In The Dark Knight's New Game, You Enter The Madhouse, And Live The Nightmare.
INTRO:
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In Batman: Arkham Asylum, you of course, will play the role of Batman: The Dark Knight, The World's Greatest Detective, The Caped Crusader (etc.)
The Game opens with a cutscene, showing us that Batman has Joker in his custody, Batman drives Joker to Arkham Island in the Bat-Mobile, and then escorts him to the cold steel doors, of the "Intensive Treatment" building.
Batman and his Prisoner both meet Warden Quincy Sharp, Frank Boles, and several heavily armored, and armed guards.
Batman makes it clear something is up, that his capture of "The Clown Prince" was too easy, and Joker was planning something, he tags along with the Security Squad escorting a now restrained Joker on tied to what appears to be a dolly, in which the player than plays as Batman towering over all of the guards with his great height, and the player walks slowly with the Squad.
After a little power outage in an Elevator, and a quick reunion with a shock-collared, and chained Killer Croc, another cutscene takes place.
Frank Boles (Which is one of the heads of Security) tells Batman that he cannot tag along any further, and that Joker's cell is close by, Batman has a bad feeling as they unrestrain the Joker, which leaves the Joker now only hand cuffed.
Batman tells Commissioner Gordon about how capturing the Joker was too easy, the Joker almost gave himself up to him, as he is telling Gordon this, Joker now a short distance away, kills the Guards escorting him, and removes his hand cuffs.
Batman sees this happen outside of a window, he breaks through the window only to be a little late, Joker activates an Electric Forcefield of sorts that blocks the doorway, and then releases tons, and tons of thugs.
The Game then begins, and you as a player, have now just fallen into a Living Nightmare, after a moderately short tutorial telling you the basics through a series of horrific events (Examples: Serial Killer Victor Zsasz holds a Security Guard hostage in an electrocution chair, which it shows you how to swing from stone gargoyle to stone gargoyle, and then shows you how to perform a glide kick, or silent takedown. Joker releases Happy Gas in an enclosed room full of Guards, killing every single one of them, you then are shown how to grapple, and glide, jump (etc.)
THE GAME:
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After the tutorial, you will find yourself outside of the "Intensive Treatment" building, and out in the open-world Arkham Island, you will already have been shown how to use your map, and you will follow objectives marked on your map, and every objective sends you deeper into the dark abyss of The Nightmare.
You will also be able to find Riddler Secrets Revealed Maps, which will mark on your map where a Riddler Trophy, Riddle, Secret of Arkham, or Hidden Question Mark may be, with a Question Mark.
In The Game, you will find yourself surrounded by thugs quite frequently, and then you will have to decide for yourself, whether or not you should take them out one by one in a stealth like fashion, or just take on the thugs, and most likely Destroy them with the Freeflow Combat system.
But there will be times, in which you (The Dark Knight) will not be able to possibly take on the thugs, because they will be armed, and when thugs are armed, you will find yourself dying very, very often if you try to confront them head on.
With Silent Takedowns, your arsenal of Gadgets, Detective Mode, and some good strategy, you will be able to take out groups of armed guards with ease.
Detective Mode: Detective Mode is like X-Ray vision, you will be able to see through walls with it, and thugs will be depicted as skeletons (Like an X-Ray would show people) but they are shown differently when they are armed thugs, or unarmed thugs, they will be seen as a light blue skeleton as an unarmed hostile, and red as an armed hostile, also you will be able to see the number of armed, and unarmed hostiles in your area, on the lower right side of your screen.
Detective Mode also is used for tracking, tracing, and is pretty much always required for Riddler Challenges, you will be able to track tobacco, alcohol, and pheramones in the game. (Examples: When Commissioner Gordon has gone missing, you find a packet of his favorite tobacco on the floor, you scan it with your Detective Mode, and then trace the tobacco to his current position, or close to it anyways. To find Frank Boles you do the same thing, and you do the same thing with Poison Ivy, overall Detective Mode is a brilliant idea, and is an amazing addition to an already amazing game, but you will find it to be tedious, and/or irritating at times, because you use it very frequently.
With an arsenal of Gadgets as well, ranging from Batarangs, to Ziplines, to Sequencers, each Gadget has it's own exclusive purpose, and each one of them equally as awesome as the last.
You will also be able to upgrade these Gadgets with XP, you can get XP from Destroying, and Bashing thugs, you can get XP from winning, and solving Riddler Challenges, and you can also get XP from saving people occasionally.
