I realise I’m a little late to the game here given that its sequel is out and proud and doing well but I just completed Batman Arkham Asylum for the Xbox 360. A friend lent it to me*, enthusiastically batting away my indifference to the Batman universe – insisting “it’s a good game, even if it wasn’t Batman, it’d still be good”; which suggested to me they were too lazy to create something new and instead surfed on the back of something already popular. I’m right about that but, admittedly, it is a quality game.
The basic premise is that Joker takes over a prison/come asylum in order to create an army of super mutants and take over Gotham City or the world or similar. Spoiler alert. The storey is told well, it’s revealed and foreshadowed and isn’t just expanded in a contrived way like when some games hit six hours they – because that resonates with the zeitgeist – pull some terrorism out of their ass and continue for another pointless four. I really enjoyed it over all and it’s a great example of storey telling in video games.
On the other hand. The characters, for the most part were a little anaemic. There were a lot of villains in it that were – I assume at least – returning characters like Scarecrow and Killer Croc and Zsasz to which I was introduced and given a sense of but I felt like that was it. There was nothing else to them. Even with the psychiatric recordings littered around the place. I suspect this is just a problem with the source material: comic books. These characters have to survive years and years of re-use so they have to be vague lest they implode like their cousins in soap land. Yes it’s true good characters can be summed up in a sentence (Zzasz: self hating serial killer with a god complex. Killer Croc is a metaphor for the animal in us all and Poison Ivy is a nasty evil naked Greenpeace liberal fag) but with great characters you want to say more. I didn’t.
But it’s a game. Examples of great characters are a little sparse *cough – Kazooie cough cough*.
The game play is split into three main parts, rooms of baddies that you have to punch into unconsciousness – the moral alternative to murder – room of baddies to you have to suffocate into unconsciousness one by one causing panic and fear in your future victims – the moral alternative to murder – and very infrequent side scrolling-ish pieces that end up with you shining a light on Scarecrow – the much less effective alternative to murder.
The crowds of baddies are what make up the majority of the bits of the game, and it’s done well enough. Most of the time it just comes down to hitting X a lot, but as you progress through the game you have to think about what you’re doing a little more some enemies shock you if you attack them head on and some have knives and guns making them higher priority targets. There are some moves you can do after building up a high enough combo but I found that it rarely responded quickly enough and I lost powerful finishing moves. Even the simple counter move didn’t always work – especially later on when there were lots of baddies. You either had to pre-empt the counter prompt or if you’d successfully countered you’d get attacked by someone else which just simply wasn’t fair.
The predator bit’s were my favourite, you were given a room full of armed guards (in this game bullets kill you dead) and you had to take them out one by one and silently, reminiscent of how you’re ‘meant’ to do things in Assassins Creed. They require a lot of thought and if you fuck up it’s always your fault, not the game’s. They evolve throughout the game, as you get gadgets you can distract guards or blow out walls to take them out. It’s very satisfying to complete one without being caught and to watch the guards get more and more freaked.
The Side scrolling-ish bits were a nice change of pace. But they never really evolved and I thought they were foreshadowing something bigger as they were linked to Scarecrow but they never followed through.
Boss battles! I’ve missed playing games that have such things. However these were either at the end of the game or let downs. Killer Croc especially was disappointing, he’d been referenced all the way through and when you got to the sewers all you had to do was slap him back into the water thirty-two times while you were trying to do something else. I get that it was trying to build tension and stuff but it went on so long it became terribly predictable.
Flaahgra from the Metroid prime games made an appearance towards the end. “How’s it going?” I asked surprised to see her, it’s been a long time. “How’s the family? Are you still eating Vigilantes for a liviaaaaghhh!” Poison Ivy was a fun boss if a little simple. In fact all the bosses in this game are simpler than some of the combat arenas and predator rooms which you will have to retry. But they give the game good pace and stop it being too repetitive.
I played through on hard mode and once I’d nailed the basics I coasted through a lot of it until about three quarters the way through when I just hit a wall. I was trapped in a tiny room with one huge enemy and like twenty thugs armed with metal pipes for four hours hearing jokers three taunts half a billion times and no doubt in my sleep for the next fortnight. It was difficult to the point of tears. It was the game’s fault. The area so small it was impossible to fight both the mini-boss and jokers devoted minions at the same time. It didn’t seem to want me diving to the right, there was always something to get caught on and diving to the left got you slapped by goons. When I realised that this was actually a puzzle-fight (you have to use the Titan to thin out the crowd of smaller guys) it was better but still frustratingly difficult – enemies were taking more hits than they had in the last room and the game never lets you counter two people at once even when two people are coming at you at once.
The difficulty spike in the minions seemed really unfair given that the conditions were very different plus you had to neutralise a Titan at the same time. When I finally completed it, it wasn’t as satisfying as some of the other trickier bits – it felt more like I’d gotten lucky.
Over all though I did enjoy the game. It’s exiting when you get a new gadget to play with it and it opens up areas you were previously locked out of – particularly if you’re hunting down all the Riddler trophies. There are great details too like the chattering teeth that guide your way and your costume deteriorating through a pretty rough night. Things like that can really strengthen a game.
Like I said I’m late to play it but if you haven’t already, it’s worth picking up – even if you no like Batman.
*The same friend that bullied me into buying the recent Batman films. I assume it’s necessary for them to be Batman lest something as original as a toxic idea escape from the film industry.
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