Batman Arkham Asylum review

Batman Arkham Asylum was one of those games that surprised everyone in 2009. A license game(which usually tend to be bad or just have a bad reputation) from a nigh completely unknown game studio Rocksteady Studios. No-one expected this to be one of the greatest games of 2009. Neither did I. And I only grabbed the game 2 years later. Now the question, did it blow me away? Or was it more of a disappointment or a game that is just plain mediocre? Well let’s see.

The Dark Knight in the madhouse

Let’s start with the story. The story starts with Batman bringing Joker to Arkham Asylum after Joker had attacked the Mayor’s office. Due to the recent fire in Blackgate prison most of the inmates from the prison were temporarily placed to Arkham Asylum. With lots of before hand planning Joker takes control of the asylum in a snap and makes it his playground, with a little help from Harley Quinn, a bribed guard and hundreds of his own gang members from the Blackgate prison. Threatening blow up some random bombs in hospitals and in other public buildings if someone tries to enter the island, Joker denies all help for Batman and thusly he needs to work on his own through the crisis. After a lot of sneaking around, detective work, smacking some sense into goons and having some confrontations with some familiar(or unfamiliar doesn’t really matter) faces, you finally come to the end of the devious plan and find yourself in the grand finalé to end the crisis on the island of Arkham Asylum. There’s really not much I can say about the story without spoiling, now is there?

The story progresses quite linearly through out the adventure and you don’t have a lot of options with the plot. But that necessarily isn’t a bad thing and once you get out of the first building where you brought the Joker to, you have access to the outside part of the island which you can a little more freely to give you a little illusion of freedom. I just pretty much blasted through the story without that much of exploring around so I might be wrong about this.

All in all, I felt that the story or the plot, however I should say it, was woven tightly together and formed a beautiful adventure with tense moments, surprising events and an interesting plot that really engages you extremely well. The story lasted long enough, it wasn’t left too short. Maybe could have been longer. And I think that remained interesting enough to play through again on harder difficulty (played through on normal). The characters perform their roles visually and especially audibly very well. I really like how the voice acting was done in the game. Mark Hamill performed as the joker superbly and everyone else besides just did a solid job to help the plot to be more intriguing and accessible. Voice-acting is one of those things that can really mess up the enjoyment of otherwise excellent stories. Fortunately that indeed doesn’t happen here. Music, voices and sound effects are very well done.

Visual look? Level design? Let’s take a look

Graphically Batman impressed me from the start. Especially the cinematic cutscenes look very polished, better looking than the normal gameplay graphics but still close enough to the normal to make a really smooth transition in and out of the cinematic scenes. The game has a sort of dark, gloomy and ominous overall look to it that and it really fits to theme that way. It would really spoil the mood of the game if it were otherwise. Especially the characters and their animations are well done.

Levels are designed okayish. Generally there is room for some sneaky play such as grappling between gargoyles or moving between high places, vents. Overall it’s still pretty linear when you are in a building/cave or any “inside” place. Outdoors area of the asylum offers a bit more freedom of movement. But only a bit, not that much. There’s a lot of nook and crannies though, and searching every corner of the map and levels is rewarded with collectable hidden trophies. These trophies award you with 3D models to a gallery, some extra information on different characters and they unlock challenge modes were you obviously can challenge your skills in the game with more extreme challenges than there are in the actual story mode.

Scarecrow levels deserve a special mention. They work almost like levels work in 2D-games. Also they give you a break from the normal cycle in the game as you can’t just rush everywhere and progress by being superior in combat. You have to be careful and avoid the gaze of Scarecrow by hiding behind cover, move forward and try to reach the spotlight and reflect it towards Scarecrow. They are refreshing elements between the other levels.

As you could expect Arkham Asylum isn’t a place containing endless amount of different areas, you eventually will have to visit same places you’ve been before. I could say that it is cheap to you use same areas multiple times but as the places have different meanings and something has been changed since the first time I were there, it’s not that bad.

