Coming close on the heels of the blockbuster The Dark Knight featuring the late actor, Heath Ledger’s amazingly spine-chilling portrayal of the Joker, fans could be forgiven to assume Batman: Arkham Asylum to be just another attempt to cash in on the success of the movie with a video-game tie in. Thankfully, for both gamers as well Batman fans, not only is Arkham Asylum a superbly executed game in it’s own right but also a great chance for fans of the series to romp through the grounds of the iconic Arkham Asylum as the caped crusader.

Batman: Arkham Asylum opens with a lengthy cut-scene showing Batman, having captured the Joker, is on his way to deposit him at Arkham Asylum. Joker’s indifference towards his capture is soon explained when he makes a run for it as soon as he enters the building. The break-out or more precisely the break-in is revealed to be a planned act as Joker rapidly takes control over the whole facility, letting lose his henchmen and many of the super-villains currently incarcerated at Arkham Asylum. It is up to Batman now to bring down the Joker before he carries out his diabolical plan.

Just few minutes into the game, you will have to start dealing with Joker’s goons. At your disposal is a wide range of beautifully choreographed attacks and counter-attacks and all you have to do is just press two buttons on your mouse (or the Xbox 360 controller if you prefer it, like us). Pressing the attack button will have Batman lash out on the nearest goon while the counter-attack button will have him evade and counter their attacks. Time it right and Batman will move fluidly between a gang of thugs, attacking, evading and counter-attacking them without getting even a scratch on his cape all the while.

A comb-system in place ensures that even though you are essentially button mashing your way through the hordes, the wide range of superbly animated attacks keep the on-screen action engaging as well as racking up the experience points along the way. Not dodging in time and getting hit by one of the goons means that Batman will lose balance and vulnerable to more attacks. If you can keep up with the flow though, he will finish off the last standing goon with a stylish, slow-mo move, bound to make you cringe at the sheer viciousness of it.

The experience points that you so earn can be used to unlock more of Batman’s deadlier moves as well as an awesome range of gadgets, right from a gun that can spray paint a wall with explosive gel to the mighty-useful Grapnel gun that allows you to zip between two places by firing a zip-line. Other upgrades will enable you to take out three enemies with three Batrangs thrown at the same time or remotely activate the collars worn by the inmates to signal a downed comrade and thus divert the rest as you swoop down and clean them up one at a time.

These gadgets, combined with your conventional hand-to-hand attacks have to combined together later in the game as Joker’s henchmen start showing up with knives, cattle-prods and guns. At this point, Batman can switch on his detective vision which turns the world in to a black-and-blue X-ray scan, where every enemy is visible on screen, the ones armed showing up in red. Here is where you can use the environment by remote-detonating explosives to bring down walls on unsuspecting foes, ledge-takedowns or even the awesome inverted-takedown.

Adding an extra edge to your already quite-deadly arsenal of moves are the stealth moves. Batman can perch over the gargoyles and roof-tops as he scans around in detective mode. From this vantage point, he can choose to drop down and silently sneak up on and choke an unsuspecting enemy, glide-kick another from a distance or swoop down and pick one up the third as he passes below him, unaware of what is lurking just above him. These moves are essential when there are enemies around with guns as Batman cannot survive for too long with a couple of gun-toting enemies around.

What you will immediately notice during such levels is the way these henchmen react to their dwindling numbers. Initially they will all cocky and arrogant as they patrol around, confident about their ability to bring “the Bat” down. But slowly as you picking them out one by one, their collars going-off, their confidence starts to falter. From there on, they start moving in pairs, often back-to-back, waving guns wildly around, shouting out for their comrades, positively whimpering with fear. Having Joker as the boss doesn’t help either with his constant taunts cutting on their already frayed nerves.

Facing off the super-villains during the boss battles will feel immensely rewarding and there are quite a lot of them in Arkham Asylum. The Scarecrow sequences in particular stand-out because of the way they mess around with your mind, distorting the world around you, showing your worst nightmares manifest right in front of you. These sequences are particularly rich in object physics with stuff flying around all the time and are a great way to test out the PhysX engine, only available on the PC. Less rewarding was the hefty patch for it which was initially available only via GFWL.

Graphically, the game looks amazing running on the Unreal 3 engine. The dark and creepy world of Arkham Asylum is brought out beautifully in the art-style and architecture of the old, creepy and slowly crumbling down asylum; it is very much reminiscent of the world of Rapture from BioShock. Voice acting, similarly is top-notch with Mark Hammil as the Joker putting in a superb performance. Rest of the super-villains, Batman and even the lowly henchmen are ably voiced as well. Finding the recorded interviews of inmates of the asylum add more depth to their character.

Those who will explore the nooks and crannies of Arkham Asylum will find various references to many characters that inhabit the world of Batman. You also get to hunt down cleverly hidden Riddler Trophies as well riddles that can be solves by taking pictures of objects being referred to in the riddle itself. These can be sometime as simple as taking picture of an object in the same room and as complicated as lining up objects far apart to literally make the pieces of jigsaw fall into place. These riddles are immensely gratifying to solve besides the experience points that they earn you.

Outside the single-player experience, there are eight challenge maps that have you either take out waves of increasing number of enemies or take out armed goons while running against the clock. These regular and extreme challenge maps are based on the single-players levels. Challenge maps also throw in specific objectives that you need to complete like one where you need to execute a certain type of takedown or another that requires a combination of attacks to earn medals and a higher ranking on the global leaderboard via the Games for Windows LIVE functionality.

Rocksteady Games has done a brilliant job of creating a Batman game that will keep both the gamer as well as the fans happy. If you happen to be both, then Batman: Arkham Asylum will appeal to you on many levels. Even if you do happen to be just a gamer without any knowledge of Batman’s universe, give this game a try for the sheer brilliance of it. Missing this one will be “criminally insane”!

9.5 / 10
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