Rocksteady’s slightly delayed PC version of their rather well-received man-thumper/ledge-grappler goes on sale this week. I’ve been playing it. I’ve also written some words detailing how I feel about it. But I’m not just going to give them to you, oh no. If you can solve my cunning riddle, you can work out how to read them. Riddle me this!
Solid: that’s the word I’ve most often heard used to describe Arkham Asylum. It’s odd, the way a single word can come to encapsulate a game so – much the same happened with STALKER and ‘atmospheric.’ These are words that say everything and nothing, but do accurately reflect the sensation the games in question most pervade. Arkham Asylum is indeed solid, and that’s because it’s a game that’s based in part about a really strong guy repeatedly punching slightly less strong guys. But it’s not that simple.
It’s solid because of how it shows the thumping. It’s in the camera angles, the generous handful of varying animations, the sound effects, the breathless cross-screen flow from punch-to-punch and the judicious use of slow motion (this latter infinitely more graceful than Fallout 3’s stodgy, puerile slo-mo deathcam). Yep, that’s a guy thumping another guy alright. But it’s also solid because of how punchy-guy (that’ll be Batman) is presented. Arkham Asylum’s Batman universe is halfway between the comic incarnation and Christopher Nolan’s silver screen take – a hyper-trained secret agent-type using brain, brawns and bleeding-edge technology to take down exaggerated mutants and psychopaths. He’s a big bugger, he’s wearing armour rather than spandex, and he can shrug off just enough thumps to the jaw and bullets to the chest to evoke someone that’s simultaneously more than yet undeniably mortal.
His massiveness doesn’t deny him grace – when the level structure allows it (and it often doesn’t), he can grapple from ledge to roof to air duct to gargoyle (Arkham Asylum has an awful lot of huge, indoor gargoyles, conveniently) like an overweight but still capable Spider-Man. He can remove a heavy metal grating near-silently if he’s trying to remain undetected. He can disappear into ceiling shadows if someone dangerous is on his tail. Y’know, he’s bloody Batman.
In fact, Arkham’s greatest feat is establishing exactly what makes Batman Batman, distilling them down into a few core features, then presenting them with oodles of flair. He’s not a jack-of-all-trades hero, his Batrope isn’t magically able to attach to anything, he isn’t invincible, and he can’t duff up 38 guys a minute. He just does a few things very, very well, and these few things are presented excitingly enough to rarely become boring. They do at times, sadly – there’s a bit too much reliance on find the door/switch/vent to progress, which can ruin the sense of Batmanniess – this isn’t a character you expect to see wandering around desperately looking for a door or wilding firing his Batrope at anything in sight.
Underneath all the surface flair, the game is a succession of looped sequences – melee brawl, a spot of grappling and vent-opening, a Splinter Cell-lite stealth-kill room, a fight against a vaguely irritating boss with convenient weak spots and attack cycles, and repeat it. It’s really a simple affair, based around classic console action game values. But because it’s overlaid with the impressive might of the Unreal 3 engine at its best, in-game architecture gone gothic-wild, some absolutely corking voice-work and a (faintly illogical, given this is an asylum) wide variety of environments, it successfully masks the simplicity at its core. Bar some annoyingly gamey setpiece fights, it feels like not like a mere beat ‘em up but a bona fide adventure – as a superhero game should.
It’s, without a doubt, one of the best superhero games ever made – though, perversely, much of that is because how cleverly it emphasises that Batman is just a clever, athletic dude in a suit, not SuperWonderSpiderUltraman.
A quick note on controls here… After some moral delibration, I opted to use a 360 controller plugged into my PC. The game just doesn’t feel right on keyboard and mouse – it’s positively built for analogue movement, triggers to fire ropes and Batarangs, and even for pad vibration. It looks great on PC, the characters especially looking incredibly detailed if you can pump the settings high enough, but it does feel like a console game rather than what we’ve come to think of as PCy. There’s no shame in that – all you need to do is allow yourself to play it like a console game.
