Batman: Arkham Asylum is a unique beast in the video game world. On the one hand, it follows a long tradition of licensed super-hero games, a genre one would think would translate very easily into the interactive medium. On the other hand, it bucks just about every convention of all superhero games before it, instead putting together an outstanding final product that is as much a thesis of action-adventure game design as it is by far the most outstanding translation of a revered superhero that players have ever seen.
The most common fault in superhero games is that lately they have tended to be based on the big-budget Hollywood blockbusters that they accompany. This leads to many inherent problems: a strictly-timed and limited development cycle, a smaller budget due to license fees for the movie as well as the hero, and trying to replicate a 1 1/2 hour spectator storyline into an 8 hour interactive one. Ultimately, games developed under these restrictions can never truly live up to the name slapped on their box. With the 2008 mega-epic blockbuster The Dark Knight, many were sure that a game based on the title would soon emerge with similar mediocrity to most "movie games". Surprisingly, a few months after the film came out, Eidos announced Batman: Arkham Asylum, a game having absolutely nothing to do with the movie and instead developed from the ground up for gamers using the classic comics as its influences.
Most games featuring tightly-clad heroes tend to feature open, free-roaming cities that attempt to give the player a feeling of freedom and power to go along with the character they control. The intrinsic flaw in this philosophy is that creating a huge city means you have to fill it with meaningful things for your hero to do, and no superhero game has ever come anywhere near the living, breathing open world featured in games like Grand Theft Auto. With Arkham Asylum, the developers at Rocksteady Studios instead chose to isolate the Dark Knight's adventure into the titular psychological penitentiary. This approach proves to be a fantastic idea as the game feels tight-and well-designed, all the while still giving you some sense of freedom and exploration with an island that is still big enough for you to want to discover its secrets, particularly the Riddler's 240 challenges strewn throughout the nooks and crannies. It's clear that from the very beginning, Rocksteady wanted to make a badass Batman game, not just a superhero simulator.
The game can easily draw comparisons to The Legend of Zelda and Metroid, as well as numerous other games, but the truth is, there is nothing else like it. What the folks at Rocksteady did so well is that they looked at succesful aspects of good games and implemented pieces of those proven designs into their own, cohesive experience. The result is a game that features the exploration and gadgetry-based progress of a Zelda or Metroid, the rhythm-based combat of a Fable or Assassin's Creed, backrground-filling audiotapes and overall eeriness of a BioShock, and its own blend of stealth, all with a Batman coating. The game even channels some Eternal Darkness-style breaking of the 4th wall to mess with the player, but you'll have to play it to see for yourself.
The game is incredibly well-paced, never feeling repetitive at any juncture, and constantly upping the ante as you progress and naturally get better at the game's conventions. The original story is compelling and well-presented through a combination of brief cutscenes, in-game chatter, controllable-but-herded sections, and even some brief conversations with Arkham guards. Sound design in Arkham Asylum is absolutely top-notch, with a powerful original score and some of the best voice acting in gaming, headlined by Batman: The Animated Series' Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy reprising their roles as Joker and Batman, respectively. Oh, and the game is absolutely gorgeous.
Really enough cannot be said of just how well designed this game is, with respect to being a game and an experience in the Batman universe. Many big-name Bat-villains make appearances, including Harley Quinn, Killer Croc, Bane, Poison Ivy, and Scarecrow. On top of that there are constant allusions to just about every baddy the Caped Crusader has ever tussled with courtesy of the Riddler and his challenges. All the while, it works incredibly well as a game and the world has the cohesiveness of a linear FPS despite being semi-free-roaming. It is very clear that Rocksteady did their homework, and many other developers could learn a lot by following their cue looking at what other great games do so well and implementing their own subtle take on it.
Even once you finish the sublime main story, the adventure continues. You can go right back to Arkham and now that you have all the tools you have free reign so finish finding all the Riddler's clues. Doing so throughout the game will also unlock a fantastic challenge mode which is split into two types (Predator, a stealth-based mode where you take out armed guards, and Freeflow, where you fight waves of henchmen) that highlight the games two staple scenarios from the story. The Predator challenges are especially fun, letting the player use their own style of stealth-action to take down guards, and giving you certain ways you have to take them down in order to earn medals but all the while teaching you new methods. The game is so good you'll likely want to play through it again, and the Hard mode provides a great challenge, steadily increasing the difficulty from right where it leaves off on Normal. On top of all this, Rocksteady has provide a free DLC challenge pack, with more promised to be on the way.
Batman: Arkham Asylum truly makes you feel like you are the Dark Knight himself and provides an incredibly cohesive Batman game. Well-polished game mechanics and excellent pacing make a great story even more fun to play, and there are a lot of ways to dig deeper for those who are inclined to. The challenge mode, which at first glance seems like tack-on to artificially extend the game, proves to be fun and challenging in its own right and is a great addition. To put it bluntly, Rocksteady Studios absolutely knocked this one out of the park, and other suphero game developers--and for that matter developers in general, could really learn a lot from what they have done. Normally, a license like this means the game is cannon fodder for the masses; in Arkham Asylum's case, it is a jumping point for one of the front-runners for Game of the Year.
Overall Grade: A+
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