“Batman: Arkham Asylum” First Impressions.
I played through the demo of Batman: Arkham Asylum a couple weeks ago and was thoroughly impressed by it. The atmosphere was right, the stealth was fun, the comic book stuff was spot on and having Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as Batman and the Joker respectively felt like coming home. I liked it so much that I decided to purchase the game, my first retail purchase of a video game since Street Fighter IV was released back in February, I believe. I got it for the PS3 for the Joker Challenges and, after being reminded of the ridiculousness of console game installations, I dove right into it.
I’ve put a few hours into the game as of right now and here are, as the title of this post so subtly hints, my first impressions.
This game is amazing.
It may very well be the best licensed game I’ve ever played (sorry Goldeneye, you’re too dated), not to mention the best Batman game I’ve ever played (and Batman for the NES and Batman Returns for the SNES were both pretty good).
Influences in the development team are clear: this game borrows to various degrees from Metal Gear Solid, Bioshock, Metroid, Zelda, Gears of War, Resident Evil 4 and God of War among others but blends it all together into a delicious pastiche of its own with pitch perfect Batman icing on top of it. All these disparate gaming elements are integrated seamlessly into a Batman context and what could’ve been yet another case of “trying to do too much” ends up being a cohesive Batman experience that makes absolute sense.
You engage in combat, you take on enemies via stealth, you do detective work, you solve riddles, you fight bosses, you do minor platforming, etc, etc, etc. The pacing has been brilliant so far and no section in the game yet has had me begging for it to end or outworn its welcome. The game moves you briskly from one section to the next, always bringing something new to the table.
And the presentation is just fantastic. Graphics, music, menus, atmosphere, voicework, it’s all top notch and it blends in the comics, the movies (Dark Knight more specifically) and the animated series with a dash of Bioshock all into a beast of its own. Writer Paul Dini gives the game its comic book cred with nods and winks, both obvious and obscure, to the Dark Knight’s long serialized history. He also provides a story that has been quite pleasant so far, spot-on characterization of every single character in the game and amazing Joker dialogue. It’s at this point that I should again mention the amazing work of both Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill who are, arguably, the perfect Batman and Joker. I’m also throwing Arleen Sorkin out there because she’s the only person who should ever play Harley Quinn.
If there’s one complaint I have, it is that the combat is rather weak. It’s almost as if Batman is operating on auto-pilot and you’re just watching him beat people up, barely moving him along. That being said, I have gained new abilities recently that should spice up the combat and you do have to slow down a bit when 6+ guys and a boss gang up on you because they will kill you if you’re not careful. I definitely feel like it’s the weakest part of the game but it’s never been terrible.
One of the reasons why I slowly stopped caring about games was because my expectations were, more often than not, met with disappointment. This game has exceeded my expectations and, precluding an excessive amount of repetition or backtracking, could be my favorite game this year. Derivative it may be, but it’s a high quality game nonetheless.
Kudos to Rocksteady.
PS: I’m probably not going to do further impressions on this game unless it changes completely and turns into a terrible game somehow, in which case I’ll let my e-rage be known.
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Yea i rented this game manyg. It was a pretty smooth game. I really liked the graphics and voice overs as you said, mark hammil was spot on. I also thought the combat was weak. I tried as much as possible not to engage opponents. Mostly focusing on stealth which i felt they should have made a bigger part of this game. I also feel they should have made battarangs more powerful and not infinite.
solid game tho.
about 10 hours game play for me to beat it.
Did you do all the Riddler stuff?
I’m having fun with those.
I did a bunch of the riddlers stuff. But I ended up not finishing it after lookin at what kind of cutscene or reward i was gonna get for 100% completion. That lil bit bout the riddler getting caught didnt really made the juice not worth the squeeze.
[...] and a fantastic piece of entertainment in its own right. I never wrote a proper review of it but my first impressions are clearly favorable and my one complaint (combat) turned out to be one of my favorite parts of [...]