Batman: Arkham Asylum Review

After days of beating up many henchmen, solving riddles, finding trophies and stopping the Joker and his pals.  I have finished Batman: Arkham Asylum.  All I can say is wow.  Best single player game since I played Dead Space.  Dead Space was fucking awesome btw.  Batman: AA is right up there in terms of single player.  Sadly there not multiplayer but you don't need multiplayer.  What you do get is a great single player game and challenge mode.  Let get down to it.

Story:
Batman: AA is about the bat catching the Joker and taking him to Arkham.  Only to have a suspicion that something gonna happen and it does.  Joker breaks free and takes over the asylum.  Now you must stop him.  First you have to fight his minions and villains like Harley Quinn, Croc, Poison Ivy, Bane and Scarecrow.  I don't wanna spoil much but Scarecrow is most undoubtedly the best villain in this game.  If you wanna know why play this game now!  The Riddler is in this game to but he mostly behind the scenes.  Instead of fighting him, you have to find his trophies and solve his riddles all while he taunts you thru bats communicator.  You also have to solve the biggest mystery, the Chronicles of Arhkam.  To make it more fun to find things, there is also patient interviews and chatting teeth.  These are interviews of the main villains in the game when they first came to Arkham.  Worth while to listen to.  Chatting teeth are scattered about the island  Believe me, finding these items it more fun than a chore.

Graphics:
Batman:  Arkham Asylum uses Epic's Unreal Technology to power this game.  It looks stellar.  Has a very gritty and dark tone.  I love it.  Fits this game very very well.  Character models look good.  Some do look a little like plastic figurines.  Only minor gripes I have is it needs more various henchmen.  It seemed that Rocksteady only used 3 models for Joker's henchmen.   More visual damage to the batsuit.  I notice towards the end, that batman had a scare on his face and his cape was ripped.  Batman went through a lot and his batsuit should of shown that with more tears in it.  Like I mentioned, only minor gripes. 


Gameplay:

Using the freeflow combat takes awhile getting use to.  For the tougher battles, using the counter button is necessary.  You can probably get away with mashing the X button to fight but if you playing on hard mode, it very important to learn to use the counter button and using your upgrades.  When you upgrade your combat and string together enough combos, certain options appear like a super takedown, tossing a hechmen or using your batarang without breaking up your combo.

Controlling the bat is not difficult to learn.  Just like the combat, his movements are also fluid.  If your running towards a huge hole in the ground, batman will automatically jump over and continue running.  So there is no need for a jump buttom.

Besides single player campaign, there also challenge modes.  In these challenges, you fight some henchmen in each round or for predator mode, you take down each henchmen with a silent takedown all while not getting caught.  Think Splinter Cell but replace Sam Fisher with Batman.


Audio:
The voice talent in this game is spot on.  Mark Hamill voicing the Joker certainly was a shock.  Still he did a fantastic job.  Same goes for the other actors and actresses doing voice over.  Compelling dialog with talented voice actors made this game very enjoyable.  There was some repeated dialog but not much.  When roaming outside, you'll hear the Joker over the PA insulting the bat.  There funny at first but tends to get annoying after awhile.


Longevity:
Length wise, I'd say maybe 12 hours (on normal difficulty) if you take your time and explore.  If you blast through it without finding all the hidden items then it will be much much shorter.  After beating the game, you can free roam the joint to find all the hidden items and chatting teeth without worrying about anyone getting in your way.  That with challenge modes, it adds to the longevity of the game.  I hear the challenge modes on extreme are a bitch to complete.  There is downloadable content on the way and it FREE!  Free is certainly good.


Overall:
To sum it up, you won't be disappointed.  I found the game to be engaging.  At work, I find myself wanting to go home and play more.  Even after beating the game,  I went back to discover all the trophies and patient interviews.  Now I'm working on the challenge modes.  I just love fighting the henchmen and doing silent takedowns.  Very satisfying hanging a henchmen upside down from a gargoyle statue.


Score: 9/10