My Take Radio

               

 A game like this has been long awaited by gamers and comic fans alike. I can only hope to see even bet­ter titles in the future but right now Bat­man: Arkham Asy­lum is the shin­ing gem in what is oth­er­wise mostly a fum­ing pile of feces. In AA, you really get to be Bat­man, not just play as him, which is some­thing I per­son­ally have felt was lack­ing from pre­vi­ous comic titles. This guy gets beaten both phys­i­cally and men­tally and it shows in his face, in his behav­ior and even in his cos­tume.  Unlike most games which have you start and end a mis­sion, fol­lowed by a cut scene where the hero gets some sort of rest time,  AA has you expe­ri­ence a sin­gle, hor­ri­ble night in Batman’s life. Will you have what it takes to deal with The Joker and Harley Quinn, The Rid­dler, Bane, Killer Croc, Mr. Zsasz, Poi­son Ivy and the com­bined insan­ity of both Black­gate and Arkham Pen­i­ten­tiaries back to back? You really need to pick this game up and find out.

 

STORY

                The game loosely fol­lows the clas­sic Arkham Asy­lum sto­ry­line. The Joker had escaped Arkham Asy­lum some weeks before the start of the game and we open to a speed­ing Bat­mo­bile fer­ry­ing the Clown Prince back to his padded cell. Bat­man remarks to the Com­mis­sioner how the Joker really just gave up and he doesn’t like it – seems his detec­tive sense was on point as at that same moment the Joker breaks free and announces that he is in con­trol of Arkham. He proves this by lock­ing down the island with the help of Harley. Bat­man is going to have to play the Joker’s lat­est game if he wants to keep the sur­viv­ing employ­ees, the Com­mis­sioner and him­self alive long enough to get out of Arkham. It’s a good thing The Dark Knight is always ready for just about any­thing. Best described by a remark the Joker makes to his goons, “He just ONE MAN – one man dressed like a lunatic and armed to the teeth…GO GET HIM!”  With writ­ers from “Bat­man – The Ani­mated Series” and a top notch story to sam­ple from, this was one aspect of the game that pretty much could not have come up short.        

Score: 10/10

 

GRAPHICS/CAMERA

                To put it bluntly, the graph­ics are stun­ning. The graph­ics are so nice that while this game was in devel­op­ment, I thought it was going to be crap. I said to peo­ple “They are putting a huge focus on graph­ics; the game­play is going to be ter­ri­ble;” I am so proud to report that I was wrong, but I will touch on that later. At the open­ing menu, you get an up close view of our hero and his cos­tume and you can also access unlock­able tro­phies – all of which show the beau­ti­fully ren­dered cast of char­ac­ters (you can stop star­ing at Harley and Ivy now). Tra­vers­ing the island is seam­less and the clos­est thing to a load screen is wait­ing for the doors to open. The only actual load screens are when you start the game and when you restart after dying. When you reach high points in the game, you can­not help but look around at the scenery some­times (and you should be look­ing for land­marks like Wayne Tower, hint hint). Rock­steady Stu­dios has a bright future ahead of them if this is the worst they can do. Bink Video did their usual bang-up job on the cutscenes with the only gripe peo­ple can make being the ter­ri­ble lip sync­ing dur­ing in-game or cutscene speech. While the game is extremely pretty to look at, there are some ugly points. Get­ting the snot beaten out of me in the com­bat chal­lenge rooms I became very famil­iar with both the start and game over screens for the fights. Hav­ing to watch the screen ren­der itself made for some nasty images. See­ing an oth­er­wise amaz­ing back shot of Ivy in Arkham attire is nearly ruined hav­ing to watch that rear end de-pixel and anti-alias. Graph­i­cal flaws in the game are only momen­tary, but they are sadly appar­ent through­out the adven­ture. I thought it was the fact that I was play­ing a con­sole ver­sion, but I have seen the same issues on the PC (which is with­out sur­prise the most beau­ti­ful of the ver­sions). We also have to look at the cam­era in this game which was good for the most part, but far from per­fect. Dur­ing the main game I have to say the cam­era did not bother me. At times it did have some trou­ble with per­sonal space for a third per­son game. The few times the game goes into first per­son mode the cam­era is excel­lent. How­ever, the prob­lems once again pop up when we go to the chal­lenge mode. The preda­tor chal­lenges were fine with the cam­era, but even when you fin­ish those quickly they play much slower than the com­bat chal­lenges. Dur­ing said chal­lenges the cam­era can be tougher to beat than all of the ene­mies put together. Hav­ing to make angle cor­rec­tions is nei­ther fun nor easy when a guy with a bat or gun is right of screen and about to clob­ber you. Let’s not even talk about the times it decides spin around you like the Flash. I am ready for the groans, but I have got to say that it some­times drove me batty.                                                                                                                                 

 Score: 8.9/10

 

