Pretend, for a minute, that you are Batman. While it may at first seem awkward to imagine to wear a pointy mask and long lustrous cape, I assure you, I think about this on a daily basis. So you're Batman, and you're skulking around in an Arkham Asylum torn apart and taken over by The Joker. You zip up to perch on one of the many high-mounted gargoyles (there to scare the sanity into patients, I think), and watch over your prey—dumb, hapless goons. The best (only?) kind.
You wait as long as it takes for one to come strolling right under you on its patrol, then you dive down and grab the schmuck. As if the chokehold wasn't enough, your cold stare sears his soul long enough for him not to notice you've just tied your cord around his foot. You let him go and give the gargoyle a new pendulum. The thug's yelps attract his buddies as you flee to a new vantage point. With his friends directly below him, the pendulum pleads for them to cut him down, but you're the one who grants his wish. An impeccably aimed batarang frees him to meet the ground. Sure was nice of his pals to break his fall.
In Batman: Arkham Asylum, you can do that. Every part of that sequence I illustrated is part of the gameplay. And there's a lot more to do, too, involving hiding spots, stealth submissions, gliding, controlled explosives and hard kicks to the back of the head. More than any other game, Arkham Asylum really makes you feel like the goddamned Batman.
The atmosphere helps a lot. Though it's rendered in the weirdly-shiny Unreal 3 Engine (used for dozens of games like Gears of War and Mass Effect), the different parts of Arkham still manage to look great in their own kind of way. It also helps tremendously that they've got key players from The Animated Series back voicing Batman, Joker, Harley Quinn, etc. Mark Hamill in particular carries his sizable weight, basically narrating the entire game over the speakers and intercoms, BioShock-style.
The whole game owes a lot to BioShock (and the Metroid Prime games), from the moody vibe to the gadget-based progression to the little audiotapes you find in little nooks and crannies; in a great twist, the tapes are interviews with various members of the rogues gallery. It's this solid foundation that Arkham Asylum builds on and slathers a heckuva Batman coat upon. Highly recommended stuff.
Crossposted on The Squiggly Lines!
"Batman: Arkham Asylum" is on sale August 25, 2009 and is rated T. Action, Adventure. Developed by Rocksteady Studios. Published by Warner Bros Interactive, Eidos Interactive.
