First let me start with the game plot:
The Joker attacks Gotham City's Mayor's office but is foiled by Batman, who escorts him to Arkham Asylum. Due to a recent fire at Gotham City's Blackgate Prison, a large number of sane prisoners have been temporarily relocated to Arkham, many of whom are in the Joker's gang. As Batman accompanies the guards taking the Joker inside, the asylum's security is overridden by Harley Quinn, allowing the Joker to escape and take control of the facility. Batman quickly realizes that these events, including the Blackgate fire, have all been part of the Joker's plan and that the Joker had bribed a security guard to help him escape. The Joker threatens to detonate bombs scattered around Gotham City should anyone attempt to enter Arkham, forcing Batman to work alone; however, Batman is able to rely on Commissioner Gordon and other loyal guards after Batman is able to free them. Additionally, Oracle is able to guide him through the Asylum over the radio. Batman eventually learns that the Joker is seeking a chemical called Titan that is being produced at the asylum. The compound is based on the Venom drug that gives Bane his super strength, though the Titan formula is much more potent. The Joker plans to use the Titan formula on the various Blackgate inmates to create an unstoppable army, as well as on Poison Ivy's plants, which mutate and take over the island.
Batman, after defeating several of his arch enemies, is able to return to the Batcave to create an antidote to Titan, but only has enough time to synthesize one dose before Poison Ivy's Titan-infused plants destroy the Batcave's computer. After destroying the mutated plant life and defeating Ivy, the Joker invites Batman to his "party" The Joker then reveals that he has recaptured Gordon and attempts to shoot Gordon with a Titan-filled dart. Batman jumps in front of it, taking the injection himself. Batman attempts to resist the change, which causes an upset Joker to shoot himself with the Titan gun, becoming a massive monster. He tries to persuade Batman to stop resisting the Titan formula and change into a monster, saying it is the only way to defeat him. Batman refuses, and uses the antidote on himself. The Joker, amazed at his decision, attacks Batman directly. Batman defeats him by covering his glove in explosive gel and punching Joker fiercely in the jaw. The Joker reverts back to his original state and is taken back to his cell, and armed Gotham police officers slowly regain control of the asylum.
Now lets start the review.
Gameplay:
Combat:
The combat mode of
Batman Arkham Asylum is actually pretty simple, consisting of attack, counter attack, finish movement and a dodge movement. Some games suffers of very hard combat sequences by having a lot of variations of attacks, buttons and super attacks, that doesnt happens with
Arkham Asylum, the game with its very own simple combat sequences makes a fun and exciting experience, making you feel as you are Batman himself. Another great combat success on the game is the boss fights, even we only having seven boss fights(not sure really, I counting the Titan thugs too) including three or four(if you count Scarecrow too) Super Villains only:
Bane(awesome fight), Poison Ivy(very clever fight) and the Titan Joker(the best one in the game). These three Super Villains fights are very simple
and not too hard(specially the Joker one, the most easy one), what shows that you don´t need a hard fight with a boss to show that the game is good,
that easy boss fights are what makes the game even better!
10/10
Stealth:
The Stealth sequences on the game are very simple too, you normally has to grapple on a gargoyle and take the enemys down, one by one, you can distract one of them by using a sonar batarang, you can also use your triple batrang to make three of them unconscious and then finish them. Still on the stealth mode you can do a lot of movements similar to games like
Splinter Cell, like sneaking behind an enemy to take him down. This stealth system is very well done, its easy and clever, but it really needs an improvement, mainly related to the characters A.I, which should be better done(I not saying its a bad A.I, just needs an improvement), all this should get better on the sequel
Arkham City
9/10
Grapple:
That part should be on the gadgets down on the article, but I decided to have it here as I will comment on the gadgets section only the eight or seven ones that we use and get on the game. Very easy and cool to use, the grapple mode allows you to grapple from a lower floor to a higher place, its used for grappling in gargoyles too. Well its good and simple, but there is a problem with it, sometimes its not possible to grapple at some higher floors, I know that its impossible grappling from a very far away distance, but sometimes the grapple doesn´t allows you to grapple for a higher floor near you! Batman says that the place is in ruins, thats my opinion about it, made me very mad when that happened at some places.
7/10
Detective Mode:
I will be putting here this mode too for the same reason on the Grapple part. The game also has a detective mode where you can find clues that cant be seen by regular eyes, with the detective mode you can search Fingerprints, DNA samples let by blood(Dr Young case), tobacco samples(Gordon case) etc. Is a very cleaver move, and very fun also to use, not to forget that it helps you to know what kind of enemy you´re confronting and its not like on
James Bond Blood Stone where a cellphone detects the enemys and the kind of weapons, but its a special gadget(made by Batman of course) which is easier to believe about its functionality
9/10
Gadgets:
The game has eight gadgets(or seven I not sure), you start the game with two of them, one batarang and the explosive gel. We them start to acquire more as the game goes forward in story, gadgets such as a sonic batarang, triple batarang, frequency scanner, grapnel gun, line launcher. The batarangs are very helpful to take down thugs, and specially the sonic batarang that allows us to distract one specific thug, same goes to the explosive gel that allow the player to take down a specific number of enemys that are near a weak wall. But it has to be the line launcher the most clever gadget on the game, this one allows the player to move from a specific place to another one, doesn´t matter if its far or near and also allows us to take down the thugs on the way, which is very helpful, different from games which you go from a spot to another and the thugs starts to beat you
10/10 to all the gadgets.
