A Knight In Shining Kevlar

by AXIS of Reality

©2009 Alex Baldwin

I’m sure a lot of you already reading this have Batman: Arkham Asylum by now on your console of choice (PC gamers need to wait another few weeks).

I’m also sure there are a lot of you out there who have held off on Batman, for a number of reasons: maybe you’re not a Batman fan, maybe you’re saving for other big hitters like Halo ODST and Uncharted 2, or maybe you’re just sitting on the fence waiting to see what people really think when the hype has died down.

That’s why I’m going to do this review in a different way: reasons you should buy Batman: AA and reasons you shouldn’t. There’s also a small section about the differences between console / PC versions at the end.

First, a bit of background info. Arkham Asylum is developed by the relatively unknown Rocksteady Studios, makers of…uh…Urban Chaos: Riot Response last gen. And that’s it.

• Batman: Arkham Asylum Trailer

So in all honesty no-one would have been surprised to see Arkham Asylum completely and utterly fail – a big budget project given to an inexperienced studio and showered with more money than they know what to do with.

I’m happy to report however that we’ve got another District 9, where fresh hands have given the Batman license a fresh new start much like the recent Batman movies.

So without further ado:

Reasons to buy it

1) It’s pretty – oh so pretty…

Very pretty. The look of the game has been tuned just right to get a perfect balance between realism and comic book exaggeration, with fantastic looking characters and extremely detailed environments.

It just looks gorgeous, even though it ‘just’ running on the Unreal Engine 3 which many gamers had already dismissed.

Looks like it was a case of not what the tools are but how you use them. Especially of note are the lighting and fog / mist effects that give a great depth to the scenes and fantastic atmosphere.

All the strengths of the Unreal Engine 3 are at work here (highly detailed surfaces, almost zero loading) with barely a hint of the usual drawbacks we’ve come to associate with it (texture pop-in, visual glitches, ropey physics).

All in all, a game that looks right at home on either console.

2) It’s a license – and what a license

Usually a reason to run away screaming lest you tarnish your memories of the great movies / comics / books, here the license actually adds to the appeal tremendously.

And I’m not a Batman fan. My experience with Batman are the two recent movies (which I love) and a few levels of Lego Batman.

I’d heard of a few of the main villains, but to see and fight them in Arkham Asylum was a real treat and made me a lot more interested in the Batman universe.

It reminds me of the first time I played Chronicles of Riddick on the original Xbox – the game was made even better and controlling Riddick felt every bit as badass as it should be. Which leads me neatly into my next point.

3) It makes you feel really ‘badass’

This isn’t a game about challenge – many of you will breeze through it without a single death, but that’s not the point.

Rocksteady obviously worked very hard to make the player feel powerful and just plain awesome with minimal effort involved.

‘Detective’ challenges are little more than following a glowing trail and most fighting can be done with one or two buttons.

The camera is smart enough to get the optimal camera angles on it and combined with some great animations and very smooth-flowing fights this really is an empowering game.

My jaw almost hit the floor the first time I reverse-punched an enemy down some stair before smoothly transitioning into a backflip down to land feet-first on his ribcage.

Very very cool, and that’s even without mentioning stealth takedowns such as stringing an enemy up to a gargoyle or pulling three over a ledge at once without alerting the rest.

4) You’ll keep playing to the bitter end

No chance of giving up partway through on this one. Just as you might be wanting to do something different another big event or gameplay change occurs that sucks you right back in.

Whether it be fighting, stealth or platforming it’s all polished to the nth degree.

The story is also to be commended, not for complexity but for perfectly situating each event and driving the player into larger and larger set-pieces.

5) Exploration – and lots of it

Now this I wasn’t expecting. Each major area of the game takes place in huge facilities located somewhere on the island.

This isn’t just a linear trek – a lot of time will be spent in the great outdoors where you can hunt down collectibles, take out enemy stragglers and grapple your way smoothly around.

There are a ton of secrets hidden around that provide more background on the main villains and unlock challenge levels.

To give you an idea I finished the game the first time with a third of the Riddler’s puzzles solved and less than half the hidden tapes and unlockables collected. Now I want to dive back in to find the rest.

6) It’s not just to pass the time

Initially I was expecting Arkham Asylum to be a good game to pass the time like Wolfenstein until the heavyweights like ODST, Uncharted 2, Assassin’s Creed and Modern Warfare 2 arrive, but I was very surprised.

The demo really didn’t do the game justice (and like the FEAR 2 demo is cobbled together from random little segments), as I’ve enjoyed Arkham Asylum as one of my favourite games of the year.

7) It fooled me into thinking my 360 was about to RRoD

And that’s a good thing – never have I been so scared in a game before, not because of an enemy but because at one time you may experience what are known as the early warning signs of an oncoming RRoD (Red Ring Of Death).

