Batman: Arkham Asylum

It's a new record. I have finished the storyline of Batman: Arkham Asylum in a week. Normally I get a game and I play it for a few days and then I get distracted by a different game. Not this one, it hooked me in and kept me. I could have possibly have been done with it sooner too had I not needed to eat, sleep, or work. Rocksteady Studios did their job well.

Let's get to the review.

Story:

The basic plot is The Joker tricks Batman into bringing him back to Arkham Asylum, only to spring a long planned trap in which The Joker sets free all the asylum inmates and takes over the asylum. Commissioner Gordon and Warden Sharp are both captured. Batman has a long night of rescuing and recapturing inmates ahead of him. Saying much else will give away spoilers. The story is kept pretty much in currently established cannon.

Two minor sub-plots adds a "find the goodies" game as the Riddler has hidden puzzles and trophies all over Arkham and "The Spirit of Arkham" has wrote it's own story in hidden areas also.

The games story was co-written by Paul Dini who won Emmies for his work on the shows "The New Batman Adventures" & "Batman Beyond," so you know it's going to be good.

Controls:

Rocksteady has put together a good control scheme. Simple and to the point, not overly complicated. They are easy to pick up and easy to use. Movement is on the left stick, camera on the right. Batman's various gadgets can be selected on the D-pad and readied and put to use with the shoulder buttons. Various actions (running/grabbing/etc.)are handled by the "X" or "A" Button (PS3/Xbox 360 respectively) with the rest of the face buttons handling combat(punch/counter/stun). "L2" or Left Trigger is for turning on/off Detective Mode, the "R2" or Right Trigger for crouching/stealth.



Gameplay;

With a great control scheme, the gameplay works wonderfully. The "freeflow combat" that they came up with works wonderfully. Point Batman in a direction and start hitting the punch button ("square" on PS3/"X" on 360) and keep moving. If you are in a large crowd your "combos" will rack up quickly. If someone is about to hit Batman they will have "lighting bolts" appear around them, quickly hit the counter button ("triangle" on PS3/"Y" on 360) and Batman will counter them and you will not get hit. If you miss the counter, when you get hit the screen will got to "double vision" momentarily, but will go back to normal.



But while Batman is a capable fighter, he is a smart fighter, and this is where the "invisible predator" system comes in. Armed inmates or large groups can take Batman down very quickly. The environment has plenty of places to hide such as gargoyles, ventilation shafts, etc. Batman can quickly and silently take out foes from these areas. Both the combat and the "invisible predator" work very well and are very satisfying.

Now while there is plenty of combat, the game does also include a fair amount of platforming too, surprisingly. Navigating Arkham Asylum provides plenty of jumping, swinging, climbing, ducking, and gliding.

Batman's gadgets work well for exploring and navigating Arkham, as well as assisting in taking out bad guys. These can be upgraded as the game progresses with an experience system. Take out bad guys, gain experience (and health). Find Riddler trophies, solve puzzles, gain experience.

In addition to the main story to play through, there are the challenge maps that test your skills in combat and stealth. Additionally, if you have the PS3 version you can play through challenges as The Joker, who has his own gadgets and fight moves. I have to say his fight move are fun as they are a bit more silly/clown based.

Graphics and Sound:

If you played the demo then you have a good idea of what it looks and sounds like, beautiful. Rocksteady put a lot of detail into their work. Right down to the fact that as Batman progresses through the game he visibly shows various cuts bruises and scrapes.

Sound is crisp and clean. And considering they got Kevin Conroy, Arleen Sorkin and Mark Hamill from the Batman Animated Series to reprise their roles (Batman, Harley Quinn, and The Joker), there is no badly delivered lines...at least from all that I heard in the game. The rest of the cast are top notch talent. Music fits, sounds very good and is not intrusive.

Overall:

This game kicks ass and takes names. It has a great balance of story and gameplay, neither being sacrificed for the other. After years of terrible Batman games, many of which were just quick movie tie-ins, Rocksteady hit this one out of the park. And with this being the second game created by the studio, that's quite a feat.

The only thing I can complain about is the camera position. For a majority of the game you are looking over Batman's right shoulder. My personal preference would be to have it centered, which is what they do when you are in combat or running.

Still like I said that's really the only problem I can find, and even that is just nit-picking.

I give the game 5 Bat-shaped Stars, Two Thumbs Way Up, a 10 out of 10, and I highly recommend it for Batman fans. Thank you Rocksteady for a AWESOME game.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is rated T for Teen for Alcohol and Tobacco Reference, Blood, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence



EDIT - If you wish to follow my game reviews please go to my new game review only blog, "Lord Moon: Resident Gaming Addict" thank you.

PAX08: Lord Moon Meet Lord Vader

Lord Moon Meets Lord Vader
Originally uploaded by Lord Moon

Well another PAX in the books. PAX08 had 58,500 people come through. Lord that's a lot of geeks and nerds in one place.

