Takes a Minute To Get There, But Worth the Trip
Batman: Arkham Asylum is based on the DC Comics (recently DC Entertainment) character who has become a cultural touchstone since the brilliant one-two punch of "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" and this game, while taking a little while to rev up, fairly accurately simulates what it must be like to be The Batman.
You take control of the titular character as he's bringing his archnemesis the Joker to the sinister Arkham Asylum. Naturally something goes wrong within the first ten minutes of Joker's incarceration and Batman is forced to enter the Asylum to apprehend the violent clown and ensure as few people are hurt as possible. On the way you'll encounter a fairly hefty cast of the Dark Knight's most vicious recurring villains and even find souvenirs from all the others. The bosses were well chosen to give Batman a realistic challenge since, as a master of martial arts, just throwing any old villain at Bats would be like expecting a twelve year old karate student to fight Bruce Lee. He'll also be confronted by a series of challenges from the Riddler. Many of these require, or at least are assisted by, Detective Vision, in which everything appears with a blue tint, you can see the outlines of the scenery and objects and even see through some walls and doors. These challenges range from finding small statues scattered throughout the grounds to discovering how to align symbols to finding the remnants of the asylum's founder. Even finding the souvenirs of villains who don't make appearances, but do get character profiles unlocked.
This touches on my favorite part of the game: not the fights or riddles themselves but the loving attention to tiny details that show that this crew clearly know their Riddler from their Mad Hatter. The Asylum feels like a fully formed and realized building, even when vents don't lead anywhere but to one of the small statues, they continue on for a little while so it's not like they were just some tiny chamber for the secret. There are too many tiny things like that to mention, but it really gives the impression that you're in an Asylum fighting for Batman's life.
And speaking of fighting: the "free-flow system" that Batman uses to obliterate hordes of inmates is one of the most satisfying, intuitive systems I've ever used to fight multiple opponents. It ensures that danger could come from any direction at almost any time, but that you'll be ready as long as your reflexes are sharp enough and you don't lose your cool. At first seeming like mindless button mashing, as enemies get stronger you'll need to assess each one as they come at you and react accordingly. That is unless they have guns. In that case, the game switches to "predatory" mode where you'll try to isolate one thug before taking him out as quietly as possible. Once again Detective Vision is massively useful for seeing where your targets are at all times, though it can be a little hard to see what direction they're facing. This leads to probably the most deeply satisfying part of the game: taking out a group of henchman one by one and watching their buddies freak out as they try to find you until only one is left, spinning and shooting wildly and randomly. The psychological AI is amazingly good.
These all combine with the incredible voice acting from most of the cast of the incredibly popular animated series from the 1990s (including the brilliant Kevin Conroy and Mark Hammil as Batman and the Joker respectively) and some of the most genuinely frightening hallucination sequences since Eternal Darkness pioneered the concept to make a game that starts slow, becomes satisfying and finally impossible to put down. I've never seen a more perfect union of atmosphere and gameplay than what they've achieved in Arkham Asylum. Even if you'd never heard of Batman before, the game's 6-10 hour length (depending on how hard you want to look for the Riddler's trinkets) and different Challenge Maps make it easy to recommend.
