Batman: Arkham Asylum Reviews

Batman is a great game, but will be over soon enough

• Posted Sep 5, 2009 5:16 am PT

Batman Arkham Asylum from Eidos is a masterpiece of level design and the Freeflow combat system is a great new way to portrait combat and flashy combos without the need of complicated control schemes or stupid button mashing.

Kudos to Rocksteady and Eidos for this wonderful super hero game which will feel almost like an encyclopedia of characters from the Batman Comics, right back to when Bob Kane used to create the firsts Dark Night comic series.

Batman Arkham Asylum is a sandbox ****game, with a lot of freedom as well, but; thankfully, the story has a sequence of orders and even the dialogues and characters will help you to progress and not to be confused, the map view is also compelling and simple, with doors and way points highlighted for your convenience.

Our favorite hero (at least for me), the Dark Night is thrown into a trap set by nonetheless than the Joker himself, and guess what?, many supervillains are here to help his nefarious purpose on bringing a new great threat to Gotham residents and Batman itself.

As the word describes, the World Greatest Detective will have an array of moves and gadgets that will come slowly as the story progress as a way of unlockables and other items, and some areas before impossible to reach will become available after such gadgets are in your inventory.

The exciting thing about been the Batman, is gliding around, execute vertical takedowns, and of course, the Batarangs are present, deadly friends and very handy when disposing of foes in more than one way, yes, this game has a few types of takedowns.

Besides that and as I said before, The trade Marked FreeFlow system embeded with this title, is responsible of some of the coolest looking auto animations you have ever seen, as Batman jumps and kicks and elbows foe after foe after foe, cool isn't it?

As well designed as the above mentioned, the Invisible Predator mode of the game, is both the most challenging and strategic of the game, as you have to observe on a special Predator ****the moves of Armed Enemies below you and strike from above, whether with a explosive Batarang, Hanging out and vertically taking and enemy, or Simply by Gliding/Kicking them like a Hunting Eagle, all very sexy indeed.

Artistically this game really feels with the Watery colors and technique of its original source product, once the best illustrated comic novels in History, Arkham Asylum is definitely an stand out again, with Rocksteady superb taste and re-creation of the ****c.

The Audio in Arkham is what you expected it to be, specially on its villains, I gotta stand out for Harley Quinn, The Scarecrow and the Joker's impersonators as the best ever on a video Game, there's so much dialogue and catchy phrases you could easily learn English properly with this software. I certainly improved mine.

When you enter Detective mode, for me the best aspect of the game, you can discover many hiding things and items, and riddles from Mr. Nigma (the Riddler itself), and of course patient interview tapes that gives the game a bit of Audio Book value and other cool stuff that will keep you entertained for hours, as some are difficult or partially hidden.

The only complaint so far I have after finishing the game and finding around 80 percent of the Riddler items, is that the game is way to short for the amount of developing time and wait, as I was eager to get my hands on this piece for over a year.

The game will be over way to soon, it took me two or three days playing about three to four hours to finish it, and I was really , really hungry...

Despite that I dare to say it is indeed the best Super Hero game of all times, and the best executed for its simplicity and its beauty, regardless of the shortness of content and the many, i mean many missing villains that you will encounter Bios as Riddler items around the game; there's the challenge mode, which is a Refreshing plus to the campaign, as you can take on tasks that you did over the game in a Arena **** or Gladiator **** and can even unlock a new suit to use for Batman, that I will be happy to have use in Story Mode as it is superb.

In Many words, I love the way they did this game, and I just felt that they could have thrown a couple of two more super villains and two or three more minor ones, as it felt a bit lack of action some times and as Gamespot said: "a lot of missed opportunities" were there as many villains are only in the game as a Bio Character.

Overall, I vote for this to be best game of the Year, but only 8.0 out of 10 because of the missing details i thought will have make this game perhaps the best third action person of all times, I hope that for the sequel they throw at us fans more content than this time, in a year that have been clouded with poor releases due to the financial turmoil in the world and low quality games, this is definitely a Standout.

Congrats Eidos, you did it this time!!