Batman: Arkham Asylum [PS3 & Xbox 360 Review]

I have a bit of a funny history with this title. When it was first announced that there was going to be a Batman: Arkham Asylum game, I took the title quiet literately and thought it would be based around the comic of the exact same name. It was one of my favourite comics and so a game on that would be awesome. Then when the story came out it dropped off my wire as it was far from the comic and I thought the devs missed it completely. That is until recently when the game came back on after reading more about it, seeing the footage and playing the game I quickly turned my head!

This isn’t a re-imagining of the same comic book, but a whole new addition to the Batman Universe and the stories behind the H.P. Lovecraft inspired Arkham Asylum.

Going Down to Arkham

So seems The Joker was holding up the Mayor of Gotham City’s office again, till Batman came and took him down and in. Upon his arrival at Arkham Asylum, Batman confesses his fears that The Joker seems to of given in without a fight, as if he wanted to get caught. Not a moment later, Joker springs free from the guards and starts running amok in Arkham, holding the city and the warden at ransom while the Joker makes Batman jump through his hoops.

The whole game follows Batman solving the mystery as to why the Joker wanted to take over Arkham and what his plans are with Batman himself. A lot of Batman history is covered in the game but not so that you have to know it but rather learn about it from meeting inmates who Batman previously caught and sent to the asylum.

Walking Around the Insanity

The game is pretty much an open world game based around the island allowing you to go where ever you have access thanks to the variety of tools Batman has at his disposal. The island isn’t that big so to add extra length to the game, back-tracking is involved. This has been carefully thought through as it feels fresh when you are forced to go into an area as you gain the new tools you travel to new parts. The outside part of the island is your hub to travel to a new building where you can often choose how to enter any given area and decide to either go for the up-front and personal approach, or the true batman style of sneak in a surprise!

You have to sometimes solve a few puzzling elements that require some logical thinking, but if you feel this isn’t for you then no worries. Batman: Arkham Asylum offers a detective mode that you can activate at any given moment to look for interactive parts of the level as well as for enemies in and around a given area. This adds a nice little twist on the gameplay to give you that Batman feeling that fills the game in so well.

Don’t Mess With the Bat

It’s interesting to think why Batman: Arkham Asylum game has worked so well and it has to be the fact that the developers must have taken a methodic approach to designing Batman because playing this you do feel like you are Batman.

Batman isn’t the sort to walk in to a room and just start throwing punches and struggle with a fight, he uses tools to gain an advantage first and then when he needs to fight, he does it with such ease. The game follows this extremely well. You normally need to take a stealthy approach into a level where you have to suss out how to gain the advantage and use it. When you are pushed into a fight, you are extremely good at it.

B: AA uses a system called free-flow-combat where you are given three buttons to fight with, but typically use one: hit, counter and stun. You will first start off button mashing the hit button to knock down all your opponents in a very cool, stylish way, and this works for a limited time. As you progress through game, you learn to adapt to use the other three to gain a better advantage in battle when you have have up to 10 thugs trying to attack you at once. The better the combo you get in these fight, the more experience (exp) you gain, which will allow to upgrade your armor and arsenal.

It’s strange how well this system does work, that you are powerful, but still careful on how you approach a situation. Anybody who has played Assassin’s Creed will know how this works.

Tasty Jaw Line, Bats!

The graphics are extremely good and some the best I’ve seen in a comic book game. It uses the Unreal 3 engine, famous for games such as Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War 2, but this is the first I’ve seen it not using all beefy characters but some slim. They are all rendered in a way you expect to see them; fat, slim, beefy, huge, mencing. Each model is crafted to perfection!

The world itself looks like it should too, providing a very menacing look with dark corners and disturbing scenes across the asylum, you are engrossed in the look and feel of the game world. It’s hard to talk about how good the graphics looks without sounding as if you are getting a little over excited about it, but they work so well and can’t be flawed. The only issue is when you are in detective mode, a lot of the niceties are lost, but if you are anything like me, you will reserve the detective mode to when you really need it! On both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the graphics are immaculate and exactly the same; there is no worries on superiority here but rather the devs really push both consoles to show what can easily be done on both system putting others that complain about cross platform coding to shame.

Adding to the Back Pages

The game adds challenge modes on top of the normal story mode that allows you to test your skills that you learned in the game. Even though you will probably play through the game more than once, this allows extra-longevity that would normally be lost. At the moment, there have been two extra download content packs available for both system, with the PS3 also having an extra pack to play as the Joker through the normal challenge missions. This is possibly the only pro and con of the systems is that ability to play as the Joker exclusively on the PS3; there is no release planned that I know of to have the Joker on the Xbox 360, so this maybe the reason to purchase the PS3 version if you are stuck as to what system, mind you, if you are an achievement whore, then they are (kind of) easy on B:AA so that may sway you also.

So with all this positivity in a comic book game, there has to be some negatives. There is one and that’s obvious; the cliche ending. That’s all I’m going to say, it doesn’t spoil the game as the plot up until the end is great along with some really cool, and confusing, surprises.

BOOF! POW! WHAM!

One of the best “super hero” games ever released; it stays close to it’s source material and adds a whole new chapter to the DC and Batman universe with this true homage to the Dark Knight. This is a game to add to your collection whether or not you are a comic book fan.

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