BinaryJack
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Oooohhh...this sounds great!
Was surprised of the review actually, thought it might be another comic dud!
Seems not!
Part 1
Was surprised of the review actually, thought it might be another comic dud!
Seems not!
Part 1
Batman: Arkham Asylum
August 21, 2009 - It's not often that I'm conflicted about a game. Don't get me wrong, review scores are in the eye of the beholder so I'm sure there are plenty of times that you've read something I have written and not agreed with me. I mean that it's rare for me to play a game during a demo and not have a solid idea of what the final product is going to be. I played bits of Batman: Arkham Asylum a few times before I finally got a copy to review, and I always found myself coming away with mixed feelings. I enjoyed the combat and attacking from the shadows, but the pacing seemed off and Batman's movements seemed stiff. Could Rocksteady really pull everything together to deliver on one of DC Comics' biggest franchises?
After having beaten the game, I can tell you the answer is most certainly "Yes."
It not what I say that defines this video review, but what I do.
Batman: Arkham Asylum is a third-person action game casting you as -- you guessed it, chum -- the Dark Knight himself. The title opens with Batman racing back to Arkham, Gotham's home for the criminally insane, with the Joker in tow. Seems the Clown Prince of Crime broke out a few weeks ago, but Batman was able to track him down and re-apprehend the baddie. However, things are never what they seem with the Joker, so after getting the wiry maniac back into the building -- a building stocked with hundreds of the Joker's goons after a "mysterious" fire at their prison -- Mr. J breaks free with the help of Harley Quinn, takes control of the penitentiary, and releases all the inmates.
Holy plot twist, Batman!
From there, you're off on an adventure that ranks right below The Dark Knight movie in terms of awesome Batman experiences. The actual Arkham campus is a loony bin spread across multiple buildings on one massive rock. With the Joker in charge you're going to have to swing over rooms filled with gas, save doctors, rip vent covers off the walls so you can make a path around locked doors, and move as fast as Batman can to stop the Joker from releasing an army of monsters on the people of Gotham City.
Now, that might sound like your typical Batman story -- and it kind of is -- but it's important to point out that this is a fairly adult title. Yeah, some of the folks from Batman: The Animated Series are back to reprise their roles (Mark Hamill is the Joker, Kevin Conroy is Batman, and Arleen Sorkin is Harley Quinn), but this isn't the cartoon. Harley's wearing a fairly skimpy outfit that shows off her lady parts, Poison Ivy's in some painted-on panties, colorful language like "ass" and "bitch" is peppered in, and there are people getting murdered left and right. Arkham itself is a dark and dingy place that just had every psychopath housed there run through the halls tearing the building apart. Dead guards are laid out on the floor, papers are strewn about, and the facilities have seen better days.
Strike from the shadows. Be Batman.
These adult themes tied in with a very, very Batman-looking world really drive home your connection to the story. I don't think I'm ever going to forget Mr. Zsasz holding a knife to a female doctor, her screaming for me to save her, the Joker screaming at Zsasz to kill her, and Zsasz screaming at me to stay back. After years of the Riddler being goofy, I realized Arkham's version of the character was on a different level when he told a Riddle that ended in dismembering a baby. Plus, the segments where you're under the Scarecrow's influence and Batman's worst fears are realized are some of the coolest, most cerebral parts of the game. These are the moments that wrapped me up in the experience and made me feel like Batman on the longest night of his life.
Gameplay in this dark, creepy world breaks down into three main portions -- fist fighting, attacking from the shadows, and exploration. As you move from room to room chasing Harley or Commissioner Gordon's kidnapper, you're going to run into bad guys. Lots of times, you'll find a crew milling about or the Joker will spring a trap with handfuls of guys who are ready to kill you. This is when you'll make use of your straight hand-to-hand moves.
Fist fighting in Arkham Asylum is pretty much the definition of an easy to learn/hard to master combat system. The game allows Batman to move faster than his enemies (He's a trained ninja, people!) and engage them in 360 degrees. You just point your left stick towards whatever enemy you want to attack and Batman follows suit. Through four buttons -- strike, reverse, jump, and stun -- you'll unleash Mr. Wayne's fury on the scum of the Earth. Obviously, you can just mash the strike button and take down the bad guys with a healthy set of animations -- dropkicks, elbows, punches, and more are peppered in -- and reverse when you see the spider-sense icon pop-up above a bad guy's head, but there's a sweet science to this madness.
This system is great. I felt empowered as I knocked these creeps down, grabbed their bats and slammed them back into the attackers. I'm sure it sounds like the process could get repetitive, but the crooks start using tasers and knives eventually, and that leads to you having to fight them in a different way and avoid simply mashing the strike button; you need to get behind the taser-packing guys to strike and daze the knife dudes before socking them in the jaw.
As you ping-pong off people with your savage attacks, a combo meter tallies your strikes on the left side of the screen. As long as each of your attacks is landing (Don't mash the buttons; pick your shots.) and you're not getting hit (Reverse, Master Bruce!), the combo count keeps climbing. I'm sure it sounds simple, but you'd be surprised how good you have to be to link together massive combos. If you can get the count up to eight (five with an upgrade), you can do special moves once you've unlocked them, and I can tell you that I don't do special moves all that often.
Let IGN Strategize be your Alfred.
Still, whatever your largest combo is by the end of the fight, you're going to get a bonus in terms of XP. See, there's this little circle in the upper-right corner of the screen that is your XP gauge. Pulling off moves and besting challenges fills in the gauge, and when the two ends meet, you get to pick an upgrade for either Batman's suit for more health, moves for super-cool takedowns, Batarangs for power and such, or other weapons like your explosive gel.
You're also going to earn XP by taking out your opponents from the shadows. While there are going to be those times where Joker's men ambush you, there are also "Invisible Predator" moments. This is where you get the drop on a roomful of bad guys who are patrolling. These sections are cool because they forced me to play like Batman and not some random action game character. I'd shoot up to a gargoyle, kick on detective mode to see how many enemies I was up against, and then start picking them off one by one. If there was just one dude with a gun in the group, I'd glide in to take him out and then move to the other baddies. If there was more than one gunman, I'd stick to the shadows so as not to get my brains blown against the wall.
There's a lot of freedom on how you want to engage these bad guys, and it's one of the best parts of the game. You could wait for a guy to be alone and then glide kick in and perform a ground takedown, but you've got access to Batman's entire utility belt if you want. Once everything's unlocked, you can use explosive gel to blow out walls and knock guys out, you can through Sonic Batarangs that'll then explode, you can pull people over railings with the grappling hook, and you smash through windows to take guys out.
And all of that is just for starters. There's a line launcher, grates to pop out of, and gargoyles to hang bad guys from. Still, for me, the most satisfying part of these missions are the silent takedowns. This is where you crouch, come up behind an unsuspecting grunt, and choke the guy out. There are a few animations for these moves, and they're so quiet that even a bad guy just a few feet away from the attack can't hear it.
What do you fear?
While I enjoy the fact that the AI doesn't notice friends getting silently KO'd, there are plenty of times you'll plop down next to a goon or come right up on his peripheral vision and not be seen even though you would be in real life. Playing on Hard, which is available from the start, makes the AI a bit smarter, but I still could've gone for more attentive henchmen.
Still, Arkham excels despite any miniscule gripe I might have, and a big part of that draw is how much fun it is to explore this place. There are six main buildings on the island and each is cavernous. These places are filled with cells, laboratories, libraries, and more. Most of the interesting rooms are locked or blocked, so it's up to you to use your cryptographic sequencer to hack security panels or the gel to knock down walls and crawl through grates to get where you're going.