The combat is incredibly simple, barely much more than repeated button pushes – but though some will complain about its lack of complexity, its triumph is how it plays out on screen. Your vaguely rhythmic taps activate an artful death-ballet (yeah, I know Batman technically doesn’t kill anyone, but c’mon – no-one’s really getting up from that kind of a beating) that makes you triumphantly feel like an expert fighter. Again, it fits the nature of Batman, somehow – grounded in reality, but just a little bit silly even at his most grim.
But there’s one big, disappointing way in which the game forgets who Batman is supposed to be. Throughout its duration, there’s a surfeit of hide’n’seek collectables – some hung to blimmin’ Achievements, some for the XP necessary to upgrade Brucie’s powers, and some just to unlock character factfiles and similar gubbins. This is all theoretically optional – it’s not necessary for progression, and the game can be completed without any upgrades. Unfortunately, you’ll want the upgrades because throwing three batarangs at once or vertically dragging people up from the floor while you’re suspended from a gargoyle sounds like a lot of fun. Upon entering any and every area, you’re also bombarded with messages and hints about the collectables, via an infuriatingly omniscient Riddler. The problem isn’t so much that all these collectables (and there really are a lot) are in there, but rather that the game won’t stop reminding you about them.
In other words, collectormania is pervasive and unavoidable. It disrupts the flow of the game, because you’re forever feeling compelled to sniff around for magic floating question marks rather than to save a) your life b) the people of Gotham City’s lives from the manic machinations of the Joker. At least Arkham Asylum attempts a narrative reason for the secrets’ existence, but it’s unclear why Batman would give a flying toss about the Riddler dicking about so, given he doesn’t present any threat.
The implementation of the upgrades is a little on the silly side too – I bought improved armour midway through a boss battle, which magically made me extra-strong and restored all my health on the spot. Oh, for a cutscene that showed Bats cheerily welding armour plates onto his legs in the middle of a fight with a drug-addled uber-mutant.
Arkham suffers from a few rough edges that upset what’s otherwise a masterfully-realised fantasy, then – which I wouldn’t mind so much if they didn’t seem like faddish adherence to Achievement/unlock culture rather than because they add to the game. I can feel a big rant brewing about this kind of thing at some point – Achievements, optional unlocks et al have always been a little silly, but fundamentally fine so long as they’re not altering the experience for those sensible souls who don’t care about them. Here, their presence is actively affecting the entire game. Perhaps it would have felt too slim without this persistent secondary challenge, but I would much rather a game that simply let me get on with being Batman rather than feeling like a child on a birthday treasure hunt.
Nonetheless, if you can either shrug such nonsense off or elect to lap it up, Arkham Asylum is quite the triumph for the most part. It’s Batman. It’s really Batman, dramatically more real than any other game has ever made him, and to the point that he is a component part of why the game’s so great, rather than the game being great but happening to have a Batman skin in it.
And, yes, it’s oh-so-solid.
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Ignore that last sentence, it was copied from your original post :)
Imagine if Batman had used Shark Repellent Spray rather than the Bat Shark Repellent Spray.
We’d have lost Adam West.
I think you’ll find it’s Shark Repellent Bat Spray.
@lemming – I think Batman wants both, Revenge for the injustice done to him as a child but also Justice for others. This, I think, it shown in that he seldom if ever kills any of his villians. Like Spiderman he just beats the heck out of them and sends them off to a place to get “help”
@Gorgeras – What would a world without Adam West be like? I wouldn’t want to know personally. (Though soon I fear we will find out, all the stars from my childhood and teenage years are dieing off like flys)
WTF is a bat shark? I want one.
Currently playing on 360 (and enjoying except for the seemingly random doens’t always save my progress moments). If it didn’t give me achievements, how else would I know I’m achieving anything by playing it…
Anyone else have trouble patching this? Games for Windows just hangs at 98% and never finishes the patch. You don’t get Physx without it
“That kind of play also tends to make for a short game, as seems to be the case here. ”
Actually, no. It’s fairly lengthy.
