Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Binge Gamer Review
Review: Batman: Arkham Asylum
By James Walker
Eidos are idiots.
…let me explain. Remember how, about a month ago, Eidos was accused of trying to bribe gaming magazines with the right to break the embargo on their Batman: Arkham Asylum review? Well, let’s assume for a moment that this story was true — after all, Eidos has been accused of trying to tamper with reviews in the past. Assuming this is true, somebody at Eidos is breathing a sigh of relief because they risked tarnishing the reputation of one of the best games of 2009.
Batman: Arkham Asylum opens with the Caped Crusader returning Joker to Arkham Asylum after an assault on Gotham’s mayor (that is never seen, but referred to). The first few minutes of the game are you walking with Joker and Arkham’s armed guards, being verbally assaulted by Joker in that special that only he can. While Batman and Joker are both voiced by their Batman: The Animated Series actors (Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, respectively) it becomes very apparent very early on that the game is much darker than the show ever was.
After a few minutes Joker escapes his captors and puts into motion his plan to not only kill Batman, but bring absolute chaos to Gotham City. Naturally, because he is the good guy and also because he’s trapped on the island, Batman sets forth to stop Joker and restore order to Arkham.
“Detective” Comics
You know why almost every other Batman game has failed? It’s because the developers forget one key aspect of what Batman is: he’s a detective. In that respect, Arkham Asylum is really the first game to do Batman justice.
Throughout the game you will be tasked with utilizing Batman’s “Detective Mode”, an alternate way of viewing the world that highlights clues such as fingerprints that you have to follow to continue the story. The Detective Mode also works to highlight interactive parts of the environment such as ventilation grates, ledges to perch on and destructible walls. Early on this helps the player navigate through the game world, but as you become more adept at the game you find that you really don’t need it to know where you can and can’t hide.
Detective Mode also serves the purpose of helping Batman identify which enemies have weapons and which don’t. This has a direct impact on how you go about dispatching said baddies since Batman can only survive for a few seconds under fire.
The usefulness of the Detective Mode is also a drawback in that it becomes very tempting to play through the whole game without ever turning it off. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with playing like that, you miss out on all the little details that help suck you into the game world.
Combat
When you aren’t using the Detective Mode to find all the hiding spots and weak floors that you can blow up, you’ll most likely be getting into fights. There are two ways you can go about the combat, which I’ve dubbed “Classic Batman” and “Frank Miller-style“, respectively.
Frank Miller-style: Contrary to what certain sissies want you to believe, violence is one of the only things that ever actually solves anything. Batman realizes this and goes through great lengths to remind Joker’s henchmen why he is, in fact, a total badass. The combat mechanics are as simple as you can imagine, with a single button serving as your strike button and another serving as your counter-attack. While the combat controls are easy to pick up, they are deceptively hard to master as (especially on harder settings) you will need to have precision timing to counter enemy strikes. Furthermore you also need to think ahead to the next enemy as pausing for even a moment will cause you to lose your combat multiplier, which works to help you earn experience.
The combat is smooth and fluid, for the most part. The only complaint I have is that at times the camera will work against you, obscuring other enemies and causing you to lose the multiplier that you’ve built up.
Classic Batman: Later on in the game as enemies with firearms become more frequent, you will want to keep to the shadows since Batman, while being a tough SOB, is not bulletproof and it only takes a few shots for him to go down for good. By using explosive gel, batarangs and high perches like stone gargoyles, you can stay out of enemy sights and pick them off one-by-one. This becomes especially fun after you’ve KO’ed two or three of them and you see the remaining henchmen start to freak out.
Exploration
Because Arkham Asylum takes place entirely on Arkham Island, you are going to backtrack. A lot. Thankfully this never gets old as there is a ton of exploration to be had. Of course, you’ll be doing most of the exploration as you try to solve the many puzzles left by Batman’s intellectual equal, Edward Nigma aka The Riddler.
