Batman: Arkham Asylum (video game)

Batman: Arkham Asylum. Rocksteady Studios. PS3, August 2009. Eidos Interactive, December 2009.

Reviewed by Sean Kennedy, SFRA Review #291 (Winter 2010): pp. 32-33, who notes that

Technology is commonplace throughout Arkham Asylum: Batman relies on the latest WayneTech gadgets to outwit and defeat his foes, Arkham Asylum is protected primarily through technology, and it is this reliance on technology that ultimately results in the guards’ loss of control of the asylum. [...] Such devices include security cameras, door locks, prisoner “suicide collars,” and the not-so-humane “patient pacification system,” which is essentially a floor designed to electrocute problem inmates. [* * *]

The Scarecrow portions of the game make the player question what is real and what is purely imagination, not unlike the false memories of the replicants in Blade Runner or false perceptions of the Matrix in The Matrix. The authority’s over-reliance on technology leads to disaster when that technology was turned against it, just as Skynet turned against humanity in the Terminator films.[1]

For the "suicide collars," cf. and contrast those on "Risks" in Pohl and Williamson's Reefs of Space and such films as DEADLOCK, VIRTUAL COMBAT, CAPTIVE STATE, SWORDFISH, INSURGENT.

RDE, finishing, 19Mar21