First Play: Batman: Arkham Asylum

We all know that Batman: Arkham Asylum is one of the most eagerly awaited games this year. After being subject to a number of delays, the game is finally set to street on August 28th in both standard and collector’s edition. Thanks to the guys at Eidos UK, I got a chance to get a hands on with the game this afternoon and…WOW! Batman is as good as the hype suggests!

With a script by long-time Batman scribe (and fan favourite) Paul Dini, and featuring the voices of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, Batman: Arkham Asylum sees you assuming the role of Batman as you deliver The Joker to Arkham Asylum following an all too easy arrest. As is per The Joker’s de-facto behaviour, all is not what it seems. Once inside, The Joker unleashes hell upon Batman, trapping him inside Arkham with its cast of super-villains.

Graphically the game looks superb. It’s often said that official screenshots are not a true representation of the actual gameplay, as a lot of them are captured from game cut scenes, but Batman is different. The entire game looks like one long cut scene, I haven’t seen such a detailed looking game in eons. From the wrinkles in The Joker’s face, to the creases Batman’s gloves, not a single detail has been spared. The graphics are matched only by the excellent voice acting – Hamill, as usual, is excellent as The Joker; embuing his Joker with a terrifyingly maniacal edge, throwing quips at Batman at every possible opportunity. Kevin Conroy, as Batman, brings the same vocal gravitas to the game as he did to the Emmy award winning animated Batman series of the 90’s. The prior experience of Dini, Hamill and Conroy in the “world” of Batman shines through every pore of the script – it’s obvious that a lot of care and attention has been taken to make this the best Batman story possible.

The gameplay in Batman: Arkham Asylum is very intuitive, with different modes for different tasks. The fight system is very similar, but much improved upon, the fight system in the recent Watchmen downloadable game. Using only two buttons: one for attack and one for counter, you combine two button combos into a free flow fight system, stringing together attacks and counters to build the combo meter and when it’s full you’re treated to a slow-mo Bat-attack, which looks amazing on screen. The slow-mo’s are a brutal display of Batman’s power and strength, the first time I saw Batman do a slow-mo handstand and kick one of the enemies two-footed in the face I was blown away.

The game also features a “Detective Mode” in which you spot items to examine, objects to grapple onto and enemies to track – there’s a nice sequence where you, as Batman, must scour a scene in detective mode to find a way to defeat Zsazz without being seen by him. If you’ve played the recent Wolverine game, Batman’s detective mode is very similar to that game’s feral mode. This being a Batman game there’s also the typical Batman tools at your disposal – the batarang and the grappling hook. These are easily triggered by a combination of bumper button presses such as, in the case of the Batarang, left bumper to aim, right to fire. As with most modern games there are also plenty of unlockables throughout the game – character bios, skill upgrades and most interesting of all, combat arenas.

I can guarantee Batman: Arkham Asylum will not disappoint, everything about the game is nigh-on perfect. To compare the game to the Batman film franchise, in my opinion it betters Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, that’s how good it is.