The Joker managed to occupy Arkham Asylum, the super villains’ prison, and it’s up to batman to stop him and his cronies.
This was certainly a long time coming because, to my knowledge, this is the first good superhero based videogame. They actually managed to convey the essence of what Batman is.
Technically speaking this is a third person action adventure. The graphics are very good, they use the unreal engine. The quality is actually not that incredible but the artistic direction is spot on with very interesting visuals that resonates with the entire batman canon. The scarecrow induced hallucination sequences are little masterpieces of surrealism and dread.
The combat system look complicated but is actually really easy, no punching in midair, the game will point you in right direction. Aesthetically is inspired by the Krav Maga, Israeli home grown martial art, and really deliver. Batman is a vigilante so a very violent and physical fighting style is perfect for him.
The stealth, predator, sequences are also brilliant. They are basically long mini puzzles where we have to figure how to pick up all the armed thugs of the Joker one at a time.
There are a lot of puzzles, riddles and stuff to figure out. Some of those is quite difficult and in the end I had to use a walkthrough but considering that it’s all optional content we really can’t complain.
The main problem for me was the detective mode. Basically we could switch from a normal visually pleasing world to a stripped down to blue tones reality where everything that we could need to know is highlighted. Now for all practical reason the game is easier to play by never switching to reality again and it actually obliges you to get into detective mode very now and then to follow some forensic trail. This drove me mad playing it because I wanted to enjoy the visuals but most of the times I couldn’t because I was continually switching to detective mode.
I must also add that when we get to the ending the fights start getting repetitive and underwhelming but considering that this was a surprise hit without a lot of funding we can forgive the developers. We’ll see what they do with the obligatory sequel Arkham City, out later this year.
A must buy for all Batman fans.
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