Hello, and welcome to The Back Page, A Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined, as ever, by Matthew Castle. Matthew, we have another special guest joining us this week. So, Tamoor, would you like to introduce yourself? Hello, I am Tamoor Hussain, and I work at gamespot.com. I’m the managing editor there, and I hang out and do things, video game stuff at other places, as well as GameSpot, including Giant Bomb, and Kinda Funny, and I also stream on Twitch. Yeah, and we have a history together, us three, in the UK press. That makes it sound like we killed someone. Yeah, we have killed. We have killed. Yeah, it’s funny, actually. I was thinking on the way back to my house to record this, did we meet in New York City at that Namco Bandai event? And I think I insisted that we walk to the Flatiron building, and I sold it to you as it’s the Daily Bugle building from the Spider-Man films. And I was 100% on board from that point. Yeah, and then it was a slightly too long a walk, and everyone was a bit, I think, slightly frustrated by the end of it because it had been about twice as long as people thought it would take. I think me and you were the only people that were okay with it. Because we stopped at Midtown Comics as well, right? At one point. Yeah, it was my first time there. Yeah, same, it was my first time there as well. But we had both heard it was a legendary comic book shop in the world. And the Namco Bandai, the actual trip was a bit rubbish. So when you proposed the house, I was like, hell yeah, this is good. And then I think me and you were the only ones that were well up for it. Everyone is kind of tagged along. I can’t even remember who else was there. It was just me and you in my mind. It was a nice, romantic walk for me and you going to a comic book shop. I think that is my prevailing memory of that trip. That’s my fondest memory, going to that comic book shop and hanging out with you. Because we bonded over comic books real quickly. And then I was like, yeah, it’s a good lad. I’m glad. Yeah, that’s genuinely the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me. It’s like, I like comics. So did he. He was a good lad. It’s like, it’s peaked there, I think. But yeah, that was a lot of fun. I remember walking through Central Park as well. And yeah, it was a good trip for that reason. I think we went to Guy Fieri’s restaurant this evening. You know, classy joint. So yeah, I brought you on this episode to talk about Batman, Tamoor. So, you know, I guess we’ll come to the Batman part of it a little bit later. But I’m supposed to ask a little bit about your career and how you got into games media. What were the games you loved growing up? And how did you end up writing about Games for a Living? The games I loved growing up were like, I think I was a great devourer of games. Like I was Galactus, just with games. I want it all. And I tried pretty much everything. And I played games that I probably shouldn’t have played these days. I wouldn’t play because I’m an adult and I don’t have the time. But I think there’s like a few games that definitely amongst all that gluttony defined my tastes. And like if I had to guess, if I had to summarize my personality into like different games that I played over the years, like my earliest memory of my playing a console was the Super Nintendo and playing games like Mario World and Street Fighter 2 and Super Metroid, which is currently, it is and it will remain one of my favorite games of all time. And, you know, a whole bunch of, I played pretty much every Super Nintendo game my cousins could get their hands on. Zombies Ate My Neighbors, I played a bunch of the crusty Super Fun House games, The Simpsons games, like anything and everything, I’ll take it. Then my first console that I got myself was a Mega Drive or Genesis or whatever you care about. And that was like where I got really obsessed with different kinds of games. Like I started playing Phantasy Star and that I believe is Golden Axe and Sonic was like my thing. But it was always kind of begrudging. I always loved the Super Nintendo more, but I settled for the Sega Mega Drive. And every time I play a game, I’ll be like, it’s fine. It’s Sonic is good, but it’s not Mario. And like, yeah, it’s true. It’s true. The major exception being I’ll take Street of Rage over Final Fight any day of the week. Mainly because of the music. Then from there, it’s kind of like I played a bunch of games, like the games that stand out in my mind, like Counter Strike was massive for me, the Street Fighter franchise is massive for me, the Batman franchise, all the Souls games, they are huge for me. And then, you know, I dipped my toes into certain MMOs, like, wow, here and there, but I didn’t get, like, hooked on them in the way a lot of us did. But yeah, those are kind of like the big games for me. Mass Effect is another one that I really love. There’s a certain period where I feel like if you name a game from that period, I probably will have played it, which is much harder these days. But I try everything. Like, there’s very few, I think the big exception is sports games. Where they’re mainly simulation sports these days. Like we don’t have NBA Jams anymore. We don’t have SSX trickies anymore. And those were the sports games that work for me. And I was kind of like out of racing games for a while as well, where they were all leaning towards that same trend that sports have, where there were simulations in the post-burnout age. But then Forza Horizon came along and kind of like found a really nice middle ground. So I dipped in and out of that franchise as well. So I play pretty much every genre apart from sports, but that’s sports genre’s fault, not my fault. Yeah, for sure. I too only indulge in fictional sports like Blitzball. So your career starts with CVG, right? How do you end up breaking into the industry? Oh, man, that was, I think, a stroke of luck in a lot of ways. I’ll say this is one of the things that I will say. Like we all came, we all have crossed paths with Future. I hated Future for so long when I was a kid. I would go to like my local news agents and pick up a magazine, and every damn magazine was Future Publishing. I was like, I can’t, and I couldn’t get a job or an interview at a Future. So I felt like I was being denied entry into the industry just because of this monopoly that this one publishing company had on all magazines. Obviously, back then, I wasn’t really like, there weren’t a lot of, as far as the circulation in my local area, there weren’t a lot of Imagine magazines or anything like that. The Internet was non-existent for me. I didn’t have Internet until quite late. But I used to still read CVG. I’d read Games Master. Games Master was my main one that I’d pick up, and then official PlayStation came out, and then the official mags came out, and then I started spreading out a bit more. I was always a Future kid, but the moment I got Internet, everything changed for me. The first website I always remember that I went to when I got Internet access installed was gamespot.com just because I’d heard so much about it. And I became obsessed with that website. And from a young age, I always wanted to write about games, not professionally. I just wanted to write about games. It sounds kind of corny, but these days we have that impulse where you watch or play something and you’re just so excited about it that you want to talk to someone. And these days it’s so easy to do that. You just turn to your friend and you’re like, hey, I played this game, it’s amazing, XYZ. Or you record a podcast, you jump in a Discord call, or even you tweet it into oblivion and you get 100 replies. Or however many replies and you start a conversation quite easily. Back then, for me, at least, it was hard to have that. It wasn’t… a lot of my friends weren’t into games in the way that I was. There was one or two that I’d meet later on in life. But when I was in primary school, it was no one. My cousins were my main source of gaming interest. And they obviously, I couldn’t speak to them all the time. Like phones weren’t as readily available as they are now. You had to have credit and I didn’t have credit. And also like no diss against my cousins, but they weren’t thinking about games in the same way that I was thinking about them. Like they were enjoying them and moving on. And that’s what they were supposed to be. But like, I was like really stuck on them. Like I remember thinking about the Metroid title screen for literally days, days and days and days. And like my cousin doesn’t want to have a fucking conversation about Metroid title screen for days. Like he’s moved on to the bit where you shoot the missiles or whatever. Not burning through that phone for a bit. Yeah, exactly. And so I just started writing it down. I just started writing. Like it was like became my diary entries where I just like spew my internal monologue about this thing that I liked really poorly onto a paper and then chuck it away. And it was just like a thing that I did to get it out of my mind and get through it. I kept doing that well into like my teenage and young adult years, honestly. Like I kept writing and writing and writing. And then eventually the internet came along and I was this disheveled, overweight, incredibly unhealthy, not looking after myself person. So I did what every person does and started a blog spot and called it The Hobo Gamer. And just started writing bullshit about video games on that. And then I got like somehow like through a forum. I think it was a forum for an anime called Prince of Tennis, which is a great anime and it’s also completely ludicrous. I met someone there who was like, who knew someone else who had like a video game website, really small one. And they were like, oh, we like, we’re looking for writers and not paid whatsoever, but worked like just free writing. And I was like, I’m studying a law degree and it is boring as hell. And I still want to write about games. So I’m just going to start writing about games and I’ll just chuck it into this random website. I don’t really care what happens. It was just me speaking thoughts into the void, which we do now on Twitter. But back then that didn’t exist. Unbeknownst to me, through no planning or any sort of direction of my own, I was basically putting together a portfolio on writing there. And eventually I plucked up the courage to like, write in a reader mail to CVG, I believe it was. It was like, it wasn’t ever a reader mail. It was like, hey, send us a review of a game you