Thread: Batman: Arkham Asylum Review

Relatively little has been said in public about how the story mode plays out, but we can infer a lot from the manner in which the challenge rooms are unlocked and the states in which you face them. There are 16 rooms in total, and some are opened up based on progress, while others become available when you collect a certain number of Joker teeth hidden around Arkham. Staggered between these will be other Brucie bonuses, which develop Batman's battlefield vocabulary through variation, physical enhancement and new gadgets. In other words, there are regular rewards, and they take some digging out

The challenge rooms, which alternate between Combat and Invisible Predator, are designed for high-scores repeat play, and become more enjoyable as Batman becomes more potent. Whereas last month's trip to Intensive Treatment was a rhythmic but limited procession of twirling strikes, disorientating counters and the occasional leg-break, the Batman facing today's extreme alternative is more sure of himself.

Close combat in third-person games usually goes one of two ways - complex hackandslash, or one-hit-killery - but Arkham Asylum is closer to capoeira, as Batman spins and pirouettes through the Joker's goons, following your analogue direction to a specific target and improvising the encounter based on a catalogue of contextual blows, providing you hit the single attack button within a certain window. Distance isn't a factor, and combos follow, counting up at the side of the screen.
Complication stems from counters, the need to stun certain enemies with your cape-spin, and the availability of multipliers, throws and takedowns once you cross combo thresholds. Throws can be used to toss enemies over barriers or into electric fences, and the more elaborate takedowns bend backs and twist limbs to breaking point, the savagery of the spectacle matched ably by the grace of the animation and the wet crunch of fist and boot on muscle. Gadgets like the batarang and bat-claw trigger-button moves encourage experimentation, which is useful because you accumulate score bonuses for things like variety and avoiding damage. Both Combat and Invisible Predator feed into leaderboards, with global and friends filters, and the best scores will rely on those bonuses.

It's not just Batman with more to say though; the Joker's goon squad is out in greater force, and with new tricks for Intensive Treatment Extreme. Crowd control is ramped up as henchmen start to attack with lead pipes and go for a locked gun cabinet, which sounds a siren. With gunfire tearing Batman down so easily, it's important to keep their hands off it. Health regenerates between enemy waves, but only slightly, and the final opposition line-up gives you a knife-toting Victor Zsasz to worry about, forcing you to reach for cape-spin stun moves rather than traditional counters.
Fortunately It does when it came to the next challenge room, Survival Tactics. Set at the prisoner entrance to Arkham, it's a series of overlapping, split-level walkways surrounding a small stack of admin buildings smothered in staircases, topped off with a glass roof, all of which is circled by the gargoyle-spattered bleakness of the asylum's outer wall. As with the other Invisible Predator challenges, it's a broader space, emphasising height as much as breadth and patrolled by half a dozen henchmen, each packing an assault rifle.

Each could be tackled hand to hand, but the cost of incurring gunfire is prohibitive, and enemies are drawn to their comrades' plight when you engage them directly, so it's safer to use the left-bumper Detective mode to locate them (they appear as glowing red skeletons, through walls and all) and then isolate stragglers by grappling and gliding around the room at gargoyle height to employ stealth kills, also called takedowns. There are obvious attacks - by holding the right trigger to crouch, you can sneak up behind someone like Sam Fisher, peering out of cover, before performing a silent takedown from behind - but the more severe and elaborate finishers are correspondingly satisfying. They're also immeasurably cooler.

