While Batman: Arkham Asylum might not be perfect, but it's definitely the best game to feature the Caped Crusader...
If you're a fan of the Batman universe, you'll fall in love with the story. The story is penned by Paul Dini, a former producer and writer for Batman: The Animated series, and a man who clearly knows him his Batman. The story picks up just as the Dark Knight has captured The Joker, and is delivering him to the famed Gotham madhouse. Batman notices something suspicious, however, as The Joker didn't put up much of a fight, and, alas, he is quite right. When The Joker arrives at Arkham, all hell breaks loose, and he's the man behind it all. The events of the game will follow Batman's night in the asylum as he tries to put an end to The Joker's rampage. The plot throws in quite a number of characters from the Batman universe, and even the few who aren't included are referenced. During your adventures in the madhouse, you can find a ton of material about pretty much all of the significant characters in the Batman mythos from their background on down to their first comic book appearance. The game's main plot is fully featured as is, and all the extras will be sure to please any comic book fan.
Arkham Asylum offers quite a number of gameplay elements, and pulls them off well. To put the core experience in simple terms; it's a lot like a Metroid game. You'll venture through the asylum, eager to explore as much as you can until you find a certain key item. You then use said item to venture further into the environment.
But of course, what you do along the way is very important, and luckily Arkham Asylum has quite a variety of activities. To survive the Asylum with as many goodies in tow as possible, you'll have to fight, sneak, inspect, and explore. Arkham Asylum truly packs a lot of variety, but unfortunately falls for the old "jack of all trades, master of none" type deal.
Combat and sneaking are both entertaining, and especially fun to watch, the problem is, however, it takes a while for either of these systems to get especially deep.
The game's Freeflow combat system only consists of a few basic button presses at the start of the game, and one can easily dispatch most foes while just sticking to those few button presses; if you want to make things a little more complex, you'll pretty much only be doing it for the extra points.
The stealth system falls in the same category. It's fun, but it's basic, you really only need your few basic takedowns and gadgets, and anything you do beyond that is superfluous.
Exploration, however, is the meat of this game's fun factor. Arkham Asylum is huge, and at any given time you'll have a fair amount of free reign in terms of areas to explore. But what drives you to want to search every nook and cranny of the Asylum are the 240 riddles one Edward Nigma has set up for you around Arkham Island. These riddles will range from simply platforming to find question mark icons the Riddler has scattered about, or actually solving some riddles that can range from simple to devilishly tricky. Venturing throughout the island with all of Batman's gadgets is fun enough as is, but these riddles really serve to flesh out your experience.
The game also features 8 Challenge Maps, unlocked by either progressing through the game, or solving riddles. These Challenge Maps recreate certain fighting, and stealth sequences found throughout the game, and each map consists of one round of brawling, and one of sneaking. Each map also features a ridiculously tricky "Extreme" mode counterpart which are sure to keep diehard fans occupied for a while. Your scores on each Challenge Map are also uploaded to online leaderboards, which is a nice touch for the particularly competitive players out there. Also, since I'm doing this review for the Playstation 3 version of the game, it's also worth noting that it features a playable Joker on the Challenge Maps, who is quite fun to tinker around with, but at the end of the day simply isn't cut out for the job as the Caped Crusader is.
The graphics in Arkham Asylum are a mixed bag. The environment itself is beautiful, and surprisingly varied. The animations are superb as well, especially for Batman's Freeflow combat segments, which you might at first glance think is choreographed. But, unfortunately, not everything is so hot in the graphics department. For one, the character models, while stylized, need some work, and the animations for all non-Batman characters are stiff. But still, this game has a perfectly good graphics department.
The sound on the other hand, is excellent. The game features awesome sound design, which is masterfully showcased throughout the Scarecrow segments of the game, and the sound effects as a whole are all very well done. What steals the show, though, are the voice talents. Much of the voice cast from Batman: The Animated series returns, and reprise their respective roles in top form, the standout being Mark Hamill's terrific performance as The Joker.
The story mode in Arkham Asylum will last you about 10-12 hours if you try to get through while minimally working on riddles. If you do choose to pursue a good portion of the riddles, you'll likely see a pretty huge increase in the number of hours you'll sink in. The Challenge Maps also provide for a good bit of entertainment, and as previously stated, will be especially addicting for the perfectionist gamers out there.
Arkham Asylum is a great game, it combines tons of different gameplay elements fairly well, has a great story, plenty of extras, good production values, and a surprisingly high replay value. While there are some flaws, mainly in the form of certain gameplay elements that are too basic, and some minor graphical issues, Batman Arkham Asylum is easily the Bat's best video game adventure. Here it is: the best game of this summer. If you're a fan of action adventure games, or of the Batman universe, you owe it to yourself to check out Batman: Arkham Asylum.