Batman Arkham Asylum

Batman Arkham Asylum

The greatest superhero game ever made, certainly a contender for game of the year; think Splinter Cell meets BioShock meets DC Comics legends.

Bravo Eidos! And thank you. We really mean it. Batman Arkham Asylum is the genuine article, the event it was always hyped to be – an amazing Batman tribute, a terrific videogame, world class entertainment of any description.

Think we’re exaggerating? Play the game this weekend.

Above all congratulations to Eidos on delivering an adventure that feels soaked in Batman tradition without alienating a whole crowd of people who may not be familiar with the original comics or indeed the latest movies. If your favourite out-of-your-own-head experience has always been videogames, Batman Arkham Asylum could be the perfect introduction to the caped crusader and his larger than life adversaries.

Batman Arkham Asylum sells the appeal of Batman lore better than any medium we can think of this decade. It carries the impact of a blockbuster production, handled by a team that knows games as keenly as it understands its protagonists. More often than not you get one without the other. Here you get it all, and brilliantly polished.

Arkham Asylum, home to Gotham City’s criminally insane, is the perfect backdrop for such a moody central character to confront a career’s worth of despicable foes. The Joker is the ideal ringleader, who together with Harley Quinn and The Riddler, set the traps and provide a genuinely entertaining narrative via Arkham intercom. Batman joins the finger-in-ear brigade ala Solid Snake (Metal Gear) and Marcus Fenix (Gears of War) to receive outside help from The Oracle… previously Batgirl, a.k.a. Barbara Gordon. In responding to all of the above the B’man as Harley calls him always has plenty on his plate. You will feel task-loaded to the glowing eye-slits.

Our hero is a confident street fighter with finely-honed stealth and investigative skills. It is a real pleasure to join Batman in a brawl, the game’s FreeFlow combat system enabling combination strikes to roll seamlessly between elbow strikes to the jaw and rib-crunching body blows while surrounded by multiple foes. If the enemy is carrying a melee weapon a carefully timed counter-strike steals this from his hands to be used against the original owner and whoever’s dumb enough to hang around.

Fisticuffs versus gangs of low-league criminals look like nothing you’ve seen before in a videogame brawl. It reminds us of the famous scene from The Matrix Reloaded, or if you prefer some of the finest moments from the Shaw Brothers classics.

When firearms come into play, Batman needs a change of strategy. He can grapple out of harm’s way to perch on convenient gargoyles or on the edge of a rooftop, biding his time before dropping silently behind somebody or swooping in, cape billowing spectacularly, to land a flying kick to the back of the neck.

The repertoire is more than fine for starters, but can be added to and upgraded as the game goes on – experience points unlocking new capabilities. Among the usual strength enhancing varieties there’s also clever tricks such as hanging upside down to throttle passers by. This being Batman you’ve also got the gadgets.

Standard issue Batman gear is his Batarang and grapple. The former is used to short-circuit switches out of reach, the latter allowing access to rooftops and stealthier routes such as ventilation shafts. Explosive Gel and a portable EMP device are added to the field kit as the hours fly by, cleverly introduced to meet the increasing demands on an increasingly tattered and torn Batman.

We’ve managed to get this far in the review without mentioning anything specific, and to be honest we’d rather keep it this way. We don’t want to spoil a thing, but just to prove we’ve been there: prepare for dramatic Batmobile entrances, head-crushing Scarecrow sequences, laugh-out-loud Joker-isms and emotionally effective flashback scenes that a lesser talented development studio may not have braved, or at least not handled nearly so well. Everything about this game is simply awesome.

Make sure you play Batman Arkham Asylum before somebody else goes and ruins it for you.

5 out of 5