like. I think I did Metal Gear Solid 2 and it got printed and I can’t remember who it was. But they sent me a copy, a copy of the game, a promo disc. I wouldn’t know it was a promo disc until many years later when I got into the industry. But it was just this disc which had no art on it and it came in a jewel case. And they sent me that as like a thank you, you know, thank you for giving us content for free. Here’s a game and it was Hulk Ultimate Destruction. Which was a pretty decent game. Like it wasn’t, like, especially when you’re young, like you could run up the wall and it had a good sense of, like, momentum and inertia on Hulk. And I played that and I enjoyed it. And I wrote another, like, reader review and sent that in. And they printed that as well. And then in return, they sent me another game. I think it was Blood Rain. And I did that as well. And I eventually it fell off. I can’t remember how many times I did that. But it just became this unspoken thing where I’d send in a review and they just print it. It was basically child labor, if I’m honest. Being paid in your next assignment, which is odd. Yeah, exactly. But that was enough for me to get a taste for it. And by then, the timeline is all wonky in my head. But I stopped doing that for a while. And I focused on just other things, like working at game while my law degree was being withheld from me. So I went to university and got a degree in law. But there were some shenanigans with someone in my course like cheating. And writing my name on their paper, which obviously caused some confusions. And my university was incompetent enough to not be able to figure out which Tamoor that spelt his name correctly might be the correct one and which one that spelt it incorrectly could be the fake. That’s wild. And they withheld my law degree from me for about a year and a half. And I was stuck in retail while doing that. And that was like a blessing and a curse in a lot of ways, because at the same time, it gave me the opportunity to intern at GameSpot. And I interned at GameSpot. And at the same time, my friend from the site, we met in the community blog section, the user blogs of GameSpot. Daniel Dwyer moved to the UK. He moved to London. He literally moved down the road from me, which was an incredible coincidence. And I met with him and he set up a little game website called Citizen Game. And he wanted to do videos and stuff like that. Yeah, pretty good. It was originally called. Yeah, it was originally. So here’s the thing with Citizen Game. We called it Citizen Game. Around the same time, there was a movie with Gerard Butler called Citizen Game coming out. And there were some like rough problems around that. We were like, oh, this could be a problem. And then eventually, before it came out, they changed the name of that to Gamer. You might remember that movie. It was God Awful. I think it was basically like Rock’em Sock’em Robots or some shit like that. But after working with Danny and doing an internship, while I was having done that, which was some of the most formative work in my career, it helped me really get my feet wet in so many different ways. If it wasn’t for Danny, I probably wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t have any of the meager abilities that I have to do what I am now if it wasn’t for him. So I owe him my career, as well as a bunch of people from the future days. Honestly, this might sound a bit pandering, but Matt, for example, I owe a lot to because Matt commissioned me for a few Nintendo articles here and there and that helped me get magazine experience. I think my first printed magazine experience was in O&M and it was something that Matt asked me to do. I can’t even remember what it is, I just remember doing it. And also, Tim, remember Tim Igem from CVG? He is one of the people that hired me and he remembered a few years later, he reminded me that I showed up in an oversized suit for an interview at a video game fucking publication and I was sweaty as fuck because I was massively overweight and nervous and he was really good about teaching me the basics of reporting. They all contributed, but I think it was Danny and was one of the major ones to show me that I could make a go of it and it could be fun. While I was doing that and doing the internship, I worked at Game and HMV and I did an internship as well. I wanted to be immersed in the world of video games as much as possible and that was a good way to do it. HMV was a wild place because I was serving in the video game department and this guy shows up and he looks so familiar to me. I kept looking at him and I was like, I know this guy. He wasn’t British. He was a big guy, bearded, really small glasses. He sounded like a Spanish accent to me at that time and was very into games, really wanted to talk about games. I remember talking to him about games and he was like, I like these kind of games. I like games that have a sense of realism to them but also a sense of fantastical. Eventually, we got to the point where I recommended him a series called Metal Gear Solid and he was like, okay, cool, this is amazing, I’ll check it out. Never heard from the guy again. I realized who he was many, many weeks later. It was Guillermo del Toro. I was like, holy shit. That was wild. You sent him on his collision course with Gima. I’m taking all credit for that. I’m taking every bit of credit for that. He don’t know I exist but I remember it vividly because there was someone else there at the time with me and later on I told him that guy is Guillermo del Toro, this director and he was like, holy shit. Eventually while I was at game, I applied for CVG and I got hired at CVG and I remember quitting at game. I was a menace at game so I think they were easier to get rid of me. I used to do the, remember the game cleaning service where you’d go in there with your scratch disks and they’d be like, it would resurface them and they would charge you like £4 or some shit like that. I used to just do it for free. People would come in and I’d be like, no, I’m not charging you. Yeah, I was a good menace. I’d also like, they used to, I’m not, this isn’t, but no, I’m not going to say that. We’ll just stick with the Robin Hood of disk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s me, that’s me, yeah. That’s good, that’s a good narrative. Alright, so I guess, how do you end up going from, I guess like you were at CVG for a while, briefly leave Games Media and then you come back working for GameSpot. What’s that whole journey like? Yeah, so that journey was really interesting. So I think Matt can attest to it as well. Like there was a time when CVG was being closed down. It was the tail end of that where I started really thinking about what I could do and what I should do. And I remember being at the end of CVG and at the same time, I’m trying to talk about this. I’m going to say this in as much. I want to say this, but I mean it with as much sensitivity as possible given the context and the subject matter and the people who were involved in it. Gamergate was happening at the same time and it was incredibly disheartening to me. And the reason I said that stuff before because it was just disheartening to me. It genuinely hurt people within this industry and there were people being victimized. It was horrible. It was a horrible thing to see happen. And it really shook my faith in being here because it sounds really rough, but I wasn’t enjoying the discussion around games anymore. It stopped being about games. It started being about drama points. I’m not to minimize Gamergate to a drama point. It was one of many things that happened. Everything that happened there, to be clear, was horrible. I was vocal about all the awful things that were happening around then. But I also realized that I wasn’t excited about writing about games because no one was really talking about games in a big way. They were talking about developers, and they were talking about the industry, and they were talking about the day-to-day drama of it. It coincided with Twitter and that kind of stuff. I had this moment where I was like, do I still want to do this? That unsureness gave me pause, and it led to a question of, do I have any other skills? That worried me for a little bit. I was like, this video game thing was basically a dream come true, but I also realized it was incredibly fickle at that time. It could go away at any moment. The CVG closure, because CVG was a big deal in the UK, as you guys know, it didn’t hold a candle to the American size, but we were pretty big fish, especially in the news world. That kind of led me to the decision where I was going to go and look for something else for a while. I left and went to work at London Underground. A friend of mine was already working there. He was a train driver, and he was like, they have openings if you want to go through the training process and the kind of testing process. I did that for a while, and I went there, and I worked at London Underground. I worked shift work. I did early mornings, like 3 a.m. starts. It was a hard, hard job. It was the kind of job where the long hours become visible on your face. You can see yourself deteriorating. I counteracted that by eating better and sleeping as much as I could. So it was fine, but I also looked around, and I spoke to a lot. The thing about it, I’ll be perfectly honest, it was an incredibly well-paying job, extremely high-paying, because they know that you’re basically not seeing sunlight for significant periods of the year. You’re getting abuse from commuters constantly. So they compensate you for that. They give you a decent wage. You’re basically on a spiral, basically, a destructive spiral, but they pay you so you have a good time on the way down. I really enjoyed working there for a little bit, but I started to speak to people. I asked them, hey man, I know you’re incredibly high paid, but what kind of pay cut would you take to enjoy the job that you’re doing? It was really surprising to me, because I was at that point in the stage where I could carry on doing this forever. I’d be extremely well off. I’d be well paid by it. But I don’t think I’d be happy, and that was my conundrum. So I kind of spoke to a lot of people, and I was like, how much of a pay cut would you take? And it was really shocking to me to see people say, up to £10,000, people were like, I would take a pay cut of £10,000 if I knew I’d enjoy my job every day. And once I had that enough times, I was like, okay, that kind of means that even the people here