Return of The Joker: New Commercial For Batman: Arkham Origins And Joker Voice Actor Does The Killing Joke

In April, Amanda and I completely redid the Entertainment Annex of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, and due to changes in layout and furniture, we haven’t reconnected my XBox 360 (My gamertag? You don’t want my gamertag. I shoot the Witches in Left For Dead 2, and I do it because I quickly reach a point where I don’t care if it’s my “teammates” or me who dies if it means I don’t have to hear about my mother’s sexual proclivities anymore).

And, in an effort to keep the newly-renovated room looking like adults live here, I have held fast in keeping it disconnected, despite having a yen to play my XBox Arcade downloads after a weekend of classic video games, and even through the release of Grand Theft Auto V, because I figure once either the XBox One or the Playstation 4 comes out, either will replace my elderly and slow Blu-Ray player in favor of a new one that will report my tastes in pornography back to Corporate Headquarters.

But I recently realized that, even if I need to balance the ol’ 360 on top of a speaker or run cables across the middle of the floor, I will need to hook that bad boy up, because Batman: Arkham Origins is dropping before the end of the month. And even though this one isn’t being written by Bruce Timm, and the main voices aren’t by Kevin Conroy or Mark Hamill, and it’s the first Arkham game not produced by Rocksteady Games, the first two games earned more then enough goodwill for me to pick it up on launch day.

And the ads are helping to get me excited… kinda. On one hand, this new spot that takes us, in just a few seconds, through Bruce Wayne’s journey from Crime Alley to Batman… but it also makes me concerned that we’re gonna be spending more time than I’d like with Bruce Wayne instead of Batman. Arkham Origins without the Batman suit or the streets of Gotham or familiar rogues stands a real chance of becoming Double Dragon… but the emotional beats in the video give me some hope that it’ll be right at the core.

And you can check the latest spot after the jump.

Video Distractions: Batman: Arkham Origins Teaser Released

Comics aren’t the only thing in my life, you know. I am also somewhat of a home theater enthusiast, to the point where I have built my own home theater PC (Think a TiVo, only with 4.5 terabytes of storage space, that also plays home video, music, and online media, as well as skipping commercials automatically on recorded TV, and all without a byte of digital rights management), run by a small universal infrared sensor to read commands from a standard remote control.

I also just bought and wall-mounted a sick plasma TV to replace my old DLP projection job and – funny story – didja know that plasma TVs, as well as having the best contrast available, also spit out a bunch of infrared noise? Noise that, say, a universal infrared sensor can see? And try to constantly process? Making the PC that’s listening to that sensor as dumb as a brick?

However, being a clever man, I thought of a fix that requires only a small cardboard jewelry box. Really: that’s it. Well, that and about $400 of obscure hobbyist parts that require extensive programming and tweaking to allow a line-of-sight infrared sensor to listen to a remote control while the sensor is crammed into a small cardboard jewelry box.

All of which is a long way to go to explain that I am extremely busy today – trying to turn a bracelet box into an electronic home theater component will do that to you – but I do have one thing for you: Batman: Arkham Origins, the sequel to the excellent Arkham Asylum and Arkham City videogames, is due out this coming October, and the producers have released the first teaser video for the game, featuring Batman kicking the shit out of a low-level bad guy. A low level bad guy named Deathstroke. And you can check it out after the jump