More free Batman DLC tomorrow

By Tom Bramwell Published 23 September, 2009

Update: Appears to be on Live today.

Eidos has announced plans to release another free downloadable map pack for Batman: Arkham Asylum on 24th September.

The Prey in the Darkness add-on will be available for PlayStation Network and Xbox Live and features two new Challenge mode maps.

(Update: One of our Twitter friends points out it's live now on Xbox. Almost as amusing as my originally believing the 24th was next week - yes, I don't know what day it is.)

The first of these is a combat one, Heart of Darkness, in which you get to battle it out with enemies in the Arkham Pumping Station from deep in the campaign.

Then there's the Hothouse Prey map, which is of the Invisible Predator variety, where you take people out in the Abandoned Glasshouse section of the Botanical Gardens.

Prey in the Darkness is the second such map pack for Arkham Asylum, following on from the Insane Night pack released last week.

The full game, you may remember, is rather good, and you can read our review to find out why. Yours truly ended up playing it for 20 hours in two days, although frankly I need to be committed anyway.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • tossetaz #1 2 years ago

    Oh Eidos you really are spoiling us with all that free dlc!!
    Edited by 1 at 23/09/09 @ 17:12

  • deadmonkeyuk #2 2 years ago

    Why can this DLC be offered free, but MS are forcing Valve to charge for L4D DLC? (which is free on PC)

  • tossetaz #3 2 years ago

    @deadmonkeyuk are we sure it's microsoft that's doing it?

    and if it is - it probably has to do with it being xbox 360 and pc exclusive - when sony can't offer the dlc for free what reason do microsoft have to?

  • Moribundman #4 2 years ago

    Ummmmmm this was on Live earlier this afternoon...

  • linksdad #5 2 years ago

    Valve: Hi MS we are ready to release our free DLC.
    MS: Free, what do you mean free, if you charge for it you will make $$$.
    Valve: No thanks we wanted to reward our xbox customers like we did our PC customers...
    Valve: Oh go on then.

    Good one Eidos, and thanks for making a great game.

  • jaxon58 #6 2 years ago

    This will be the new strategy for prevention of trade-ins. Free DLC seems to be the best way to stop people trading in during the first four weeks.

  • organica #7 2 years ago

    Bloody hell. Nice one.

    They're really going for the chufty badge, huh?

  • Paperghost #8 2 years ago

    Awesome. I'd happily pay good money for a decent sized collection of fight / stealth maps - the way they've set the game up fairly cries out for it so hopefully some will be along soon. for now, the freebies are definitely worth a thumbs up!

  • glo #9 2 years ago

    I take my hat off to eidos and rocksteady

    good to see a developer and publisher rewarding their customer rather than milking them for a change.

  • penhalion #10 2 years ago

    I'd pay for a new chapter to the game as the challenge maps were pretty dull to me.

  • sneetch #11 2 years ago

    @deadmonkeyuk
    Why can this DLC be offered free, but MS are forcing Valve to charge for L4D DLC? (which is free on PC)

    I'd like to see the definition of "forcing" in Valve's dictionary, tbh. ;)

  • richyroo #12 2 years ago

    I wonder if they offer the DLC for free to try and slow down the 2nd hand copies that will eventually flood the market? Great game it may be, but with only single player on offer, there are bound to be quite a lot of copies traded in once completed.
    By offering free DLC, it will convince a fair number of people to hold onto the game. Just an idea?!

  • Ryboy #13 2 years ago

    So what about DLC for the PC? Why cant us PC peeps have it too?

  • hiddenranbir #14 2 years ago

    It will be for the PC.

    Go in game and go to downloadable content. You can download the insane pack already.

  • WinterSnowblind #15 2 years ago

    @deadmonkeyuk
    Plenty of exclusive 360 games have free content as well. Frankly, I don't buy the stories from these devlopers that are blaming MS for why we have to pay for content that should be free. The PGR games are good examples. Exclusive to the 360 and offered very large amounts of free content.

  • Diabeu #16 2 years ago

    nice move with this free dlc, thanks eidos/rocksteady for this kind of support

    and Valve, ehhh I don't want to talk about Valve....

