Been wanting to play this game since long, but never got around to it. Finally when I finished I realized how good the game is in comparison to the other Batman games. I played Arkham City sometimes back but don't remember the game being so much fun as this one is. The characters of joker, Killer Croc, Bane, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn and Scarecrow are brilliantly portrayed and adds depth to the whole game. The hand to hand combat is very smooth and the gadgets are plenty to use including bat claw, batarang, crypto-graphic sequencer etc. The game based entirely around Arkham Asylum provides various options to explore Arkham Asylum on your own and you can also pursue the quests straight away. There is complete freedom in terms of what you want to do. You can go goodies hunting and bash up the enemies for XP points which leads to upgrades or you can just go through the main story line.
I personally didn't spend much time hunting Riddler trophies or pursue the puzzles, I just did some that came across and didn't bother too hard with it. Even apart from that the audio recordings of various villains gives great insight into the background and adds to the story. The game allows batman to perform some serious combos and melee combat moves which look great while being executed. Even though based on a single island map the game never feels repetitive. For me, the best part of the game was the mission in Croc's lair. It just had all the right elements of tension, escape and intrigue.
Arkham Asylum is a large spread out area and each time you travel anywhere across the island you come across something new. The enemies are greatly different and vary significantly and some require an altogether different tactic to be handled. Arkham Asylum provides serious challenges at many a point of the game when the game throws a lot of enemies at you and mixes up the type of them. Seriously beautiful game and comes very close to cherishing the legacy that Dark Knight is.