Batman Arkham Asylum review (PS3)

So here we are another super hero game release. Will it follow the generic path of previous games based on them? Will it be like the jaw dropping poor Superman 64? Well thankfully it is not so, it has been quite a pleasant surprise to find this game is actually good.

The game begins like this, you are batman, there is joker, madness ensues and you have to save the day. All set in the lovely location of a insane asylum. You have to prevent the joker from killing all the humans etcetera etcetera.
It all feels nicely laid out but sometimes it is a little unclear on where you need to go to get to the next checkpoint. For example I was in a shall multi-tiered room and was set the task of finding something. I spent about 20 mins running about all the different levels trying to find the special item. It turned out I had to backtrack into a previous room. Felt it wasn’t really clear on where to go next.

The main way to see enemies and other “hidden” things is detective mode, in other terms it just makes everything blue and humans are light blue, interactive objects are yellow for some reason. After a while just seeing blue everywhere is boring so switching back to normal vision is a welcome break but then you run into something that requires detective sight once more.

Combat should be the next topic I think, since you’re batman, trained in the arts of punching people in the face until they lose consciousness. This in practise is quite hard to do. Anyways back to batman’ing, your default punch and kick button does all the stuff you expect, except when you come across someone immune to being punched or kicked in the face.

The combat is pretty fluid and you move from one opponent to another seamlessly, or at least that is the idea. Sometimes you find yourself jumping halfway across the room to punch someone in the face. You know when an encounter with thug group #567 has ended when you get a slowed down punch time effect which after the 60th battle can be a bit tiresome but doesn’t affect the game that much. You get “combos” which translates into how many punches you get in quick succession and if you miss it drops back down to zero.

As you progress you unlock abilities, such as multiple batarangs or special moves when you reach a certain combo level. Improved armour and other useful stuff is there that comes along when you acquire new gadgets for the caped crusader.

Boss fights in this game are well not really that engaging, you dodge X attack then you do something, rinse wash and repeat until you get a trophy. The scarecrow sections are pretty imaginative with messing with batman’s mind.
Voice acting across the board doesn’t feel forced or in anyway terrible. The thugs have a wide enough variety not to sound repetitive (thank the lords) and the main cast sounds good. Mark Hamil voices the joker (as he should). The one thing I would change is the Riddler’s voice, it randomly appears when you find one of his trophies and sometimes it just gets in the way. If 1 voice is speaking and you find a riddler trophy you have to stop and wait until the 1st voice stops if you want to listen to it as the riddler may cut in to say “oh that was an easy one batman!”

Graphically it is quite nice and looks quite batman’esk, dark grimy stoney with a view bits of green. Haven’t seen any noticeable frame rate drops besides the first 2 at the beginning during a cut scene.

The good
• Fluid combat system
• Great voice acting
• Great locations
• Enough variety in combat to elevate it just about button mashing
• Gadgets…..everyone loves gadgets!
• Trophies seem well placed throughout
• Extended play through “Riddler puzzles” can add some additional fun.
• Challange modes add a bit extra to do

The bad
• Combat system doesn’t seem to understand distance sometimes
• No save function, auto-save can leave some gaps where you have to play it again if you want to stop.
• Voice lines cutting other ones off can be annoying sometimes.
• “Detective mode” is a little irritating after a while
• Gadget obtaining can sometimes be a bit silly
• Console specific dlc, I personally hate this.