All things Batman

[Alex79]

Yeah I spotted those, I'll look forward to listening once I've completed the games.

[DomsBeard]

Has anyone ever played it in 3D?

[countstex]

Ah I forgot it had 3D. I have the tools but haven't bothered to use them.

[ratsoalbion]

Yes indeed. Although the resulting podcast won't be released until Halloween week, I'll be recording the 101st Cane and Rinse with Jay, Josh and Karl this coming Friday October 18.

This issue will focus just on Rocksteady's 2009 Arkham Asylum, with Arkham City getting its own show in a few weeks time.

So, as ever, please share your thoughts, experiences and opinions of the game in this here thread and I'll clip out some of the highlights to share with our listeners.

[Skypotter1138]

Arkham asylum is still the best superhero game I've ever played. Rocksteady made you feel like Batman. Stalking henchmen from the shadows and then leaping down to take them out or freaking them out with a well timed batarang never got old.

The combat system has still not been beaten just tweaked for Arkham City. Pulling off 50 hit combos and above makes you feel unstoppable.

The world was so atmospheric as well, I loved slowly traversing the corridors of the asylum and soaking in all the details.

The metroidvania style really suited the game well and getting a new gadget was always a thrill.

I also loved the audio logs and searched them all out so I get all the background info on rocksteadys take on the Batman rogues gallery.

Low points were some of the boss battles which were a bit samey but thankfully short lived (not counting croc which went on far too long).

It's telling that the arkham-verse has now become it's own thing with spin off comics and toys. Rocksteady clearly love Batman and have created a wonderful version of that universe. I hope Origins lives up to the work done by the original British studio.

In short after playing this game - I'm Batman!

[AndyKurosaki]

Easily one of this generations best games. I enjoyed Rocksteady's Urban Chaos game on PS2, so I figured this would be worth playing. And it turned out brilliantly. Satisfying combat, a great story, top notch voice acting. Loved every minute of this, the Scarecrow encounters being definite highlights. After years of mediocre/awful superhero games, it was great to play one where the developers had an obvious love and knowledge of the source material.

[Alex79]

I loved this game. Tighter and more claustrophobic than the sequel, this game perfectly nailed Batman's descent in to temporary madness. I loved everything about it, the combat, the detective work, the riddles, the boss fights (with the possible exception of the anti-climatic Joker end battle, easily forgiveable due to looking so damn pretty). I especially enjoyed the Scarecrow interludes, probably the finest example of madness/hallucinatory experience in any video game. It's a game I plan on revisiting for sure, should I ever find the time!

Three word review - Batman's greatest adventure.

[delb2k]

Arkham Asylums greatest strength for me was the developers desire to concentrate on a small area and make it packed full of interesting possibilities. The superbly designed locations that tantalize from the start are all grouped together to continually fire reminders in the players brain when each new ability is unlocked that they could go back and find something new. Remembering all those cracked walls and electrical boxes that may reveal a new upgrade was continually tempting. Everything felt like it had the maximum amount of effort put into it to provide something that not only provided good gameplay but also cohesiveness within the fiction of Batman and the games Asylum as a whole.

Which brings me onto the second most important point of the game in my opinion. It made the player feel like Batman. The navigation, the combat and the gadgets all worked in creating a sense of empowerment that was felt from the start and only increased during the playtime. While they always made him vulnerable to gunfire they provided ample opportunities to allow expression through they way rooms could be cleared of guards and the player gaining mastery of the combo system. Be too cocky and you could be downed in seconds, but play it like Batman and the pure sense of accomplishment you can achieve from slowly terrorizing and clearing a room can supremely satisfying. It also did something many Batman games have ignored in the past and reminded us that he is a detective. They were light touches but enough to break up the action and show more than the more signature brawling that this could have easily just continued to repeat for far too often.

These aspects are what make the game work as well as it does. All the other flourishes like the challenge rooms are fantastic extras but the tight focus and the teams aim for the player to embody the dark knight were the two key indicators they got completely right. It serves as a fantastic reminder to me that in an age where many developers push for more content a more restrictive approach can lead to a more consistent game.

[Bakers_12]

When I first heard about this game I thought not anover half arsed licensed game from a developer I had never heard of before. My fears seamed conformed when the Joypod Lads had played a demo at the MCM Expo and reported bad things.

Yet I still hoped this would be a good game and there were some good signs, the links to Batman: The Animated series (Which I Love) being the stand out one. With Paul Dani on writing duty and many of the voice actors returning to roles that they nail in the show. We would at least get a good batman story if not game.

Then the demo dropped. All my fears were gone. I loved it the combat was spot on, the stealth section made you feel powerful unlike most stealth game play in other games.

The full game did not disappoint, its main strength was that you don't feel like you are controlling Batman, you are Batman! Picking off henchmen one by one and watching them become more fearful and jittery as you perched on a gargoyle above them was a joy.
The game has a Bat cave full of collectables but it is never a chore to get them.

