AggroGamer: "If I'm not mistaken, Batman: Arkham Asylum is the twenty-first video game centered around the Dark Knight. Going all the way back to 1986 and the first game, appropriately titled Batman, I've only really found a handful of the games that can be considered at the very least decent. The SNES version of Batman Returns was great as a typical side-scrolling brawling game and of course more recently there was last year's Lego Batman which was good for a laugh or two. However nothing really captured the spirit of the character, let alone his environment and for the games that tried, they failed miserably. But Batman is one of those characters that people are willing to take a chance on. No matter how many misguided attempts to make a Batman video game have come before, Warner Bros., Eidos, and Rocksteady Studios were willing to come together to try and incorporate everything that makes Batman one of the greatest characters in comics and for the most part they were successful.
The premise of the game is fairly straightforward. Joker escapes and holds the mayor hostage. Batman takes him down and brings him back to Arkham Asylum. During the prisoner transfer Joker breaks loose and takes over the island. It's soon realized that he had been planning this for sometime having carefully moved all the pieces of his master plan into place. Now it's up to Batman to shut the Joker's scheme down and restore order. Of course along the way, a whole host of Batman's deadliest foes are going to show up to try and destroy him. Personally I didn't really look at the premise as being anything ground-breaking since I'm pretty sure something almost identical to this particular scenario has occurred before (I want to say Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth). But as I actually experienced the story playing through the game, it became so much more than I had ever expected. It became such a deep routed, psychological thriller as I progressed through the asylum and was put through the tests of some of Batman's most dangerous enemies."
Discover the best Batman Arkham games ranked from Asylum to Knight, including Origins, VR and more, with a focus on combat, story, and world design.
Batman: Arkham Asylum's powerful intro paves the way to an excellent gameplay experience, even almost 15 years later.
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