Batman: Arkham Asylum is a single player, third-person action/adventure in which the Dark Knight is forced to take on his greatest challenge yet when he is trapped by arch rival, the Joker, within Gotham City's facility for the criminally insane, Arkham Asylum. A blend of exciting arcade style combat and stealth mechanics packed with amazing graphics in a moody, immersive setting, Batman: Arkham Asylum offers diverse gameplay options that push the envelope for all action, adventure and superhero games. 
Kick it in combat gameplay.
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And stealth action.
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Match wits with The Joker.
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Utilize utility belt gadgets.
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Batman: Arkham Asylum features an original story penned exclusively for the game by famous Batman author and five-time Emmy award winner, Paul Dini, whose credits include "Lost" season one and "Batman: The Animated Series." As the game begins Batman is personally delivering his nemesis, The Joker, to the asylum at Arkham Island, but he is uneasy. Although the Arkham asylum is well fortified, he has a nagging feeling that all is not well, which proves to be the case when seconds after turning The Joker over to the guards, the master criminal breaks free of his captors. Even more surprising than this quick turn of events is the revelation that it was never The Joker's intent to escape the vault-like facility, but instead to trap Batman there. Surrounded by an asylum full of dangerous criminals, many of which he put there and all at the beck and call of the Joker, can Batman survive and discover what is behind the Joker's intricate plot? Gameplay
In Batman: Arkham Asylum players strap on the gadget-heavy utility belt of the Caped Crusader. Gameplay here is a combination of both the knuckle crunching rush of hand to hand combat as you take on the hordes of thugs that infest Arkham Asylum, and stealth gameplay in which you must dispatch individuals from the shadows. Players can expect an engrossing single player campaign in which Batman continually moves forward to face the henchmen, bosses and traps that The Joker has set for him. With regards to opponents, in addition to The Joker who you will hear more than you see, the dark walls of Arkham also hold familiar villains from the the Batman criminal universe including Harley Quinn, Victor Zsasz and Killer Croc, that you will have to deal with, but don't expect a one-dimensional experience. As players progress from environment to environment within Arkham they will have to use varying combinations of muscle, detective skills, gadgetry and a certain degree of light RPG-like leveling of Batman's skills, arsenal and physical characteristics to survive and discover what The Joker's underlying scheme is. In addition to the story-driven single player campaign Arkham Asylum also contains various additional play modes. These include an arcade styled combat mode where players accumulate points by engaging hordes of thugs in a hand to hand slugfest across a series of maps, in which Batman's physical strength and agility play a major role. The key here is to chain together as many attacks as possible due to the fact that with each successful combo players increase the point multiplier associated with their actions. The game also features a time-based stealth mode where players must hone their ability to strike silently from the shadows. This gameplay, referred to as 'Invisible Predator' utilizes the Dark Knight's skill with gadgets like the grapple tool, batarang and explosives. These allow for vertical/horizontal mobility, the ability to quickly strike from above and at a distance and to take out enemies and create distractions, even through walls. But remember that Batman works solo and is not superhuman. Your enemies will congregate around trouble areas and work as a team against you, so you must be silent, plan your attacks wisely, strike quickly and discover the value of encouraging fear within enemies. Key Features - Utilize the unique FreeFlow combat system to chain together unlimited combos seamlessly and battle with huge groups of The Joker's henchmen in brutal melee brawls.
- Investigate as Batman, the world's greatest detective, by solving intricate puzzles with the help of cutting edge forensic tools including x-ray scanning, fingerprint scans, 'Amido Black' spray and a pheromone tracker.
- Face off against Gotham's greatest villains including The Joker, Harley Quinn, Victor Zsasz and Killer Croc.
- Become the Invisible Predator with Batman's fear takedowns and unique vantage point system to move without being seen and hunt enemies.
- Choose multiple takedown methods, including swooping from the sky and smashing through walls, and use the predator camera get a closer look at the action.
