A very genuine--albeit vanilla--love letter to the Batman franchise. Batman: Arkham Asylum marks the first time a game company successfully blends two (of three) Batman's main aspects of crime-fighting. Stealth, and hand-to-hand combat (implementing actual detective work that meant more than using a visual filter would be something explored more thoroughly in the sequels).
The story itself is fairly strong, and offers some great moments that rivals other Batman-related media, a particular highlight would be the hallucination segments when confronting The Scarecrow. The rogue gallery first featured in this game are also a delight and bare designs that aren't ashamed of its over-the-top comic book origins. Most notably Bane and Killer Croc (might be a weird thing to harp about, but seeing later DC-related games merely try to ape the live action films' designs is depressing to think about).
The combat is pretty simple as far as brawlers go, but the way it's designed emphasizes how much you have to get through confrontations relatively unscathed, as enemies can bombard you pretty easily, but it just takes focus, positioning, and decent reaction-time to overcome. The game somewhat rewards you for being stylish with your attacks, as it grants more upgrade points, thus unlocking your full potential sooner. Stealth maps are also fun as they can sometimes let you be creative at how aggressive or discreet you can be.
Speaking more on comic-like visuals, I love the HUD and menus. All these blank white canvases covered in a heavy-black imagery of Batman, and all the character profile portraits drawn by David Hego were fantastic as well. I love how they provided homages to nearly all of Batman's villains, and scanning them provided full character profiles complete with a beautifully detailed drawing. This emphasizes how much this was a love letter to the franchise, and perhaps they thought they should give these characters some love since Rocksteady likely had no idea how well the game would sell.
Topped off with a Metroid-like world design, this newly-pillaged Arkham Asylum is really fun to explore and find all of its secrets! There are certain aspects the sequels would manage to improve upon, but as a pure Batman game, I don't think this series ever reached the peak that was the beginning.
The story itself is fairly strong, and offers some great moments that rivals other Batman-related media, a particular highlight would be the hallucination segments when confronting The Scarecrow. The rogue gallery first featured in this game are also a delight and bare designs that aren't ashamed of its over-the-top comic book origins. Most notably Bane and Killer Croc (might be a weird thing to harp about, but seeing later DC-related games merely try to ape the live action films' designs is depressing to think about).
The combat is pretty simple as far as brawlers go, but the way it's designed emphasizes how much you have to get through confrontations relatively unscathed, as enemies can bombard you pretty easily, but it just takes focus, positioning, and decent reaction-time to overcome. The game somewhat rewards you for being stylish with your attacks, as it grants more upgrade points, thus unlocking your full potential sooner. Stealth maps are also fun as they can sometimes let you be creative at how aggressive or discreet you can be.
Speaking more on comic-like visuals, I love the HUD and menus. All these blank white canvases covered in a heavy-black imagery of Batman, and all the character profile portraits drawn by David Hego were fantastic as well. I love how they provided homages to nearly all of Batman's villains, and scanning them provided full character profiles complete with a beautifully detailed drawing. This emphasizes how much this was a love letter to the franchise, and perhaps they thought they should give these characters some love since Rocksteady likely had no idea how well the game would sell.
Topped off with a Metroid-like world design, this newly-pillaged Arkham Asylum is really fun to explore and find all of its secrets! There are certain aspects the sequels would manage to improve upon, but as a pure Batman game, I don't think this series ever reached the peak that was the beginning.