As a child, I was a big fan of Batman, be it films, The Animated Series, as well as the broader Batman mythos in general. There is something profoundly compelling about one man, going out every night to face a city corrupted by sadistic criminals, and holding his morals and integrity in the face of it all, whatever the physical and psychological costs may be. Over the decades the character has evolved, he had transcended from cartoonish and one-dimensional, to humanised and multifaceted.
So, when I finally got around to playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, and being able to embody such an awesome character, I was, understandably, pretty excited. However, I was also ten years late to the game, but still very much interested as to how it would hold up.
The premise of the game is quite simple; after recapturing the Joker and seeing him incarcerated in Arkham Asylum, Gotham’s institution housing the insane and abnormal villains of Batman’s rogues gallery, when The Joker breaks free and takes control of the Island, with Batman forced to navigate his way through a pantheon of oppressive facilities, deranged villains and deadly puzzles to defeat The Joker and restore order to “the madhouse”.
The first thing I experienced when starting the game was a sense of nostalgia. I grew up with Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as The Joker, and to me, they are the definitive versions of the characters. However, this nostalgia was also mixed with a new, darker tone, with the characters being far more brutal in their actions, and dead bodies littered across the levels. This wasn’t just the animated universe translated into a game, but rather something with its own macabre atmosphere and unique lore, drawing heavily from the beloved source material of the 90’s animation but also more recent, grounded takes on the characters.
Fighting the classic villains like The Joker, Killer Croc, The Scarecrow and Harley Quinn in this new world was exhilarating, as now they were truly twisted and murderous, whilst encountering a variety of original characters created for this game, like the uptight Warden Quincy Sharp or Security Chief Aaron Cash, whose hand was bitten off by Killer Croc, only serve to demonstrate the corruption and evil rooted on the island.
By setting the Asylum on an Island as opposed to the outskirts of the city, you get a deeper sense of confinement, as well as a relatively close proximity to Gotham, creating a game that embodies the claustrophobic and desperate nature of the main home of Batman’s rogue’s gallery, and gives the island its own personality as it becomes even more wild as the night progresses.
Another benefit to the tight, small environments is that each location you visit has purpose to the facility as a whole, expanded upon by character bios, short story segments and patient interview tapes to make every location feel natural and relevant to visit, something that later games in the series suffer for by making the map larger for a sense of scope at the cost to the world it attempts to convey.
The gameplay is another exciting and innovative feature, broken down mainly into predator and combat enemy encounters, using the handful of gadgets at your disposal. This is what truly makes the experience make the player feel like the Dark Knight himself, by having to use your wits to assess a situation and plan accordingly as to how to clear a room.
What attacks should I use? Which armed thug could I take out without getting spotted and having to retreat back into the shadows? By providing you with a wide variety of ways to incapacitate an enemy, and putting you in an area with a dozen of them patrolling around, it allows you to be creative and experimental in your methods, and creates an element of player control in an otherwise linear narrative. And whilst these sections may seem clunky and disjointed in comparison to the more recent entries in the Arkham series, this game set the precedent, not only for its sequels, but an entire generation of games following it, such as its detective mode and stealth sections inspiring other combat systems in games such as Spider-man and Shadow of Mordor.
My only complaint at the game, if you could even call it that, was the Riddler puzzles, which as some-what of a completionist became a nightmare to acquire all of the trophies and solve every riddle. The riddles were actually quite entertaining to solve, as had to pool your knowledge of the environment, peculiar scenes and item placements and even batman mythology if you are already familiar with what the riddle relates to, and the puzzle-solving aspect of the trophies does solidify Batman’s status as ‘World’s Greatest Detective’, but having to return to an area to find that one trophy you couldn’t find earlier, or didn’t have the maps to locate them could be extremely frustrating.
This did create the intended impression of Edward Nygma being a compulsive narcissist and a nuisance for Batman to come across, but it could have done it in a far more satisfying way that didn’t artificially pad out the game time, and force you to either let him roam free, or end up youtubing various puzzles for the answers to get them all.
Unfortunately, this was made worse with the sequels, which put the Riddler puzzles in the hundreds, but to judge Asylum on its own merits, it is a minor annoyance in what is otherwise a compelling experience.
Overall, I would give Batman: Arkham Asylum a 7 out of 10, as its ability to capitalise on all that makes Batman and his world compelling significantly trumps the now clunky gameplay and graphics, as well as revolutionising the combat and mechanics of games even to this day.
SPOILER SECTION
The story of the game was not a complex or thought-provoking one, revolving around the Joker getting his hands on the monster-making Titan formula with escalating chaos. It didn’t need to be too sophisticated as the first entry, relying more on the Batman mythos as opposed to its own narrative, but does have all the right twists and turns to keep the player invested, and lays the groundwork for continuing plot threads through the rest of the series, which, when going back to this game, creates a whole new layer of context that makes the macabre atmosphere even darker.
Whilst the inclusion of various villains to go up against was commendable, it presents two problems; the first is that while some characters appear, the lack of presence for others makes the island sometimes feel empty and devoid of life. I’m not saying that each and every character should have a standoff against Batman, or even appear at all, but there were certain areas where it would make sense for villain cameos, such as the section in intensive care, where we could have seen some of the more deranged, or less well known villains, appear as thugs. I’m thinking of Two-Face in particular, but everyone from Maxie Zeus, Amygdala, and Cornelius Stirk had potential to appear.
This could have added some flare or variety in the thug types, but does also slightly undermine those characters, so I could see why this wasn’t done, leaving only their cells as indications of their presence on the Island.
The second problem is the boss fights themselves. Whilst I was glad that they were included, as originally there was no plan in having boss fights at all, they were by no means technically impressive, and only the Scarecrow encounters and the Killer Croc section were visually pleasing or tense, doing their character’s justice. Bane was just the tutorial for dealing with titan enemies, Poison Ivy essentially just consisted of repeatedly throwing batarangs and dodging from time to time, and the less said about the mohawked - Titan Joker the better. This is vastly improved upon in the next instalment, City, when they had boss fights in mind that had multiple stages and facets to explore, but that is for another review.
The inclusion of a Batcave underneath the Island was also a little silly and detracted from the sense that Batman was stuck with little help or room to breathe, but its small size and relatively minimal presence in the game didn’t force you to linger too much in it.
UP NEXT
I will be continuing with the Arkham series, uploading my review of Batman: Arkham City on Saturday, and Arkham Knight on Sunday. Since Arkham: Origins wasn’t remastered to the PS4, I haven’t been able to play it, so I will be sticking to the main trilogy. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you again next time.