Bruce Wayne beats himself in the first part of the Arkham-series through masses of mad culprits, Super-villains, his own mind and much more. All these points make a grand comic video game.
Great mixture
Imagine: After an exhausting workday, you’re sitting in front of your fireplace in the living room with a good glass of bourbon. That is the wrong picture for Arkham Asylum. Because here, the dark knight got his hands full of word and quitting time is faaaar away.
After the Joker got himself caught and brought into the mental hospital through Batman, just to conquer it and release madness into it. It works all to his plan and Batman sees himself confronted with quite many mad figures. In all this theatre Batman stays, in contrast to his green-haired enemy, very uncommunicative, more than “Stay here” or “You are safe now” isn’t finding a way out of his speaking tube. But because of that, there is that feeling of Batman’s superiority, which makes the game as great as it is.
The slight comic-like look of the Unreal Engine is, for a game that relates more to the comics than the movies from Christopher Nolan, forthcoming.
Everything needs to be down on your own
“Everyone is incompetent”. That is something you will learn very quickly in that (and every following game), which feels unreal. It feels like we constantly rushing from rescuing Commissioner Gordon to rescuing several doctors to rescuing Gordon again. Nobody can look after themselves and we need to clean up after them. Which is very good tied up into the story but they could have put another plot in there instead of doing the same thing over and over. But because it is very good integrated into the story, you don’t mind if you climb up and down the elevator shaft.
Innuendoes all over the way
If you are looking for the “all loved” Riddler-challenges you will notice some good hidden Easter eggs, that might make only sense if you are a major nerd, but even if you are a beginner in the lore of Batman you can enjoy these riddles and even learn something about this lore, by, for instance, listening to the tapes you will eventually find during your time in Arkham.
If you are a madman like I am, you will find a body with a label on it in the morgue that says “Ra’s al Ghul”. As a nerd, I knew that that is nearly impossible, but I enjoyed that the developers took it into the game. Or the frozen cell, which only could possibly house one inmate only. The mere mention of villains like Penguin or Two-Face is a pity, there was potential to see them in the game. Others, like the founder of the asylum, Amadeus Arkham and his wife, you got mentioned quite often, which, as a history lover, I was really happy about.
Collecting the riddles is not hard, you need to think about a few things and be observant and then most might not pose a problem.
A big problem of the game is the not existing respawn of the AI. So, after beating the shit out of everyone in a certain complex on this island, it will stay empty. That makes travelling through the island soon very boring because it is empty. That makes literally no sense, because, as we all know, Batman beats the thugs only unconscious and doesn’t kill them. So where are they? Theoretical they should wake up and do something. Not vanish.
[]Challenge[/b]
The game got three different levels of difficulty: Easy, Normal and Hard.
A playthrough on Normal is a nice experience, it is not too hard, you got a nice Batman-Feeling, as I like to call it. Bosses are not dealing too much damage and are taking quite good damage. On Hard, however, it was still quite fair. A boss deals significantly more damage and takes approximately the same damage as on normal difficulty. The final boss was very underwhelming. In contrast to every other boss, it works according to a certain tactic, but the three phases of this battle are very simple and quite fast, compared to every other boss fight on hard. You take a relieved sigh when the final boss is defeated, in my case just because I knew I had beaten the game.
Now, let’s talk about the survival mode: It is hard. Even on Normal. It forgives nearly no mistakes and, if you want all three stars, it frustrates quite fast. Soon you will know every voice line of Mark Hamill, who is introducing each fight, by heart and at the latest of the 17th round, after your score didn’t ascent much in the last rounds, you will quit frustrated. Even I, a guy who wants to achieve 100%, abandoned the game without going through every survival map. So, you quit and maybe you try it again. Or you start playing the second part.
Combat system, camera and levels
The combat system is very easy and intuitive. It is just a two-button-smash-system, but it works quite well. During playing you just encounter a few targeting problems, which causes your combo to break. This is bearable on the one hand but very annoying on the other, because when your combo streak hits a certain amount you can trigger a special attack, which, for instance, knocks out an enemy instantly, which is quite helpful. With the help of these instant knockouts, combat is becoming very smooth and believable, because who wouldn’t believe that a hulk like Batman could not down a thug with one blow?
Combat feels balanced, smooth and as time goes by, with different types of enemies, the game is not getting dull. The camera follows Batman in third-person, you can adjust the camera with your mouse and during battle, the perspective changes, so Batman is more in the middle and you see more of your surrounding and you can aim better at your next “victim”. The moment you sent the last thug to the ground, the camera glides back at the “running-perspective” so that Batman is inside the left half of the monitor.
The levels are not just the triste corridors you would expect of a madhouse, Arkham is way more than that. It is a complete island with many hidden pathways who just wait for exploration. You could say that Arkham Island is the dream of every child, with its old buildings and secrets.
After Joker took over the Island, you see signs of that event everywhere: Injured or dead guards are lying around in vandalized rooms and corridors and there are quite a lowlife and shady gangsters everywhere. As I mentioned earlier, Batman-Fans will see innuendoes everywhere.
What to fight?
Thank god, Batman got many gadgets. A charging Killer Croc begs to be stopped with a fast-thrown Batarang and sags afterwards down like a bag full of cement. Every gadget of Batman just aims for one purpose: Beating every rascal to the moon and back. The further you come into your story, the harder the enemies get, either with throwing a complete mass of them at you or with putting more special enemies at you. Normal thugs start to arm themselves with batons, electro-batons, rifles, shotguns, or knives. In levels with stealth, gadgets come in quite handy, you just are not completely stealth anymore, your enemies will change their actions because they start to become terrified. But in such event of a panic, mistakes happen and this is why Batman will leave their unconscious bodies and start fighting with the next group of mislead sheep.
Controls
…are quite unhandy with mouse and keyboard. Changing the keybindings is only possible outside the game in an extra menu. The speed of the mouse is not changeable at all but it is not necessary. Saving is only possible at certain points in the game, such as opening doors.
Rating: 75/100
Pros:
+ Free-Flow-Combo-System
+ suitable comic-look
+ complete voice-acting
+ great characters, with a background
+ Riddler-riddles are fun
+ 12 – 14 hours of story content
Cons:
– Final boss battle even on Hard very easy
– not ported for mouse and keyboard
– The ending is very sudden
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