who are extremely high up wish they would enjoy their job. There’s no point in this track where someone goes, I love this, this is amazing. Most of the people who are working alongside me, I’m not saying there’s no one that is there, but most of the people working alongside me were people who are in it for the money. And I really like thought about it, and I was like, I’m not in this for money. I want to enjoy what I want to do. As I made that kind of revelation to myself, someone from GameSpot contacted me and was like, hey, we’re looking for someone to join our UK team. You’ve been recommended. Would you be up for having an interview? And I was like, absolutely. And I had an interview. Get me out of these tunnels. Yeah, I literally had the interview on the threshold between the underground station on the Victoria Line. I believe it was Pimlico and the road where there’s just enough signal to have a phone call while I was on my shift. So I had like earphones in and I had like a scarf over my neck because I couldn’t get the time off to have an interview. But by the end of it, I think it went pretty well. They kind of called me up a week later and they were like, we’d like to offer you the position. And then I ended up at GameSpot and I’ve been there since. I started off as like a staff writer or something like that and then worked my way up to where I am now, which is managing editor. That’s awesome, man. That ascent is just amazing. It’s so cool. Because I can remember when you left CVG and I remember thinking, not really knowing your situation or anything, but what a shame. There goes a guy who knows just a shit tonne about games, loves writing about games, disappointing that there isn’t a decent place for that at the moment. But now, what an opportunity, what a life. You make the move from GameSpot UK to US at a certain point, what led to that and what new challenges did that involve for you? What led to it was kind of just the opportunity. And I always wanted to work from the US office, the office that I grew up seeing in Gamespot videos. Like I said earlier, the first website I went to was gamespot.com and they were ahead of the pack when it came to videos. They were doing gameplay videos before anyone else, and they were doing Let’s Play style stuff before anyone else. And they were also doing behind the scenes stuff before anyone else. Like they’d have videos of Jeff and Brad and Ryan and Homer and a bunch of people just going to E3s or just showing off the office. And I always desperately wanted to be there. I always desperately wanted to work from that office. And in my mind, I was like, I’d love to work from that office. And it never was a thing that I really considered happening because I never saw myself living anywhere but in this country in England. And it was only when I joined GameSpot where it started to become more of a thing that was plausible but never possible. I was still in the UK team and the UK team was very much treated like a satellite team for a long time. It very quickly changed where we were kind of like became one big GameSpot team, which was great. But I kind of worked harder than I ever have worked anywhere in my life at those GameSpot UK years. Like I came in and I just I worked morning till night in a way that is incredibly unhealthy and I would not condone and I do not recommend and I actively stop people that I manage from doing now because I know what it’s the impulses like to do it. I started like working my way up to the point where people started listening to things I said. People started letting me review games and people started seeing that I was willing to learn. And over time, I got myself into a position where, you know, I ended up being the UK editor. And as the UK editor, that kind of put me in the same conversations as a lot of the people in the US because I was managing an entire team, an entire office of people. And I say managing very loosely because the team there was incredibly talented and still is. And they required very little input from me. Like everyone knew exactly what they’re doing. I was there to just kind of guide people. But then after a while, it was like what the managing editor for GameSpot in the US was leaving. They wanted to break off the news part of it and let someone else take care of that. And that came to me. So I became the head of news for global head of news for GameSpot instead of just the UK editor. So at one point I was UK editor and global head of news. At a certain point, like it became very obvious to me that I was like the head of news, but also out of lockstep with the news cycle because it’s very US focused, right? US centric. Everything happens on US time, unfortunately. And that kind of presented some weird challenges. I made it work for a real long time. But eventually, like a lot of it, I also kind of have the decision to the idea of moving over was something that got into my head before they actually offered it. Because a colleague of mine, Lucy James, did the same thing where like she kind of moved over to the States and her was working on the video team and was doing like amazing things there. And for me, I was like, huh, maybe that’s something I could think about. As I started having those conversations, there was an E3 that were and I was presented with the idea and discussed it with my current manager. And they were like, yeah, let’s make it happen. And the one thing I’ll say about GameSpot is like and CBS is they’re incredibly they were they were and still are very, very encouraging of trying to make forward and upward steps. And they will try and enable it as much as possible. So when I when I went to them and I was like, hey, would this be doable? They were like, absolutely, we can make that happen. And it’s trickier these days because of the world we’re in. But like, yeah, that’s the kind of thing that that’s the kind of mentality they had. And and the other challenges for that were many. I mean, like it was the first time I lived away from home because, you know, I’m I’m a Pakistani person. South Asian culture is very much. It doesn’t it doesn’t treat like adolescence and, you know, growing up in the same way that non-South Asian culture does, where it’s like, oh, you’re you’re a teenager now. You’re going away to college. You leave home. You get your own apartment and that kind of stuff. It’s the other way for us. Like the older you get, it’s kind of like a South Asian culture treat it as like a reversal of responsibilities where you’re born. Your parents look after you up until you come of age. And when you come of age, you swap. You have to take care of your parents and stuff like moving away is not something that you would do. It’s incredibly rare for a South Asian person to move out of their home unless they get married or, you know, have start having their own family. So that was a big deal for me. Like I obviously I was always very independent. And and but the entire time I was in the UK, I lived with my parents and lived with my younger brother and sisters, brothers and sister. And so that was a big deal for me, like moving away to another country, not only moving out, but moving away. So that was a huge challenge for me. And it wasn’t something I was nervous about. It was just something that I was kind of like, you know, when you even when you’re confident about doing something, doing it for the first time can be nerve wracking. And I got over there and it was much easier than it would be for most people because I was incredibly familiar with all the people that I worked with, who were very close friends as well. As colleagues and I had a very strong safety net of people who could help me. They were they were perhaps more excited about having me over than I was excited about being there. They were like super, super into it and they were helping me out. But the challenges were still the challenges, you know, like a whole new environment. And when I felt like I really had my feet planted is when the lockdown shelter in place happened. And so I moved over. It was a few months and then the lockdown happened. And it was basically like I was stuck in a room for a year and a half and which was not ideal. I have not seen any of that country. I’ve not seen any of that city. I’ve just seen I saw like the route from my apartment to the office and then the inside of my room, my apartment for about a year and a half. And then as that happened, as it was kind of easing off the kind of like the California, very fortunately was like has had the highest rate of vaccination. And as that kind of started to the vaccination became more prevalent and it started to feel a bit safer, I had to return to the UK for a visa thing. So I’ve been living in America for close to two years, but it does not feel like I’ve lived in America for more than a month. Dude, your story, I didn’t know most of this about you. And so it’s actually genuinely illuminating to hear your story. It’s because I spend all my time just mouthing off on Twitter about bullshit. Well, that’s valuable content too. One other thing I kind of wanted to mention on the career front is your message to the video games industry around the events in Palestine this year. I thought that was illuminating in terms of like how you used your platform and how you think about the way streamers use their platforms. Can you say a little bit about kind of what led to that and how you think about the way that streamers do use the, you know, the kind of like voices they have to reach their audience? Yeah, I think the thing I’m proud of most about the games industry, I say proud, but that makes me sound like I have some stake or I have some responsibility in making it happen. I absolutely don’t have that. But the thing that if someone asks me where do you see the value or explain why video game streamers or video games are good, the thing I’d point to is the amount of charitable effort that streamers and gamers and that they get behind and the messages that they’re able to push, the sense of progress that people are making in social issues that are in a large way. The engine of that is the gaming industry. And it’s important to not ignore the fact that, of course, there are a very vocal group of people who are anti that and they do exist within games to act like they’re not there is like fooling ourselves. They are there. But I think they’re far outweighed by the people who are genuinely trying to do good in the industry and not just for video games, but for the wider world. And I watch people like