Batman: Arkham Asylum Review

The moment Batman delivers his longtime foe, the Joker, to Arkham Asylum, he knows something isn’t right. It was too easy. The asylum guards safely strap down the babbling mad clown, and yet Batman insists to personally see the Joker to his cell.

Taking the role as one of DC’s most famous heroes in the game Batman: Arkham Asylum, I thus walked Batman a cautious few steps behind the criminal transport party. The developers at Rocksteady put on a visceral, constantly unfolding display that effectively acquainted me with the looming darkness of Arkham’s halls. As I apprehensively guided Batman past prisoners who cheer for the Joker and tensely clutched my controller (yes, I used a controller) during a menacing encounter with Killer Croc, Batman remains stoic in his resolve. He stares the Joker down: the two colossal personas collide with tense antagonism during what was, for me, a deceptively calm walkthrough before the storm.

The scene has so much tension, any other game would’ve crashed by now.

Despite Batman’s vigilance, the Joker inevitably escapes. While the villain chases after his master plan, a storm of titanic proportions brews over Arkham. I felt that the game’s first hour builds necessary intrigue as Batman initially follows Joker’s trail, but I most appreciated how the rising action motivated and subtly introduced me to the gameplay. Prisoners stand in Batman’s way so I can learn about combat. Both Zsazs’s hostage situation and armed thugs require knowledge of a stealthy approach. And Joker, in all his arrogance, points to his own whereabouts using painted green arrows and graffiti, which greatly helped keep me on the right track while I still adjusted to the otherwise daunting labyrinth of Arkham.

Very early on, Joker even gives Batman a single opening to end their conflict once and for all, knowing full well the honorable hero won’t break his solemn vow. With the Joker gone again, Batman retraces his steps with some high tech detective work. I can activate the cowl’s detective mode to scan the environment for clues, whereby I can follow a new path to the Joker, or at least track down his airhead assistant, Harley Quinn.

Batman’s detective vision seems overly helpful to the point where it makes the game easy, as it can guide towards the correct direction, highlight vents and gargoyle perches useful for sneaking around, and mark hostile prisoners from far away and even behind walls. Indeed, when I could see everything, I ended up seeing nothing. I used it sparingly rather than let it wash out the environment’s details and gritty art style, so I could better enjoy exploring Arkham.

Behold the greatness of Arkham Island.

What follows might be a spoiler, but I can’t talk about the game without discussing how the above-mentioned first hour built up my expectations only so it could dramatically blow my mind. Even the detective vision didn’t spoil my feeling of awe when I realized that the constricted, enclosed facility I first assumed was the asylum was only just a single wing within the entire Arkham Island. Batman walks out to a vast expanse with an ominous full moon in the night sky, the once hopeful lights of Gotham City in the hopeless distance, and the Gothic Arkham architecture that hides the Joker with dusty, haunting ambivalence. The spirit of Arkham looms, beckoning me to scour the island’s depths and uncover its darkest secrets.

Amadeus Arkham died centuries ago, yet his immortal will endures to contain the madness of Gotham within his isolated island. Arkham’s presence permeates every one of my button presses, and the game’s combat certainly doesn’t feel like a soulless afterthought. Batman is Arkham’s avatar as much as he is mine. He silences mad hysterics through Batman’s punches, counterattacks, and stun maneuvers, and he’d turn in his grave if he knew that anyone button mashed. I appreciated how much combat requires a more calculated mix of Batman’s move set, without which enemies can easily take him down. Combat scenarios can get repetitious, and only throw an increasing number of enemies at Batman along with the occasional Titan-sized miniboss. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed combat because it let me feel Batman’s versatile martial arts mastery, his humorous redirection of the clumsy Titans’ strength back at other inmates, and his creative use of gadgets.

Batman especially needs stealth with Scarecrow, who’s apparently a big fan of sidescrollers.

My thoughts grew even more like Batman’s when I most needed stealth. In moments, armed enemies can easily kill Batman, but with an incredible variety of stealthy approaches to stalk the inmates or improvise traps, they’ll never see him. I can spray explosive gel behind a crumbling wall, perform an inverted takedown of one prisoner from a gargoyle perch above, and, as the others gather around him to investigate, I then detonate the gel to blast them all. The one poor sap who stayed behind, meanwhile, turns into a nervous wreck, and I highly enjoyed watching him react to the tiniest of noises with screams and gunfire before I finally silenced him.

Whether or not Batman actually qualifies as a “superhero,” in stealth, he still becomes an overbearing presence, an “ideal” as Ra’s al Ghul puts it in Batman Begins. Stealth not only feels like the most satisfying game element, but also the most unifying and immersive. Any more and I may as well have donned the cowl myself.

Joker’s commentary in the Visitor’s Center provides brief, captivating moments of narrative reflection.

As much as I became increasingly sympathetic to Batman, the story of his toilsome search through Arkham doesn’t dig very much into his character. The voice cast from Batman: The Animated Series, including Mark Hamill as Joker, perfectly embodies the comic-based characters, yet even Kevin Conroy’s Batman doesn’t veer too far from the adamant comic hero cliché. Pre-rendered cut scenes are the game’s poorest use of the medium, while Batman’s in-game dialogue and self-commentary reflect a more effective narration that enhances player interaction within the narrative.

The few scenes that do elaborate character, however, come from Scarecrow’s hallucinogens, which make Batman walk through vivid visions where his world tears apart into the realm of Bruce Wayne, the man behind the cowl. Rocksteady practices a degree of game narrative restraint, where I simply have Batman walk during the dramatic scenes, yet their use of minimalist interaction creates a highly evocative connection that reflects a mastery of the medium. This time I won’t spoil the ways Arkham Asylum reenacts Wayne’s most influential event, but I’ll say that its representation of his parents murder is the best I’ve seen, and could only be done in a videogame.

I guess “tears apart” wasn’t a metaphor.

I especially value the story’s capacity to let me follow or leave it at my own pace so I could also explore Arkham. Riddler’s challenges, for instance, gave me an ongoing side mission to appreciate the extraordinary effort that went into Arkham’s design, including the searches for the disturbing interview tapes of the game’s main villains and all the salient Batman universe references. Though a relatively small open world, the brimming Arkham Island astounded me with visits to Batman’s secret Batcave, Killer Croc’s murky sewers, and all its other detailed environments.

Batman’s more at home in Arkham Asylum than the patients.

Batman’s determination to find Joker mirrors Rocksteady’s ambitious endeavor to make the greatest Batman game, if not also the best superhero game. I’m sure the developers likewise ignored their growing facial stubble and bodily demands to better achieve a game that fully realizes the strengths of The Dark Knight. Arkham Asylum not only makes an unquestionably faithful interpretation of the already well-defined comic hero, but also stands as its own worthy entry within the overarching Batman story.