The Freeflow System is honestly one of the best things about Batman: Arkham Asylum though, (Example: You move Batman into a group of thugs, who will then just start coming at you with fists throwing, and feet kicking, they will try desperately to hit you, but everytime they go to hit you, a flashing bolt icon will appear above their head briefly, that is telling you to get out of the way, or counter them, when countering them with the Triangle/Y button, Batman will block their hit, and then unleash a blow back onto them, by pressing Square/X, you will strike them, Batman will hit them, or kick them, and if you time your hits your Critical Strike Combo will grow, and you will hit harder, and execute blows faster, and when in challenge mode, gain way more points, Batman can leap over thugs, and he can stun them with his cape, and it really begins to get interesting when thugs start ripping steel bars off of the walls to hit you with, or go to a gun locker, and try to unlock it for a few seconds, then once it is unlocked, grab a gun, and begin to blast you with it.
But honestly, you really do feel like Batman when playing this game, because you can waste about twelve bad guys, and not take a single blow, with only a moderate amount of effort.
The Graphics are also very stunning, the dark, abstract feel of the Arkham Asylum Comic, really does come to life in the Game.
PARENTAL GUIDE
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Violence wise, this game is packed, but the game is near bloodless in combat, and as The Dark Knight, you will be fighting tons of bad guys, Guards are killed with weapons, or hung, or gased almost around every corner for about the first half of the game, and the Bodies of Doctors, Thugs, Guards, and Patients can be found littering the hallways around every corner as well, smears of blood can be found sprayed on the walls, and certain patients called "Lunatics" are very violent, and often are found in cells, with their fellow cellmates dead on the floor, Lunatics jump on Batman from out of nowhere frequently in a part of the game, in which you have to press a button rapidly to throw them off of you, they can be seen choking, and biting you while on you.
This game is packed full of elements that could be scary, frightening, and distubing to children, or maybe even some adults, I will be honest, they didn't scare me, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't scare anyone else, a villian named Scarecrow has a hallucinogen which makes you see what you fear, Batman his sprayed with this toxin, and Batman sees things like his dead parents laying there in Crime Alley, and Batman also unzips three body bags in one part of the game, which one of them holds a zombie looking corpse of his father Thomas Wayne, who begins to talk to him, and another one has a zombie like corpse of his mother Martha Wayne, but she appears to be alive too, and when he begins to open the third one, Scarecrow jumps out of it at him, but then disappears.
A Serial Killer naems Victor Zsasz can be quite disturbing to some people, he kills people, and then puts them in life like poses, some Riddles are answered by you finding some of these victims, they are dead, but are posed as if they were reading a book, or playing cards, also, some interview tapes that you can find in the game, may be disturbing to some people, Zsasz in his interview tapes talks about how he killed people, how he liberated from their daily routine, and says they were "Lucky", in the first interview tape of Zsasz, the interviewer starts off by mentioning the fact that Zsasz cut the throats of twenty young women in the last month, and left them in life like poses, also in Zsasz's interview tapes, he begins to tell his interviewer in a creepy like fashion about her home, he lists the hotel, the number of her hotel room, her favorite red chair she sits in with her cat in her lap, and the fact that she keeps forgetting to buy cat food for her cat to her, Zsasz's interview tapes are really the only disturbing ones, the other ones just let you hear how crazy the other villians are in a stereo type fashion, But Riddler does mention in one of his tapes (To answer the riddle, what walks on four legs, two legs, than finally three legs?) that it is wrong that it is a man, that crawls as a baby, walks as a man, and then walks with cane as an elderly man, he tells his interviewer that the correct answer is all a baby, it crawls on four legs, cut off two limbs, then it is left to use two, give it a crutch, it can hobble around on three. These things may be disturbing to some people, and so may the bios of the villians, where it explains their insanity in a nutshell, Killer Croc may appear frightening, and some hallucinations that Batman has are rather creepy, where he will have to fight off legions of skeletons, and Joker may also frighten young children.
Language wise, this game really doesn't hit anything serious, maybe an occasional B**ch, A**, Freakin', Crap, and Damn
Suggestive wise, this game is moderate, Harley Quinn wears an outfit that reveals substantial cleavage, and Poison Ivy wears close to nothing, however most of Poison Ivy is sheltered from sight by plants.
This Game has its moments, where a child would not probably want to touch it with a ten foot pole, but you as the parent are the one who decides whether or not you want your child to have this game in their collection, my personal opinion, if your under thirteen, don't play it, but that is just my opinion, hope this information helped you, and I hope you like the review, thanks.
ARBALON