the folks at AbleGamers or, you know, Alana Pierce is constantly doing massive streams that are charity focused. In the UK, there’s like Black Girl Gamers. There’s Mr. Midas who’s doing stuff all the time that’s like charity focused. And, you know, there’s Dr. Lupo who’s massive and does charitable stuff. Even the big, big, big streamers, like the Shrouds, they will do charitable stuff now and then. And for me, that was such an amazing thing to see. And I think I got, you know, really exposed to it around Black Lives Matter. I was in America at that time when all that stuff was going on, and especially around the riots. A lot of the rioting happened on my doorstep to the point where it was literally like outside my apartment, people were gathering and, you know, the riots were happening around then. And it was amazing. And stop Asian AAPIA as well was another thing that happened around that time. And it was amazing to see the industry galvanize around it and do it in the face of criticism from quote unquote gamers. But I don’t treat them as gamers. I think these are like agitators within the industry and within the past time. But like in the face of that, like they they they were they did not care about that. They did what they had something to say. It was important to them and they said it. And that was incredibly, incredibly important to see happen for me. And then E3 happened and GameSpot as a team came together and everyone said, Hey, we’re about to do E3. This is the biggest thing of the year for us. We’re going to have more eyes on us than ever. We don’t think it’s right to do E3 in the current day and age within what’s going on without addressing it and doing something to help. And the you know, the subtext being we want to we want to do a charitable effort around Black Lives Matter and stop AAP I Hate. And the fact that there was zero pushback on that was something that I could not believe. Like we were a CBS company at the time, but there was no pushback. Everyone on the team immediately was like, yes, let’s absolutely do this. And we did it and we raised a hell of a lot of money and CBS also chucked in a lot of money. Like I’m not a corporate shill and I got no love for corporations. But I will say and CBS, you can find any number of issues with that company easily. But the one thing I got to hold up my hand up and say is like whether for PR move or whatever, when we came knocking, they opened their bank account up and gave us a hell of a lot of money that we gave directly to these charities. And that was important for me. And that kind of taught me the the showed me the voice that the games industry can have the the Palestinian effort. The thing that really kind of sparked that was when Palestinians were being displaced, killed, brutalized by Israeli forces. It was one of the most horrific things I’d ever seen. And I was seeing footage and images from ground level. I was seeing people talking about, you know, people who are like reporters saying, hey, our building, our workplace where we bring you the news of what’s happening here was strategically destroyed. And I couldn’t believe what was happening. And the thing that really struck me was how no one was saying anything. And I don’t mean to compare. And I said in that video, I’m not here to compare one cause versus another cause. It was all, they’re all valuable. But the people who are out there making a big deal about supporting Black Lives Matter and charitable efforts, whatever they may be, which is completely silent on it, it was not happening. And for me, that really, really struck a chord. And I couldn’t believe it. And I took some time to think about it. And my conclusion wasn’t that they suck or anything like that. My conclusion was they don’t know. They just don’t know about it because the conflict that this stuff was happening in between, it’s decades old. It’s decades old. And the media, I’m going to sound like a bit of a kook, but like the media has a vested interest and has a history of making that conflict as complicated as possible to the point where the average person just tunes out of it. I have been thinking, I have been hearing about the Israel-Palestine conflict since I was a child. Like when I was a little kid living in a block of flats in East London, some of my most prevailing memories are news reports in the background of X things happening in Gaza, why things happen in the West Bank, as things happen to Palestinians. And it’s always been there, and I’m someone who has a bias. I’m a Muslim, as I said in that video, I made that bias clear. When I go to the mosque at the end of a prayer, when I was a kid, I would go all the time, at the end of a prayer, everyone puts their hands together and they pray, right? And there’s always the one figure at the front who’s leading the prayer, we call him the Imam, who would like say the prayer out loud over the speaker so everyone can hear it. And without fail, for 24 years of my life, it has always been praying, there’s always some element of his praying for the people of Palestine to give them respite from what’s happening to them, since I was a child, every time I went to. So the idea of thinking about the human impact on Palestinians has always been there for me. That is not the case for the majority of people. That is only the case for me because my cultural and religious upbringing is enabled there. So for me, my thought was there are good people in this industry and there are people who want to help. They just do not know what’s happening. And if they do, they’ve been trained to look away because it’s confusing. They’ve been told it’s far more complicated than they can ever imagine. And that is geopolitical and this X, Y and Z thing that they need to consider. And for me, the reason I made that is because the video is I wanted to dispel that. And I want to tell those people, hey, this is happening. This has always been happening. And the reason you subconsciously look away is because of this. It’s because the media is trained to look to you to look away. And I wanted to break it down as simple as possible. And that was there were innocent people, men, women, children who were being killed, displaced by a force with a great deal of power over them that was sanctioned by a government. And that’s as simple as it needs to be. I did my best to not take sides. And I did my best not to paint one side as a villain over the other. There was a lot of people who were out there saying, you know, Israelis this, Israelis that. That was not my intent. I didn’t want it that way because that kind of is part of the mechanism that makes it confusing and charges it in a way that you start to lose the human element of it. When it’s one side versus the other, you start to, it starts to become a bit like, you start to feel like I don’t want to wade in on this. For me, my message was like, these are just people. These are just people that are being killed. They need your help. And the other part of the message was, I know that you have the capacity to help because you did it before. And I know that you as streamers have these considerations that you have to think about, which is sponsors. Are you going to get demonetized? Are you going to get blowback from your audience? Are you going to get a blowback from big game companies? And I wanted to acknowledge that, but also point out the fact that that did not stop them before. It did not stop them with Black Lives Matter. It did not stop them with Stop AAPI Hate. It shouldn’t stop them now because there’s no difference in the causes there. It’s just different people at a different part. It’s just that these people exist in a place that you’ve been trained by media and entertainment to just think of as a battleground and as a place, a theater of war, a place that, you know, your movies and games and comics take place in, but where the life of a human is disposable. And that was my main reason for doing that. And I think it helped in a way that I feel good about. My main goal was to just educate people and kind of help people not step away from that conversation. And I had some people reach out and be like, hey, I’ve known this stuff my entire life. I’ve just never looked at it. And that is ultimately what I wanted out of it. Along the way, I decided like if I wanted to do something kind of meaningful in my own way and try and encourage other people, I was going to stream. So I streamed, I think, every day for I think it was a week or two, raising money. And I raised, I think it was like 30 to 40,000 pounds or dollars. And it was and that was just because that’s not me saying I did this thing. That was me saying that is an example of me being right at the fact that this industry is full of amazing people. It’s full of people who want to help. They just need to be told how, when and where. And this wasn’t just random people. It was people from the communities that know me, people from random communities. I had developers reach out. I had developers, high level executives from different companies reach out privately and be like, hey, I want to donate. Where can I do this? And a lot of them donated significant amounts of money. And that was me. That was when it really struck home that yes, this industry is a force for good. And it’s an industry that’s always keen to learn more. And they just need to be pointed in the right direction. And it’s again, one of the things that keeps me here. Man, your story from taking a phone call outside of London Underground Station to raising tens of thousands of dollars for charity. That’s just an amazing journey you’ve been on there for sure. And now it’s time to talk about a man who dresses up as a bat or as I like to call it, a totem shift. How do I do this? It’s fine. How do I navigate this as a host? I don’t think I’m able to navigate that. I mean, like, I can help you with that. I mean, maybe we should just keep this bit in the podcast. That does the total shift. Okay, yeah, let’s do that. All right, so we’re going to take a quick break. Then we’ll come back and talk about Batman, including ranking the Arkham games. I still don’t think I quite pulled it off, but I think it will do. Welcome back to the podcast. So in this section, we’re going to talk a bit about Batman, which is one of my specialist subjects, and one of Tamoor’s as well. So Tamoor, I thought we’d start with Batman as a character, what your history with him is. Him, the property, whatever, that, you know, the whole Batman situation. So we’re recording this episode just as