For years, fans of the caped crusader have been waiting for a great Batman game to come out. Tremendous failures like Batman: Vengeance and Rise of Sin Tzu have kept their expectations low, but hope has remained that one day, some developer would create something worthy of Bat-fan devotion. That day has come, and the game is Batman: Arkham Asylum, courtesy of publisher Eidos Interactive and developer Rocksteady Studios. It’s an incredible title whether you’re a Batman fan or not. Here are several reasons why.
The setup. The key feature to Arkham is the mixture of combat and stealth. The game’s “Freeflow” fighting style allows Batman to jump seamlessly from one enemy to another, and the variations of ‘Takedowns’ you can perform make full use of the environment, knocking out an enemy with a single, targeted strike. Keeping your combo is critical while using the freeflow fighting, and remaining hidden while systematically knocking out targets is crucial to the stealth gameplay. The variations in the combat and upgradeable skills and gadgets keep the combat refreshing throughout.
Plot points. Whereas in the past, Batman games were based on cartoons or movies, Arkham Asylum is based off of the comic’s continuity, and was written by longtime comic author Paul Dini. Dini was also a writer for many episodes of animated series featuring comic book characters, especially Batman, and his writing is almost always spectacular. Arkham’s plot centers on Joker’s plan to create a super-powered army to destroy Batman and Gotham City, which has Batman trapped within the confines of the asylum he’s been supplying with psychos for years.
Stellar voice acting. Christian Bale’s raspy ‘desperately-needs-a-cough-drop’ voice doesn’t represent Batman so well. It’s just not clear, concise, or intimidating enough. To me, there’s only one man who can voice the Dark Knight the way he’s represented in comics, and that man is Kevin Conroy (the voice actor of Batman/Bruce Wayne in the 90’s animated series.) Conroy’s return to the voice of Batman in Arkham is almost a selling point on its own. To go with it, Mark Hamill reprises his role as Joker (yes, Luke Skywalker has been Joker this whole time.) The rest of the voice acting is great, and fits the characters better than I thought it would, especially in the cases of Bane and The Riddler.
Graphics and audio don’t make a game, but they definitely help, and while a lot of the game is spent in vibrant shades of blue with Detective Mode, the attention to detail is spectacular. Even on my crappy TV, the game showed up gorgeously. Every punch, kick, gadget, blueprint and every last nook and cranny in the environment shows up in glorious vivid, gritty detail and the game’s soundtrack is better than that of most movies. It seems that no expense was spared in making this game great.
Atmosphere. Stealth and horror games struggle to get this part right, but Arkham hit it right on the nose, which is good because there’s plenty of elements of both the aforementioned genres mixed in with all the action – and it works. Especially in the cases of Killer Croc and Scarecrow (oh lord, Scarecrow was done well) the atmosphere of the game is set up perfectly. On that note…
Scarecrow. A game has never freaked me out as much as Arkham Asylum did with Scarecrow. That’s no small feat, either. There are a number of spine-chilling moments to it.
Get creative with the beatings. In Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Batman has a definite flair to his fighting – he can take out an entire room of people before they ever know he’s there, or work his way through a crowd. Arkham Asylum allows you the same courtesy. The player can use stealth and gadgets to take out a room of thugs with guns, or take on an entire group of henchmen just as proficiently as one-on-one combat. There are also a number of achievements that deal with being innovative with your ass-kicking, and it’s definitely refreshing to beat up a thug and then hang him upside down from a gargoyle.
Overall play value. I beat this game in a weekend, and my eyes are paying the price for it, but it was time well spent. With a slew of truly difficult Challenge Maps to unlock and hundreds (yes, hundreds) of Riddler secrets littering the huge island, this will get added to many a gamer’s list of must-buy titles. The story is compelling, the gameplay is rewarding, the enemies are sometimes just begging for you to hurt them (there’s a room where about 20 henchmen are standing in line wearing silly hats; it’s so fun to place plastic explosive on the floor to knock them all down at once) and the feeling of hunting criminals from the shadows is far too great to describe accurately.
The game is one of the best of the year, and easily the best Batman game to date. In the same way that Christopher Nolan’s movies were a revolution for Batman in film, Arkham Asylum is the revolution for Batman in gaming. It was made for fans, by people who know exactly what the fans wanted, and even if you’re not all that into Batman you can still find something you love about gaming in Arkham. This game is just that great. It’s not the next Messiah of video games, but it’s definitely close to it.
Batman: Arkham Asylum is $60 for the Xbox 360 and PS3, with the PC version due for release in mid-September.