Batman: Arkham Asylum Review

[Kenzomatic]

For those who don’t know I am just about as big a Batman fan as I am a Ghostbusters fan so having both games come out in the same year has been awesome. Ghostbusters was a great game a delivered where it had to and Batman is no different. Unlike Ghostbusters where it had been over twenty years since a true entry in the saga Batman has been a high commodity lately with The Dark Knight becoming the highest grossing and arguably the best comic book movie of all time. So what was to happen with the game there was no movie tie in. Well now is the time to be a Batman fan because the game has delivered and is by far the best comic book game of all time.



Luckily instead of going for hyper realism like The Dark Knight they decided to make this game more in the vein of an adult comic book and it has worked in a big way. The game starts out with you returning the joker to Arkahm and of course he gets loose and takes over the island. The story is actually pretty good and even though its another joker vs. batman story it doesn’t feel typical and is a fun ride. The voice acting is done by the cast of the animated series, which means you get great voice acting and Mark Hammil as the Joker is arguably the best joker voice act there ever was. It still amazes my that the joker is Luke Skywalkers voice. The animations on the character sometimes are a little stiff but for the most part are really good and don’t break suspension of disbelief.



The game play is near flawless as it scales excellently if you just want to play for causal fun you can and if you want to be an extreme super gamer who has perfected button combos and timing you can do that too. You gather a few tools a weapons through out the game and all of them are cool and with the exception of maybe one very useful. The game is also really good at giving you options of how you will play you can be stealthy and take enemies out one by one or use brute force or an combo plus your assortment of weapons adds even more options and cool take downs. My favorite is dropping down from a gargoyle and stringing a henchman upside down by a rope. All of this makes the game almost never repetitive with the exception of one section which is rather redundant, but it’s a very small section.




The graphics are great as is the art design everything is absolutely beautiful. The one flaw I would say in the game is detective mode. Detective mode is the view you go into to find clues and you see everything through an X-ray mode, the mechanic works great but unfortunately you will spend a lot of time in this mode and not get to see the incredible backgrounds fully while in the mode. But that’s a minor gripe as the second time I played through I didn’t use the mode nearly as much as I knew where I was going.



The best part of this game is that at no point during the game will you not feel like batman and that is saying a lot. The game is true to the batman franchise and is one of the best games this year. This is a game that anyone will enjoy and is highly recommended.

9.5

[skeezer]

Thanks for the review, I played the demo a while back but don't have much money to pick this up for a while. I'll get it as soon as it hits 40 dollars