On an Island Full of Overdressed Lunatics
Batman: Arkham Asylum is a masterpiece. Who would've thought?
Published: October 5, 2009
Ok, now I'll get to the second major component of the gameplay: stealth. After all, this is a Batman game. While the combat is great for what it is, you only truly feel like the invisible predator that you are as soon as the game lets you silently drop into a room full of badguys patrolling the area with heavy weapons. While there are some very obvious ways to silently take down enemies like the vertical takedown for example (you grapple up to a gargoyle, let yourself hang upside down and then wait for your prey to be foolish enough to walk by beneath you), the game gives you many more ways to scare the shit out of your unsuspecting prey. Experimenting is key here, and I have to admit that I failed to discover every single way to take down henchmen on my first run through the game. The ledge takedown is one of them (you hang off a ledge and wait for an enemy to walk by on the walkway above, then press the triangle button and see the beautiful animation play out – very cool). Or also that I could use my batclaw to pull dudes off cliffs and over railings.
In addition to the main story mode, Batman: Arkham Asylum contains a variety of standalone challenges, which are appropriately called challenge rooms. There has been much talk about Sony securing a couple of them exclusively in which you can control the Joker. As a shameless Sony fanboy, I was glad that they finally managed to get some piece of exclusive (downloadable, but free,) content, and yet my excitement was tempered by the fact that it sounded like a trivial extra. Now, after spending about 8-10 hours with those challenge rooms, I can only say how glad I am that my greed for that sexy platinum trophy forced me to dig deeply into them.
The challenge rooms can be divided into two categories: combat- and silent predator challenges. While the combat challenges will reward you medals for earning a certain amount of points (which are the product of a multiplier-based scoring system that stresses strict timing and keen perception), the stealth ones give you medals for using certain takedown tactics. It starts off by making you perform certain standard takedowns and then progresses to such crazy tasks as pulling three targets over a railing simultaneously, or using explosives to take down three guys with three different walls at the very same moment. It tends to be a bit frustrating at first, but once you adjust to the higher difficulty you will earn the satisfaction of having beaten a very hard part of the game and having earned all of its medals (which in turn give you trophies).
It was conquering those challenge rooms that made me fully understand both the combat system and the stealth tactics at Batman's disposal. I would probably have never discovered how deep both mechanics are had it not been for the challenge rooms and their medals. Upon returning to the campaign to complete it once more with my newly gained skills, the game opened up an entirely new experience to me.
Now that's what I call replay value.
Batman: Arkham Asylum is one of the greatest games to be released this year, and that's saying a lot if you keep in mind that 2009 is the year where Uncharted 2, inFAMOUS and Killzone 2 came out (ok, Uncharted 2 isn't technically out yet, but you get my point). Anyone with a PS3, 360 or PC should not commit the crime of ignoring this masterpiece. It doesn't matter if you're a comic book fan or not, Rocksteady has created one of the most carefully crafted and sophisticated pieces of gaming software to date, period.