Finally installed the patch!
It took of staring at a progress bar that immediately shot up to 98% and stayed there for an hour without any notification of how big the file was, how much time was left, what speed it was downloading at or whether it was doing anything at all, but it’s finally installed.
Wasn’t the idea of Games For Windows Live to make the experience better? All it ever seems to do it mar it.
Alec – I totally agree with you about the collectibles / achievement-mania. It’s one of the things that really turns me off of console gaming, and I sort of wish it hadn’t started to infect PC gaming (e.g. Steam achievements). I don’t really understand the compulsion to pointlessly find or “achieve” things (seriously, who really thinks they’re achieving something by doing repetetive things ad nauseam?), and I think that stuffing them into otherwise great games is a waste of development resources.
@Psychopomp
Every review and comment I’ve read on the subject seems to indicate around 12 hours at the outside (doing all the Riddler stuff and whatnot).
@Vinraith
I’d say it took me around 12 hours to get 100% completion on normal difficulty. There are also the challenge rooms, and surviving some of those will take a LOT of practice.
ahh, the curse of the collectibles (which are usually tied to those stupid achievements), Wolfenstein might have been fun without them
when will we learn not to ruin the flow of an action game with BS
OK, played a bit of the demo, two questions:
1) Is there any way to zoom out? It happens automatically in combat, but when exploring and moving about the environment Batman occupies at least a 3rd of the screen for no reason. I’d like to see more of the room I’m in and less of that lovingly rendered cape.
2) Is there any way to jump? In combat I occasionally find a low obstacle between me and an enemy and the attack system (normally smooth as glass) won’t hop over it. It’s an annoying and terribly un-Batman way to die.
“seriously, who really thinks they’re achieving something by doing repetetive things ad nauseam?”
Ideally, they’re not that. Dead Rising did’m right, very few other games have.
@Vinraith:
Batman will jump and glide automatically when you have the run button held.
I don’t know if there’s any way to zoom out, but the depth of field changes to highlight things that you can latch on to or otherwise interact with, especially in detective mode.
I wouldn’t have minded the Riddler challenges if there weren’t so bloody many of them. Maybe if they’d dropped the trophies but kept the photos / spirit / teeth killing bits.
Still, great game. Boss battles were a little gamey – but I guess the combat system is built for fighting a load of mooks – not just one guy, so they had to do something.
Best bits were the Scarecrow moment. Crazy but awesome.
Really enjoyed the demo of this, glad to hear it’s quality through and through. Anyone know of any decent drivers to get my PS3 pad working with PC? Last ones I downloaded BSOD’d my PC! :O
Good review and bravo for standing against the tidal wave of achievement seeking.
I have it on Xbox 360, its a good game, my “beef” is that its all laid out for you. I think Edge’s term was “too focus-tested” and thats right on. Its just too easy. Which is fine, most games are built like that nowadays and this is still better than most.
Yahtzee has a Zero Punctuation review up, if anyone cares… http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/926-Batman-Arkham-Asylum
The comment above from “maple story hack” appears to be spam.
Glad I ordered the retail version – the Steam copy has Securom limited activations, while the retail just has a disc check.
Poor old Maple Story Hack. He never gets his comments out.
Cmon already..
…paces up and down outside letter box…
A few words about the collectibles: I absolutely hated them in Wolfenstein. But here, I gathered them all, hell, I even got the ones I missed after completing the story. It felt enjoyable and not flow-breaking, although the Riddler trophies were very clearly on the “gamey” side and the game be better off without them. I loved the rest though – especially the Spirit of Arkham bits, along with the conclusion. Story or sub-story driven stuff like that are ideal collectible/achievement material.
