Not only a great (if not the best) batman game, but a great action game.
Story: The story could actually be a sequal to the dark night if you think about it, Batman has just beaten the joker, and is taking him back to arkham, but once he gets there, it turns out that the joker has set up a trap for batman and has relaesed all the prisoners, it soon turns out that the joker's plot goes beyond that, and he palns to take over (Supriese!) take over gotham.
Graphics: The game looks amazing, plain and simple, the te textures look great, the lighting is great, the only thing is that sometimes the diaalog dosen't sync up well, and the atmosphere is so thick you could cut it with a knife, in fact I would comapre it to doom 3, but whereas doom 3 had great graphics and atmosphere, but shallow game play, Arkham asylum has great gameplay.
Gameplay: There are two types of gameplay in arkham asylum, stealth and combat. The combat is simple, but fun. You have an attack button, a counter button, and a doge button, this sounds simplistic and it is, it sounds repetative, but it's not, the combat is fluent and fun, and never gets old. The stealth is much more fun, it forces you to use batman's gadgets to take out enamies, and sneak around without being spotted. It's alot like other stealth action games, but it's great overall.
Sound: the music is epic and moody, and it sets the tone perfectley for a batman game. Mark ahmill voices the joker and he dose a fenominal job, most of the other voice actors from the animated sereies re pries theri roles as well.
Exclusive content: If you buy the PS3 version, youc an paly as the joker in 6
or so chalenge rooms, and his portions are very hard, much harder than batman's challenge rooms. He also has some new gadgets that are fun to paly with.
One of the major problems with the game is that it's too easy, I played on ahrd diffuculty and I never had any trouble figuring out what to do, or fighting the enamies, sure I did die some, but ti wasn't a regular acourance.
Do not dismiss this as just an action game, this is also a very atmospheric and scary game, some of the new renditions of clasic batman villians are really scary, and it also includes the scarriest rendition of the scarecrow in existance, and his scenes are very disturbing. So in short, you don't need to be a fan of batman to enjoy this amazing action game, but if you are a fan of batman there are some great unlockables to find including bios of heros and vilians ect. and hundreds of riddles from the riddler to solve.
That's another thing about this game, it's amazingly replayable, as soon as I beat the game, I immidiatly wanted to paly it agian to get all the hidden things I missed, and if that isn't the mark of a great game, the I don't know what is. If you ahven't bought this game already, buy it now!!!