After going into work the other day and seeing the Sony Rep change the demo disc in the PS3 I decided to check out what was on it. Pleasantly surprised to find that there was a demo for Arkham Asylum on there I leapt in immediately. There are two playable sections in the demo. To be fair I have only played the first of the two which is solely focused on the combat in the game. To be honest, it's not so great in my opinion.

The combat relies around using the square button to perform combos, triangle to counter, circle to swing your cape and "stun" enemies, and you can also use L1+R1 to throw the battarang (never really came into use in the demo). The level is just a square room where the Joker sends inmates at you in waves to defeat, so pretty standard stuff. What I noticed though is the cape move to "stun" your enemies doesn't really do much since they are back to normal by the time your animation ends. Also when an enemy is prepping to attack they glow blue for a brief period. That is your cue to use the counter button. Just push the analog toward the glowing enemy and hit the butt. That's all. The problem with this is that it then delves into Assassin's Creed-like territory of just waiting for an attack and countering. Enemies only attack one at a time and in succession you can just keep countering from one enemy to another until they are all down. If that's as deep as the combat gets then I'll spend even less time on this game than I did on AC (stopped at the 2nd city for lack of anything new to keep me going).

Again to be fair though, I haven't played the second part of the demo yet. Hopefully it is about movement and exploration and if that is done well then maybe it'll counteract the repetition of the fight system that I've experienced thus far. Here's to hoping.