MUSIC/SOUND EFFECTS/VOICE ACTING

                Either I fin­ished this game too quickly or I waited too long to pur­chase sur­round sound; either way I am kick­ing myself for hav­ing to hear this game through only two speak­ers. The sound effects were spec­tac­u­lar, espe­cially in the com­bat rooms where you get to hear each and every punch, kick, gun­shot and espe­cially every bone break­ing.  The more vicious and defen­sive you are, the more you will appre­ci­ate the sound effects and the voice work. Speak­ing of voices, all I have to say are Mark Hamill, Kevin Con­roy and Arleen Sorkin, bet­ter known as The Joker, Bat­man and Harley Quinn, respec­tively. Once again, tal­ents from the incred­i­ble Bat­man car­toon from the 90s lend their voices to their ani­mated roles. The for­mer Jedi Knight sold more than half the copies the moment you heard that trade­mark laugh.  Kevin Con­roy is arguably the best Bat­man ever and he’s never even worn the cos­tume on screen. Same goes for Hamill and the Joker.  The orig­i­nal music for the game was com­posed by Ron Fish, who maybe none of you rec­og­nize, but if you enjoyed the score of god of war II, the PSP Chains of Olym­pus title or you are look­ing for­ward to god of war III, then you’ll want to give this man a freakin’ cookie for the work he put into this game. I could not say any­thing bad about this part of the audio of the game if you paid me.                                                                                                                                                                         

 Score: 10/10

 

GAMEPLAY

                Right here, right now, give AA the irony award of the year. The game man­ages to give you an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence, with a good deal of inno­va­tion for a Bat­man game, but with absolutely no orig­i­nal­ity to speak of. I will say that you can­not call this game a but­ton masher in terms of  com­bat because if you just but­ton mash, you will die often. The com­bat plays sim­i­lar to games like Crouch­ing Tiger Hid­den Dragon for the Xbox, where you have to fight, dodge and counter ad nau­seam. You sort of have to play a lit­tle rock/paper/scissors with your ene­mies when you have to fight a bunch at once. Maybe I got so much sat­is­fac­tion out of it because this is how Bat­man really fights. Even in the recent Dark Knight movie, you see a lot of block­ing and coun­ter­ing, but you see this in a ton of other games also.  Bat­man hides in the shad­ows to silently pick off armed ene­mies one by one and he uses his detec­tive vision, a very cool fea­ture he’s built into his cowl to see way past his nor­mal field of vision. Both of these have been used in recent Spider-Man games.  Even the remote con­trol batarang is rem­i­nis­cent of shoot­ing arrows and bombs in Heav­enly Sword. The thing is that Rock­steady took all of these ele­ments from mediocre games and com­bined them to make some­thing great. Mak­ing inmates freak out in the preda­tor rooms is truly fun as is putting the extreme hurt on the bums in the com­bat chal­lenge rooms. One rec­om­men­da­tion I have for peo­ple play­ing this for the first time is to try the silent preda­tor chal­lenges before play­ing the story mode. The rea­son I say this is because the chal­lenges offer very lit­tle notice­able spoiler mate­r­ial and the preda­tor chal­lenges teach you very cre­ative take­down meth­ods that you will not learn dur­ing story mode. The biggest beef that I have with the game is that the boss bat­tles could have been much more chal­leng­ing, but I do not think any­one was too mad at the lack of orig­i­nal game­play in AA. As the say­ing goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.                                                   

Score: 9/10

 

REPLAY VALUE/TROPHY & ACHIEVEMENT HUNTING

                Story mode is a solid, sin­gle player adven­ture that you will want to go all the way through in one sit­ting. You will find your­self play­ing for hours and say­ing “I played for that long?” just because the game does not feel stale as you progress. Ten hours should have you wrap­ping things up and there will be very lit­tle rea­son to play through again unless you chose to not play on hard. For the achieve­ment and tro­phy whores, set the game to hard on your first play through and there will only be two awards that you can pos­si­bly miss. I don’t like post­ing spoil­ers so all I will say is that if you do every­thing that Bat­man would do, you will not miss any­thing. Chal­lenge mode is the evil arch neme­sis of the tro­phy hunter. None of the lev­els are espe­cially dif­fi­cult to beat, but get­ting all three of those bat medals on each stage will drive you to drink and mis­treat small chil­dren. The chal­lenge rooms have leader­boards and the com­pet­i­tive will go try to climb the ranks by tooth and claw. Preda­tor rooms are all about achiev­ing three spe­cific goals while tak­ing out the armed guards faster than the other guy. The com­bat rooms are about being cre­ative as you mash an inmates’ face in. The larger and more var­ied your combo, the more points you get and the higher your rank. The cur­rent 48 achieve­ments apply only to the con­tent on the actual disc. The pre-order “Dem Bones” Scare­crow map, the cur­rently PS3 exclu­sive Joker chal­lenge maps and the “Insane Night”  and “Prey In The Dark­ness” free DLC chal­lenge maps are not needed to get 1000pts/Platinum tro­phy. They are worth your time and def­i­nitely add-ons that make the $60 price tag more accept­able. Free con­tent is free con­tent, but it is espe­cially appre­ci­ated when it is good con­tent and it adds to the “off the shelf” life of your game. One should not that like the “Play as the Joker” con­tent, the Prey In The Dark­ness DLC is also cur­rently PS3 exclu­sive if you live in North Amer­ica (avail­able for 360 out­side of N.A.). Right now the PS3 is the sys­tem to own this game on if you have the option.                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Score: 10/10

 

OVERALL

                Unless you absolutely hate Bat­man in gen­eral, you should own this game and even if you do you should still at least be play­ing this game. There is very lit­tle to say about it that is neg­a­tive. Solid graph­ics and a solid fram­er­ate with game­play that was prop­erly put together like a Franken­stein mon­ster from other games. It does have the occa­sional graph­i­cal faux pas and the cam­era can be frus­trat­ing at times, but it is noth­ing that is going to make you stop play­ing. Con­sid­er­ing the lack of orig­i­nal­ity in games in gen­eral, more games should fol­low this formula.                                                                                                  

Final Score: 9.6/10