Arkham City turns 10 years old, and writers Warner Brothers is about to reveal a new trailer for the Robert Pattinson film, The Batman at DC’s Fandome event. So I was curious to hear about your connections to Batman, in terms of your favorite comics, movies, shows featuring the character. What kind of brought you to the dance with the character? I think it was for like, with a lot of people, the animated series wasn’t the major one for me. It was, I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to buy comics when I was younger. And so my entry point to Batman was the TV show. And it was so, so unlike any other TV show, cartoon that was on the television at the time. I was like transfixed to it the moment I saw it for the first time. And it was just so well done. And so like the world of Gotham and the character as well, like Kevin Conroy, still probably my favorite Batman, and Mark Hamill as Joker. And it completely captured my imagination. And I primarily watched the TV show for the animated series for the longest time. It wasn’t until like many years later that I started getting into the comics. And by then it was, I can’t remember when I really, really got into it. But like by then there was a massive backlog of Batman comics to kind of go through. It was around the time I started discovering, it was around the time I got the internet and found that there was ways to read comics and get comics that were quick and let’s just say cheap. So I started doing that. And Batman would not approve. Yeah, he probably wouldn’t. How does he feel about piracy? I don’t know what Batman’s policy is. I think it probably would, it would be a no-no, but also it’s not really harming anyone as far as he’s concerned. I’m not out on the street doing it. It’s not a priority for him. Yeah, it’s not a major one. He wouldn’t hit me for it, that’s for sure. But yeah, I got into the character through the series, but then like the comics are what really kind of, because the comics explore the character. Obviously they would because there’s like years and years and years and years of them. So reading through that, it kind of helped me build a better picture of the character, and his beliefs, and his arcs, and his ethos, and kind of his motivations, and the way he operates in a way. And I really, I envy, not envied, but like I was inspired by him in a lot of ways. He’s got this like single track mindedness that I wish, I always wish I had, and always wished I was capable of like having. And I got like so into thinking about the way he thinks and behaves that it kind of eventually had this big impact on my life that I just did not expect. When I was working at CVG, it was kind of early when I was working at CVG, got a job there. I was, as I mentioned earlier, incredibly unhealthy. And I ate a lot, because I was also quite depressed at the time. And I used food as a coping mechanism. And it had an impact on my weight and my body. And I go to the doctor and the doctor was like, you’re incredibly unhealthy. You are at risk of diabetes and etc. etc. And despite having no diabetes in my family, and it was kind of like a wake up call for me. And I wondered, like, how would I fix this? And I just didn’t have the motivation to fix it. And at the same time, I was reading Batman comics. And eventually it got to the point where I realized, like, I can just, I’m going to Bruce Wayne this shit. I’m going to Batman this shit. And I just turned the idea, the question, what would Batman do into this mantra in my head, where every decision, every moment of my life, I operate based on that question. Before I had anything to eat, before I went anywhere, before I did anything, I asked myself, what would Batman do? And that kind of single, that question allowed me to kind of like carve out that single track, you know, a single mindedness track that he has in his life, in the way that he approaches dealing with villainy and corruption and his never ending quest for, you know, justice. And I used that as this kind of like funnel into improving my life. And at the same time, I kind of fed it by continuously reading more Batman and consuming more Batman, and I became like obsessed with it. Like it was, it went from a character that I liked to a character I loved to a character that I had an obsession with. And during that process, I think I like, I lost like nine stone or something like that. Oh, wow. Wow. And like got much healthier than I’d ever been. And like I was running two hours a day. I was going to the gym twice a day once in the morning at like 5 a.m. And once straight after work, I’d go in the morning and do like heavy weight lifting. And then in the evening, I’d like run for two hours every day. I ate nothing but like two slice or three slices of brown bread and a tin of baked beans for maybe a year every meal. Just to minimize like my input. Is that what Batman eats? I don’t think so. I think he has a proper meal. I don’t think he eats very much at all, honestly. Yeah, I don’t really see him as an eater. Yeah, and he was incredibly unhealthy. It was very bad. But like at that point, I was like, I need to simplify everything so that I don’t give myself any points of failure, potential points of failure. And I realized that if I just eat this one thing, I won’t have to worry about counting calories. I know exactly how much is in this. And it’s just the bare minimum. It’s like a little bit of carbohydrate, some bare essential proteins. And it’s not good. I do not recommend it. But it’s what I did. And eventually it got me to a place where I was in a much better position health-wise. And I could like start eating relatively normal food again. And I also applied that to my career. It was like, how do I get through what I get to where I need to be? And what do I need to do that? And every decision I made along the way was what would Batman do? And the fact that I, like I said before, the entire time I was reading, I was watching Batman, I was listening to Batman stuff, whatever it is, Batman podcast, it was, you know, comic books, it was animated shows, it was, I was even drawing Batman for a significant period of time, I was that obsessed and I’m still very much like that. What were the, your favourite kind of comics or graphic novels along the way? Which kind of creators stuck with you? I mean, like, it’s the usual ones that everyone mentions, right? Hush, it’s Long Halloween, it’s the recent Scott Snyder stuff, there was some, a couple of arcs that, like, I think Tomasi did. Mm, it’s Batman and Robin stuff. Yeah, yeah. And then, obviously, the Grant Morrison stuff is my big thing. Yeah. I love, I know you’re a fan of it as well, Tom. Yeah, that was like, there are like two ages of Batman comics for me, it’s like before Morrison and after Morrison, where it is, like you say, it’s reading all the touchstones, like the Frank Miller stuff, obviously he’s a very contentious creator these days, and then, like, leading you into more of the modern stuff, like Hush, and, you know, Dark Victory is a long Halloween sequel, and yeah, Scott Snyder stuff, and all that sort of thing. But the Grant Morrison run, the whole ethos of it, I think is it essentially posits that everything that’s ever happened to Batman, like in the 60s series, all of the different, like, stuff he’s been through, all happened implausibly in this one man’s life, and has shaped the kind of perfect Batman, and wasn’t afraid to lean into that sort of tonal variance across that multi-year run. Is that what you liked about it as well? Yeah, it was, I think it was the challenge. Like, I always, whenever I read it, I think about it from Grant Morrison’s perspective. Clearly come into this and gone, I’m gonna make all of this nonsense make sense. And I’m gonna make it, I’m gonna weave it into one ongoing story, which is just a, the most foolish task, but like, does it, and it goes places and it definitely is weird throughout it. But by the time you’re done, like, you’re like, that was really good. I really enjoyed that. And some of my favorite moments from Batman history are from that arc. And the fact that it’s been so influential in Batman mythos going forward is also hell of a thing. In doing so, created one of the coolest narrative arcs in comic history. Yeah. I mean, Damian Wayne is a heck of a legacy, to some believe. Oh, yes. He’s easily my favorite Robin. And yeah, I like all the others, but like Damian Wayne is just, I think, a cut above the rest. He’s got a unique perspective, which is something the others have to a degree. But like, he’s coupled with his attitude and his brashness and this entitlement that he has, and also the arc that he goes on. He’s my favorite Robin, easily. Yeah, he’s just a lovable little bastard. I thought what I did with, you know, killing off Bruce Wayne in order to have Dick Grayson, Batman and Damian Wayne Robin, that could have just ran for years and years, I think. It was just such a great template for Batman’s future. I’m always sad they kind of, you know, went back on it. I guess it’s inevitable in comics, right? But yeah. Yeah, I love that era of Dick Grayson, Damian Wayne, Batman and Robin. And it looks so different as well from the Batman you’re used to as well, especially the covers. I like still flick through those covers every now and then. And they are they are iconic in my mind. And there’s also that stuff of, you know, bat cow and like weird shit that happens along the way. Yeah, when he starts recruiting all the different Batman in Batman and Batman Inc. And then there’s like one issue where he goes into the internet to fight like a virus or something. And it’s just. Yeah, it’s wild. It’s wild. And yeah, I highly, the other thing about it is like it’s such a weird, like the journey to read that entire arc and read anything relevant to it is kind of mirrored in the journey that Batman goes on within the narrative itself. Because it’s like finding broken pieces of these stories and trying to connect them together in a way that feels like cohesive. Right. Like you have to go back years and years and years to read everything relevant to Grant Morrison’s arc. I remember reading, looking at a like a essential reading or the complete reading list for it. And it’s like a black casebook they put out with all the old 50s issues. