
Two smaller Batman games get skipped in the ranking above because neither has a console/PC critical record to compare against the eight games here. Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate (2013) is a handheld/mobile side story that later got a PS3/Xbox 360/Wii U remaster with mixed reception. Batman: Arkham VR (2016) is a short, PlayStation VR-exclusive detective experience built to showcase VR hardware rather than compete with the mainline games on scope.
The Pattern the Scores Reveal
Line the eight games up by Metacritic score and a pattern shows up that no single review calls out directly: every game built as a single-player Batman story — Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Arkham Knight, Arkham Origins, LEGO Batman 2, and Batman: The Telltale Series — scored 72 or higher. The only two entries that dropped into the 60s, Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, are also the only two built around persistent multiplayer or live-service systems layered over the campaign. That’s not proof multiplayer features caused the lower scores on their own — both games also launched with separate, well-documented technical and pacing complaints — but it is a clean split in the data: the moment this franchise moved toward co-op and live-service structures, its critical scores moved with it, in the same direction, both times.
For the story of the last Rocksteady game, if you want the Arkham Knight ending explained, including the Knightfall Protocol and whether Bruce Wayne actually survives, that’s covered separately. For the villain who drives most of that story, our ranking of the best Batman villains goes deeper into the rogues gallery than this list has room for. And if release order versus story order across the Arkham series is the question, our Arkham games in order guide lays out both.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best-reviewed Batman video game?
Batman: Arkham City has the highest Metacritic score of any Batman game, 96 on PS3, with the Xbox 360 (94) and PC (91) versions also rated Universal Acclaim.
Is Gotham Knights part of the Arkham series?
No. Gotham Knights (2022) is a separate continuity built by WB Games Montréal on purpose, not a follow-up to Rocksteady’s Arkham trilogy. It shares a publisher and a setting, not a story or a game engine lineage.
Is Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League still getting updates?
No. Rocksteady ended post-launch content support in January 2025, about eleven months after the game’s February 2024 release, after shipping an offline mode in the final update so the campaign stays playable.
What order should I play the Arkham games in?
Story order is Arkham Origins, Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, then Arkham Knight. Release order — Asylum, City, Origins, Knight — is how most players and critics experienced the series, and is the order this ranking follows for consistency with how each game was originally reviewed.
Which Batman game sold the most copies?
Batman: Arkham City is the best-documented seller in the franchise: a former WB Games Interactive marketing manager’s account, reported by GameRant in July 2020, puts it at roughly 12.5 million copies and about $600 million in revenue within a year of its 2011 launch.
