By far the most exciting and well made Super Hero game to date.
Batman Arkham Asylum is a surprisingly great game. In the past, the standards for a game based off of a super hero have been relatively low. That’s why I was extremely skeptical about the amount of hype this game was getting pre-launch, but once I started playing it I immediately saw why everyone was so excited. Not only is the game technically sound, but it also feels like a true Batman experience and not just a grab at the success of the Dark Knight movie. In other words, the guys that made this game actually did their Batman research.
The game starts with Batman arriving at Arkham Asylum with the Joker. Batman immediately suspects the Joker of having some evil scheme at work because of the ease of his capture, and within the first few minutes he turns out to be right. Joker breaks free and releases all of the villains being held at the asylum as well as setting traps for Batman to fall into. The game uses the Asylum to give a perfectly logical reason for the multitude of villains that Batman will encounter throughout the game. Batman will meet many of his foes including the most famous like Scarecrow, Harley Quin, and Poison Ivy. Most of the villains that are being thrown at Batman have their own Arkham stories to go along with their over obsessive want to kill Batman. These stories are told Bio Shock style threw sets of audio recordings of the inmates and their doctors that are lying around various places in the Asylum. Although you don’t have to try and find all of these tapes, the stories that they themselves tell are pretty interesting.
Not only are there tapes for the Batman to find, but also trophies and of course riddles set up by the Riddler for you to find. The trophies and riddles give a collection aspect to the game that makes it feel almost Metriodvania because of how you see some trophies that are just out of reach until you acquire the means to get to them. This gives completionists, such as myself, another compelling reason to keep on playing in the hopes of being able to reach the next riddle or trophy. Also, by finding certain riddles you unlock character bios of all the main characters in the Batman comics as well as some of the more uncommon villains. This gives the game an authentic feel that has you feeling like you’re playing a game made by actually Batman fans that aren’t just using the license as a sort of selling point.
The game play in Arkham Asylum is what truly sets this apart from other super hero games. There are a few different styles to the game play that give it a fresh feel from beginning to end. There are times when Batman must face a number of unarmed thugs that Joker has placed throughout the Asylum. Batman must then beat these guys up through what feels like button mashing at first, but then towards the end of the game can get elaborate and with the skills that Batman learns by leveling up. Batman will earn experience by beating guys up or collecting the Riddler’s trophies and puzzles. When he levels up there are a total of 20 different skills to choose from and will most likely be learned throughout one play through of the game.
Some other great parts of the game play, and probably my favorite parts, are when Batman must use stealth and activate something called detective vision. While this is on, batman can see through walls and floors to see his enemies as well as walls that can be broken or blown up. This is extremely useful when trying to find all of the Riddler’s trophies as well as taking out thugs. There will occasionally be rooms full of thugs that have guns on them, and Batman, being only human, doesn’t fair well in hand to hand combat against thugs with guns. Therefore Batman must use the element of surprise and fear by perching on gargoyles at the tops of each room where the thugs cannot see him. With detective vision he can then plan out his attack on each individual thugs until the whole rooms is knocked out. With the variety game play, it hardly feels repetitive. In fact I found myself not wanting to put the game down because there was always another bad guy to stop or just one more collectable to find.
After beating the game there are challenges that put you in specific situations and give you either objectives to complete in stealth, or a bunch of dudes to beat up for as many points as possible. I didn’t find these challenges very exciting and really only played them because I wanted the achievement points, but considering it isn’t part of the overall story, I don’t fault the developers for making the story mode as good as possible even if the challenge stuff did suffer.
Batman Arkham Asylum is by far the best super hero game made to date, as well as being one of the most fun games to come out yet this year. Any fan of the Batman comics or any fan of great video games in general, should definitely check this one out.