I bought the Riddick games for cheap on D2D and I’m pretending Butcher Bay is Arkham Asylum. It’s working out pretty well!
Achievements are a cancer eating away at the heart of modern videogames, slowly killing them from within.
“the Steam copy has Securom limited activations, while the retail just has a disc check.”
Whyyyyyy! I feel rather let down having dropped £30 on this to find out that there’s no way to preload and there’s more drm than with retail. And it’s so much worse coming from Steam, like being mocked by an old beloved friend.
It’s a 4 per month limit. If you seriously need to install the game more than 4 times in one month, something is horribly wrong with you.
That said, I finished and enjoyed the game greatly. It reminded me why I play games in the first place.
I actually have had months where I had 4 hard drive deaths, turned out the power supply was eating them.
There is something seriously wrong with your luck, in that case.
Nah, just had a bad power supply and didn’t know it. It pretty much killed that whole system, but did it so slowly that it looked like a series of separate malfunctions.
The point is, limited installs suck, even when they’re quite generous. You never know what’s going to cause you to need a bunch of them, and of course the long term viability of any game with an activation system is suspect.
If you think about it, the Steam version relies on three separate authentication system, each requiring an internet connection, and future access to those authentication servers:
Steam
Securom
GFWL.
If any one of those isn’t available/online at some point in the future when you re-install your game then you either won’t be able to play the game or will have no access to any DLC you may have downloaded.
By contrast the disc version only has:
GFWL.
That’s three times the amount of DRM on he Steam version. Relying on one internet activated DRM system is bad enough, but three different ones is three points of failure for authentication instead of one.
I dislike the combat mechanics, and the stealth is a bit too simplistic too, but I love everything else about the game, especially the whole Metroid-like progression (very reminiscent of Metroid Prime 3 which I recently replayed) where you get new tools and abilities to reach areas you couldn’t before, though it’s also more linear than you’d expect with these mechanics. Beautiful game though, perhaps the best super hero game yet. Now, make me a sandbox sequel please.
I’ll disagree about the controls, I have a 360 pad but I find myself playing it with mouse + keyboard with the usual WASD setup since it’s what I’m used to AND it works so well here, despite the fact it’s not an FPS. I mash the left mouse button to attack, the thumb-positioned button for the stun punches (middle mouse button normally, but that’s where mine is placed), use F to insta-batrope somewhere, and switch between my tools with 1-2-3-4 and use right click to aim, then left click to fire them, or if I’m in a rush, just their hotkeys, Z, for batarang, C for the hook, etc.
It works like a charm, the only thing I would change is put the sprint stuff on Shift instead of the space bar since it’s a bit fiddly and is required to be tapped rapidly for some of the actions, but now I got used to it halfway through the game I’ll leave it.
Started this yesterday and went with the bad. Out of the habit of pad-playing but I do often prefer them for this sort of game.
(Spoilers) Got to the part where Joker first unleashes one of those enormous angry fellows on you. Really good fun so far, swooping FTW. Loved the atmosphere in that first section, with no little help from the brilliant voice acting. I’d not see the animated series aside from clips, but Hamill is indeed excellent.
Whoops. Meant “with the pad”. Not sure what that says about me, given the b isn’t anywhere near the p.
Yes, I am a batman lover. And no, I don’t like men running around in rubber suits with a little boy on their side. And yes, I’m glad there is no Robin in the game.
Geez, this reviewer makes it sound like the optional tasks in the game almost ruin the experience. That’s not the case at all, if you don’t care about this kind of stuff, it will not bother you with it.
I understand it’s difficult to point problems in such a well rounded game, but I really disagree with such a disproportional rant about the collectives. The game only instructs you about each type of collective during the first couple of hours or so. Once you get what is what, it stops bugging you.
The socalled ‘Detective mode’ is ‘meh’, the title is unpronounceable crap to me, but I’ll have to admit the game does just about everything else right.
The main thing of course is that it’s also simply a lot of fun to play.