Batman Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham Asylum : from a famousblueraincoat
Played 20+ hours on PC
"Holy-Surprisingly-Fun-Game-Batman!"

I've always thought Batman was a lame super hero. I loved the Animated Series cartoons as a kid, but have never found the movies or comicbooks interesting. The recent re-imagining of the franchise with Batman Begins and Dark Knight have reinvigorated the character and made the focus on moral questions and the hyper-reality very compelling in terms of story and character study, but otherwise Batman has always been, generally speaking, a non-super super hero.

When I first picked up Batman: Arkham Asylum, I was skeptical. I was in equal parts anticipating and dreading that this was going to be somehow linked to the new movie franchise. Anticipating it might be interesting to see a game in that new world, but having a general dread of movie-related games, I was both relieved and disappointed to find that I would be playing the tired novelty act of plastic-suited Batman vs. purple-pants Joker.

The opening sequence involves a long third-person zoomed-in view of Batman escorting a detained Joker through the layers of security in the Arkham Asylum. A long drawn-out process of character introductions and wise-cracks from the restrained Joker all lead up to the trite eruption of the Joker's escape in to the Asylum and releasing all of the 'sane' prisoners that have been temporarily relocated due to a recent fire in Gotham's Prison.

Soon, Batman finds that this has been Joker's plan all along; to use Arkham as a staging ground with its laboratories and inmates to develop an army of chemically altered mutants and release them upon Gotham City. You proceed as Batman through the Asylum, and then further through the entire island of Arkham encountering super-foes like Harley Quinn, The Scarecrow, Croc, Zsaz and Poison Ivy, unraveling some really interesting history in the DC Universe along the way.

The slow-burn at the on-set of this game really opens up soon after the story begins and introduces very well the main strengths of Batman; Fighting, Stealth and Detective-work. The combat in this game is so unbelievably fluid and enjoyable it could be its own game without any kind of narrative attached to it at all. There are three main combat maneuvers, Attack, Stun and Takedown. This is augmented by a system of Counter moves and Combos. The system of combat is then a kind of stringing together attacks while countering incoming enemies.

A typical combat situation that you encounter is where you will be encircled by several enemies. As they inch forward, one goes in to attack (indicated by a preemptive blue marking) and Batman will counter (mashing the counter button), follow up with an attack (mash the attack button) that will push the enemy back. Batman then attacks in the opposing direction (turn and mash attack), counters a fourth enemy attack (mash counter button) and then proceeds to perform a takedown (mash takedown). As the combo-indicator increases with each attack, Batman is able to perform more powerful attacks and is given the options for specials like Throws to clear multiple enemies or One-Hit-Takedowns.

Although admittedly difficult to describe, this fluidity of combat combined with some exceptional contextual camera-work highlights extremely well Batman's karate bad-assery. Like any good combat system, it is easy to understand at first, but exponentially difficult to pull-off 30+ combinations without getting hit. There is a certain beat and pace to this system, and feels more like a rhythm-game at times as you try to anticipate when you will be using either counter, attacking or takedown moves.

The Stealth aspects break up the combat and are used mostly in cases where there are Armed Enemies that might be able to takedown Batman with a few bursts of a machine-gun. In these cases the environment is used to silently clear a room of enemies one-by-one. Examples of this would be to use the Grapple to attack from a ledge or a perch. Wait for an enemy to be out of sight of the others, swoop down to knock him unconscious, perform a takedown and grapple right back up to that same ledge where you had attacked from.

As you progress, you develop other skills that include being able to drop overtop of an enemy and string him up to a perch or with a kind of wall-hug-cover mode, knock-out an enemy with a Batarang. Gadgets that become unlocked include a Explosive Spray, Grappling hooks, Zipline, Multiple Batarangs and Security-panel Frequency Tuner. They can all in one way or another be used in combat or extra-curricular exploration.

Detective Mode is a HUD overlay that uses a combination of X-Ray and Nightvision. This gives you the ability to see through walls and find structural weaknesses or vantage points. In this mode, enemies appear as skeletal. A heart-rate monitor shows their level of anxiety or awareness, and it also indicates if they are armed with Guns or not. Using this mode to scope our your Stealth-based attack is imperative as it can indicate which are the most dangerous of the enemies in any given areas. You then have the option to sneak-attack these heavily-armed enemies, or go in head-first smashing skulls.

The Detective Mode is also used in cases where Batman comes to a seemingly dead-end. For example, early on one of the Doctors is kidnapped by the Joker from her office. You identify this doctor's fingerprints in her office and then follow her fingerprint trail to where she is being held. In other instances, you must find and follow a Tobacco trail to see where the Warden of Arkham is being kept. This, although just another form of 'bread-crumb trail' used to push along the narrative, I found to be a really interesting way of using the detective skills that go along with Batman's motif.

Of course, the trend in videogames is 'collecting' trophies and Arkham is no different. Between the hidden 'tapes' found of Asylum interviews with each Super-villain, the Arkham historical plaques giving history on the Island-complex itself and the Riddler's secret trophies there is an added incentive to explore outside of the very standard straight-ahead plot-line. It also gives you a chance to use and develop platforming skills that are otherwise few and far-between in the narrative itself.

A point of personal preference, I would much rather have played this game on console. It is definitely a 'sit-back couch' kind of experience as opposed to a 'sit-forward PC' experience. Only once did I find the mouse and keyboard actually impeded on my playing, but I could immediately tell that thumbsticks, buttons and triggers would have held my interest that much more.

My reviews are generally much more conceptual and not so detailed on the mechanics of any particular aspect, but I just can't help but outline how exceptionally this game is made. The pace of play is such that you are never playing the same way for too long, and each section of Combat, Stealth or Detective is more and more complex the further you encounter that situation. It is perfectly casual, and has a nice 'hop-in-for-twenty-minutes' system of play with its auto-save features. I highly recommend you at least rent this game.