*PC REVIEW* Batman Arkham Asylum

I have to admit, when I first saw the screen shots and heard about Batman AA- I was a bit mowed over by my lull-ness…. If that’s even a word.. It looked like another fighter/possible brawler held inside a huge insane asylum.. oh yay… But then I saw it was getting rave reviews everywhere.. WTFBBQ I said.. So I decided to give it a try.. and am I glad I did!

Batman AA is one of the most refreshing brawlers I’ve played in a long time.. But it wouldn’t be fair to classify it merely as a brawler.. It really feels like a tomb raider Esq brawler.. Imagine if tomb raider had GREAT combat and a lot more of it.. That is the experience Batman brings you. It really feels like you’re playing the super hero! You feel strong and powerful, and most of all batman’s gadgets come into play and make him this super hero as much as they do in the movies. Your grappling hook is your most valuable asset, whether its just for scaling buildings or using it to take out guys from gargoyles it gives the game a nice flair from the standard 3rd person feel.

The pace of the game is wonderful, as every few hours you’ll get a new gadget that will let you get to new areas and accomplish new goals. But what really helps here is the storyline keeps you going. I remember watching one of the reviews saying how perfect the storyline is and intertwined into the game play it is. I will agree, it’s very well done, you often know where to go and what to do just by paying attention to the storyline, everything is well spelled out and the voice acting in this game is superb! I really didn’t know it was mark hammil doing the voice of the joker! Way to go Mark, you really put life into the character. I laughed at many of the jokers sick comments but I found them hilarious! There is good writing to be had in this game as well as the voice acting.

Let me quickly blab about the combat system as I was fairly impressed with how well they implemented this. Basically you use one button to fight this is the button you’ll do most of your jabbing with, but you can stack combo’s doing other things. There’s a counter button so when an enemy has little bolts over his head, he’s about to attack and if you hit the counter button it usually automatically picks the right guy and immediately goes into a counter against him, there’s some enemies you have to do special other things to attack, but somehow it never gets boring jumping into a pile of 5 to 7 guys and just going crazy on them and kicking ass! It works out well. It’s never too challenging on normal mode, i died probably 4 or 5 times, but each time I always said to myself “Oh yeah i can get past this” where as some games will with be so annoying frustrating i just want to break my controller, I NEVER had a moment like this in AA, I had a blast from start to finish.

The graphics and polish in this game are TOP notch. I want to thank the studio for this but I also want to thank whoever published it for letting them HAVE THE FUCKING TIME TO POLISH IT. Polish can REALLY make a game, just the little things.. As you enter arkham you notice batman is pristine and clean, you can even see his face is newly shaved.. about 4 or 5 hours in, you’ll notice batman is starting to get a little 5 o clock shadow, and soon he’s a stubby mess.. It never goes full beard, but still its a nice touch that just shows the polish oozing from the game. Also his suit will slowly become torn and ripped and his cape will start to get shredded as he goes on, It really shows how many of the small details they provided! The jokers face and skin have a nice clean look, its almost a little ‘claymation’ like but not quite.. Its very very nice indeed and the camera system works very well. I was quite surprised i didn’t have more issues. The whole game is very very pretty!

The boss fights in this game were very well done as well. Often repetitious patterns, but still satisfying and NOT sloppyily done where you can get screwed over. Yes quite a few times there will be ‘extra’ guys thrown in while you fight a boss, or mini boss, but it never gets quite annoying. Actually one thing I really liked was on one particular fight (Poison Ivy) You could make the extra guys follow you to a certain area and Poison Ivy’s vine attack would hit them (and you if you don’t move your bat tail)! It’s about time environmental hazards hurt the bad guys too! Nice job on this!

The sound effects are spot on and VERY satisfying.. The huge CRUNCH you get when you face plant a guy or kick him in the head are extremely enjoyable. They really know that good sound effects can make something much more enjoyable! And the Music is spot on, it feels like a cue was taken from the newer batman movies and slightly changed around, but it works GREAT in this instance.

One of my favorite things about this game is such a tiny thing.. Its how fucking AWESOME batman looks whenever he does anything.. His cape touches the ground. When he just stands there he looks fucking intimidating. when he kneels he looks like he should in the comics.. He jumps over bars and quickly hits the ground, he is a dark terror in the night for all criminals and it is just fucking AWESOME! My favorite moment hands down was when these crazy guys charge after you (they can grip onto you if you aren’t careful) and if you just wait till they get to you, and counter them, he picks them up, slams them down on their face then you use a finish on em, where he gets down and just CRAMS his fist in their face *POW*!! It’s just satisfying I could do it all night..

Lets clear the air, this batman is not the new batman from the movies, nor is he the old batman, This seems to be alot like a mixture of the comics as well as some inspiration from the movies here and there.. It has its own vibe. Where as much as I liked the joker from the newer batman, He felt far more evil than crazy, I never laughed at him, but older joker and this joker I found comical but yet still sinister. The game has it’s own voice here and it parades it well. I am very happy with the final result provided in this game and if there was one thing I was yearning for, It was to let batman get set loose in Gotham. I wasn’t a huge fan of being constricted to the island only, but they made it work, and now I want a sequel with city mission in Gotham! Give us Gotham!! you have a GREAT engine and fantastic game-play here! Give us more!

The only things I’d nitpick here are the upgrades. I was never really wowed by them. Matter of fact by the end of the game I had about 90% of em and i hardly used many of em. The combo ones seem like they’d be cool but you can loose the special throw or finisher quickly if you aren’t fast about it, and I never really feel like i had that much control in a fight to use them. The ones I liked the most where the armor upgrades, the rest, I kind of wish would have been simple moves or maybe just increased damage in punches.  Also sometimes I got frustrated trying to leap over bars or railings.. There was a particular sequence where you need to hop from floor to floor to keep from being electrocuted and there’s hand railings separating them and i was up against it hitting the A button to jump over and he was just doing somersaults there and got zapped a few times. But that was maybe 1 out of 100 times, so really not that big of an issue! Also it seemed like whenever I was spotted by bad guys it was tougher to get away and get hidden again, if there wasn’t any gargoyles around I was probably going down. Its too bad there isn’t some bat-flash powder or something to give me a slight better chance at getting away. Although I do realize this encourages you to just do better, I often found I was hiding in grates or on high up things because i never felt safe on the floor with the smart guards.

Batman is a GREAT game and if you like beat em up type brawlers with a little puzzle action (not a ton really) and great gadgets I urge you to pick this one up! I was running on my pc at 1900×1200 no physx unfortunately, everything else set to high and I only have a 9800GTX 512meg quad core 2.43 ghz with 8 gigs of ram. It ran silky smooth most of the time! Go out and get this game now!

My verdict is

5 STARS! Fantastic job guys, it has a few little tiny issues, but over all it was very fun and very entertaining. One of those games you start playing at 11pm and notice its 5am and you don’t wanna stop!