- Explore every inch of Arkham Asylum and roam freely on the infamous island, presented for the first time ever in its gritty and realistic entirety.
- Experience what it's like to be Batman using batarangs, explosive gel aerosol, the Batclaw, sonar resonator and the line launcher.
- Unlock more secrets by completing hidden challenges in the world and develop and customize equipment by earning experience points.
- Enjoy complete superhero freedom in the environment with the use of Batman's grapple to get to any place you can see, jump from any height and glide in any direction.
- PlayStation 3 exclusive Joker Challenge Map DLC.
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 The Definitive Batman Game. |
| Review Date: August 25, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Daniel Wolf, Cleveland, OH |
For years and years, gamers (myself included) have played many different Batman video games and have only been let down time after time.
Now, Batman: Arkham Asylum IS that Batman game that you have always wanted to play.
It satisfies every part of you Batman desires and really gives you the feeling that you ARE Batman.
From the strength and power to the gadgets to the stealth and surprise you can bring toward your enemy, it is quite a marvel that a game developer finally got it right.
Thank you Rocksteady!
I do not want to give away any spoilers from the game so the plot is really basic and simple.
The Joker has taken total control over Arkham island and Batman needs to hunt him down to stop him, but not without going through many of Batman's familiar villians in the process.
Batman's gadgets come in handy often, most of the time you will be using his 'detective mode' which is built into the cowl and gives you the ability to see important items in the room and clues to lead you in the right direction.
There will be some moments where you find yourself just playing with all of Batman' gadgets for 10-15 minutes because there are so many of them to play with. (It feeds your inner dork so it's okay!)
Gameplay mechanics are solid and I have yet to find a defect in them or any glitches.
Fighting is very enjoyable, because you can be surrounded by 6-10 enemies and everytime an enemy is about to attack you hit the counter-attack button and continue to fight off all of them at once. Very fun.
The graphics are amazing and highly detailed like you would expect from a PS3.
Voice-over work is superb and Mark Hamill, as The Joker, really steals the show. If they gave out Oscars for Best Video Game Voice-Over Performance then Hamill would easily win it for this game!
All in all, Batman games have been so poor for so long, it is exciting to see a Batman game done right and this is worthy of a $60 purchase.
Go and get it and play it with the lights off in the dark with the sound blasting. |
Holy Incarnations Batman, Freaking Finally! (Jest Review)
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| Review Date: August 27, 2009 |
| Reviewer: elchamber, Chino Hills |
After playing this game, you'll forget all of the other bad comic book in the past.
This is a spooky, creepy, gothic-style sand-box where you play the real Batman. Real in that he can't jump 20 ft high, but rely on his gadgets, skill and intellect to avoid, escape and hunt enemies, find important evidence and scout locations. The fighting mechanics are easy that even a 10 years old child can use it, but the difficulty of using it increases where you have to use some of Batman's gadgets to take down larger opponents. At one of several moments, I had to jump into a group of enemies to get to a location. At first I was hesitant, but then I remember how easy it can be if I remember how to deal with each kind of enemy. First, I see what kind of enemies their are and plan my onslaught. To test and hone-in you fighting skills, you have challenges outside the main game to practice on.
It's not just a button-smashing game, its also a puzzler. You can switch into 'detective mode' to find evidence, trophies and solve environmental riddles as well as figure out how to get to one place to another.
I beat the game in 10 hours, but worth going back to try on harder challenging levels as well as to complete the entire game. Puzzles were very cleaver. I had trouble with a certain type of puzzle that I decided to completely ignore them. Now, I have figured it's skillful ways and hitting myself for not thinking of it earlier.
Two things I hated were the fact that I couldn't get to certain locations and be able to get things without the upgrades I got later. The next problem of mine is that the game ended where Batman goes back to Gotham City.
