As I surprised as I was with Natal from the Microsoft press conference, Metal Gear Solid Rising on the 360, and not one but two new Super Mario games for the Wii, the biggest surprise for me was how much I enjoyed Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Ok that’s stretching it a bit, but still I needed a poignant opener to accurately convey how impressed I was by this E3 demo. The demo itself had two modes available to play: first part of the main story mode and four levels of the challenge mode. Thankfully I was able to play through the entire level of the story mode along with playing a single level from the challenge mode.
Batman: Arkham Asylum takes place in the titular Arkham Asylum where Batman arrives after receiving word that The Joker has been brought in. Batman has a bad feeling though as the Joker apparently surrendered without even putting up a fight. Once the Joker is within the prison forcefields and out of Batman’s reach, the trap is sprung. The Joker breaks free of his confinement and use his inside woman, Harley Quinn, to take total control of the prison’s security and make Batman the one who is the prisoner inside Arkham’s halls of crazy convicted criminals.
It is here where we gain control of Batman and are pitted against a group of enemies all at once. Combat in Arkham Asylum feels like it has been created with a single goal in mind: make the gamer feel completely like Batman. Batman is not the kind of character who uses the same repetitive five hit combo over and over again as you mash the attack button mindlessly. Batman is a character who will beat up one guy, block the attack of another one behind him, throw him over his shoulder, then turn his attention to another and within seconds, everyone is on the floor.
All of this is translated perfectly into the game. Batman has two main buttons for his attacks along with a button for counters. You’ll know when to press the counter button when you see an icon appear over an enemy’s head indicating that they’re about to attack. After a successful counter, the enemy will likely be stunned long enough for you to either focus on another enemy, or finish the stunned off with a satisfying finishing move. Often times you will also be prompted to perform takedowns which will have Batman dashing towards an enemy and spear tackling them to the floor for a little ground and pound. Combat is fast, brutal, fluid, and provides the player with a lot of variety when you throw in all of Batman’s gadgets as well.
Speaking of Batman’s gadgets, the demo showed off just the Batarangs and the Bathook. Batarangs could be thrown in groups to hit multiple enemies at once and were great for catching enemies off guard and stunning them. The Bathook comes into play when you need to zip up to the top of a gargoyle statue or pull a grate off of a vent.
Another aspect of the game that totally nails the whole Batman style is when you are in stealth mode. When you enter a room full of enemies that are completely unaware of your presence, Batman can swing around from the rafters and plan out how he wants to take a group of enemies down without alerting everyone else. One of the coolest things that you can do is sit on top of a gargoyle and wait for a pair of patrols to walk by, then swoop down, pick the rear guy up, return to the top of the gargoyle before the other enemy realizes he’s missing, drop him back down to the ground, and then swing over to another area before the remaining guard realizes what just happened. Then you can watch as the remaining guard points his gun around in a panic as you work your way across the rafters so you can swoop back down and kick him in the back of the head. I can’t see it ever getting old.
I can’t say much about the challenge rooms because I only played through one of them, but it seems like a fairly standard mode in which you’re tasked with defeating a certain amount of enemies within a time limit and then are scored based on your performance. The difficulty and number of enemies rises as you complete each round, but your health stays the same so you’ll have to fight intelligently or you won’t have enough health to survive the final rounds.
With most games based off of comic book characters I’d usually end with “If you’re a fan of the series, you should check this one out. Everyone else should probably stay away.” But in the case of Arkham Asylum, even if you’re somehow not a fan of the Caped Crusader, you really should seriously keep this one on your radar. The graphics and art style are fantastic, the game features the voices of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill (who are really the only voices that exist for Batman and the Joker in my opinion,) and the gameplay is solid as a rock. Be on the lookout for Batman: Arkham Asylum when it reaches US shelves on August 25th.
