Going back to the days of the NES, Batman has a long history in video games. The Caped Crusader has graced the NES, Genesis, Game Boy, PlayStation platforms, arcades, various computer systems, and others in his time. However, Arkham Asylum was the first to not just be a great superhero game, but a great video game. It crossed over from just appealing to Batman fans to being a must-play game even for casuals. Batman: Arkham Asylum has been raved about for years and is pointed to as being the gold standard of licensed superhero games. Even if you’re not hard into superhero pop culture, it’s been hard to ignore. So let’s take a look:
The first few hours are a tutorial that teach the player how to perform basic mechanics like crouching, jumping, fighting, gliding, using Batarangs, using the grappling hook, how to use stealth, etc. However, by the end of it, you feel like Batman. You are Batman.
Mechanically, Arkham Asylum doesn’t reinvent the wheel. It draws on a lot of other IPs with its mechanics. It has level design and gadgetry that draws on Metroid Prime and The Legend of Zelda. Some of its stealth elements are reminiscent of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. It’s more of an action-stealth than a straight action game, that also dabbles in being an action-adventure game at times. Some of the best parts are when you’re outside and can explore. When you’re inside, everything feels more constricted and linear, and the camera becomes more of an issue (more on that later).
The pacing does a good job of mixing up the action and stealth elements. A good stealth game will allow the player to have fun with the enemies they’re hiding from. When Batman takes out one thug in a room from his shadowy perch, the others start getting agitated. They start nervously talking to themselves, and to each other, and it’s amusing to listen to. They’re terrified of Batman and know they’re at his mercy, but Joker has hired them to take him out, so they have no choice.
However, the game desperately needs a minimap. I suspect Rocksteady was going for more of a cinematic aesthetic and didn’t want to clutter the playing screen, but having to constantly go into my submenu to look at my map to see where I’m going added an extra layer of tedium to the game that could’ve easily been avoided.
The Riddler makes his presence felt with hundreds of riddles scattered throughout Arkham, and they’re surprisingly fun to solve. These take the form of green question marks he’s left behind, or certain things in the environment that Batman has to scan. If you finish the game without getting them all, you can go back and find the rest sans enemies if you so desire. I was expecting it to be tedious, but it ended up being surprisingly addicting. The Riddler’s taunts do a good job of challenging you to find and solve them, and his surprise and annoyance when you do solve them are funny.
What stood out almost immediately in Arkham Asylum was the quality voice-acting overall, but especially Joker’s.
Joker talks a lot in Arkham Asylum. In fact, he pretty much never shuts up. He’s constantly on the loudspeaker taunting Batman or giving instructions to his men, and almost everything he says is well-written, amusing, and voiced to perfection. I knew Mark Hamill was famous for voicing Joker, but going in, I didn’t think to check if he worked on Arkham Asylum. After listening to him taunt Batman for several hours, the quality of Joker’s voice-acting stood out. So I checked Wikipedia, and sure enough, there was Mark Hamill’s name. This was my first exposure to him as Joker, and if I didn’t know already going in, I would have never guessed that the actor who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars and the voice of Joker in this game are the same guy. Hamill is phenomenal, and he has tons of lines. Joker easily has more dialog than any other character in the game, including Batman.
Batman has other iconic villains and arch-nemeses, and they’re on full display in Arkham Asylum. While you don’t see most of them in the game, there are references to what seems to be just about every character that’s ever been in a Batman comic. I had no idea Batman had so many enemies.
Joker is constantly talking, and Riddler’s prodding of Batman is amusing, but even the common thugs like to talk tough about Batman when they think he isn’t around to hear, or when they think they have him at such a disadvantage that there’s nothing he can do. They all learn the hard way. Like Batman says in the game ‘I eat punks like these for breakfast,’ and he definitely does.
The visuals and art look fantastic. The character models and art are some of the best I’ve seen. It looks and feels like a modern graphic novel come to life on your screen. As you progress through the game, there’s a gallery you slowly unlock where you can admire the character models. They’re done incredibly well. The art direction in Arkham Asylum is through the roof. Arkham Asylum makes you feel like you’re in Batman’s Gotham. It’s dark, maniacal, and feels authentically like a Batman game should. Arkham Island is fleshed out incredibly well.