Visual artifacts, frozen interface, controller stops responding…I won’t spoil any more but got to say the dream / psychosis sequences in Arkham Asylum are some of the best I’ve ever played in a game.

If you think I’ve spoiled the game by mentioning there are psychosis sequences, then you are clearly quite slow and haven’t read the ‘Asylum’ part of the title or remember Scarecrow from Batman Begins is a key villain.

So those are the main reason you should be running down to your local GAME to grab a copy of Batman. Of course, I couldn’t call myself a critic unless I pointed out the game’s flaws, small though they may be. So here goes:

Reasons to ignore it

1) It’s expensive – especially here (OZ)

Or at least it is here in Australia. I was quite frankly shocked to see it on the shelf with an RRP of $119.95 AUD (standard edition), the same price Activision has priced Modern Warfare 2 at in Australia.

To all you US residents out there, using today’s conversion we’re paying just over $100 US for the privilege.

It annoys the hell out of me to see many overseas gamers proclaiming to woes of paying $70 US for the top-priced games when we’re down here getting price gouged (another example: the PS3 Slim here has ‘dropped’ to $417 US from its original $584 US, and on launch it was $835 US).

While I feel Arkham Asylum is a good enough game that gamers will pay the premium, it doesn’t excuse Eidos from this blatant fleecing of us Aussies.

2) It’s ‘not a challenge’

For players looking for something to test their skills, this is not it.

This is about empowering the player and making you feel damn cool, not about stats sheets, complicated controls or controller-breaking frustration.

If you’re after that and still want to play the hero in shiny black leather, Ninja Gaiden 2 is available now.

3) It doesn’t last forever

And a shame it does. As I mentioned there’s a ton of collectibles in there for the obsessive among you, but the game does still rank in at about the same playing time as other similar titles like Dead Space and Bioshock.

This isn’t a massive RPG, but it thankfully has a lot of replay appeal and the challenge mode which you might find entertaining for a while by fighting waves of enemies or clearing a room stealithly as fast as possible.

Aaaaaaand…that’s about it. It’s up to you how the good points weigh next to the bad points, but for me they left me with a resounding feeling of satisfaction that I’d played one of the best games of the year that deserves a solid:

”9.0/10 

Platform Version Differences

I know a lot of people like me can see past the fanboy bickering and are lucky enough to be able to afford more than one gaming machine, so this is for you. These are written in comparison to the 360 version reviewed.

PS3

I also tested the PS3 version as it’s a widely known issue that the Unreal Engine 3 and the PS3 don’t play nice, as UE3 is heavily relient on the GPU (as the 360 is geared) while the PS3 is more based around its Cell CPU.

I’m pleased to report that Rocksteady have done an outstanding job of getting both versions to play nice, with neither side getting an inferior version.

The only real visible differences I could see flicking between versions in the same spot on the same TV in 1080p were the 360 version appears to have a bit better anti-aliasing with slightly more smoothed edges and some sharper textures, but that’s the case with most multiformat games and it’s no significant loss to PS3 owners.

Of course, there’s the heavily publicised inclusion of the Joker on the PS3 version who is playable in the challenge mode. This is a nice bonus for PS3 owners, but truthfully I wasn’t inclined to spend much time in challenge mode as the real meat of the game is the story.

PC

The PC version isn’t out until September 24 in Australia, but I downloaded and played through the demo on PC a few times to see if there were any real advantages.

It’s inevitable that the PC version has much sharper textures and better resolution, but it shows elsewhere the console version have not been cut down in any way.

There is also the exclusive hardware PhysX for Nvidia GPU owners which adds some superficial physics effects such as swirling paper, moving fog and tearable cloth.

From the demo this mainly seems like a bit of dressing and doesn’t impact the gameplay in any way, so console and ATi GPU owners would only really know a difference if they had it side-by-side with it playing on an Nvidia-equipped PC.

More inexcusable however is the ‘Nvidia-exclusive’ anti-aliasing. I have a pretty damn powerful PC with dual ATi 4890s in CrossfireX and a Core i7 CPU, yet in the settings panel I’m told anti-aliasing is only possible on Nvidia GPU series 8800 and up.

This is just mind-numbingly stupid. Anti-aliasing has been around for a decade so to say only one brand can really support it is a terrible, manipulative marketing move. Shame.

And so…

So which version should you get? If you have a PC that can handle UT3 on high, wait for PC and if you have an Nvidia GPU you’ll get the bonus PhysX effects.

If you have both a 360 and PS3, it’s hard to say. There’s a slight visual improvement in the 360 version and you don’t have to install the game, but the PS3 version has the Joker in challenge mode (which I barely played to be honest).

Having a 40gb PS3 I’d take the 360 version so I can play straight from the disc since my PS3′s hard drive is almost full.

©2009 Alex Baldwin

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