A wonderful game
The worst part about Batman Arkham Asylum is that it's a Batman game.
Not that it captures the spirit of the Dark Knight poorly, it's actually quite good about it, with fabulous voicing and such. But as someone who's no more than a casual Batman fan I really don't care about that and it's ridiculous dialog and cliches while totally in character are kind of silly. It's got tons of back story if you're into that sort of thing but I could care less about Poision Ivy's background i know the basic story but it's not that interesting.
What's really special about Batman is it's an amazing stealth game that has great action or action game that has great stealth. You wander around Arkham Island as Batman beat the crap out of thugs. When they have guns you've got to sneak up on them. The stealth makes you feel powerful instead of making the action feel like crap. When you're in stealth you're a lion in the grass.
When you're fighting you're a lion on the prowl, at no point do you get that feeling of dread that stealth games often give you about being found. The fighting is simple but a look beneath the surface you'll find a fairly deep fighting system that can allow you to really take on an unlimited number of the Jokers goons.
The Boss fights in the game are all against mostly Iconic Batman villains. The Joker, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow and Killer Croc are all pretty central. Trouble is most of these boss fights are pretty simple action puzzles that are some of the least rewarding parts of the game. I really would have enjoyed it had the Batman universe had room for villains who were Batman's equal in hand to hand combat and required a really serious mastery of the fighting system a lot more than say throwing batarangs at a weakspot while dodging plant attacks.
Despite some of the pointy eared shortcomings the action is really some of the best, and it's got tons of Riddler puzzles to solve.
