Urban Chaos: Riot Response was Rocksteady's pre-Batman crime crackdown

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Bruce, almighty. As widescreen summer entertainments go, Batman: Arkham Knight is big, brash and badass enough to mix it with any of 2015's movie blockbusters. It's even been marketed as the conclusion of an epic trilogy, equating London-based developers Rocksteady with popcorn auteurs like Christopher Nolan or Peter Jackson and positioning Arkham Knight as the capstone to some grand, overarching mythos. (This also conveniently sweeps 2013's snowy Arkham Origins, the competent but slightly underwhelming prequel developed separately by Warner Bros Montreal, under the bat-carpet.)
But before Batman: Arkham Asylum rubber-stamped Rocksteady as major industry players in 2009, they'd already created a game where one man attempts to save a beleaguered city from eccentric criminals using a combination of hi-tech gear and down-and-dirty street-fighting. Eidos published Rocksteady's first game in 2006, two years after Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker established the studio. During development, it had been codenamed Roll Call. But when it arrived on PS2 and Xbox, it was rebranded Urban Chaos: Riot Response, which certainly sounds like an exciting collection of words. (The Urban Chaos part was lifted from a forgotten PS1/PC game Eidos had previously published; the Riot Response bit was essentially the player's job description.)
To continue the auteur theory: before you go and see the new Fantastic Four movie, you might rewatch Chronicle, Josh Trank's previous film as writer/director, to see if it helps you get a handle on his reboot. Similarly, the rapturous reaction to Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World could send intrigued dino-fans back to the director's first movie, the low-budget time-travel tale Safety Not Guaranteed, to try and work out what impressed Spielberg so much he handed over the reins to a beloved franchise. In that spirit, I wanted to return to Urban Chaos: Riot Response - in search of any Batman breadcrumbs. The core Rocksteady crew that created Urban Chaos had a major hand in Arkham Asylum three years later. Could rugged riot cop Nick Mason be a proto-Bruce Wayne?
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