Arkham's Batman is the perfect companion for a spooky night of fun

Every Halloween I return to the Arkham games. It’s as much a ritual of mine as playing Super Mario World in the lead-up to Christmas – a personal yuletide delight I absolutely recommend. Batman is made for Halloween, for shadows and hauntings and pumpkin faces leering from misted windows. He dresses up. His enemies dress up. They plan tricks. He’s a total treat.

Normally I head to the first game, Arkham Asylum, because it has the bit with the second Batcave that I love so much, and because, for me, it’s best at capturing the all-in-a-single-night feeling that these games draw so much potency from. This Halloween, though, I headed somewhere else, to Arkham City, the second game in the series, and its challenge rooms.

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There is a reason for this. Over the last few weeks, Arkham challenge rooms have been blowing up on Tiktok. I can’t scroll for more than five videos without seeing one. The challenge modes are Arkham at its best – just you, dropped into a single, complex map, with a bunch of goons to take down. Sounds simple? It would be, but you have to stay away from brawling, because you’ll get shot to pieces. Instead you have to use everything else in the Batman arsenal: the gadgets, like explosive gel, Batarangs and smoke bombs, your traversal skills, such as the glide and the the grapnel swing, and the environmental stuff – weak walls you can knock through, grates you can dive in and out of, gargoyles you can hang from.