Developer Profile: Rocksteady Studios

It's no mystery that Batman: Arkham Asylum has become one of the surprise hits of the summer. Fans dared to hope for a Batman game that accurately captured the character while still being a fun game. It seemed impossible but the folks at Rocksteady Studios pulled it off. The game is beautiful, engrossing, and just plain fun thanks to a great cast and greater gameplay.

But just where did Rocksteady Studios come from?

I personally had never heard of them before Batman. It turns out that the developer was founded in 2004 by Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker. It is based in Highgate, North London. Many of their programmers worked together in the past, including the game adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. They now employ 55 people and have one other game to their credit. That game is the first-person shooter Urban Chaos: Riot Response for the PS2 and Xbox.

Before researching the company, I had never heard of the game. The reason is obvious, it came out in June of 2006. The Playstation 3 was looming in the horizon and the Xbox 360 was already out. However, just because it was forgettable doesn't mean it was a bad game. Urban Chaos was unique in that it cast players as part of a city task force called T-Zero that actually worked hand in hand with other departments in New York City as you tried to bring gangs under control. EMTs, firemen, and policemen were all there to help you solve physical puzzles, save civilians, and arrest gang leaders. That last one is especially notable in that arrests were used to later interrogate these leaders. Reviewers noted that the game was very good at making it seem like the civil servants were working together as a community.

What I found particularly interesting was the way unlockables and extras were handled in the game. In each of the game's 18 missions, a list of objectives was available to players in order to unlock extra missions and upgrades. Regularly occurring objectives included pulling off headshots, making arrests, detective objectives, and survivor objectives. As you played through the game, the number of headshots required to earn upgrades increases, from five or 10 early in the game to 25 or 30 later on. Arrests require players to shock and detain an enemy using a taser device. Detective objectives require searching each level and collecting masks. And Survivor objectives are met by playing through a level without having to use the check points. Am I the only one who thinks this sounds like an early version of the Riddler's challenges?

One of the biggest problems with Urban Chaos was that it had no recognizable or identifiable main character and a nonexistant overall story. Other characters were just as forgettable and had generic designs. The art direction as a whole was considered bland and the load times were quite long.

Obviously Rocksteady Studios rebounded from this and made a game that improved on story and art direction. It's interesting to see the evolution of a developer but I'm not sure if there are many others that had such a jump in quality from their first game to their second. Here's hoping their third continues the upward trend.