Let’s get over with controls, combat and gameplay elements

What can I say, smooth controls. Your hero, Batman follows your commands very well and you don’t feel clumsy in any part of the game. I played first with keyboard + mouse which worked just well enough but I really think that the controls are laid out even better on the Xbox 360 controller. You can go either way whichever you prefer.

Combat primarily consist of 4 basic things: attack, counter, stun and dodge. Each one has been placed to its own button except dodge is on the same button with jump and but it works great as running requires you to hold the button and jumping only happens when there are gaps to jump over and dodge is executed by double pressing the button. Combat is kind of easy and you just require some reaction skillz to not get hit by countering or evading those incoming hits against you. After you combo enough attacks + counters in a row without missing or getting hit yourself, you get to do a special takedown or throw which is unblockable. Opponents who are squirming on the ground can be finished off with a takedown. You can also use Batarangs to knockdown or disrupt your enemies and Batclaws to pull them towards you. The only problem I might have with combat eventually is that it really doesn’t vary and opponents tend to stay pretty much the same. There’s a few additions to the basic goons whose ass you kick all the time with a goon who can block your attacks and you can’t counter his attacks, instead you have to stun him first with your cape and then take him down. Later on a guy with stun baton is added to the crew of goons you might face. This guy needs to be attacked from behind otherwise you get damaged from attacking him. Then there’s the armed goons who in groups require you to play more sneakily. As in use wall gargoyles, other high places and ventilation pipes as hiding spots and take down the gun armed goons one by one with silent takedowns. Grapple can be used to climb to higher places quickly and you can glide down silently from high places to sneak down on your enemies. Glide kick is especially useful in certain situations. Overall the combat works smoothly, you’ll enjoy doing it but I feel like it eventually will get a little repetitive and thusly dull. But the interest with it lasts easily at least through the first playthrough.

To help solve puzzles and to give some extra information, Batman has detective mode. Detective mode reveals points of interest such as structural weaknesses, gargoyles, power lines, thugs (unarmed in teal color and armed with gun in red color), vent entrances, destructible objects and so forth. You can see people even through walls and I usually had the detective mode on nearly the whole time whenever there was a situation I had to take down several armed thugs. Helps a lot with knowing where every goon is in the room and makes planning easier. There’s not a lot of puzzles and those that exist are pretty easy to crack.

There’s also a leveling system in the game. You get experience by fighting, doing certain stuff such as destroying Joker’s annoying toy teeths jumping on the ground with batarangs or finding things that the Riddler has hidden in the island. When you get a level you can upgrade some things like get a maximun health bonus, get decrease on how much you have to combo before you can do the special takedown(also a upgrade you have to get) or even something like a homing batarang. It’s an interesting addition to the features and I prefer that to just having all those abilities at start or just randomly getting them. You have a choice on what you would like to get to enhance your experience in the game. Of course the game still drops new gadgets as it progresses. You have only batarangs at start but you get the explosive gel very soon after and the batclaw after that.

Summing it up and final thoughts

Batman Arkham Asylum is a great game. It has solid controls, smooth gameplay, nice graphics, superb voice-acting, interesting story, the atmosphere is engaging and so forth. It really has the whole package, nicely woven together. Sure it doesn’t have multiplayer but I don’t think you need to have one for every game and in some cases adding a multiplayer might disrupt the developing of singleplayer or if the multiplayer is just bad it would have been just pointless to do. It ain’t an increase to its value unless its quality stuff. The stuff that I’d improve upon is to get more different kind of opponents to fight against, add some more levels, not reusing the same things when you could easily add something new, interesting and challenging instead.

I enjoyed the game very much and I can recommend to it anyone digging some action, adventure or just Batman. A quality product you can get quite cheap, like less than 10 euros. At least I bought mine with about that price. And the game is totally worth that amount of money. There is a demo available so once again if you’re not so sure about if the game is good enough, try out the demo and make your decision after playing the demo through.

I’m excitingly awaiting Rocksteady studio’s next release Batman Arkham City. Expectations are high, can they deliver the goods, is the question? Once again, time will tell.

I’m telling you, it’s awesome! Aren’t you listening to me?!

Batman Arkham Asylum review, 10.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

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