Review: Batman Arkham Asylum

Escorting a restrained Joker through the halls of Arkham Asylum, Batman attracts vengeful remarks from inmates he's likely to have put there. The Joker's maniacal laughter fills each successive corridor, the next more dank and decrepit than the last, leading up to the holding cells where the arch nemeses must part. Batman expresses his suspicions aroused by The Joker's effortless capture to an equally concerned Commissioner Gordon - suspicions which soon prove to be warranted once The Joker overpowers a guard and sets foot on an anarchic voyage.

The introduction to Arkham Asylum is brief but powerful. With basic control of Batman throughout, the player can experience the descent both literally and figuratively. It's clear that Rocksteady took inspiration from the original Half-Life's opening tram sequence in that you get to experience the calm before the storm, but where Arkham Asylum differs is that the journey establishes Batman as the truly intimidating, formidable character he is known to be. He walks with unfading determination, talks with the voice of justice and looks every bit as capable as his enemies' incarcerations would suggest.

Designing Batman this way helps to ground the story in the DC universe because it gives passage to the belief that we're looking in on Batman's life during a particularly nasty struggle, rather than him existing entirely for the game. This delicate yet devoted handling is indicative of Rocksteady's love for the mythology, arguably something needed for fair treatment of such popular property. I'm sure experienced Batman writer Paul Dini and the animated series' Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as The Joker helped things along swimmingly as well.

Arkham And Get You

Shortly after The Joker's escape you're introduced to the combat. Mapped to only two buttons – one for attack, the other for counter – the simplicity of controls belies the complexity of efficiency. Point the left thumbstick in the direction of an enemy and press square to perform a basic attack. You can alter the direction mid-flow to accommodate all angles, but to truly ensure full 360 degree assaults it's prudent to make use of the triangle button whenever a nearby enemy adopts some wiggly neon lines above their head to counter their attack and punish them for the inconvenience.

On the many occasions where you're outnumbered, it's easy to mash the attack button in the hope of lucking out, but with incremental increases in enemy difficulty comes the need to adapt. Rather than having to memorise complicated button presses, more powerful moves comes about via timing and fluidity of attacks – the better timed, the better the attack. Keeping your cool not only results in XP multipliers, but also in sheer visual candy as Batman vaults around, propelling elbows onto skulls, feet into stomachs and faces into knees, all with cringe-worthy impact, before cracking his neck and flexing his muscles once everyone's unconscious in a well-deserved self-five.

Once, and only once, a fight is over your health recharges and the XP you earned joins your collection, represented by a thin purple circle in the top left of the screen. The upgrades on offer unfortunately don't extend to new gadgets, but instead offer upgrades to the ones you collect as you progress through the game, as well as basic health and combo improvements. It's a functional if a little ordinary system, and contains no upgrades you'll be frantic to obtain, but some can give you an extra advantage over the enemies in stealth situations – for example, sonic Baterangs attracting collar-wearing enemies before exploding, or selective detonation of explosive gel to distract or knock out the enemy.

Stealth is of little significance in the very beginning portions of the game because Joker's goons have little in the way of weaponry beyond metal pipes, which Batman is quick to counter, but once automatics and sniper rifles get handed around, it's time to recede into the shadows. All of the encounters with armed foes take place in areas so ostensibly geared for stealth, with high-rising grapple points from which to either string an enemy up by his feet or glide down and kick someone in the face; under-floor passage ways for undetectable movement; and breakable surfaces, the debris of which will KO an enemy with ease. This sometimes leaves stealth sections feeling a little too predetermined, but one of the many fine pleasures of Batman: Arkham Asylum is figuring out how to take out enemies and in what order.

Enthusiasm was my real enemy; leading me to engage a premature glide kick, the resultant fallen man unable to be ground-attacked before his chums arrived to investigate. When a planned approach goes well, though, it's a very rewarding experience, reminiscent of early Splinter Cell. By no means are you facing the most intelligent AI in video games, but taking down eight armed men without getting harmed is something to smile about.

Arkham And Find You

When you're not kicking people in the face or watching them from the shadows, a little bit of detective work is required for your progression. The appropriately named Detective Mode dampens the colour palette of ordinary objects while highlighting those of interest, such as removable vent covers or destructible walls. You can also see enemies through walls, whether or not they're armed and, if you fancy it, confirm that lifeless bodies are in fact deceased. But the most interesting, and integral, use of Detective Mode is the tracking of people via rather unusual trails - the first of which is Commissioner Gordon.

Having scanned a whiskey bottle in Gordon's office, Batman calibrates his visor to detect traces of the whiskey brand in the air, effectively marking out a dotted line to the Commissioner himself. The same thing is performed with finger prints later on, with equally predictable results. As outlandish as it is to be following someone's movements via their breathing – even across a vast courtyard – all squabbles are forgotten in light of the Batman character's commonly-known genius.

Still, one of the big gripes with Detective Mode is how its benefits tend to detract from the game's natural beauty. This is perhaps a concern only for the philistines, but the advantages in knowing enemy locations and equipment from afar meant Detective Mode stayed active for up to 30 minutes at a time – a period in which many of the game's striking visuals may have passed me by. I could have abandoned the technology and gone in almost blind, but Batman wouldn't do that, would he?

Bat-Ons

It was also a little disappointing to find out that Detective Mode doesn't help you in finding any of the game's collectibles. Admittedly, it has to be used in solving some of the puzzles set out by The Riddler, some of which are real head-scratchers, but any of the Bioshock-style voice recordings, Riddler Trophies, chattering teeth or Amadeus Arkham's history lessons can only be found with real exploration

Once you've collected everything in the main campaign, you can squeeze a little more goodness out of the game in the form of Challenge modes. With online ranking the strict task-based rooms ease the pain of having no multiplayer online component. Though they're mostly point building, against the clock types of challenges, they offer a good extension to the game as well as keeping rank-whores happy.

Unfortunately, the game tends to sag toward the end as nothing but taking out each iconic villain in quick succession is all you need to do to finish up. The Scarecrow's handful of psychological attacks on Batman, inducing dream sequences that reminded me of Max Payne's ghastly blood trail following, were an unwelcome change of pace and camera angle, making you run around on a 2D plane, avoiding the giant Scarecrow's vision. Interestingly, Arkham Asylum's combat and stealth mechanics may have been able to carry the player through the eight-or-so hour long story on their own.

With a dark and sombre atmosphere, multi-layered, fluid and ferocious combat and deeply engaging stealth, Batman: Arkham Asylum is the game Batman fans have been waiting for, and more. It's simply a fantastically told, superbly acted and brilliantly realised action adventure. It makes me wonder if Rocksteady realises the scope of what its achieved here.