The framerate is mostly smooth, but I was getting framerate hitches here and there. I had one instance where the game slowed down to a slideshow. At first, I couldn’t tell if it was some sort of special effect from the game, but if it was, it wasn’t executed well. It felt like the game was about to crash. Other than that, I didn’t have any issues with performance.
The combat feels simplistic at first, like you’re just mashing the attack-button and Batman is doing all the work. However, there’s some depth to it with counters, throws, stringing together combos, and laying out enemies. It’s fun taking on a bunch of thugs and seeing how long you can go without Batman taking a hit. All of Batman’s punches and kicks have weight and crunch to them. It has a good flow to it and feels good.
The combat has a combo system that is all about stringing together as many punches and kicks as you can without getting hit. Once Batman takes a hit, you have to start a new combo. The countering mechanic is what makes stringing together long combos fun and challenging. If you’re fighting one guy and another baddie comes from behind and tries to tag Batman, hit the counter button, and Batman will block the attack and deliver one of his own.
However, the counter system can be strange as well. When a light appears over an enemy’s head, you’re supposed to be able to counter that enemy’s attack. However, many times, when I would hit the Y-button to counter, the light would disappear right as I was hitting the button. So instead of countering or attacking, Batman would just stand there, and another thug would land a blow. That happened a lot, and since the whole strategy of enemies you fight is to come up behind Batman and hit him while he’s fighting someone else, countering is very important to combat – but it doesn’t always feel consistent.
When you’re stringing together combos, you control which direction you want Batman to attack with the control stick. While it doesn’t target individual enemies, it usually does a good job of targeting whoever is the closest. This is helpful when you don’t want Batman to get backed into a corner or put into any other compromising position when he’s fighting a lot of guys at once.
Some thugs will carry shock-sticks, knives, or even machine guns. They require special attention that requires stunning them with Batman’s cape or vaulting over them to make them stumble so he can take them out. He can also use Batarangs to stun opponents to get the jump on them, or he can pick up thugs and throw them. Lots of cinematic slow-motion knockout blows is the icing that makes the combat system one of the main highlights of Arkham Asylum. It’s a lot of fun.
However, the main problem I had with the combat is that so much of the game takes place in confined spaces. When you get a lot of enemies put into that confined space fighting with Batman, the camera can be a problem since he has enemies coming at him from everywhere, and needs to be able to see from everywhere at once. Since he can’t, taking hits from enemies you can’t see becomes much more common with more enemies on-screen. You can switch the camera-assist on or off in the options, but it’s going to happen no matter what you choose. When there’s too many characters on-screen, the camera simply can’t keep up. That leaves it up to you as the player to either get creative with the camera, or just ‘git gud’ and develop a sixth sense of unseen enemies coming up on you.
During normal fights, it’s only a minor nagging issue. In the more difficult fights, it’s a major issue because you’re having to fight the camera while you’re fighting enemies. When Batman gets cornered, or is fighting with his back against a wall, good luck. Instead of panning out from another direction, the camera squishes itself against the wall so you can’t see Batman at all. So you have enemies teeing off on you, and you can’t see what you’re doing to fight back effectively. The player shouldn’t have to fight the game’s mechanics on top of the game’s enemies, but that’s what you have to do during the difficult combat sequences. The good news is that the really difficult fight sequences are in the Challenge Mode and not in Story Mode. So if you’re playing the game in normal Story mode, it likely won’t be a problem for you.
VERDICT
Batman: Arkham Asylum is easily the best superhero game I’ve ever played. In fact, it’s probably also the best licensed game I’ve ever played. It captures the dark, gritty aesthetic of Batman, Gotham, and Arkham Asylum incredibly well. Even playing this game for the first time years after its original release, it plays like it hasn’t aged a day. If you’re like me and have had Arkham Asylum sitting unplayed in your backlog, it’s well worth your time to give it a go. Whatever your opinion of superhero games is going into it, you’ll have a higher opinion of them coming out of this one. I give it my strongest recommendation and can’t wait to jump into Arkham City in the near future.
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