Batman: Arkham Asylum

So, while not playing LotRO I took up with a couple of solo games, one of which is Batman: Arkham Asylum. I mostly purchased this because Zero Punctuation rated it fairly highly (actually it won his game of the year 2009) and in particular said it has one of the best implementations of a stealth game. This was purchased as a PC version, it is also available for X-Box 360, but I don't own one.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

The Game
I should say that is in some ways B:AA not my kind of game at all. It uses what I call an RSI (Repetative Strain Injury) Combat System which is fairly typical on consoles and arcade games - the faster you mash multiple buttons in the correct sequence the more damage you do. This made a number of the later fights, in particular the boss fights, very difficult for someone of my skills to complete. When I did complete them any satisfaction was more connected with relief than pride in my achievement. Having said that, the design of most of the boss fights was generally excellent - I can appreciate good design even if my personal enjoyment of it is limited.

The whole game is very atmospheric and draws you in beautifully from the opening video through the introductory sequence and into the first gameplay. The only game that has perhaps done it better is the original Half-life and B:AA is very close to being as good.

The whole game is tutorialed and tool-tipped and while I would critise that this cannot be turned off even if you are re-playing, I found it fairly inobtrusive after a short while.

The blend of pure combat, pure stealth and mixed combat and stealth is excellent. As mentioned previously, I personally found some of the later pure combat fights hard to complete, but that does not detract from the skill in the design and steady escalation of difficulty. The stealth and other puzzle like game sequences I was thoroughly entertained by.

The 'Riddlers Challenge' puzzles also added a good deal to the game for me. Some are very simple others much more complex. Despite being stuck for a great deal of time on a number of them I found solving the more complex ones very enjoyable. In the end I was defeated by one puzzle although I acutally failed to complete 2 as one challenge could not be completed after the game had progressed beyond a certain point.

The stealth is handled very well with the computer characters responding in a reasonable way to Batman's various actions depending on how he is moving, what he is doing, the computer character's level of awareness etc. Zero Punctuation was completely correct.

Overall the AI is just phenominal. I have not seen this kind of game for quite some time. It was a real eye-opener to see how far game AI has been developed since the days of Quake and even much more recently Far Cry when various encounters could become jammed or easily defeated because of the total lack of intelligence the AI exibited. The behaviour of most of the oppenents that Batman faces is so good I rarely found myself adopting tactics because I was thinking "This will make the AI do this so that I can do that". The vast majority of the time I was treating the opponents as that, an opponent; their behaviour and responses felt almost totally natural and consistant.

I was absolutely blown away the first time Batman was subjected to the Scarecrow's halucinogenic gas, but I won't spoil it by saying much more than that. Brilliantly done. Having said that it is one point in the game where it feels more like you are participating in a game rather than starring in your own film.

Ultimately it is a linear story that you are guided through with really no deviation at the player's choice. Having said that it does not detract from the game.

Clever reuse of areas as Batman is guided, coerced and lured around the asylum tracking the Joker and his minions allows B:AA to maximise the gameplay without having to invest further in art assets.

Visually I have rarely been so impressed, it is simply beautiful. Everything is in keeping with the 'Dark Knight' style and virtually flawless. The only slightly sad thing is that by the nature of the game design I spent the majority of the game viewing everything as X-ray skeletons while in 'Detective Mode'. This meant that a lot of the extrodinary artwork was to a great extent wasted. My one critism would be that on my system (which I consider well balanced) I could not get it quite bright enough. There is a game control that is supposed to allow you to adjust the balance but even maxed out it did not meet the requirements of the adjustment tool. Despite having a somewhat aging system (albeit with a good graphics card) I was able to run this with almost everything maxed out and get a very acceptable frame rate the vast majority of the time.

I have previously been somewhat dismissive of 'Physics Effects' but having seen the difference between PhysX off and on in B:AA I am quite a convert. Flags and banners that wave and flutter, cobwebs and crime-scene tape that breaks and mist that swirls around as you pass through. I still feel that many game companies invest too much in graphics and too little in game-play but B:AA has both at an exceptional level.

The sound, in particular the voice acting, is spot on and unusually for a game I felt no need to adjust the default balance of Effects, Music and Voice. While the combat sounds are fairly grisly I did not find them gratuitously so and nor (despite the many fights) noticably repetative. Of course some of the background dialog of the lesser henchmen does tend to repeat but I did not find it overly so while playing the actual game (during the Challenges it does get a little irritating sometimes).

There are a few niggling critisms:

Initially I had some issues with the game crashing but this proved to be because the game had not patched up from the DVD release (1.0) to the current version (1.1). It is still not 100% stable but it did not crash during normal gameplay unless I had been playing for many hours without restarting. It still crashes occasionally when I repeatedly restart a challenge and I believe all drivers etc are fully upto date on my system.

I don't mind too much the use of Windows LIVE(tm) as a way of forcing original purchase play, but it seems a little pointless to give 4 save slots when there is no voluntary save ability. Each save slot can only save the current progress of a single game. This means you cannot save the game at a particular point to return to it later and try something again from that point or try something in a different way. Having said that, the automated save points are very well positioned and there are mid-boss fight saves which were a major relief for me.

There is one boss fight where there is an unjustifiable, to my mind, use of a game-designer trick. This is the only place where I felt that the game designers had 'cheated' the player to make an encounter more difficult without it fitting within the context of the game. This to me was such a shame from a game that had otherwise been almost flawless.

While generally the difficulty progression curve was spot on I think it stumbled a little right at the end. I found the final fight significantly easier than the one that immediately proceeded it and the one prior to that was the most challenging and entertaining.

The Challenges
As you complete various stages of the game 'Challenges' open up. These allow you to play out various encounters that are scored or timed. The Combat challenges are scored and the Predator challenges are timed. The Combat challenges have 3 internal tiers based on points levels. The Predator chalenges have 3 tiers based on objectives within the encounter.

The scores and times are all uploaded onto online leader boards so that you can see your ranking compared to others. I am not really a competative kind of person, or at least I don't really compete much against others, but I got a lot of entertainment out of the Predator challenges. Working out and experimenting with different strategies to try to improve my times was and is very entertaining for me. The Combat challenges I will never do well at and was unable to complete the later ones of the (Extreme) level.

Conclusion
Overall I would thoroughly recommend this game, although you do need a certain minimum level of hand-eye co-ordination, reaction time and finger speed. There were a few points where I nearly gave up because I simply could not defeat the combat stage of the game.

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