This year was a bit new and different for me. in past years I had worked in Table Top. This year I was in the Expohall......as a Gold Assistant.....with the most exhibitors. Talk about being dumped off the deep end. In the end not as bad as I thought it was going to be. There was the drawback of not getting all the swag and doubles for my annual giveaway at BRS, but I can deal with that. Besides Kathi from Turbine hooked me up with some awesome swag. Two limited to 1000 pieces of autographed artwork from Dungeons and Dragons Online. Nice!

Working the Expohall did let me see a lot of the games that are coming. South Peak had "Ninja Town" for the DS. It's basically a cutesy RTS. Pretty easy to pick up and play, I could easily see playing this on the bus ride to and from work. They also had X Blades, a fantasy action hack & slash with some lite RPG elements. I never got a chance to play it, but it looked damn fun. Big special attacks, with some bullet-time effects that looked hella cool. The game comes out next year. I'd say keep an eye out for it.

It was kind of interesting to hear the guys from South Peak admit that they screwed up Two Worlds, but they said they learned a lot from their first console game and have decided to go cross-platform with everything else they put out.

Atari had some cool stuff. Neverwinter Nights 2 which looked good. Again another I didn't get to play as to many others were playing it. Race Pro which looks to be Atari's stab at the Grand Turismo/Forza market. What I got to play of it was not a final build, but has some good promise. Real tracks, real cars, real driving and real damage.....though in this build there is not a lot of crunching to the cars, more of the bumper comes off and after a few more good hits a wrench appears on screen meaning the car is heavily damaged. And to go with that the fact the pit row wasn't active to repair your car.

I also got to play their newest Big Game Hunter game. I think one of their own devs said it best, "I'm ready to go home, drink a six-pack of beer, and play this game." I suggested they put a "slow elk" on the game. If anyone reading this knows Slow Elk Ale, then you know what I'm talking about. The beer label has a picture of a cow with a branch tied to it's head. This also prompted the idea of putting a Jackalope in the game.

The Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway didn't show off anything, but it was probably one of the busiest booths on the floor. If you allowed them to give you a "Hellcut" haircut, then you would get mailed the game for free when it was released. The "Hellcut" was a buzzcut with the word HELL spray painted on the back of your head (it was haircoloring paint). I was the 5th one in line. :D I know at least two women went through it too.

Turbine showed off their MMOs, Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. Both looked damn pretty and when I saw the rigs they were running them on...full blown Dell gaming systems. If I could have just walked away with one thing.........

Cryptic had a playable build of Champions Online. I really like this game. It's was a bit like City of Heroes/Villains but better. Graphically it had a cel-shaded look to make it more like a comic book. The game had more action to it, not a lot of time waiting for your powers to be ready, a big improvement over CoX.

Sony was showing off the Resistance 2 multiplayer and of course LittleBigPlanet. I talked briefly with one of the Resistance devs and he basically said everything you can find online right now. It was interesting to find out he loved his Xbox 360 as much as his PS3 as we started talking about other things. Like the fact that someone at Sony corporate picked the worst email system ever to use company-wide. There were long lines for both games so I got look at them only. I want the big screen HDTV they had LBP set up on, had to have been a 50 or 60inch screen. I did get to play around with Echochrome on the PSP, it reminded me a lot of Crush, also for the PSP, so I may have to get it.

The Rock Band 2 booth/stage easily was probably the busiest. They had all the songs available, but they were not allowed to let anyone play the the GnR song, "Shackler's Revenge," but given GnR that really doesn't surprise me. The coolest thing there besides getting to play Rock Band 2 was at the Expohall party that was afterhours on Friday night. The afterhours party was so the exhibitors could get to mingle and have some fun before the long days of Saturday and Sunday. Expohall Enforcers got to hang out and mingle too. I got to sing Elvis Costello's "Pump It Up" in a band consisting of two of the Harmonix devs. One on guitar and one on drums. My fellow Enforcer, Groove, played bass. The epitome of cool right there.

I did check out the Guitar Hero World Tour booth. They had four stations set up. I give you three guesses as to what a majority of the people played on it, and the first two don't count. Yup, Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher." Overall it looks pretty good, but drummers may have a hard time. My roommate who loves to play the drums in Rock Band pointed out the bass drum line is purple, which is kind of hard to see on the black "fretboard."

That is pretty much all I remember game-wise that got to see or do. Being a gold assistant I didn't want to wander too far from the exhibitor's I was in charge of, nor did I want to leave my area for too long. Most other games I wanted to check out (Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, Microsoft's booth) were way crowded. Fallout 3 got especially bad on Saturday when Morgan Webb and Adam Sessler from X-Play showed up. Talked very briefly with Major Nelson about the new dashboard coming. And took a ton of photos (see my flickr account).

I did get to see part of Freezepop's concert and Johnathan Coulton's show on Friday night. Missed Saturday's show. :-(

Keith "Sir Psycho" and his girlfriend, Michella (I hope I spelled that right) came out to visit and attend PAX. They had fun. Keith got to play new songs in Rock Band 2, especially Steely Dan's "Bodhisattva," which evidently was the only time it was played over the weekend. Nobody knew the song so they just blipped over it. Met up with Bobby Blackwolf again and checked out his show live.

And of course got to work with again possibly the best all volunteer team EVAR!, the PAX Enforcers. We do so much for so little and it's all for a good cause.