I'm somewhat baffled by the Batman projects that don't have Batman in them. There's a TV show about the early life of Batman's butler Alfred; the 2019 Joker movie was Batman-less; October's disappointing "Gotham Knights" is full of heroes, but Batman himself only appears in the first five minutes. I know it's the current trend to squeeze every last drop out of the expanding superhero universe, but I can't bring myself to be interested in a Batman thing that doesn't have Batman in it.

In the words of Batman, "I am Batman. If you're going to make a new Batman movie, Batman should be in it more, not less.

So I was excited to see a new Batman movie coming out: Batman: Rogue City. And surprisingly, this is a full conversion mod of "Doom 2" (open in new tab), featuring the Dark Knight himself and his familiar enemies.

Believe it or not, just because it's a mod for a nearly 30-year-old game doesn't make Rogue City look like a ridiculous Batman game. With this mod, you can beat up the Dodger, use grappling hooks and stun guns, fight bosses like Mr. Freeze, the Mad Hatter, Harley Quinn, and the Joker, and even drive the Batmobile through Gotham City. All with the Doom engine.

The trailer shows the inside of Arkham Asylum, where prisoners once again run the prison. The Mad Hatter appears on a monitor inside Gotham's stock exchange, where businessmen are tied up by hoodlums wearing rabbit masks. And Batman appears, punching goons in a maze of cargo containers, soaring through the air with a rapid-fire grapnel, and wielding the iconic Batarang.

Mr. Freeze's lair offers a glimpse of a frozen Nora Fries (followed by an angry Freeze himself), and the Batmobile speeds across a bridge, firing machine guns and blowing up the Joker gang's purple and green car. The Gotham skyline even shows Wayne Tower and the Bat-signal reflected in the clouds, and the trailer ends with a confrontation between the Joker and Harley. What more could one want from a Batman game?

Batman Rogue City has not yet been released, but the creators say they will release a public beta "soon." So don't miss the bat signal on the Moddb page (opens in new tab).

In the meantime, consider checking out Batman Doom (opens in new tab), a very good 1999 mod by the Chilean development group that became ACE Team, the developers of Zeno Clash and Clash: Artifacts of Chaos