Batman Arkham Asylum review

If there’s one thing that all superhero and licensed titles have in common it is that they are universally terrible.  Sure there have been some games that haven’t been exactly terrible, but at best you’d say they were decidedly average (X-Men Origins: Wolverine I’m looking mat you) and as a fan of comic books you’d be left wondering if your favourite hero would ever feature in a game worthy of his or her talents.  Enter Batman: Arkham Asylum stage right. What Rocksteady Games has done with this game is nothing short of miraculous.  Not only have they managed to make the best licensed game I’ve ever had the pleasure to play, but they’ve also done justice to one of the most complex and interesting superheroes out there.

Batman: Arkham Asylum opens with Batman speeding towards Arkham Asylum in the Batmobile with the joker strapped into the seat next to you after you captured him at the scene of a bombing at the mayor’s office.  Upon entering the Asylum to drop him off Batman senses that something is not altogether right with how easy it was to capture the Joker and so decides to go with him as the doctors and staff of Arkham transfer the Joker to a secure cell.  What follows is a great scene setting series of encounters with inmates, criminals and villains as you walk the hallways of Arkham after the Joker, who despite being strapped down seems light-hearted enough to make constant quips and jokes to everyone around him.  Your trip ends with the Joker managing to make good his escape and set Batman off on a series of encounters to try to track him down before the night ends.  It’s a scene that goes on for 10 minutes or so, but in that 10 minutes the game’s atmosphere is set excellently and you know you’re in for something special.  To say anything more about the plot would surely spoil it for anyone yet to play it but rest assured that if you’re a fan of the comic book or a casual Batman fan you’ll be in for a lot of pleasant surprises with the story and cast of characters.

One character in the game that deserves special mention is the Asylum itself as it filled with small details and a design that makes it one of the most unique settings in a videogame of late with only Bioshock’s city of Rapture matching it.  Each of the buildings you work your way through has been meticulously crafted with a lot of loving attention by the developers and it shows.  It’s certainly taken a lot of inspiration from the Gothic look of Gotham City that was prevalent in Tim Burton’s movies about the Dark Knight.

Gameplay wise you’ll usually be following an objective which entails you making your way through hordes of prisoners and inmates that the Joker has put in your way and its here where Batman: Arkham Asylum shines.  Rocksteady have realised that you can’t do the character of Batman justice by merely making him a generic thug who beats up everyone in his path and so they decided to rather focus on what precisely makes Batman, well Batman.  So when you find yourself facing a room full of gun-toting bad guys you can’t just rush in, beat one up, grab his gun and kill the rest. No, you sneak in taking them out silently one by one without them spotting you. It’s great to successfully enter one of these encounters and see how the last few henchman realise that you’re somewhere in the room but they don’t know exactly where.  They’ll frantically look around and start shooting wildly into the dark at any noise all the while screaming out at you to leave them alone.  It’s at this point that you realise that most of Batman’s fights are never really shown in the movies, as they consist of him skulking in the shadows and slowly preying on the fear of his enemies before finally striking and when he strikes, boy does he strike with a vengeance.

Batman: Arkham Asylum’s fighting system is almost flawless and is something beautiful to witness as Batman becomes a whirlwind of fists and pain.  Consisting of a few simple button combinations Batman can take on an army of the Joker’s henchman and know that he’ll come out the victor.  That’s not to say the fights are easy though, as some enemies later in the game will prove a stiff challenge to Batman, but what I’m trying to say is that when you take on enemies as Batman you know that Batman will be able to handle them as you’d expect from a man trained in a variety of martial arts and fighting techniques.  Thinking about it, the fighting system in this game bears many similarities with the one in last year’s Prince of Persia in that you need to get into a flow to get the most out of the fights. It’s especially true here with Batman being capable of huge combos that can go up to 40 hits or more if you can manage to avoid getting hit and stringing successful counters together.

Balancing out the amount of fighting you’ll do is the riddles scattered throughout Arkham island which the Riddler has tasked you with solving.  Unlike a lot of games that shove a huge amount of collectibles in your face and reward you with nothing more than an achievement or two, Batman: Arkham Asylum rewards you with a rich tapestry of back story for a large selection of the characters  from the comic books and some interesting background into their psyches with interview tapes detailing how the staff of Arkham naïvely tried to “cure” them.  It’s certainly a great reward for fans of the comic but it also serves another purpose with each riddle you successfully solve and every enemy you defeat giving Batman experience points to buy new upgrades and abilities.  Adding a bit of RPG into Batman: Arkham Asylum these experience points allow you to get some abilities during the course of the game to make either the fights or stealth sections a bit easier.

Using the Unreal engine Batman: Arkham Asylum is one of the best looking games out on 360 at the moment with the main characters looking extremely detailed and almost exactly like you would have imagined them.  Add in some spectacular environments and the aforementioned beautiful Asylum buildings and interiors and you’ve got a game that manages to use its good looks to drag you even deeper into its world.

The voice acting is probably the greatest treat for Batman fans with the reunion of Mark Hamill (Joker), Kevin Conroy (Batman) and Arleen Sorkin (Harley Quinn) from the Batman: Animated Series being a particular highpoint.  Hamill’s version of the Joker manages to strike the perfect balance between the Joker’s amusement at the absurdity around him and the malevolence that hides beneath his smile while Kevin Conroy is still the perfect Batman.

Other than the story mode the only other gameplay modes on offer are a selection of combat and stealth encounters which are placed in locations taken from the main game and are available to play through to get high scores.  They don’t really gel that well with the main story as they don’t play to the strengths of the Batman character but nonetheless they are still great to play and will keep you busy as you try to beat your friends times and scores.  Add to this the free DLC on the way and Batman: Arkham Asylum will still be played long after you’ve finished the main story.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a singular game.  Its managed to take a complex character, Batman, and use his strengths and weakness to create a game of utmost brilliance.  Rocksteady have realised that making a run of the mill brawler / stealth game might have sold a few copies based on the Batman name but that if they created a true Batman game they might have something special on their hands.  You don’t need to be a Batman fan to get the most out of this game, you just need to be fan of great games.  Rocksteady have created one of the defining games of our generation and for that they should be thanked.

• Great combat system
• Well crafted story and universe
• Excellent voice acting
• Beautiful graphics

• You might never want to play another game after this