You can travel between grapple points at surprising speed with a few stabs of the right bumper, so it's tempting to go for the most iconic kill, witnessed last month, where Batman hangs upside down and hoists the target from his feet, leaving him dangling by a cord, where he will attract attention and terrify the other henchmen. You can then encourage them to disperse by firing a batarang from afar to snap the rope, and hopefully notch up a falling-body kill in the process

Or you can work harder for your payoff, using a glide-kick to swoop silently over distance and disable a bad-guy, before silently rubbing him out on the ground and firing a swift grapple to ascend back to the shadows. Situational takedowns are typically brutal and more exotic, allowing you to haul an enemy neck-backwards onto a railing that you're suspended from.
As with Combat modes, there are sub-objectives, but in this case they emphasise takedown variation - the most satisfying and elusive in this instance being to smash through a glass ceiling onto an enemy beneath, which first involves coaxing the AI down the right pathways. It's this kind of kill-hunting that exposes Invisible Predator for what it really is: playing with your food. All the meanwhile, a clock quietly rounds up time taken; the best people on the leaderboards will have to match a short kill window to a checklist of sub-objectives
But what's especially promising about Arkham Asylum is the things you don't immediately concentrate on as you compete for fast times and heavy combos: there's no slack in the economical controls, which allow you to dance around and disable enemies, and hunt with predatory poise through a minimum of button presses; the camera is right-stick controlled and seldom if ever gets in the way; and developer Rocksteady's use of the Unreal Engine not only articulates the steaming noir of Batmans of comic and screen, but delivers it with complete coherency. As a variation on the traditionally brutish Unreal aesthetic, it's stylistic enough to outstand lingering memories of both The Dark Knight and Gears of War, but polished enough to stand up to direct comparison.

Games Master UK - 96%

Arkham Asylum is a game with the power to utterly captivate you and can stand proudly alongside modern classics such as "Resident Evil 4", "Gears of War," and "BioShock"...Simply put, Batman: Arkham Asylum is a masterpiece. [Sept 2009, p.66]

Game Informer 95%

Batman: Arkham Asylum is this year's "BioShock," not just from the connection established with the world, but from its ability to innovate where new ideas are needed, and moreover, deliver an adventure unlike any other. [Sept 2009, p.82]

Xbox World 360 Magazine UK 95%

A massively impressive licensed game. Without a license holding it all together Arkham Asylum would have been a stunning game with striking features. That it's all wrapped up in Batman's world makes the experience so much more appealing, and it works both as an extension of lore for Batman enthusiasts and an entry point for those less familiar with the DC universe. [Oct 2009, p.84]

Some impressive scores for a licensed title looks the business

interesting the demo is good as well, so looks very promising.......

is the demo on the market place?

I don't know how much you guys know about the controversy surrounding the large number of 90% + reviews of this game but you can get the gist of it HERE and HERE. So all those reviews only serve to make me suspiscious, especially considering Edios' past behaviour towards the due process of reviews (ahem... getting people fired for giving poor reviews and meddling with Tombraider reviews too).

The press would never lie I'M shocked you could even think of it. It is a bit worrying but it looks like it deserved such high scores and hey you play as batman, sweeeeeeet

The demo is suprisingly good, and Mark Hamil as the Joker always brings a smile to my face.

I will probably be renting it out day it comes out as i am currently skint.

Mark Hamil is fantastic as the Joker didn't he do the voice for the Animated stuff a few months back

Yeah, Mark Hamill was the Joker in the animated series.

Bought this yesterday, and it totally lived up to the hype. It's awesome! The combat is brilliant, detective mode is such a great idea, as are the Riddler's Challenges, and despite the asylum itself being intimidatingly big, the game is straightforward enough to not leave me wondering what to do next, hehe.

However, I went into Gamestation to get the special edition - who wouldn't want a batarang sitting on their shelf? The guy behind the counter was nice enough to show me what was in it, and it sucks. The batarang itself is an undetailed piece of cheap plastic, the cover of the game box is pants, and you get a really poorly printed book with all the villains in it. So if anyone else is thinking of splashing out on the special edition, I advise against it. And I got a neat little prequel comic with the normal edition anyway.

The special edition is going for ?75 on ebay:

BATMAN ARKHAM ASYLUM COLLECTORS EDITION 360 NEW XBOX on eBay (end time 03-Sep-09 10:25:25 BST)

But its still in stock at game for ?59.99 - how thick are some people?

I originally went on Play.com to get it, and someone was trying to sell it for ?127.99!!!