Negative Gamer Review: Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3)

For anyone who’s been living at the bottom of the ocean for the past few months, Batman: Arkham Asylum is Rocksteady Studio’s attempt to create a videogame based on DC’s brooding antihero. It takes the form of a stealth-brawler hybrid that moves between open combat against unarmed enemies to sneaking up on gun-toting guards.

Whilst not based on it directly, its plot bears some comparison to the Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth graphic novel. Batman’s nemesis The Joker has taken over Arkham Asylum and its grounds and released the other inmates. The Joker isn’t alone in his plotting, with his perennial love-interest and sidekick Harley Quinn and numerous other members of the infamous ‘rogues gallery’ on board to aid his takeover of Arkham.

Fly, my pretties!

For so much of my time with Batman: Arkham Asylum I was impressed by the masterful way in which Rocksteady created an authentic Batman experience. Disappointingly this can’t be said about the boss fights, many of which felt uninspired or flat-out boring. The only name I’ll explicitly mention here is that of the only exception, Scarecrow. The hallucinogenic platforming sequences that make up his boss fights are original and utterly fantastic. The rest of the rogues gallery provide little satisfaction in defeating them.

Some involve fighting waves of faceless thugs and the final two encounters simply don’t feel like you’re playing the same game any more. The penultimate battle felt like it could have been drawn from almost any third-person action game of this generation. Even more crushing was the final encounter that can only be described as a complete let-down.

A truly great boss fight should serve as both the narrative climax of the previous chapter and the full use of a game’s distinctive mechanics. This is why the ones present in Batman: Arkham Asylum, excepting of course the Scarecrow fights, were such a let down. For so much of the game I felt like I was truly inhabiting a very specific character and environment. That feeling was snatched away during so many of the boss encounters, something I deeply resented. Simply put, a boss fight should be more than just a particularly difficult stretch of combat bookended by a cutscene.

Everybody was kung-fu fighting…but only Batman was anywhere near as fast as lightning

To describe the level of challenge involved in Batman: Arkham Asylum’s melee combat as low would be an over-simplification. Instead it’s more useful to draw a line between absolute and player-created challenge. Some games put forward the notion of absolute challenge where the goal is to progress past a given set of enemies and there is only one way to do so. Batman: Arkham Asylum presents a more subjective challenge, progressing past the melee combat being almost inevitable for players with any level of co-ordination. Instead, the challenge comes from trying to master the combos and stringing together a seamless sequence of attacks into one perfect motion.

Once you get into the mindset that Batman: Arkham Asylum wants you to take on, the combat can be immensely rewarding. The problem is that in a narrative-driven experience where you feel compelled to reach the end of the story, the temptation to button-mash your way through the combat can be irresistible. Once this bad habit is established, as it inevitably will be through no fault of the player, the introduction of a more arbitrary difficulty level will feel jarring. At the very end of the game when I encountered this difficulty spike, it felt cheap and irritating.

I have the power and no reason to use it

Batman: Arkham Asylum uses an experience system to unlock new abilities, adding the now obligatory mild RPG element present in so many action games. The abilities make either combat or stealth easier and add a number of new options to each scenario. The combat improvements were never a problem, adding more health and providing a couple of handy moves.

However I found the improvements to Batman’s stealth abilities, particularly the special Batarang enhancements, completely unnecessary. It’s the inevitable side effect of tying them to an experience system rather than introducing them as part of the central game mechanics. I’d have much preferred them to be integral parts of the stealth mechanic introduced over the course of the game.

A few other points worth mentioning:

• I occasionally found myself repeating sections of the game due to a slightly vague autosave system.
• Some of the introductions for Batman’s various abilities and gadgets feel a touch contrived. It never affected my enjoyment of those abilities but did pull me out of the story for a moment.
• The ‘detective vision’ reduces the environment to a series of pale blue walls and bright orange objects. It’s essential to the gameplay but somewhat spoils the lovingly crafted setting.
• If you don’t like collecting trinkets or exploration for exploration’s sake, there’s very little replay value once you’ve played through the story.

The do-it-yourself attitude to difficulty will put off those who prefer more demanding games and I found most of the boss battles extremely disappointing. Despite these drawbacks, Batman: Arkham Asylum is a worthy and important addition to the stealth/action subgenre. The extremely high quality of the voice acting and gorgeous visuals help to create a very well executed interactive Batman experience.

You should play this game if…

…you’ve ever wanted to actually have fun in a stealth game or just enjoy a good Batman story.

Final Score
Lacklustre boss fights are the only real downside to this otherwise excellent Batman game.

(What does this score mean?)

Images: Giantbomb