Batman: Arkham Asylum is one of the games I have been the most excited for this year. On Tuesday morning I picked up my copy at Gamestop and I kept playing until sunrise. I was completely blown away with the amazing attention to detail with the Batman lore as well as the gameplay itself. Its the first Batman game where I actually felt like the worlds greatest detective.
Arkham Asylum is about the Dark Knight taking the Joker into custody and transporting him into Gothams Arkham Asylum. During the process he breaks loose and takes control of the island. Batmans goal is to stop the Joker while also dealing with a myriad of other notable villians such as Harleyquinn, Bane, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc while being accompanied with the Jokers henchmen.
The core gameplay behind Arkham Asylum is using all the tools and techniques Batman has to disperse the wide variety of enemies you will encounter. You will get to explore Arkham with a myriad of gadgets allowing you to grapple to greati heights as well as swoop down with your cape. The game will switch to scenes that involve a flud hand to hand combat system involving counter blows and take downs. The animations during these scenes are downright breath taking. You will also engage in stealth when dealing with certain groups of armed soldiers who will actively patrol a certain room and use some tactics in order to take you out. The stealth involves mainly sweeping around the room via gargoyles which are convienently placed around the Asylum. You can set explosives, use batarangs, as well as perform inverted takedowns witch never get old. However throughout the game you will fight mainly the same type of henchmen, some armed and some wielding some type of melee weapon or gun. They will throw in some twists to them to keep it fresh as well as throw in some mutants. Being Batman doesnt just mean beating up baddies to a pulp, it also means youre a detective; and you do your share of detective work. In many situations of the game you will have to search rooms for clues to point you in the right direction
While youre exploring Arkham you also have the side mission which is to play the Riddlers game of whose the smartest. There are 240 Riddler riddles which you must solve. Some of these riddles include standard riddle solving to finding little Riddler trophies. You will also encounter documents and tapes the reference almost every Batman character in existence. The riddles are handled nicely and the work put into spreading them out throughout the grounds is great.
The game covers almost every aspect of Batman with great respect. The game features amazing voice work from cast members from the Batman cartoon featuring actors such as Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy from the original Batman Animated Series. The cuscenes are brought to life witch great animations and set pieces, its very much like watching a movie at times.
The only things that drag down Arkham Asylum is that it suffers from a highly Unreal 3 Engine presence which I didnt quite like. You will notice a few pop in textures here and now, some intense post processing effects as well as some ragdoll issues. However the style they went with the visuals and top not animation helped a lot in that aspect. The score couldve also been better in some situations. Many times you will have music that doesnt fit with what youre doing at the moment and the volume and power the music evokes isnt very strong. With the small ammount issues, Arkham still comes out very strong. The fact that its a Batman game truly does help and its about time Batman fans truly got to experience a game like this. Its a pretty epic title to come from developer Rockstead with only two games including this one on their belt, but I have to take my hat off to their hard work on this title.
Whether youre a fan of Batman or action adventure games, or even quite simpler put; games in general, you owe it to yourself to play this game.
Lets cross our fingers that Eidose doesnt keep Rocksteady making Batman games forever.