  • Raz76 #17 2 years ago

    The thing is that it's not free on Xbox Live, it requires gold subscription. Which can fuck right off. I kind of regret not getting the game for the PS3 instead.

  • Olemak #18 2 years ago

    Actually...

    This DLC stuff is really just a slightly different perspective on content that is already in the core game, right?

    I mean - the "Abandoned Glasshouse" is a part of the singleplayer campaign, and an area in which there's already a big fight? Yes?
    So yanking that "level" out of the singleplayer game, slapping on the already established challenge room combat mechanic and maybe tweaking the opponent loadout for four rounds of freeflow mayhem isn't really all that much work... is it?

    I really appreaciate the effort, and I love Batman: Arkham Asylum, but it's not like this stuff takes a lot of wourk to get out there. Smart move of them, like Richyroo pointed out: this "free flow" of "new", free content is slowing down the second hand market a lot. No way that I am trading in my copy. Not that I was going to anyway. This game is a keeper.

    So, it's nice of them to "give away" content like this, but I think they are doing because it's good business sense, not only because they're just nice people. Probably some smart guy at Eidos that told them to hold off some of the content intended for the initial game to set off trade in's.

    I wonder if they're develop some actual, new content for the game tho. I wonder what that could be. Maybe stopping the Two-face bank robbery mentioned at the very end? I'd pay for that.

  • bratmandu #19 2 years ago

    @ Olemak :

    The first DLC was a 'hand to hand fighting' challenge that had infinate waves of bad guys - they never stop coming, you just have to see how far you can get. The stealth map of the first DLC seemed to be a place NOT in the main game - at least, i didnt remember it from the main game.

    --

    The invisible predator (stealth) maps are great, i finished the main game in the first week, and these are a welcome bit of fun - trying to get all the medals is pretty cool too - more stealth maps dlc plz!

  • Olemak #20 2 years ago

    Oh ok, I have not gotten around to playing the DLC yet, as my PS3 and the wireless router are corrently not on speaking terms. I think the router is to blame, it suddently decided to change it's name and I dont know how to change it back, forgot my login details :p

    The endless steam of enemies sound really good, but my point is, I guess: this is content that easily could have been in the retail game. I think it is a very clever way to ensure prolonged ownership, tho, and I applaud them for this. I hope they sell tons, and that nobody trades their copy of Batman in. They could be missing out on fantastic DLC that is just around the corner. Glever, clever guys and gals over at Rocksteady (and Eidos).

    I hope Rocksteady will both get a sequel and the job of making the game to go with the next Batman movie. And good enough time to do it right. But seeing as they already have the gameplay perfected, making an adaptation of a batman movie based on the technology they already have should be relatively easy, even on a tight schedule. Sprinkling a Batman game with Riddler Trophies like character Photos (from the movie), movie clips, trivia, documentaries etc etc would actually be very very nice. And Christian Bales voice... now that is finally a movie-to-game title I'd be psyched for...

  • smelly #21 2 years ago

    I *loved* this game.. but the challenges never really intersted me enough to not sell the game once i'd completed it.

  • bratmandu #22 2 years ago

    Yea, free DLC announcements pretty much guarantee you'll keep the game until the content comes out at least. If they promised a couple of new maps every now and then for free, and maybe chuck in the odd paid-for campaign extension, i could play a game like this for ages. Without the challenge maps, and free stuff I'd have traded this in pretty much the minute i'd done the campaign on hard.

    Hopefully other developers follow suite to bust up gamestop's used games empire!

  • muscleblade #23 2 years ago

    @bratmandu

    Same here. Poison Ivy on hard is kind of hard btw. My last achievement is beating the game on hard after that i will download the new challenges. I love them. I probably wont trade in this game ever. One of my favourite games this gen. I usually hate collectibles but even those where fun to find.

  • bratmandu #24 2 years ago

    Yea, she was def one of the tougher bosses on hard, still, whole game took me a good 20 - 22 hours on hard, with all collectables. Decent. Loving tryin to get medals in the stealth challenges.
    Edited by 1 at 24/09/09 @ 12:57