On an Island Full of Overdressed Lunatics
Batman: Arkham Asylum is a masterpiece. Who would've thought?
Published: October 5, 2009
But let's stop with the psychoanalysis and instead get down to some of the basic gameplay mechanics. The game itself can easily be divided into three parts: hand-to-hand combat, silent stealth tactics and exploration with the help of gadgets from Bruce Wayne's high-tech utility belt. A very large part of the exploration's driving force are the 240 riddles that Edward Nigma aka the Riddler constantly teases while you are wandering the halls of Arkham Asylum. Rocksteady has done an amazing job of making sure every riddle includes some sort of awesome Batman reference or cameo. Anyone who makes his or her way through the game ignoring the riddles misses at least half the fun. And that also applies to the folks who have never heard of that Batman everyone keeps talking about lately.
The hand-to-hand combat actually worried me quite a bit when I first got to try it out in one of the preview builds a few weeks ago. While I didn't think it was bad, I never really understood it to be very deep. However, after playing through the game twice, which took me about 10 hours on my first go through plus about 2 more hours of riddle solving, (and another 8-10 hours in the challenge rooms which I am going to talk about in just a bit), I can honestly say that the game offers one of the deepest and most entertaining fighting mechanics in any third person action game that I've played to this day. While the combat in its most basic form only really requires two buttons (square to punch/kick, and triangle to counter), button mashing won't get you very far, at least on the highest difficulty, and is definitely much less satisfying than taking full advantage of Batman's repertoire. You see, quickly tapping the X button twice in a row will make Bats jump around like a ninja turtle, circle will make him use his cape to stun enemies, double tapping R2 will make him use his batclaw, and quickly pressing L1 will knock down up to three thugs simultaneously with his batarangs. Add in another throw-move and an instant takedown, and you are ready to take on massive amounts of brainless musclemen armed with tasers, knives and assault rifles. Of course, at the beginning of the game you start off with only your punching and countering ability. And this is where a leveling system kicks in. As you progress through the game, bats earns XP for solving riddles, knocking out thugs and, you know, finishing parts of the campaign like beating bosses. Once you've earned a certain amount of XP you can cash it in, choosing from a variety of upgrades, many of which will unlock the ability to use the above mentioned moves. And the combat really only fully realizes its true potential once you've completely upgraded bats and his tech near the end of the game. On the one hand this is great because it creates this sense of becoming more powerful as you go along, at the same time it also limits how deep the combat is for most of the campaign. This really only became apparent to me once I was done beating the combat challenges, got really good at all the special moves and then went back to beat the game a second time. Chaining combos with only two or three moves at hand just isn't as great as doing so with the full arsenal of gadgets and unlocks at your disposal.
Then there are other gadgets that you will unlock only by progressing through the story. And the further you progress, the more areas you have the ability to gain access to. This aspect very much forces you to return to previously wandered cell blocks and rooms that you have been locked out of the first time around. This clearly means that you will be backtracking quite often which definitely can be a bit frustrating at times. However, in the larger scheme of things I think that Rocksteady did a pretty good job of making the experience as painless and seamless as possible. In the end, my excitement to get to the next story bits or riddles clearly outweighed the tedium of passing through the same environment for the third or fourth time. What also definitely helps is Rocksteady's amazing love for detail and the fact that Arkham's environment undergoes some significant visual and structural changes as the story progresses.
