I've never been that into DC comics, and thus have never been that immersed in the lore of the Batman. The most contact I've had with the franchise are a few of the movies, particularly the most recent two, and occasionally watching the animated show as a child. I never read any of the comics, though, so when Arkham Asylum was released to high praise, I wasn't particularly interested and didn't pursue it past the demo (which while enjoyable was far from amazing).
Eventually though Matt ended up buying it for cheap, and as has been happening recently, I borrowed it and blasted through the game. While I ended up enjoying it far more than I would have thought given the demo, it still had a lot of flaws that prevented it from being a truly great game.
To begin with, the overall key flaw I found with AA was that for every cool feature it had, it had another that felt incredibly old-school video game, and not in a good way. For instance, instead of punishing you for falling in exploration levels, you whipped out your Batclaw and went back to the start of the level. Instead of a basic "you died" screened, you get the enemy you're currently facing taunting you. But you also get things like a very silly list of findables that rotate between being laughably easy and stupidly frustrating, and boss fights that are predictable and underwhelming.
The overall presentation was good, with nice graphics and actions that look fluid and realistic. The combat system in particular feels very cinematic, and flows nicely. The biggest complaint was when removing vents, something you do fairly often: you have to rapidly tap A to succeed, and while it looks cool and very cinematic the first few times as Batman struggles to pull open a vent being flinging it away, after the first 2 or 3 times it just got annoying, and something that made me dread every time I had to pull open a wall or similar. Beyond that, though, movement was easy, the camera was never a problem, and the map system worked well.
Combat was interesting. The key problem was that it was never explained well-- there was never a tutorial, the manual didn't explain much, and it wasn't till I went into the combat Challenges and in trying to beat them read an online guide did I actually grasp how it worked. If you have to consult an outside source to understand the combat mechanics, the developers have failed on some level. With that said, the combat system is kind of cool if you understand it, but after a few fights it gets fairly boring. It's all combat based and you can get by with just hitting one button with the occasional variation, and the best tactic seems to be just doing that. While it looks fantastic, it's somewhat yawn-inducing in actual practice once you get the hang of it.
The stealth sections also made me kind of irritated. The biggest flaw is you can never be sure when guards can see you or to what they'll react; you can fly over them without them noticing sometimes, and other time they'll react to you walking behind them. Coming out of Splinter Cell this was particularly annoying, since there was a lot of potential just lost from being unsure of guard behavior. They did react very realistically though: once they discover a body (usually because the Joker says something, even if you performed a perfect stealth take-down, another annoying factor) they'll go back-to-back and be more alert, talk to each other, etc.
Speaking of the Joker, I was pleasantly surprised they went with classic Batman: The Animated Series for the inspiration for all their character designs, instead of going the route of the classic movies. Playing through the game sparked a lot of memories of watching the show, and the depictions of the various villains were very entertaining. Lots of background content was provided as well, including character bios, interviews from their time and Arkham, and character models. The one thing it made me realize is how, like many comic book franchises, utterly silly some of the Batman lore is. Some of the villains sound like enemies 5 year olds would come up with, and their backstory are equally ridiculously shoehorned to make them fit. Likewise, I became less and less impressed with the idea of Batman, too: a character that is somehow a genius, billionaire, top-form martial artists and also "the world's greatest detective" just seems even more perfect than Superman, and comes off as just cheesy. Likewise his stance on not killing people; fighting all of these enemies seems to indicate that a lot of these villains really would be better off dead, considering how they don't stop murdering people and keep laughing as they get away with it. Considering you keep knocking out thugs in the game, and keep fighting more, it seems highly probably that Batman is knocking these guys out, and then they wake up and fight you again. As Matt pointed out when I was talking to him about this, it's likely that Batman is causing extreme physical trauma due to blunt-force injury to the skull, probably making these thugs worse off mentally than when they were before, and only increasing the problem. Good job Batman?
As I mentioned earlier, one of the constant sidequests is to solve 120 Riddler "riddles" scattered all over the facilities. First off, it seemed ridiculous; how did an inmate manage to hide, for instance, a statue on top of a tower that Batman used his Batclaw to reach? A lot of the riddles are either silly or forced, and once you get the easy-to-find map it's a matter of wandering around trying to figure out what you're supposed to find. It's hardly difficult, but you have to find them to get various unlockables, and they're an excellent source of XP that you need to level up. They were perhaps the most illogical and out-dated mechanic in a game trying very hard to be next-gen.
Overall Arkham Asylum is an enjoyable game, but one with many flaws. Fans of Batman will likely enjoy it, since it is the best super-hero video game I've ever played, but people with little concern for the Dark Knight will find a slightly above-average experience. It's good for a rental, or borrowing it from a friend as I did, but I would hardly recommend it as a purchase unless you're confident you'll want to play the game multiple times.
-HTMC
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