The only low points in the game are a few of the Boss fights that where either annoying or just odd (croc we are looking at you). The final fight with the Titaned up Joker is a miss-step; A prolonged game of cat and mouse with him in the "fun house” would have been more in keeping with his personality.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a love letter to batman’s universe, the fact that they put a hidden room that sets up the sequel shows they were working on something that had legs.

[Beck]

It's not often that I have the time or patience to complete a game more than once. Batman Askham Asslyum is one of the few that broke this trend, I couldn't put it down.

I've completed the story 3 times between both consoles, collected all the collectables. Finished all the combat and sneak missions, I well and truly cane and rinsed this one.

One of my favourite aspects of the game was the combat system which is expanded brilliantly in the combat missions. I didn't realise how often I button bashed until I attempted to get the 3 star ratings and achievements. At first I found myself really struggling with pulling off the combos correctly. The game demands that you input your next move precisely as batman would perform it. Missing this cue or pressing your next move before bats is finished his current action ends the combo flow and scunners the 3 star rating.

Once you have mastered the combat mechanics you are instantly rewarded with the ability to wreck havoc on large numbers of goons. On the first play through I played as a silent assassin mainly because I found more than a few goons challenging. On the second play through, after completing the combat missions I was boldly attacking large groups without hesitation. The combos let you break limbs and destroy the batmans enemies as if they were nothing. An excellent game with quite possibly the best combat system I've played.

[DomsBeard]

I wasn't expecting much after buying every sub par Batman game for years from Spectrum through to the 16 bit days. So I tried the demo and was instantly hooked after that incredible introduction that reminded me of Half Life and bought it straight away.

Its everything a Batman game should be. Great fan service and it made me feel like I wasn't playing a Batman game, it made me feel like I was Batman. Standing on those Gargoyles picking my targets and using the inverted takedown never got old.

Arkham itself was a stunning location to tear it up in as Bats but that brings me on to a little problem I had with the game and it's sequel, detective mode. Don't get me wrong the game is fantastic but I felt it pushed you too much into using detective mode to get around and find things meaning you spent far too long out of the surroundings.

Voice acting overall excellent with Mark Hamill outstanding as The Joker. Thought Batman was a tad weak but I got used to it.

Moaning again but was any relevance ever given to who you saw with the Titan at the end of the game in the post credit scene?. I had Killer Croc on mine and I think Bane was one other available.

What a game though! Probably my top 5 this gen easy and I counted down the days to the sequel once it was announced.

[InsrtCoins]

My expectations could not have been lower for this title. Games based on comic book heroes, with a few noble exceptions, usually fall into the same traps as most licensed video games. But I was absolutely sold on it after playing through the brief demo that preceded it. Arkham Asylum mastered both action and stealth in a medium that typically allows games one or the other to do well.

The highlight of the experience was exploring the island. It plays like a Disneyland theme ride of Batman lore. Areas of the asylum where the villains have taken up residence feel absolutely drenched in their unique personalities (moreso even in the sequel, Arkham City, where the world felt a bit more "lived in" and territorialized by these warring villains). The result was that the villains all felt real, threatening, and important. For someone who has only a moderate level of knowledge of the Batman mythos, the game does a great job of introducing the characters and establishing their importance.

The plot's fascination with Titan was a bit of a sore spot for me, and this feeling really culminated in the final boss fight. The game did a great job of making each villain appear threatening throughout the game. I can't imagine why they felt that they needed to make The Joker into a Gears of War monster to make his fight seem substantial. He is Batman's most dangerous foe already. But, like BioShock, I don't let one rubbish final boss fight sour my whole experience, especially when the game is so abundantly littered with brilliant moments like the fantastic Psycho Mantis Scarecrow encounters.

[Todinho]

Arkham Asylum is for me the best adaptation of the caped crusader after the animated series,Rocksteady embraced the Batman universe while giving it a a new spin of their own,Asylum manages to make players feel like batman himself from the combat to the detective mode and the setting all of the elements of a good Batman adventure are there.

The combat while simplistic manages to be good and acessible enough to the player straight away and can be quite challenging on Hard difficulty(Aka the only way to play the game!)making you focus on crowd control to avoid getting swarmed,the stealth works in a similar way it's simple and easy to grasp with the player being hunter stalking his prey but for Batman that makes complete sense and mashes really well with the rest of the game,the Detective mode is one of the weakest parts of the game since your not really doing any detective work really but it's nice it's there to reminds us that we are playing as the worlds greatest detective.

The game's arcade adventure(because metroidvania is a stupid name XD) structure certainly adds to the game not only in improving the gameplay by making you explore but also adds alot to the atmosphere,but the best part of the game by far for me are the Scarecrow sections that manague to be both fun and sometimes a little disturbing,the story while no Dark knight manages to be a very good one-off Batman story,as for the Boss fights...well they are garbage and shouldnt be in the game.

