User Review : Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham Asylum absolutely lives up to the hype it has received in the past little while.

Ever since I had the chance to experience the demo, I knew that Rocksteady had something potentially outstanding on their hands. We were shown some excellent combat, stealth, and visuals, as well as the opening to what could possibly be one of the best Batman storylines to date. However, could Rocksteady’s finished product be as good as what we had been shown? You can form your own opinion, but I was miles and miles away from disappointed.

Life is good for Batman, he’s caught the majority of his all-time greatest foes and they now reside between the walls of the revered “Arkham Asylum”. Add one more to the list, because as the game’s opening sequence plays we see that The Joker has also been recently apprehended as well after taking the mayor hostage. This turn of events does not go without suspicions however, as The Clown Prince of Crime apparently handed himself over a little too easily. Add that up with the fact that many of Joker’s gang are now being held within the asylum after a convenient fire at their prison, and we’ve got an eyebrow raiser. The Bat’s suspicions hold true, as within minutes Joker has escaped from the clutches of his captors and introduced chaos by unleashing the inmates alongside his ever-so-seductive sidekick Harley Quinn.

Now it’s up to you stop this madman in his own home. A task that will bring you to every corner of Arkham Island, and require the use of damn near every tool on the utility belt. Are you up for it?

One thing to remember is that, while Batman may be a hero to many youngsters across the world, Batman: Arkham Asylum is in no way a game for children. Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy both appear with some pretty big redesigns for a much sexier and revealing look, and the general atmosphere of the game is very dark, featuring many instances of death, cursing, and destruction.

This dark and adult atmosphere is in no way a negative aspect, if anything it improves the game. At times there is even a dark humor present, such as with The Riddler. I don’t want to spoil the joke for you, but at one point he tells one which involves a baby with missing limbs which is actually pretty funny. But overall the best parts of this dark theme are the Scarecrow segments. These scenes give us an inside look at Batman’s fears and weaknesses, and make Batman look like more of a human than he ever has before, and less like an invincible vigilante hero. Something I praise the writers for.

Now let’s touch on the different aspects of gameplay within Batman: Arkham Aslyum. There’s the hand-to-hand combat, the stealth, and the exploration portions. We’ll start with the straight up hand-to-hand stuff.

At different points throughout the game you’ll run into a room filled with The Joker’s baddies just waiting for you. No gargoyles? No high ledges? Well that throws stealth out the window, time for some mano-a-mano scrapping. Fighting is done with the left analog stick and the four face buttons. The left analog stick controls The Dark Knight’s direction, X/square is used as your regular physical attack, Y/triangle is for countering, B/circle is for stunning enemies, and A/x is used to jump around the room like the Nesquik rabbit on crack. The combat is easy to pick up on, yet the difficulty is increased throughout the game at a very nice pace.

Button-mashers be warned, simply pressing X/square over and over again with the occasional counter will not work in this game. At first, yes that may get you through fights, however as you progress the enemies will possess stronger weapons such as tasers or knives which require a much more strategic approach involving stuns and evasions.

If you can resist button mashing and take your shots wisely, you’ll have an easier time filling up your combo-meter. The combo-meter rises as you successfully land hits on enemies and will revert back to zero once you yourself are hit. If you can manage to get your meter high enough a number of things will happen, such as the ability to perform a special attack or the unlocking of certain achievements or trophies.

All of these things factor into your XP gauge, which works a lot like the XP from X-Men Origins: Wolverine. In the upper left corner of the screen is a circular gauge representing XP, when this gauge is filled you can then choose to unlock one upgrade. Upgrades include a number of things such as special attacks, increases in health, extra gadgets, and much more.

There are other ways to gain XP however, and this brings me to the next section of gameplay, stealth. Stealth is probably one of the game’s best parts, as there are a plethora of different options available to the player when going into a stealth situation. In rooms which require stealth there are usually a group of gargoyles conveniently positioned along the walls up near the ceiling. Batman can grapple up onto these gargoyles, switch to detective mode, and scan the room for information on how many bad guys there are, as well as which ones are armed. The player can slowly pick off the enemies one by one and watch as they grow increasingly terrified as The Joker himself announces over the speaker system that one of them has fallen. How do you pick off these grovelling goons? Well that’s entirely up to you. There are glide kicks, inverted takedowns, sonic batarangs, I could go on forever about the different possibilities. However, if you don’t like using the gargoyles for leverage you can sneak around the room and take out your enemies from behind using silent takedowns. One gripe I have with silent takedowns however, is that they are far too easy to pull off. Two guards can be standing about 3 or 4 feet apart. If one of them is taken out by a silent takedown the other will not even take notice. I can’t imagine this happening in a real life setting, then again, who in real life is a highly skilled vigilante who masquerades as a bat?

