Batman: Arkham Asylum
He's the Goddamn Batman
A couple different Superheros could probably vie for the title of most beloved overall, but if you ask your average joe who their favorite comic Badass is, Batman may well stand alone. It’s somewhat surprising, then, that Batman’s history with video games has been somewhat problematic. Most of the caped crusader’s interactive media exploits have, till now, received moderate praise at best.
Arkham Asylum breaks this trend in the most spectacular of ways. The game opens with Batman having just stopped the Joker’s latest crime, but is unsettled by how easily the Clown Prince of Crime gave himself up, and chooses to see him into Arkham’s holding cell before disappearing into the night. Once they get very deep into the complex, the Joker’s men spring a trap, and Batman finds himself trapped in an Arkham Asylum run by the Joker and crawling with his cronies and other Super Villains.
Arkham is expertly detailed, and as you travel location to location, you’ll have a constant running commentary from your arch-nemisis who tells his thugs what you’re up to. While Batman is more than capable of handling large groups of thugs in a relatively simple combat system, he becomes quite less able when you realize that in this game guns are fucking dangerous. If you openly approach anyone with a firearm, you are probably going to die or only just escape with your life. Batman must rely on his stealth skills and take on his opponents one at a time to have any chance of survival.
Fortunatley, the old Batman tropes are present. You start out the game with Batarangs (blissfully, there is no ammo count on Bat-a-rangs) and a gas-powered grapple gun, but you’ll add Explosive Gel, The Batclaw (a hookshot like item you can you to draw objects towards you) and various modified versions of these items. Each experience level lets you pick an upgrade to one of your gadgets, so you can make your explosive gel act like a proximity mine, or add the ability to throw two or three bat-a-rangs at once.
There’s a surprising amount of content on the island. As you travel around, you’ll find riddles to solve from Mister Edward Nigma, collect interview tapes on the various Arkham Super Criminals, and learn about the richly detailed origins of Arkham Asylum itself, which is very much a character in this outing.
The voice acting is, of course, fantastic, with Kevin Conroy and Mark Hammil returning to their roles as Batman and The Joker respectively. One might worry that after all these years they would have gotten tired of playing the characters and given a half-hearted performance. These fears turn out to be unfounded, as both actors give some of the best performances as these characters they’ve ever given. It’s a little jarring at first to hear the voices from the cartoons coming out of these extremely high resolution models, but it will be hard to find an appropriate replacement when these two retire.
All in all, this is hands down the best Batman game they’ve made yet, and it shows that to make a good Superhero game you don’t need to create a huge sandbox world full of anonymous crimes to punch out. A small and richly detailed setting provides just as much awesome and more.
Why you should play it: You’re a Batman Fan; Stealth Action Games are your bag; You were a big fan of Batman: The Animated Series or the Justice League cartoons; You’re looking for a new Superhero title to fill the void in your life after Infamous and Prototype, but Champions Online is still too far away.
Why you shouldn’t play it: You think Cristian Bale’s “Batman With Strep Throat” voice is the best acting ever, You want a sandbox Batman game, “Superman could have taken care of this situation in like 10 seconds”
No mention of how it plays? Agreed that the voice acting and graphics are top notch, but we all know that the controls and response of the character being controlled make or break the game.
To the future readers of this review, be assured that while it only takes one button to dodge, jump or punch; the response and animation for each move is as smooth as silk. However, it will take a few replays of the combat mini games to get a feel for what can be down when different moves are used in sync.
I’ve never been a fan of stealth games but I found this one very accessible. What I like about the controls are that they are all context driven. The same button might do one thing during fighting but something completely different when you’re hanging from the rafters. It gives you hints at the bottom of the screen for which buttons do what. After this I think I’ll give the Metal Gear series a shot.
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