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like this, I remember like reading the forums and it would be like, you need to read this issue because there’s one line of dialogue that makes that is relevant. And I’m like, what the fuck? But like to find that issue in the modern day, it’s like close to impossible, not even places like Comixology or like DC’s own digital services have them. So like I remember the task of piecing the entire thing together, buying them, finding them online, asking friends if they have them. It’s that same kind of like broken, disjointed, time traveling arc that Batman goes on throughout the Grant Morrison’s arc. But by the time I’d done it, when I read it front to back, I was like, this is incredible. And in the same way, like you go from Batman at the start to the dark side stuff and ending to where it finishes off, you’re like, holy shit, it’s the same kind of madness he’s going through. Yeah, I think the symbol of like Talia’s group in the book is like a snake that eats itself. And then the story ends exactly as it begins, I think, in terms of like him going off with Jim Gordon to stop a crime. And it’s like talking about comics themselves. It’s such a good thing. I wish they would collect the entire thing as like a Morrison complete, like relevant to Morrison’s arc thing. I would buy that in an instant. Yeah, it’s quite hard to follow otherwise. But yeah, I would say that’s the most rewarding comics journey I’ve been on. What about on screen sort of Batman? Who’s your kind of favorite of the live action ones? Of the live action ones? I really like those Nolan movies a lot. Obviously Dark Knight being my favorite of the bunch. But Begins is also incredibly good. I rewatched it recently and I like it more every time I watch it. The last 20 minutes are a bit rough, I think. Yeah, it’s kind of weird. Like we’ve got to stop the fear gas from exploding. And there’s a man who says that every two minutes just in case you lose track of the plot. He goes, this thing explodes. Everyone’s getting fear gas. And we’re like, yeah, we know, man. Yeah, we’re on it. We’re on it, mate. And then Rises is kind of like, I’ve only seen that a couple of times and I didn’t enjoy it as much either time. Maybe if I go back to it now, maybe I enjoy it. But I think that’s like the bottom of the rung for me. I was really, really, I like Bale as Batman. I don’t think he’s the best, but it has some moments that I just like. I watch clips of him in YouTube and it almost brings me to tears. Like, and they are these Batman moments. Like, the one that it always has is, you know, when Bruce is in his aircraft and he’s just, he wants to tell Gordon that he is Batman, but does it in a roundabout way where he’s like, you know, sometimes a hero is a police officer that puts a coat on a child who’s just lost their family or something like that. And then flies off and then it stops for a beat and slowly zooms in on Gordon’s face as he realizes who Batman is. And every time that happens, it sends shivers down my body. I cannot watch that without coming close to tears. So those movies definitely have a place for me. And when Rachel realizes who Bruce is, and when he does the same thing, the roundabout reveal of who he is, and then he jumps off the roof and she steps towards the camera and just whispers, Bruce, that will get me every single time. So there’s moments in those movies that I really, really love. But I wouldn’t say that Bale is my favorite Batman. I’m really sad at what happened to Ben Affleck. I think he had a lot of potential. I think that he could have been one of the coolest Batmans ever. For me, he got saddled with material that was just not good. And some people love that stuff. More power to you. I’m glad you enjoy it. It just didn’t work for me at all. Especially when it came to Batman as a character. It didn’t work for me. Whether that’s BBS or Justice League or any of that stuff. And I’m really excited for Robert Pattinson as Batman. So if I had to pick an onscreen Batman on a technicality, it’s going to be Kevin Conroy. Technically that Batman is onscreen, even though he’s a voice only. But yeah, he’s going to be my favourite. Matthew, how about you? What’s your relationship with Batman on the screen? I feel like that’s probably where most of your interactions. Yeah, my dad’s a big comics guy, weirdly. Which when I was like 12, 13, went through a period of just opening a cupboard and finding all this Batman stuff and being like, not is my dad Batman. But you open it and you’re like, oh, you know, I read the I remember reading like the storylines about, you know, Bane breaking his back and all that stuff. But yeah, obviously haven’t followed the comics as much as you guys. Yeah, I love the films. I love the character. I think he’s super iconic. I think he has the best villains as well, which is really important. I like the Bale. I like the Bale stuff. I see everyone in it. Super classy. I really, really like Gary Oldman in the second film. I think, like, he’s sort of secretly… It’s sort of secret weapon because it’s kind of more about… You know, he’s the only person in it who isn’t, like, a super villain or a super hero. So how he deals with it and kind of comes out the other end of it, I think is super interesting. Yeah, yeah, I like it. I don’t know. When I was a kid, I still enjoyed all the stupid, the silly, garish 90s Batmans, you know? Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, and obviously the Keaton Batman is fantastic too. I think if there’s one thing that… Keen’s overshadowed by Nicholson though in that first one. Like, it’s a Joker film more than a Batman film, which is dumb because I think he’s actually cool. Yeah, but Batman Returns even more so as well. That’s a villain film where Batman’s like the third or maybe fourth main character behind Christopher Walken. Yeah, it’s kind of weird how he gets overshadowed sometimes. Even in The Dark Knight, you can argue that he’s not necessarily got all the focus when you got Harvey Dent and stuff. It’s weird. I really don’t think much about those earlier movies, like the ones that you’re referencing there. I just don’t think about them. I don’t have a fondness for them. I know I’ve watched all of them, but they just don’t stick out in my mind. And I think it does come down to, I think I’m more of a child of the edgier Batman, if you know what I mean, the darker kind of like Dark Knight, Jim Lee era kind of Batman. So the Batman and Robin TV show, for example, is something that I don’t really think about as being a formative part of my Batman experience. And the same goes for a lot of the other Batman movies, the Tim Burton stuff and Joe Schumacher stuff, which is weird. I think that’s where I first encountered it. And then I think the surprise of finding these comics that my dad had was like, oh, this is actually quite different. There’s some really scary stuff. There’s one of the, is there like a standalone Arkham thing that’s like a horror story? It’s like super unnerving art. Yeah, I want to say it’s just called Arkham Asylum. Like that and thinking like, wait a second, this isn’t the Batman I know enough. So I guess that’s probably a good transition point to talk about the Arkham games. So the Rocksteady games, they start in 2009 with Arkham Asylum. I had no expectations that first game, then it kind of, it kind of blew me away. Tamoor, why would the Rocksteady games so significant in the kind of the canon of Batman fiction as well as games in general? I think they were significant because exactly what you said, no one expected anything from them. In fact, I think everyone expected them to be crap. Just because that was the way licensed games were, right? Like there were very few licensed games that you could say were genuinely good. The most you’d expect for them is competency and for them to hold your attention for a few hours. You never expected one to come out and be like, no, this is a one of the definitive Batman stories told. And this is like the now the bar for not only superhero games, but many video games. And you definitely wouldn’t expect like design principles implemented in them to go on to influence games as a whole in the way that the Arkham franchise did. But on top of that, I think like the important thing is that you could tell that they came from a place of love and authenticity. I think that’s the thing that really struck me with the first one, which was everyone says it. Oh, you know, you can tell that these developers were fans of this source material. But no, you could really feel it in this one. And it was like everything from the casting decisions of having Conroy and Hamill back to like the actual fact that Dini was working on it. And then the story and characterization was like just nail on. It did not feel like anyone who like was involved with this game, everyone who was involved this game knew Batman as well as I did or as and was as passionate about it as all the millions of fans. Around the world. And I think that’s kind of why it was important. It’s a mixture of doing right by it and then also doing right by gaming in terms of not just being like his man punches stuff, side scrolling, beat him up, whatever. It was like they really went for it with the with the stealth and the free flow combat. And that is what like it was basically like you have no choice but to pay attention to this game. Because if you’re not a fan of Batman, there’s reasons for it from a game design and game mechanic and game programming and art perspective that you need to take it seriously. And if you don’t care about that stuff, but you’re a Batman fan, it was like this is real big shit. It’s like stories being told with characters that you know, using them in ways that you’ve never seen before, but also doing it with authenticity and a way that kind of acknowledges that you what you know about them and how much you care about them. Yeah, for sure. Matthew, reflecting on Arkham Asylum, where are you out with it? Did it have the same impact to you as someone who was only more casually familiar with Batman lore? Yeah, absolutely. We’ve spoken out on this podcast before. We saw a weird little early snippet at some weird future event and I remember thinking, eh, you know, this looks just like a very shiny brawler, you know, in this kind of linear environment and actually the whole kind of like Metroid-y element of it I absolutely loved. I probably like, you know, I like Batman enough that I could appreciate a lot of the references, but I probably appreciate it more as just a, you know, a 3D action adventure game, you know, exploring that environment, the way it kind of opened up with the power, you know, the more bits of equipment going back to it. I love the kind of collectibles side