Batman Arkham Asylum

This got delayed a week because I got distracted with another game, but it was definitely time for me to spend some time with Batman Arkham Asylum.  This game received high praise from basically everybody, including several Game of the Year awards.  Some of this praise is deserved, but after completing the game I feel it could have been something really special, but fell short in some really obvious areas.

First of all, the characters, environment, voice acting, sound, and visuals are all quite well done.  The characters are what you expect from Batman, and nobody really feels out of character (save the Riddler, more about that later).  The game manages appearances from the people you would expect with the likes of the Joker, Harley, Oracle, Gordon, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, all making appearances.  The voice acting is superb in many aspects, and they all sound like what you would expect, unlike other games with large casts (Marvel Ultimate Alliance, X-Men Legends, several Final Fantasy and Star Ocean games), where you typically find a voice or two that really is just wrong and sometimes offensive.  The sound effects are great as well.  When Batman hits somebody, you really feel like he is WRECKING somebody.  I really like the feel the sound provided.  The graphics are pretty good, and I thought that Batman's movements in combat flowed really well together even when you do counter attacks in the middle of your own combos.  The environment is fun to traverse with the grapple hook (the star of the game) and allows you some room to swing around and do some exploring.  That being said, I wish there was a little more Metroid style roaming to use all your gadgets.  The areas can sometimes feel a little repetitive.  The game just uses a few too many vent shafts to sneak through, and if you hit what seems like a dead end, without fail the solution is to either grapple up to something or find a vent shaft to crawl through.  I wish there was a little more freedom and creativity in the indoor areas.

The combat in this game is where my big complaint comes in, and I'm really surprised this game didn't take more crap for this from more reviewers.  The combat is uneventful, ultra simplistic, and downright easy to master completely.  Combat involves 2 buttons, attack and counter.  You basically mash the attack button until you see an obvious symbol over an enemy's head which means he is about to attack, then push counter, and continue to mash the attack button.  After about 5 minutes with this system, you have learned everything you need to know to beat 95% of the encounters in the game, with a few oddball enemies showing up that you need to stun or dodge a bit.  Some of you may complain that God of War only had 3 attack buttons, but there you could string different combinations together to get different combos and abilities.  With your 1 attack button in Batman, you punch and kick and it looks nice, but you don't do anything but hit your one attack button.  It gets very lame very quickly, and if this game was any longer than the short ride that it is, this system would ruin the game,

A couple more quick negatives to mention.  The Riddler system for unlockables is very poor.  The riddles are just dumb and obvious.  The Riddler will give you a clue for most areas you enter, such as "Tweedledum and Tweedledee SAW it, can you SEE it?"  Yeah, you find a see-saw.  It is that bad.  That is literally, word for word, one of the riddles.  Thankfully, you can skip the Riddler stuff and all you miss is a few challenge mode things and some profiles of Batman characters, nothing like special abilities and stuff.  This is insulting to any Riddler fan, surely they could have thought of some GOOD riddles, you know, the ones without answers in caps in the question?  Maybe I expect too much.  The tracking portions are also kind of silly and feel very tacked on.  They should have left this out, or put more effort into making it meaningful and engaging.  Boss fights are a huge portion of most games, and they fall short here.  Most bosses are just gauntlets of regular enemies, sometimes without ever even actually hitting the real boss.  Fighting Harley, you take out a whole bunch of regular thugs, then get a CUTSCENE of Batman beating up Harley.  BAD, I want to do it myself, not watch it!  Also, this game is very short.  It only lasts about 8-12 hours, maybe a bit more if you try to get all of the Riddles.  I skipped most riddles and finished in about 10 hours.  I bought this game for $7.50 on sale on Steam.  If I paid full price for this I would be pissed.  Old games, I'm talking Super Nintendo, could piece together more than 10 hours of gameplay, and with how bad the Batman combat is few gamers will play this more than once or twice.  Ten hours is insulting, and modern era games need to get their shit together.  I'm tired of games running barely into the double digit hours of gameplay.  This is downright retarded.  Sorry, I'm not spending $60 for 10 hours of fun.  By comparison, I watch at least 30 hours of streams and on DVD content from Netflix a month and pay $15.  Enough said.

So, with all this complaining, why did I say I enjoyed this?  Batman's tools.  Grapple hooks are epic fun, and this game does grapple hooking well.  Lots of places to go, and lots of practical use.  In other games, grapples often are either underused, feel tacked on, or just aren't handled well.  Batman does it right, and this is awesome.  Some of the other tools can be fun, like that batarangs.  The predator sequences are fun for a while too, but can be easy mode if you just use the triple batarang or explosive gel trick (put gel on the ground, inverted takedown a guy so he screams, crowd comes, blow up the gel, crush the fools while they get up).  And like I said, the good environment is a big plus.

Overall, I had fun with Arkham Asylum, but if they simply put any effort into the combat, and added some actual length to the game it would have been so much more.  Having a difficult time seeing how they could add length without making everything feel really stretched out and padded?  Make it more Metroid style, that will get you 20 hours at least if done well enough.  This game is a rental if anything, play it for a weekend and bring it back.  You will have fun and  experience everything it has to offer.  There isn't much replay value, as you near the end some of the gadgets lose their luster and combat really starts becoming a drag.  Sad case where a good game could have been a fantastic game, but the developers just had some lazy moments with important aspects of the game.

Also, where are there so many gargoyles INSIDE to grapple on, who the hell did the architecture for this place?  Asylum?  More like a creepy torture facility run by some weird goth dude....whatever.