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Batman: Arkham Asylum
Why Rocksteady's action-adventure Batman: Arkham Asylum is the best superhero game to date
Written by Chris Schilling, 03 September 2009
You ARE Batman. It's a cliche already, but then cliches only come into existence because they're true. In Rocksteady's brilliant noir-tinged graphic novel adaptation, you ARE Batman. His cape swishes like it's supposed to swish. He moves with an oddly graceful weight. He talks in an emotionless voice that's far easier to take seriously than Bale's comedy snarl. His fists and feet connect with enemy faces, chests, crotches in a manner that just looks EXACTLY right. Arkham captures Batman the detective, Batman the rescuer, Batman the hunter, Batman the enigma. Again: you ARE Batman.
It's difficult to understate just how important that is - for all the incredible detail of this fabulously-realised gothic environment, if Rocksteady hadn't nailed the protagonist himself it would have been that much harder to invest in the experience. But this relatively untested devteam - its debut Urban Chaos was good, solid fun, but you'd never have expected a sophomore masterpiece - has nailed it. Controls are a dream - melee combat sees you slide and glide between enemies with a brutal elegance, clobbering them with combos before finishing them in near-balletic slo-mo. Then you'll face off against armed goons and suddenly feel vulnerable again - Bats is human after all, and can't take more than a few bullets before you get the black screen of death. So you stalk your prey from the shadows, zipping between gargoyles on your Bat-grapple, waiting to isolate one unsuspecting goon from his buddies before swooping down silently and incapacitating him - then noiselessly returning and witnessing the panic his unconscious body causes. Or you can hide in vents and under floors, collapse walls onto heads from a safe place with your explosive Bat-gel, truss henchmen up from gargoyles and see them flailing around, giving his cohorts the jitters.
PCGZine Issue 34
For our latest Arkham Asylum coverage, click here to download PCGZine Issue 34 for free.The Metroidvania exploration - Arkham opens up more and more as Bats' experience unlocks new abilities and gadgets - is a delight, too. You'll venture off the beaten track to pick up interview tapes of Arkham residents, with info files on familiar baddies from the DC universe, and solve puzzles left by The Riddler. Though Joker's still the puppet-master, guiding you to the story's end via impassable obstacles, locked security doors and such like, the more you progress, the more freedom you'll get to play the game your way.
The presentation is faultless - Unreal Engine 3 has never looked better, while the voice acting (particularly from Mark Hamill as the Joker) is exemplary. There are few games with such intoxicating atmosphere - and talking of intoxication, the standout Scarecrow sequences are horrific, hallucinogenic highlights where things get REALLY dark. If we're nit-picking, a couple of the boss battles jar - one sequence involving Killer Croc starts off tense but drags on too long, while the final encounter is a definite bum note.
But these can be forgiven in the light of everything else Rocksteady gets right - and with the very end not so much hinting at a sequel as confirming it in gigantic neon letters, this is likely to be the start of one of the best new franchises of the generation.
Arkham Asylum coverage available in PCGZine Issue 34 - click here to download it for free!
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