Top 10 Games of 2009 - 4. Batman: Arkham Asylum
by transience
This has to be one of the most improbable success stories of all time. First of all, it's a comic book video game. The last good one was..... was..... you know, I can't even name one. Batman for the NES was a fun little Castlevania-lite game. There were probably others as well, but hell if I could name them. Games like this always suck. Always suck. Secondly, it's one of the craziest hybrid gam...
This has to be one of the most improbable success stories of all time.
First of all, it's a comic book video game. The last good one was..... was..... you know, I can't even name one. Batman for the NES was a fun little Castlevania-lite game. There were probably others as well, but hell if I could name them. Games like this always suck. Always suck.
Secondly, it's one of the craziest hybrid games of all time. At its heart, it's a Metroid-style game: powerup-based exploration. These games are not easy to make. For every good one, there's five that are terrible. And yet Arkham Asylum succeeds with a combination of good powerups and a nice location. Yet Arkham Asylum doesn't rest on its laurels there; it also goes and scatters hundreds of hidden trophies throughout the game as collectibles, loads of audio tapes, and tons of character profiles, turning Arkham Asylum into something that Metroid creator Yoshio Sakimoto would be proud of.
And If that wasn't crazy enough, consider all the different genres that Arkham Asylum represents.
It's a beat-em-up tailored for fighting multiple enemies at once. It's a stealth game with more options than Solid Snake could dream of. There's even some survival horror elements in the form of boss fights with the Scarecrow. They even lift some elements of Zelda for the final boss. It is difficult to get just one of these genres right, but Arkham Asylum somehow nails every last one of them. The combat feels good - it's unusual at first, but man, it feels great to hit guys thanks to some Matrix-y slowdown and sound effects that make it sound like you're punching through walls. The stealth is amazing - when you sit back and think about it, Batman is the true master of stealth and Arkham Asylum uses his abilities to the fullest. The Scarecrow parts can be genuinely weird and spooky. They nail the atmosphere of a Batman movie perfectly. Hell, they nail the feeling of being Batman perfectly. In Arkham Asylum, you are Batman. There is no doubt about this. They emulated it perfectly.
You are Batman.
The most improbable part of this whole thing? This game was made by some company named Rocksteady Studios. Their only previous game was something called Urban Chaos: Riot Response. And yet they made the single best 3d action game on the 360 or PS3. What?
Batman is, of course, not without flaws. Boss fights are a mixed bag; some are great (Scarecrow, Poison Ivy), but others rely on just swarming you with hordes of regular enemies. The last boss is particularly bad about this; for a showdown with the Joker you would expect much more. Batman's combat is a little bit too easy. Detective Mode, the Arkham Asylum equivalent to MGS4's Solid Eye, is super useful but turns every character into an ugly glowing skeleton. You're often forced to choose whether you want to see all your enemies or if you want to see your enemies not looking stupid.
They're pretty small complaints though. I don't think I've had my expectations about a game rocked as badly as this in a long time. Seriously, how is this game this good?