One actual problem is the Scarecrow challenges. The camera angles and controls aren't that responsive verses the way the main game version. I liked them at first to give me a break from the main story line's gameplay, but became increasingly annoying when trying to time an action. It took me several times pressing on the buttons to have it work.
I can say, Batman Arkham Asylum is one of the best games I've ever purchased.
PARENTS: If your thinking of purchasing this game for your kids, here is what to expect. Light or mild sexual themes. Poison Ivy is presented in a seductive way and mild innuendos from criminals stating, "I wouldn't mine playing doctor with her."
Violence is suggestive. The locations have skulls and bones. Bodies lying in the floor or hang on their limbs(Batman only knocks out his opponents or left to their end, while criminals kill). No gory images if you could on a little blood dripping of Batman's mouth after a hit. No bad language. Basically, if you've watch or seen the animated series then you pretty much see what level of sex and violence it has. |
You are the Dark Knight
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| Review Date: August 27, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Tyler Johnson, |
Batman: Arkham Asylum is the best Batman game ever made. But that is not the reason that you should buy it. You should stop what you are doing and get this game immediately because it is one of, if not the best, game of the year. It excels in every category, and is alot of fun to play, a quality that is fast fading in this modern gaming age.
The game starts off with you escorting the Joker back to his home away from home in Arkham Asylum. Just before he can be safely stored in his padded room, all hell breaks loose and you are trapped on an island filled with your fiercest foes. The story only gets better from there, and you see villans ranging from Harley Quinn, to the Scarecrow in some of the most psycologicaly thrilling levels since Eternal Darkness.
The Graphics are gorgeous. Period. The voice acting is so good I go to geek heaven every time I hear Mark Hamill give us the greatest Joker laugh ever concieved. Many of the voice actors from the excellent Batman: The Animated Series reprise their roles in this game to great effect. Paul Dini penned the excellent story so have no fear, you will not be rolling your eyes at cliched dialogue the entire game. Think of this as one of the best episodes of the animated series ever.
As I stated in my title You are the Dark Knight, and it has never been this enjoyable. As Batman, you have at your disposal a wide array of gadgets ranging from your standard issue Batarang, to grappling hook, and blasting gel. Every item has a unique function, and often has combat applications for the more adventurous players. Which brings me to the combat. As Batman you have the ability to jump into a group of ten thugs and put generations of Jet Li and Jackie Chan movies to shame. After a few fights you should have the basic mechanics down, and by the time you have logged in a couple of hours you will be racking up 20 hit combos. There are times however, when you won't be able to charge into battle, but will need to use stealth, and badass scare tactics to defeat the more heavily armed foes. There are few things as satisfying as swooping down from the ceiling, tying your foe up, and leaving him to swing, scaring the crap out of the rest of his friends while the Joker taunts his men for their incompetence.
While the combat is fantastic, the area of the game that most impressed me was the exploration. In games past exploration was barely a sidequest and treated more as a distraction for after you had completed the game. In Arkham Asylum you have a ton of interesting things to find from awesome recordings of the villans psych evaluations to engravings chronicling Amadeus Arkhams slow descent into madness. While most games make you turn over every rock and look in every cranny in AA you can find maps that point out the approximate location of the items. And once you find said secrets you are rewarded with extra experience to boost your abilities.
The one gripe I have with the game is that you do not have a jump button. You jump automatically when you reach a ledge. While this seems like it would be a hindrance, in many case it is easier than a jump button. There are a couple of times I wished I had more control over my jump, but not to the point that it affected my performance.
The playstation three version allows you to use the joker in the challenge maps so if you own a ps3 get this for that.
This is an incredible game, and you owe it to yourself to play it. |
What? A GOOD Batman Game? No Way!!