Nigma has scattered an absurd 240 “riddles” across Arkham Island. These “riddles” (in quotations, for obvious reasons) range from finding hidden trophies and interview recordings between Arkham’s villains and their psychiatrists, to having to solve actual riddles by taking pictures of certain areas of the game, such as Penguin’s cell and Dr. Harleen Quinzell’s former office. The most rewarding of these riddles to solve are Riddler’s trademark signature, the Question Mark. Using your Detective Mode vision, you must find both parts of the Question Mark (the curve and the period). What makes this difficult is that they are usually on opposite ends of the environment and require you to line them both up before you can snap an image. These puzzles require you to really think about where the other half of the puzzle can be and some are harder to find than others.
Even after you’ve beaten the main game and have solved all of Riddler’s challenges, you’ll still want to run around Arkham Island, simply to look at all of the little details that you may have missed while in Detective Mode.
Presentation
He is vengeance. He is the night. Kevin Conroy IS Batman! But even though there have been other actors who have done the role of Batman justice (Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer, even though Batman Forever was garbage)*, nobody has been able to do Joker justice in the way that Mark Hamill has. Not even Heath Ledger’s serial-rapist heroin-addict take on Joker comes close to the pure, twisted, maniacal joy that Hamill brings to the role. Hearing the two of them together just feels… right and proper.
Hamill’s performance deserves extra praise. No longer hindered by the limitations of the cartoon (read: standards and practices), Hamill goes all out in his portrayal of a twisted psychotic with a warped (but admittedly funny) sense of humor. On one hand I wish he had been like this since day one, but on the other hand… I think it would’ve given my six year-old self nightmares.
But for as excellent as Conroy and Hamill are, the other voices that bring the the Rogues Gallery to life are equally good. Arleen Sorkin reprises her role as Harley Quinn from Batman: The Animated Series, and Wally Wingert gives a show-stealing performance as The Riddler. It’s so good that I hope to see him reprise the role again.
Arkham Island itself is dirty, gritty and dark. In other words, it serves the story perfectly. The world and the characters also straddle a fine line of surrealism where everything looks like it could be real, but also carries over just enough of the comic book aesthetic to keep it feeling like the Batman universe. As for Batman himself, all I can really say is that if Batman were a real person, he would have to look like this.
****MINOR SPOILER ALERT****
There are a few sequences where you battle Scarecrow. Without spoiling the surprise, I’ll only say that there is a moment in the game that rivals Eternal Darkness on the fuck-with-your-head-o-meter. This moment is especially terrifying if you are playing on an Xbox 360.
****END SPOILER ALERT****
Other members of Batman’s rogues gallery that make appearances in the game include Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, Mr. Zsasz, Clayface (but never in his true form) and Bane:
Challenge Mode
In addition to the core game there is also Challenge Mode, which lets you hone your skills and try to rack up as many points as possible. There are two key types of Challenges: Stealth and Combat.
Stealth: Hiding in the rafters and picking enemies off one-by-one. You are awarded medals for completing certain takedowns, and you are ranked based on the amount of time it takes you to take everybody out.
Combat: The combat challenges have you fighting a set number of enemies. Each enemy beaten awards you points which are multiplied based on the length of your combo, how many rounds you can go without being hit and the variety of your attacks. The higher your point total is, the more medals you earn.
If you pre-ordered the game through GameStop you can download the Scarecrow challenge map where you keep going until you’re hit once. If you own the game on the PlayStation 3, you’ll have the chance to play through the Challenge Maps as Joker.
TL;DR
Batman: Arkham Asylum is many things. It is the best Batman video game ever made, it is the best comic-book video game ever made and it is my front-runner (as of this review) for Game of the Year. If you are a fan of steal games, you owe it to yourself to pick this game up. If you’re a fan of Batman… well, if you’re a fan of Batman you probably already own the game and therefore not reading this review because you know it’s awesome.
Buy it — it’s one of the best games of 2009.
Oh, and Harley Quinn is fuckin’ hot.
*Christian Bale, while a great Bruce Wayne, is a goofy ass Batman. Deal with it.