of it with the Redler, I think, like across the whole series. I think that Redler stuff remains like one of the most kind of compelling like versions of the collectible quest. Like very few games have that kind of hook to hang it on. And it’s, you know, it’s just so brilliantly done. Technically astounding. I think it really holds up as well. I went back and we played a big chunk of it earlier this year. And, you know, it was still still pretty tight game. You know, it’s even in light of like the other ones being a bit more ambitious and a bit more open. You can still really, really enjoy yourself. Tamoor, did you revisit this one a few years ago when Return to Arkham came out? I must admit I’ve been sort of YouTube stalking some of your old videos. I watched the one that you made with Lucy kind of like kind of doing what we’re doing in this episode and ranking them. And yeah, the funniest thing from that video is when you’re asked, what will you see when you’re hit with a scarecrow’s toxin? What’s the thing you fear the most? You answered with mathematics, which I thought was I thought was great. But yeah, I suppose like so yeah, I like asylum like, yeah, I suppose. Have you revisited it recently? Yeah, I play these games yearly at this point. Which is kind of way easier now that the collections are out. At the very least, like Origins is one of my Christmas games. I usually play that over the break just because the setting is around the same time. But yeah, they hold up remarkably well. I think they’re all fantastic games. I think every time I play them, I feel like the really fascinating thing about them is they all present something different that somehow is also very cohesive when you’re done with the entire thing. Like Asylum is a way more like linear, almost focused experience than the others, but it very naturally segues into the open world of city. And that feels amazing, especially when you’re playing back to back. I usually go through like one after the other and going from the confines of Asylum into the open world of city. It’s like, it’s a really, really rewarding feeling to have that new found freedom. And for me, city is the best one, just because it nails the feeling of being Batman better than any of the others. And I love that game. And it’s a game that I often fire up just to fly around, not to do any quests or play through. I’ll just fly around just because I enjoyed like being in that place and having control of Batman as he’s gliding around. And then the way that escalates in Knight to like this explosive conclusion. It really works for me. I know a lot of people don’t really like it, but the Batmobile being a specific point of contention. But I really love the Batmobile in the scenarios where you’re not forced to use it. In the open world where you treat it as like a complementary tool in your massive arsenal, I think it works so well for zipping around and like, you know, using it as like the flourish on a combat sequence. When it does force you into like, you know, hey, you need to race on this course or chase Firefly kind of starts to unravel a bit. But thankfully, that’s there’s not as much of that as you might imagine or even remember. I was quite surprised at how little there is actually. But I feel like that the Knight has a really, really incredible narrative can see with with the whole Joker in your head thing and you slowly morphing into something else. And then the multiple DNAs of, you know, Joker knocking about and how that impacts the city and the villains within it. I think, yeah, overall, like Matt said, like they all hold up fantastically well. And I think each of them is distinct in its own in their own way. That makes playing them over and over again rewarding, but also experiencing them back to back really rewarding. Yeah. So I was really curious about this opening up aspect, actually, because I always felt that you needed Gotham and the Batmobile to complete the Batman simulation. But it seemed like the more open they got, the more contentious these games got. Maybe with people who weren’t as like big into the Batman side as I was. And yeah, I was curious. Do you think there is part of that, Tamoor, where it’s like if you love the character, you feel like you need to see that stuff. But maybe people who aren’t as tuned into Batman are more content with the idea of like a linear experience and more contained experience. Yeah, I think like the big discussion is like, is night bad, right? I don’t think there’s anyone saying asylum is bad or anyone saying city is bad. The conversation is either which one’s the best and which one is night bad or good. And I think a lot of that comes from like the fandom that quickly springs up around it or sprung up around it. I feel like it happens with a lot of games. Like when something new comes along and it’s like a breath of fresh air and then it’s something like that, you know, is special. There’s a significant portion of the fans around it that galvanize in a way that starts to feel like slightly toxic and slightly like they quickly establish this sense of ownership over it, where they need to feel like they are the gatekeepers of that experience. And they know the best for it. It happens with like a lot of Souls games. It happens a lot of like Battle Royale games and sometimes with RPGs. And I think when that happens, developers are kind of in this really awful position where those people are the most passionate people around their game. But they’re also the people that feel like everything that you do or every change that you make is wrong and they know better. That’s kind of just part of fandom, I think, in a lot of ways. I think the average person is going to play a Batman game regardless and like their gripes will be like, I prefer the other one. And that’s about it. Whereas the people who really love it are going to be like, no, this is bad. The Batmobile sucks because XYZ and the game makes you do it like this and this is why it sucks. And I think that’s where a lot of that comes from. I personally am of the opinion that these are three exceptional games. And I think they all do interesting things in their own right. And I don’t I would never describe any of them as bad. Even adding Origins to that mix, like I think Origins is a fantastic game. It does things differently and it has definitely got some weak points. But fundamentally, all four of those Batman games are fantastic. Matthew, how do you feel about that opening up that occurs across the series? Is there a bit more? How did you find it as the scope of those games increased? Yeah, it took me a while to kind of click with City. I never really got a feel for it as a place because it’s so densely designed. It’s not a massive space, but it’s very sort of tangled and intricate. And I never really got a read on it. I never really felt like I mastered it. And also just the kind of, I guess, the sort of setup of that game with the whole idea of it being taken over and all these criminals everywhere. It feels like quite an artificial, like weird space. I do love that you get to do all the Batman stuff and it is really freeing to fly around it. But it definitely took me a while to kind of like click into it and find the right rhythm. I like that it had introduced sort of villains as side quests. I thought it was really great, you know, the idea that you didn’t just have to meet everything on the central quest line. That, you know, this is a world where there’s these really iconic people who are kind of lurking just off to the side. And you can kind of engage with that if you want. And, you know, it’s really rewarding to follow a side quest line and to have like a proper juicy villain at the end of it rather than just some generic goon or whatever. Yeah, I really liked it. I’m actually the biggest fan of Knight is my favorite of the three. Part of that’s the next gen like wow factor of it. Like it’s still one of the best looking games, I think. It does some amazing, like really showing off tricks where like he throws the bat around and it follows it like out into the sky. And then you look at the city and it comes back and all all this kind of stuff. And I love the the kind of the cinematic elements where you kind of had like the first person perspective. We played as other characters and witnessed things from other perspectives. Like it’s really satisfyingly told. I even like the Batmobile because I’m a freak. Well, I just think I think that they found a version of the Batmobile which kind of fit their combat system. You know, like the hand to hand combat, I think the Batmobile is very fair in terms of like you can see what everything where things are going to attack and it gives you all the information to deal with the situation, which is kind of what the combat does so brilliantly as well. Maybe a bit, you know, obviously more repetitive than that. But I thought it was it was pretty good. Yeah. Oh, I love Knight. I love the that scary bit where the monster jumps out as well. Oh, yeah. Manbat. Manbat. That was so good. Like such like a like this big scare hidden in an open world like that. I think something you point out in that video tomorrow is the idea that the storytelling is quite sophisticated in Arkham Knight and not just when it comes to the main story. But in terms of how those side quests are presented, do you I suppose like I want to ask you about that side of things. Like I feel like they really got to grips with how to do those character based side quests in Arkham Knight. And it’s almost a shame they didn’t make another one after that. They kind of go even further with it. But yeah, I guess like of those side quests, which what’s it going to highlight for you out of Arkham Knight? I really like the Manbat stuff in that one. Like it was it was a slow burn and it comes back to me being a huge fan of the animated series because I believe season one early animated series stuff is I think it might even be the first two episodes is Manbat. And it has that same it’s got a very it kind of like wraps up the time with the game franchise in a way that really hits for me because those that arc in the animated series is what kind of made me fall in love with that character. So that holds a special place for me and it hits the stuff that I really like about Batman from different angles. It’s definitely got like the action part of it, but it’s more of a cerebral and kind of investigative quest line where you’re figuring out what’s going on with this scientist, his wife and this weird creature