PS:Mark Hammill's Joker = Best Joker =D

[DomsBeard]

Three word review:

Batman Done Justice

[Bakers_12]

PS:Mark Hammill's Joker = Best Joker =D

Yes , yes and yes again!

[CoffeeJezus]

I had a strange time initially with Arkham Asylum. It was one of the first games I bought for my PS3 and I was really excited about it. I'm quite the Batman nerd - particularly for the animated series - and to see those characters taken into games properly thrilled me.

Yet when I got my hands on the game, it didn't click at all. The characters seems too big, too clunky, and a good chunk of the screen was obscured by The Bat himself. Honestly, I didn't play that much of it, eventually trading in under the guise of it being 'not quite my cuppa joe'

Possibly even a year later I was looking on XboxLive for something to play, saw the demo for 'Asylum and figured I'd give it another go. After all sometimes you gel with a game at certain times, and God knows there's been a few titles i've gone on to really adore, which I initially wasn't fussed about in the slightest.

This time something really spoke to me, nothing to do with the game being on a different system, it just felt right. All the aspects that irked initially didn't bother me, and I was taken in by the combat, the mood, the moment. I ordered it immediately after.

When the game arrived I became smitten with it, not because of the game mechanics - I knew at this point i'd be having fun - but for stunning instances in the story which dropped my jaw, else made me cry. The scene with Bruce walking through Wayne Manor, rain starting to fall inside, to then slowly see the hallway become crime alley was utterly, utterly stunning. Honestly one of my favourite Batman moments.

I ended up preferring Asylum to Arkham City. Even though City had an impressive open world, there's something wonderfully tight and focussed about Asylum which I adore.

[IdeologyLite]

Arkham Asylum was a game that completely caught me by surprise. Tight pacing, rock solid game mechanics, chunky art style (which you could turn into a cel-shaded game via Detective Mode!), a cleverly subversive, Kojima-esque story, genuinely rewarding Riddler trophies and a wonderful Metroidvania-style structure. I had little to no interest in Batman before playing Arkham Asylum but the richness of the world created by Rocksteady really pulled me in.

Then we get to Arkham City.

With Asylum still fairly fresh in memory and expecting a similar level of length and depth second time around, Arkham City gets the dubious honour of being the only game that I have finished by mistake.

Arkham City is far from a bad game but reminds me of Darksiders 2 in that it is very much a product of its time (the mass publisher panic and consumer cash grab towards the end of this generation). By comparison to its rich and generous predecessor, Arkham City had a short, threadbare story, with too many cameos crammed into our brief time with it, the dearth of campaign content spread over a larger map, the Riddler collectibles now bloated and rather pointless, and the lack of campaign content padded out by endless challenge rooms and 'extra' content.

Whereas Arkham Asylum also seemed to slip under the radar of the publisher, its unexpected success meant that City felt (to me, at least) like a game where its publisher's presence could really be felt. Gone was the tightly crafted, intricately woven tapestry of ideas and locations, now we have a game that felt rushed, bereft of campaign content, a weak, incoherent story and a tight densely-packed location replaced with a sprawling, half-empty map and DLC, DLC, DLC.

As Origins is now upon us, I cannot help but feel that, now more than ever, that control of this franchise is in the hands of Warner Bros as development for the game has been passed to different studio. Batman has become its fat cash cow and the creative direction is now back in control of the content publisher, not the content creator.

I'd love to say I have high hopes for further Batman games but, its trajectory since Asylum has made me realise why licensed superhero games are the subject of so much derision. Asylum, if anything, was an aberration, a one-off. All sequels so far have been simply based upon this exceptional template but become more diluted towards a consensus appeal and to meet whatever successful industry trends are occurring at the time.

I adored what Arkham Asylum achieved at the time, but the magic, for me, has now gone.

[AndyKurosaki]

While Origins will be the first in the series I'm not buying on Day One (saving up for next gen), I'm still interested to see how it turns out. Though I genuinely don't give a toss about the multiplayer mode they're putting in.At no point during the previous games did I think "wish this had multiplayer!", so I'm not even bothering with that part of the game. The companion Blackgate Vita game is certainly on my rental list as well.

[DomsBeard]

I dismissed Origins as soon as it was farmed out (no doubt they are working on a next gen Arkham). I won't be picking it up Day One either, but review scores might make me get it earlier.

[InsrtCoins]

What really disappoints me about Origins was that Arkham City ended on such a ballsy story note. I won't spoil it, but it was a huge game-changer for the Batman universe and a very risky upset to the status-quo from a marketing perspective. I was really excited to see where the series would go next. I was disappointed to find that the new development studio said, "nah. Let's just do a prequel instead".

I'm worried because the trailers and PAX demo seemed to be focusing on Batman the Badass who lives in his dark and gritty world. It seems to be leaving behind the series' under-the-surface sense of humor and comic book sensibility that made it great. Characters like Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze are inherently ridiculous, but they are what gave the Arkham games flavor.