Who do you think I am? I'm the Batman. 9-2-09

As many of you will likely find out throughout the semester, I am an avid video gamer. I also used to be a HUGE Batman fan when I was younger. The cartoon, the movies (yeah, even the Schumacher ones), and the toys. With The Dark Knight piquing my interest in Batman again, I was pleasantly surprised to hear about a new Batman video game coming out, Batman: Arkham Asylum. I was even more surprised when all I heard from my favorite gaming sites that game was not just good, but great, an extreme rarity for Batman games and licensed games in general.

Even with all of the pre-release praise, I was still skeptical, so I rented it. I got it on the 26th of August, and I beat it on the 31st. It is one of the best, if not the best, game I've played this year so far. As a rule of thumb, I have never enjoyed sections of games that required me to be stealthy. In Arkham Asylum, not only did I enjoy the stealth, I looked forward to it. In fact, Arkham let me know why I disliked other games' stealth. In every other game, when you hide in the shadows, you hide because you are at a disadvantage. Either you're weaker or out-numbered or if you get noticed you could start World War 3. In Arkham Asylum, you hide because you are stronger than your enemies when you have the element of surprise. The game only requires stealth of you in sections where the enemies have guns. Batman does not have bullet-proof armor, and if the enemies spot you, they will turn you into pulp quite quickly. So you sit on the gargoyles positioned in every stealth-needed room, and wait until one person gets separated from the rest, and you take him out.

The other thing that makes the game great is the pacing. Outside of the unnecessarily long intro, the game keeps you going at a good clip. Rocksteady, the developers, did a great job in showing you sections that you couldn't reach at the time and then quickly providing you with the tools to reach them. However, the sections that the game showed were never areas that you would have to go backward to, but areas that you wold see again through the natural course of the game. When you start in Arkham Asylum, you have Batarangs and the grappling hook. By the time you finish the game you have the ability to throw three Batarangs at once, an explosive gel with detonator, a remote electronic-lock-breaker, a zipline launcher, and a type of grappling claw that lets you pull down walls. You acquire these all over the course of an approximately eight to ten hour game, so you as the player do not play for too long a section of time without getting a new toy to play with.

Now, the game is not perfect. Like I mentioned earlier, there are gargoyles, to grapple up to and hide on, in every room that you need to be stealthy in. These aren't outdoor arenas. These are indoor rooms, like warehouses or botanical gardens. It really broke my suspension of disbelief. There were some obvious objects that would have fit a bit better, such as ledges or piping or just about anything that one would find in a room.



Aesthetically, the game is quite beautiful. However, there seems to be a sort of trademark visual design to the characters in games made in the engine, which is that they are very thick and muscular looking. The only character that does not match that style is the Joker, but even Comisioner Gordon looked like he could bench 300 pounds. If the Joker was not naturally proportioned, I would have assumed that Unreal Engine 3 can only render super-muscular people, but what would appear to be their decision to make Joker look scrawny made everyone else look ridiculous. Having some restraint in the sizing of every character that wasn't the Joker would have helped give a more realistic visual style.