Review of Batman Arkham Asylum

I'm going to be straight out honest with everyone here. Comic book games have sucked! Batman Arkham Asylum changes everything. The Joker has been caught by the Gotham Authorities and Batman personally escorts him into Arkham Asylum, the prison from the criminally insane. Joker doesnt seem to put up a fight and Batman is suspicious. Well his suspicions were correct and Joker escapes and traps Batman on Arkham Island and Batman is in for the longest night of his life.

Gameplay- The gameplay is divided into two main sections, Stealth and Hand-to-Hand combat. The Stealth elements of the game employ Batman's detective mode which allows him to easily spot of his enemies from other surroundings and also analyse the environment so that Batman can take advantage of it. Stealth involves Batman silently taking out his enemies from Gargoyles positioned above. His various gadgets are also put into use so he can cunningly and quickly dispose of his enemies.
The combat aspect is a freeflow system which involves attacking and countering. This isnt just the button bashing that a lot of smaller games seem to have. Although a 2 button system sounds easy, it is extremely challenging to master and time all attacks properly. Batman's attacks are fast, brutal and devastating all done with extremely believable animations.
The rest of the game involves puzzle solving, exploration and these extremely fun Scarecrow scenarios.
The disappointing parts of the gameplay is that you will tend to spend too much time in detective vision which means that you dont get to see a lot of what this game visually has to offer.

9.5/10

Graphics - This game looks amazing. It really captures the feel of the dark and gritty situation that Batman is in. All the character models also looks amazing, however fans of the Christian Bale Batman will be disappointed because Batman is modeled after the older version. As i mentioned in the Gameplay section, you will tend to miss a lot of the amazing visuals due to the game encouraging you to spend to much time in detective mode.

9/10

Music/Sound The voice acting for the two main characters has been done by Kevin Conroy (Batman) and Mark Hamill (Joker) from the animated series and they both nail it. All the other voice actors have a top-notch performance in this game. The score is more of the traditional Batman score that we've come to know and once again it does the job.

9.5/10

Replayability

You will not be inclined to replay the single player once you have unlocked all the challenge maps. The challenge maps are story mode scenarios of the two main gameplay elements. The combat challenges will have you fighting four waves of increasing difficult enemies as is highly replayable as the combat is so addictive. The Invisible Predator challenges are the stealth challenges from the main story. This is highly replayable because the enemies have a mind of their own and each time you play a challenge, it will play out differently. There are also so many way to take out enemies that you will be desperate to go back and see what insane ways to can take them out.

9/10


Overall- 9.5/10

I agree with you completly. I love this game

I agree. Good game.

I LOVE THIS GAME.

I don't have this game yet.

dreadraptor85 wrote:

I don't have this game yet.

Get it. Its amazing

I wish we could get the Joker.... oh well... still a great game.

Cool. I don't really get why everyone loves it so much but maybe I'll check it out. Is there any free roam?

btw comic book games don't always suck

I loved Spiderman/spiderman 2 which originally were comic books, to my knowledge Prototype was a comic book, etc

Looks like an awesome game. I so want it.