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| Review Date: December 30, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Matt R., Nebraska |
| For years I have waited for a decent Batman game to be released. As a kid, he was always my favorite superhero and time after time I was dissappointed with the games that were released. And then finally, here it is, the savior of all Batman games (and one of the best games this year in general). Arkham Asylum is so engaging that I had a hard time putting it down. I am by no means a hard-core gamer but this is one addicting game and it is very well executed. You get to swing from statues, use an array of gadgets like the batarang, grappling hook, code scrambler, explosives, and more. And not just mindless throwing of batarangs. You get to aim your weapons or use them as a tactical advantage. There are areas where you are in a room of thugs and have to take each and every one out by sneaking around the room--in and out of wall grates, flying from the ceiling and wrapping villains up. The character voices are great (many straight from the animated series such as Mark Hamel as the joker). The visuals are intruiging as well. I don't think you can go wrong with this game. |
The Best Batman Game If Not Best Comic Game Ever Made
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| Review Date: January 29, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Scott Posey, Baltimore, MD |
Batman - The Caped Crusader, The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne...he has many names, but no good video games. Sure, games have been created in the vain attempt to capitalize off of a movie or during a comic book resurgence period, but rarely did these games ever amount to anything more than a filler Christmas game that a loved one can get for the gamer in their life. With the recent release of "Batman: Arkham Asylum", Rocksteady went out on a limb to create something we have rarely seen this generation of games, a good comic book game. Would their attempts at recreating the Dark Knight go off without a hitch or would The Batman be destined for video game failure?
Before looking at the game, you need to look at the source. Batman: Arkham Asylum takes place in, you guessed it, Arkham Asylum. The Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane was first published in a comic in 1974 with Batman #258. Back then it was considered "Arkham Hospital" and it wasn't until 1989 when Grant Morrison and Dave McKean wrote "Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth" that it took on it's extremely dark counterpart that we see in the video game. Arkham is where most of Batman's bad guys go when they are too dangerous, both to themselves and others, to house in a normal facility. At times, Batman himself flirts with thoughts that he too many be insane, he does wear a Bat costume as Joker points out. It's this source material that the developers at Rocksteady went out to reproduce. By talking with the creators of the comics and by doing extensive reading on their own part, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that they nailed it. The world, the characters...everything! They nailed it and they did it flawlessly. If they would have botched the environment the game took place in, they would have lost a lot of the credibility that the game was going for. By appealing to hardcore Batman fans like myself, as well as newcomers to the series who may not know much about the history, they were able to create a world that you don't need to have any history with to succeed, but if you do, good for you. With the environment taken care of, the developers then had to get another critical aspect of the universe right...the story.
Batman, after subduing Joker in a battle somewhere in Gotham, throws him in the Batmobile and takes him to Arkham to be locked up. When he arrives, he is greeted by Police Commissioner Gordon and the staff of Arkham Asylum. As you progress through the halls to Joker's lockup area, you're treated to Joker's ramblings and muses mostly directed at you. With any Batman novel or video game, you know things will eventually have to go wrong, and they do. Joker escapes and you are left alone to fend for yourself in a place that hates and fears the Batman. Joker will eventually enlist the help of some of Batman's more famous foes - Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Bane, Killer Croc, Scarecrow, and others. With their help, Joker plans to completely overrun the facility and finally break "The Bat" along the way. It's left up to you to make sure this doesn't happen and that all patients are returned to their cells and subdued.
