Game Review - 'Batman: Arkham Asylum' (Released August 25 2009, PS3/360/PC)

There is something wonderful about walking through the cells of 'Arkham Asylum', trying to figure out who they belonged to before you scan them and find out for sure. You can find references inside Arkham to a huge variety of characters from the Batman mythos, many seen for the first time by players unfamiliar with the comic books. Their inclusion seems to be an assurance from the creators to the fans who appreciate the cameos - “Hey, we've read a lot of Batman too!” - they seem to say. As with the casting of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill from 'Batman: The Animated Series', it is a way of saying that the creators of the game are also fans. They have a knowledge and a reverence for the material they follow. This is good for marketing, after all - why would anyone want a Batman game made by people who don't know who Batman is? As it stands though, this assurance is just an empty promise. All these winks and nods only demonstrate why the creators of 'Arkham Asylum' should be better at their jobs than than they are.

“For all the stern and the baterangs, you're just a little boy in a play-suit...” 

The game's story, by the legendary Batman author Paul Dini no less, is surprisingly slight, a slave to the compulsory action at the forefront of the experience. The game controls very well and the combat is dynamic and fluid. Batman clears gangs with ease, through not only physical force but also stealth and scare tactics. The combo system is well balanced and the fighting mechanics are strong enough to sustain additional challenge modes auxiliary to the story. For the first time in modern gaming, a player can feel like Batman in a fight.

This is truly great, but has been exaggerated by critics to mean the game as a whole is exceptional. The fights are and should be just part of a fully-rounded Batman adventure, but this is where the game begins to strain. I had expected a story that walked between the eponymous 'Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth' graphic novel from 1989, and the 1992 Dini/Timm animated series. In the surreal novel, Arkham is taken over by the inmates, lead by The Joker, who challenges Batman to escape the building as his old enemies stalk him through the dark. As he confronts them, we learn of the history of the asylum, it's founder and a dark secret.

This is not a million miles from the plot of the game, and is especially influential on the journals of Amadeus Arkham that can be found hidden around the compound. But where these images and ideas are the centre of the novel, in the game they are merely ornaments. As I said, the story is a slave to the heavy action. As such, the motivations of the main characters are disappointingly thin – Joker wants a super-soldier formula to make Hulk-like goons for himself. Cue more fights with bigger and bigger guys, until the final boss where you fight the biggest guy of all. In this way the game is still very much a “game”, even in the modern era where games are increasingly enjoyed as interactive story-telling. With what could have been a great opportunity to tell a different kind of Batman tale, developers Rocksteady barely tell a Batman story at all.

In the end the game lack a clear narrative focus. Too many enemies are included just to ensure enough boss battles, their characters unimportant in the game's purpose of providing things to punch. My favourite sections, which are far too few, involve Scarecrow-induced hallucinations. These scenes are evocative of games such as 'Eternal Darkness' or 'Silent Hill', and show a glimpse of what could have been had the developers shown more determination to explore the themes and ideas of Batman and not just his fighting style.

This doesn't make the game “bad”, at least not in comparison with so many other games at the moment. The 'Metroid' play style of upgrading and backtracking works for Batman, but the game also forces it's own spin on the 'Scan Visor', which puts a blue filter over the nice looking environments while you follow bright orange paths from section to section, all in the name of “detection”. This kind of faux-detective work and problem solving is less successful at making the player feel like Batman, as you just tend to follow the numbers in a linear fashion. This wouldn't have been as annoying had the mystery being told been engrossing and character driven, but given how it all is eventually about fighting the next big muscle dudes, it just stands out as tedious.

As a combat driven action game, 'Batman: Arkham Asylum' does indeed benefit from using rich characters who are part of a mythology that has been crafted over decades. However, it never transcends itself as a 'Video Game', and fails to use these characters as anything more than skins to decorate a strong but shallow entry in the dated beat-em-up genre. In it's best moments it escapes this drudgery and tries to use better gaming conventions, such as surreal horror, to explore the character of Batman. However these sections are but side-quests, novel distractions from the main goal of punching people hard in the face. It's hard to recommend the game to actual fans of Batman. It has nothing to add to the character or the mythology, and fails to even revive and re-frame a classic tale. It is a fun action game that involves Batman, which for fans of repetitive fighting who like Batman will probably be enough. For me, it is proof that a good Batman came could be made, but alas such a game has not been made yet.

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