Are you a pacifist? Well if so then you’re playing the wrong game, but there is plenty to do outside of wiping the floors with thugs. With that I bring you the 3rd gameplay element, exploration. Arkham Island is a pretty big place, and there are plenty of nooks and crannies to explore throughout your stay. That is fantastic Chad, you say, but what will drive us to explore this lunatic-infested landmass? I respond “Hi diddle diddle, it’s time for a riddle.” Early in the game your earpiece will be hacked by none other than Edward Nigma a.k.a. “The Riddler” himself. The Riddler doesn’t appear in person, but he has left an astounding 240 riddles across the entire island for you to figure out. These include trophies, word problems (which can almost be considered Easter eggs), visual puzzles, and many more interesting things to seek out in order to unlock character trophies and biographies. You are allowed to continue exploring after beating the game, so I came back and spent a good number of hours trying to find as many riddles as I could, that’s how addicting it is.

Included in these riddles are the patient interview tapes. These can be found on floors and on desks throughout the area and allow for us to get a better idea on what makes the madmen (and women) tick. Not all characters have these, but those who do have interviews consisting of 5 parts of a recorded conversation between themselves and one of the asylum’s many psychiatrists. These reminded me of the collectible audio recordings in Bioshock and, much like those in Bioshock, provide a very interesting back-story to the game. Perhaps the most interesting thing about these tapes is that after listening to a character’s set, they don’t sound as crazy as before and you can almost sympathize with the evil-doers.

Aside from the story mode there is the challenge mode, a re-play of certain areas within the main game with rounds thrown in. The player tries to be as skillful and quick as possible in order to beat their friend’s high scores which show up on a leaderboard in the select challenge menu. Points are also awarded depending on how you dispose of your enemies using your environment and the tools you possess. The fights and Invisible Predator challenges themselves are simply different parts from the game that you’ve seen already, but the leaderboards definitely improve the fun as friends will try to out-do each other’s scores competitively.

Those of you who were fans of the Batman: Animated Series show which ran from 1992 to 1995 may be familiar with Mark Hamill’s excellent performance as The Joker. Well, Skywalker returns in Arkham Asylum and not surprisingly does an incredible job as the sadistic clown. I urge you to enable subtitles in order to catch every little thing that Hamill says as you run around Arkham. He may be the star talent but the other voice work is also stellar. Every character, good and bad, has believable voice actors who’s renditions fit them to a tee. When it comes to music you’ll be hearing exactly what you expect in a Batman atmosphere, dark classical compositions which, correct me if I’m wrong, sound as if some of the tracks came directly from the previous two movies in Batman lore.

As you progress through the game you’ll notice that Batman’s suit gradually gets torn and the billionaire playboy himself receives some scarring and a 5 o’clock shadow. These subtle things really had a good impression on me as well as the dark and decrepit theme present in the game’s environments. Granted, the game isn’t the absolutely best looking on the market as it does have slight flaws here and there, but if that actually bothers you then you should probably check yourself into Arkham.

I’m sure there are many of you who are wondering which version to get, PS3 or 360. If I were you I would get the PS3 version as it does offer you a free download for DLC on the PSN Store which unlocks the ability to play as The Joker. The 360 will most likely get this DLC eventually, but who knows when and for how much.

It’s official, Batman: Arkham Asylum is indeed the best Batman game to da- no wait, let me do that again. Batman: Arkham Asylum is the best comic book game to date. The poor A.I. and minuscule graphics issues are nothing compared to the grandeur that is this masterpiece. An excellently pulled-off dark theme, an intriguing storyline, very fun gameplay, and outstanding voice acting net Batman: Arkham Asylum a 5 out of 5.

Final Score: (5/5)