The story is straight out of a comic and the developers did a wonderful job translating it to a game. The pacing is perfect and you really are left guessing what the heck could happen next. Another thing straight out of the comic is the gameplay/fighting. Batman is a master of hand to hand combat. Having trained in China and with Special Forces, he has learned to harness the power of his body to act as a sort of weapon. Batman never uses guns and despises them so don't expect to be walking into a room guns blazing. You're going to have to wait for the Punisher to come out with a good game before that can happen. Combat is handles in two distinct ways in the game. Hand to hand mode occurs when you want to get up in guy's faces and just take them down through brute force. Since Batman is a master of martial arts, feel free to take down 8-12 enemies at a time without breaking a sweat. You can't focus all of your attention on one baddy though. You need to seamlessly move from one enemy to the next, knocking them around and making sure you don't get hit from behind. In the beginning of the game this is really simple, but as lead pipes and tasers are introduced to the mix, you'll find that additional strategy is needed to really be successful with the hand to hand mechanics. The other gameplay mechanic is the invisible predator mode. This is a flashy name for stealth in Arkham Asylum. Batman has something that is called Detective Vision. When you turn this on, you can see an outline of all enemies in your vicinity as well as some other features that allow you to solve puzzles. The color coded enemies represent the different types - those without guns, and those with. Whenever you encounter enemies with guns you have to approach the situation in a totally different way that before. Arkham Asylum is littered with gargoyle heads throughout it's halls and these will act as your perches to spy and slip around the room unknown. Always begin each fight by watching the enemies' movements and then making a move, because one false step will almost always mean death. A couple blows from a machine gun will kill Batman if you're not careful. Batman is able to glide from the rafters, throw batarangs at enemies, and through upgrades, perform moves that will never get old no matter how many times you do them. The developers really put a lot of time into the fighting mechanics of the game and it shows. Batman is a badass, and you are going to love playing as him.
You may have noticed that I don't have anything negative to say about the game. It's true, the game is really good, but it does have a couple down points that deserve mentioning for all fairness. Detective Mode, which incredibly useful, is also a downpoint of the game. It's really easy to use detective mode way too much and end up missing a lot of the cool atmospheric details. Crumbling walls, blood splatters on the wall, and ivy's vines climbing slowly up a prison wall can all be missed if you're too busy in detective vision mode. Sometimes it almost feels cheap to use it constantly and you may find yourself purposefully turning it off from time to time. I'm not sure how they could have done it any better, but it is a shame that you will miss certain things because of it. Another downpoint of the game is the villains. Sure, I love me some Killer Croc and Scarecrow, but what about the other big names? My personal favorite baddy in the Batman Rogue's gallery is Two Face. You'll walk by his cell, but he's no where to be found. Same with Penguin, you'll see a poster with him on it, but he's nowhere to be found. Harley Quinn is necessary for the story and she used to be an employee at Arkham, so I can see while she is there, but Victor Zsasz? I feel like more enemies should have made an appearance. I mean, the prison was taken over and nobody escaped off of the island, so they were somewhere there. Shouldn't I have come across them? Eh, it's not a big complaint, and hopefully we'll see them in the possibly sequel.
It's easy to assume that Batman Arkham Asylum is going to be a cheap gimmick of a game that is feeding off of the license of the Batman franchise. We've almost come to expect that this sort of thing is an industry norm. But don't be fooled by such thinking. Batman Arkham Asylum is a masterfully crafted game that will amaze you with the depth of it's story and the careful execution of it's gameplay. There's a lot of game here, most of which I didn't even get to talk about in this short review. From the Riddler Trophies that are scattered around the world to collect and earn experience to the audio files you can find for each prison inmate describing their first days within Arkham, collectors beware...you will become obsessed. So, the real reason you're reading this review...should you get this game? My honest answer is a whole hearted yes. It's the best comic book video game I have ever played and one of my top games of 2009. You can tell the developers really took the time and effort to make the game world come to life. It's dark, it's gritty, and at times really difficult, but not past the means of enjoyment. When you finish the game and collect all of the Riddler trophies, there's even more game left to complete. Challenge Rooms exist outside of the main story to let you complete objectives within time frames and point totals to get on leaderboards. It's a nice touch and adds to the game's value. So, even if you aren't a fan of Batman or comics in general, you'll still get a lot of enjoyment out of this game. If you're looking to learn more about Batman or get into the comic, this is a great place to start. The lore is all here and you will certainly learn a lot along the way. I can't wait to see what Rocksteady do with the sequal to this game. The sky is literally the limit. |
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