that keeps appearing. And the fact that it also kind of weaves itself very naturally into the world where, you know, you’re just off doing something and then man bat, you can just see him floating around just circling a building and you’re like, OK, I’m going to go and take him down. And you just pin him to the ground. It’s a small chase. And then, you know, you try and take some blood or give him a serum or something like that. And the way that kind of builds over the course of multiple hours and eventually kind of has this payoff at the end. I think that’s one of my favorites of the entire franchise, if I’m honest. I really like that man bat stuff. For sure. I was a huge fan of how they incorporated the Bat family stuff into Arkham Knight as well. Just the Nightwing and Robin sequences. I think what I’ve always loved about Rocksteady’s writing is that they treat the universe as if it already exists. I mean, you see in Arkham Asylum through the Scarecrow sequences, the origin story of Bruce Wayne, but obviously the joke people always make is how many times can they show Batman’s parents being killed? And these games operate under the basis that, no, that’s already happened. This is a Batman at the top of his game. And I think that that kind of comes across and how familiar Bruce is with Dick Grayson and Tim Drake and stuff. And yeah, I just thought that was really sophisticated too. I was going to ask you, in the wider Batman community, how do people rate the Arkham games, their representation of Batman as writing? I think they, honestly, I don’t have enough engagement with the wider Batman community to really get a feel for it. But the stuff that I’ve read is, I think they’re thought of quite highly in terms of the way their characters are written. And I think the thing that helps is there was a line of comics that were based on the games themselves that were also very well received. Oh, right. Yeah, they were like companion comics that were pretty good. And they started off kind of like existing parallel, and then they filled in some stuff while the games were in development. And in the same way that the Injustice comics turned out to be very, very, very popular, if I remember correctly, those comics, they definitely made people more interested in Rocksteady’s universe. And I don’t remember there being much dislike of the entire thing anyway. Yeah, I think like playing stuff like Marvel’s Avengers, not to dunk on that game too much because that’s all that ever happens when people talk about that game is dunking on it. But I think that Rocksteady makes it look easy to build, to put that universe on screen. And it definitely isn’t like this. There are tons of ways you can get it wrong. And they’re working with some quite wild stuff. I mean, one of the reasons I love Arkham Knight too is it features Professor Pick, who was a Grant Morrison creation. But Rocksteady were like, Yep, we read Batman comics. That dude’s going on our game, you know, four years later. He’s really fucked up. But it was an amazing sequence. So yeah, I think it’s got real credibility, Matthew, when it comes to comes to those readers. All right, I want to ask you about Origin saying you allude there that you kind of like it. Do you think it’s a little bit underrated versus the other games? Oh, yeah, I think I definitely think it’s underrated. I feel like a lot of people just wrote it off because of the developer. But I feel like it’s got some really, really smart moments in it. And I think it’s got like a it leans harder into the detective part of being Batman than the others do for sure, because it has that whole crime scene reconstruction mechanic as one of the central pillars. And it leans on that quite heavily. But I also think that it’s it’s like a really it feels a lot like year one. It’s like a scrappier story and it’s got a lot of rough edges. But I feel like ultimately it comes together in a good way. And they also in the same way that you mentioned about Rocksteady, you know, flexing to show that they know comics. WB Montreal does the same thing in that and does it with like its use of villains. Like one of my favorite moments is the electrocution of fight. The first time it happens where it lasts about three seconds because Batman just clocks him straight in the face and he’s a low tier villain. But it does the whole bravado sequence where they’re presenting it as if it’s going to be a big deal. And then he just sucker punches him right in the face and takes him out immediately. And that leads into the Deathstroke fight instead. And like that is just them winking at Batman’s fans going, we know this guy is a trash tier villain, so we’re not going to waste your time with it. And like there’s so much of that. And I feel like Troy Baker as like Joker, like Mark Hamill is a hard act to follow. But Troy Baker really, really does a great job. And Roderick Craig Smith as like a younger Bruce Wayne. I think that whole story is also very good. Like it’s a little more, I feel like it’s darker than the others with the whole like Joker blowing stuff up and the black mask stuff. I think it’s interesting as a game enough for me to keep coming back to it and finding every time I come back to it, I find something new and like surprising about it or a new way to appreciate it. So I definitely feel like it’s underrated. That’s cool. I think it taps into like you say that year one thing of like a city that’s going from being a sort of traditional gangland city to the fucked up weird Batman universe Gotham City, which is such a great sort of like thing that they do in those books. But Matthew, do you have any thoughts on Origins? I was curious. I don’t think we talked about this one on the podcast before. Yeah, I liked it enough. I felt like it didn’t like move things forward much in the way that Rocksteady had with City and then would with Knight. You know, it felt kind of what I remember from it is basically everything from from City again, you know, kind of slightly remixed. I like the assassin set up that there are always people like hunting him. I think that’s quite fun. City is a bit empty. Also, I felt like they weren’t as good at the sort of the slightly Metroid element of it, like the backtracking and the kind of picking it apart. Maybe that’s just bad memory and I just didn’t dig into it too much. But I just I remember like the interior levels being the sort of dungeony sort of areas or whatever you’re calling them being like a bit more a bit more linear, a bit more simplified than the others, which is something I like about the other games is that element to it. But I definitely I definitely didn’t hate it. I think I played it on Wii U. Was it on Wii U? I think it was. I think you got Electric Fist on Wii U as like an exclusive. Well brilliant. That’s what Batman needs. Thank God. I definitely don’t hate it. It’s probably something I should revisit because I don’t replay this every year. I think it’s tough because I mean those Rocksteady games in terms of how they progressed had such momentum that like, you know, if you compare it to something like Assassin’s Creed where it’s fairly stayed between between entries and then like there’s like one big revolution every six to seven years. These games were like, okay, he’s gone from a small location to a city. He’s gone from a city to like an actual city with a Batmobile and like they progress so quickly. All that happened within a six year period like an absurd. It’s just absurd. But yeah, tough for origins and also released right between the generation gap as the PS4 came out. So probably felt like more of an also ran than it deserved to. Do you think that’s fair to more? Yeah, I think so. And like it came at a time where I think a lot of people were very precious about the fact that Rocksteady weren’t making it. And like no one should touch Batman unless they’re they’re Rocksteady. And I think that really didn’t help them. I think Blackgate also didn’t help the PSP game, which was made by Armature, which was like here’s another studio working in the Batman franchise with a similar art style and maybe even in the same universe. And that one was a bit rough going despite the fact that Armature were supposed to be a big deal. So, yeah, I feel like, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I guess then to wrap up. So what are like our personal rankings of the series? So I’ve got number four, I’ve got Origins, number three, I’ve got I’ve got Asylum, which I feel bad saying. Number two, I’ve got Knight and number one, I’ve got City. So, Tamoor, what did you, what’s your top four? I think mine are, okay, let me think. I think mine is City, Asylum, Knight, Origins. Right, right, right. Yeah. So Origins is your favorite of the four? No, no, no, that was one to bottom. I was just like, wow, that is bold. Number one is City, number two is Asylum, number three is Knight, number four is Origins. That makes more sense. Matthew, how about you? Yeah, I’ll start with four, Origins. I’d actually probably go Origins, City, Asylum, Knight. Interesting. But that might, I just like the flashy graphics of Knight. You can’t underestimate what a pull that is. The game does still look phenomenal all these years later. I say all these years later, I mean six, six years. Okay, awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us, Tamoor, to talk about the series. Where can people find you on social media? You can find me on Twitter, Tamoor H. Honestly, it’s probably not worth it. I’m just tweeting nonsense. I treat Twitter like a room. I walk in too far in and then leave. I just leave other people to sniff what’s going on. I feel like that’s the healthy approach for me. If you want some of that action, you can find me there, Tamoor H. That’s very polite. And then if you want to watch me stream, you can go to twitch.tv or slash tamoorh. Otherwise, check out my work on GameSpot and Giant Bomb and Kind Of Funny. Everywhere. You’re everywhere, man. Matthew, where can people find you on Twitter? MrBazzle underscore pesto. I’m Samuel. I was just going to say my tweets aren’t like farts. I’ve put a lot of effort into them. It’s like hanging out with me in a room. It’s nice. Tamoor’s tweets are better than he’s given them credit for there. People can keep up with when you’re streaming on Twitter and stuff as well. But I nonetheless like the fart room comparison. I’m Samuel W Roberts on Twitter. If you’d like to follow the podcast, it’s Back Page Pod. Otherwise, we’ll see you next week. Thanks for listening. Thanks very much.