Batman: Arkham Asylum

  Batman Arkham Asylum  is a video game released late in August of last year for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. Although I had bought the game maybe a month after it’s initial release, I hadn’t completed the game until quite recently, and I’m a little dissapointed in myself for not doing it earlier. 
 
  My first introduction to the version I consider to be The  Batman  was the   animated series  of the mid nineties.   Bruce Timm‘s art style and   Paul Dini‘s story’s really brought a dark side to an animated television show. That being said, and despite having a different visual style, brought to you by the   Unreal Engine, the story was crafted by Paul Dini, and they manged to get voice actors from the show to give the   DC Comics  characters a voice once more.   Kevin Conroy  is Batman, even though at first my brain went through a weird period where the audio made it think it was going to see something else, it never became a big problem. The other major part,   The Joker, was played by Mark Hammill, who has always played a great Joker. They even got some minor characters to reprise their roles like   Harley Quinn  and   Killer Croc. The game itself has a fantastic design, Batman, the Joker, and Harley all look like they belong to the world, a far grittier version than even the animated series. I think it was more inspired by the graphic novel   Arkham Asylum: A Serious house on Serious Earth, than anything. 
 
  The controls themselves feel intuative. The  combat system is very simple, Batman is sometimes put into situations where all he has to fight a baker’s dozen of enemies in hand to hand combat, the simple combat system alows you flow from foe to foe with a series punches, kicks, counters and evasions. When you reach the end of each pack of enemies, the game zooms in and slows down the action to let you see Batman really give a thug a brutal beating. And what is Batman without gadgets? Their are plenty of them, like batarangs, and grappling hooks, each are very easy to use.  Another apect to Batman is he is a creature of the night, he lurks in the shadow and gives enemies a frightening chill. The fear aspect of Batman was explored much more in depth in the Batman Begins game, but this Batman does all those things well. Being trapped in a room with about a half dozen or so foes armed with guns and various weapons you can take out each thug one by one, each time making them more on edge with every one of their friends ending up unconcious, or incapacitated hanging upside down from a gargoyle. Even though sometimes I was unable to leap from a dark perch behind an enemy and silenty take them out, because on the way down Batman’s cape slowed the descent and glided a few feet out of where I wanted to land giving away my position and, well, Batman got messed up. Despite when sometimes I get messy with the controls the game gets the main focus right. You feel like you are  The Batman. 
   
 The story itself is passable, it’s not the greatest Batman story ever told, but it does a good job of pulling together the villains it has in a manor that’s not a ridiculous string of events. Joker purposefully gets caught, just so he can take over Arkham, and infect people with a sreum simlar to the  Venom  Bane uses called Titan. It’s cohesive enough that doesn’t stray too far from the main plot, and the points where it make deviations it  seems like that’s the kind of stuff Batman would have to deal with and not be so “video gamey”. At his core Batman is a detective, and their is a “detective mode” in the game, the tale of the game is niether mysterious, not does Batman have to do any real detective work. The few times he does it as simple as Batman configuring his Bat equipment to pick up traces of alcohol, or find fresh fingerprints, so all you have to do as a player is activte the detective mmode and follow the trail to the destination. However the actual detective work Batman does is outside the main story in secret Riddler challenges, like finding hidden Riddler question mark trophies and solving riddles. This feature gives the game something you’ll want to stick around and complete once you’re done with the maybe eight hour story, to lengthen the game.

Boss fights in Arkham Asylum are oddly very few. There are hower many boss like encounters. Bane, a boss you fight near the beginning is a fight mechanically repeated several time throughout the campagin, but you only really actually fight maybe three major Batman villians from his rogues gallery. There are other major enemies from the comics that appear in the game that give Batman a unique boss encounter, like the   Scarecrow  who I never thought of as “scary”, he is just another example of good design, with his gas-mask like scarecrow mask, or his very creepy syringe fingers giving him a   Freddy Krueger  type vibe. The creative apect to the event is that it changes perspective, both changing from the games usual beheind the shoulder third person view, to an almost two dimensional feel, and the environment itself comes straight out of a surrealist painters head. Scarecrow also leads to the inevitable retelling of Batman’s origin. Scarecrow’s encounters are almost   Psycho Mantis  like from   Metal Gear Solid, and the Killer Croc sequence has you on edge until you make your way out of his lair, but you never have to go man to creature with either, which could have provided some good fights. One such encounter where I’m glad you don’t have to fight is when you have to apprehend Harley Quinn. You never fight Harley, it would be lopsided, this tiny woman of a circus performer fighting Batman? It wouldn’t be very fun. And the waves of thugs you do fight in her place only feel as good as the combat will let you. The fights with the actual rogues are never so frustrating you want to throw a controller, and if you don’t know what to do your first time and die, the game gives you enough clues so you are not stuck for very long.

 
  Another good thing about Arkham Asylum is oddly, the death sequences. They’re very simple, a fade to black and a villian out of the shadow taunting Batman. And sometimes they are creepy, especially the Scarecrow ones. 
 
 

This game stands fantastically enough on it’s own, having an actual ending to the main Joker tale. Yes, at the end there is the call on the police radio that sends Batman back into Gotham with no break, but it’s not   Halo 2′s  cliff hanger ending by any means. And with a sequel on it’s way called Arkham City, I can’t wait to see what awaits Gotham, Batman, and anything else that might come up.