Riddles and Challenges:
The Riddler does not appear in the game, but his voice can be heard a lot of times during the game, he is the one responsible for most of the challenges on the games, you have his trophies to search, if you find them you will be unlocking characters trophies and challenges! There´s also his riddles, which can be found with the detective mode, normally you unlock characters bios by solving it. Another challenges on the game are the Arkham Chronicles, which tells the story of the Asylum, you can find it by spider symbols in hidden places. The challenges are not so hard to be solved, neither the trophies to be found, which makes it even more fun to search and better, its simply great to be searching for it and solving the riddles so easily, the trophies are easily found too by simple walking around the Asylum. Clever and easy challenges, which doesn´t let us bored deserves a 10/10 too!
Characters:
Batman, Gordon, Oracle, Sharp, Joker, Harley, Croc, Zsasz, Ivy, Bane and Scarecrow are the main characters of the game. By start talking about Batman, his design is very well done on the game, the classic gray suit with the giant bat it´s simple and very well done. Same goes to the rest of the characters, specially the Joker design which I very much loved. Oracle acts as an informant to Batman and we never she her on the game, we only hear her talking to Batman; Gordon plays the Batman old ally helping him and at the same time being captured by the Joker, which let us by going after him to save him later; Sharp is an all new character, director of Arkham on the game, a nicely done character, essential to the story and it´s not that kind of all new character that bother us. Seven Super Villains are on this game, but we fight only against three or four of them(we have have to "escape" of one of them in what could be the fourth super villain boss fight), the Scarecrow escaping sequences are great, making him the best boss fight after the Joker and its not hard to defeat him, as you only have to run and attack him with the Bat-Signal, its very simple and fast, making the experience better and more fun; Bane fight is the most "hard" of the four, is also very entertaining, in the fight we literally have to beat up the guy and escape when he decides to run, its not very hard, it just depends on you, we have to be fast to run and attack him with the batarangs and at the same time to beat up some Joker thugs that appears after a while on the fight; Ivy boss fight is very good too, we have to shoot her with batarangs, escape plant attacks and fight mind controled guards, we have to be fast to run out of the plants and attack Ivy with batarangs, is a good fight and not hard, showing again that we don´t need a hard fight with a boss to a successful game; we dont really touch Harley, fighting her would just be kind of weird and too easy, that is also Batman thought then and locked her up on a jail cell, haha; Killer Croc sequence has to be the most cool and smart one, we don´t fight him(after beating up Bane I wouldn´t like to beat up Croc too), but just have to run away of him, taking him to a explosive gel floor trap; Victor Zsasz is the most easy character to take down on the game :P literaly, we only have to take him down surprisely at the beginning of the game and throw a batarang later in the game, would have been nice to fight him, but at same time too hard, because we would have to move as hell, because we would prolly dodge a lot; now the best super villain boss on the game is the Titan Joker, after fighting two Titan thugs and a lot of regular thugs(this thugs fights are harder than the Titan Joker fight :P) we finally get to fight the giant Clown, the sequence is very simple, you beat up some thugs and then have too take Joker down when he´s showing off for the helicopters, then just beat him up on the face, taking a part of his health off, that fight with him is easy and clever and that doesn´t make it bad, but actually very good, well after fighting two titan thugs and a lot of regular thugs at the same time we deserve a simple fight with the giant Clown don´t we? lol
Another thing on the characters that is impressive and very well written is the relation and dialogue between them, Batman and Joker is the example, the writers showing Batman bringing up the Joker to Arkham because he knows that something is not right about that easy caught that Joker allowed to the Bat, and Batman because of that knows that something is not right and decide to stay, but then, he realizes that he was right, and during the game we see by Joker and Batman dialogues on the times that they meet, that one can´t exist without the other and that one knows the other better than no one does and knows each step that the other will take. Batman relating with Ivy is great written too, as he knows that she would do anything to don´t have her "babies" hurt. The relation between the villains in the game is also great, Joker and Ivy having a angry argumentation on the near end of the game, by saying that after done with Batman Joker is next, Ivy also not being one of the invited of "Joker Party" shows that even you having all that villains in a game, you don´t have to make all of them related to the same plan, another good thing is Croc doesn´t caring about anyone on the place(neither other villains! As seen after he "eat up" Scarecrow); and a Bane acting as a simple thug to only beat up Batman once again, I´m not saying that he was bad used on this game, but he was perfectly used of the way he could better be on a game with such a story like that!
10/10 for characters build, voice actors and relations between each other.
Game Overral:
The game is great, awesome story, great characters, specially the villains, great fight sequences, but it loses on some gadgets like I said before and in the repetition of stealth mode, which doesn´t have a change.
My overall note is 9/10!
Batman Arkham Asylum is avaliable for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC´s(I´ve played on the PC)
It was released on 2009 and a sequel titled
Batman Arkham City is set to be released this fall, which I am very excited to play!
If you haven´t played
Arkham Asylum yet you should, because you will not have only a great game experience, but will have the feeling that you really are Batman in this best Superhero game ever.