[Originally written on 2nd Jan 2020]
The game that got me hooked on to Batman.
I finished this game just as the first day of this year
ended, and it is safe to say that my perception of Batman and the world woven
around him by geniuses such as Chris Nolan, Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jeph Loeb,
Tim Sale etc. has been turned around on its head with the onset of the new
year. All credit to this game.
Earlier I didn’t regard Batman very specially, but after
having a close rendezvous with the Bat himself and the characters around him,
especially the villains, I realized I had been missing out on too much. I used
to make fun of the dark nature of DC movies, but I now understand that being
dark is DC’s biggest strength, and not just in movies but in comics as well.
Coming to the game, I’m so very glad that I played it. It
cast Batman in a new light for me. The game is near perfect. Much of this
previous comment may have been due to how easy it is to beat, but personally, I
have never been a big fan of difficult games. I was in the middle of Sekiro:
Shadows Die Twice when I finally decided to give it a break and have completed
two games since. So yeah, Arkham Asylum is easy, I’ll admit, but it more than
makes up for it in other areas, especially in the story and the experience. The graphics are really good, too.
What is really amazing is how the game makes you actually
feel like Batman. I felt so especially when I had to secure a room full of
armed goons without being detected. I would knock one out (Batman never kills
anyone), then swoop above them and disappear in the shadows while they would
roam about cluelessly below me.
Combat is really satisfying. The sound of batman’s punches
and kicks hitting the enemy, the slow-mo finishing moves, everything hits home
to create the Batman experience. I actually felt like a detective solving
Riddler’s puzzles and finding answers to his clues.
The environment and the levels were very beautifully
designed and amplified the feel of being on an isolated island, trapped amongst
insane, homicidal maniacs.
Music wasn’t bad, and shone in some places.
In many ways, this game did to me what the Ultimate
Spider-Man had done earlier. That game stayed true to the comics, had many
in-game merchandise that showed glimpses of Spider-Man as he has appeared in
the comic books, and the villains, their appearance and the story was also
heavily borrowed from the comics, unlike
all the other Spider-Man games I’d played before that (with the exception of
the PS1 game). Ultimate Spider-Man had also driven me to read the Ultimate
Spider-Man comics but not as much as Arkham Asylum did. This may be because I
haven’t explored the world of Batman as much as I had the world of Spidey at
that time.
Usually I take a break from a franchise by playing some
other game, and then returning back in order to maintain some variety. I played
Assassin’s Creed and haven’t visited the series since. I played Mirror’s Edge,
and left Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst for the future. I played GTA IV, and put GTA V
on hold. After Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, which I finished on
22nd Sep’19, this will be the first game franchise that I’ll play back
to back, with Arkham City being downloaded as I write. And I intend to finish
all 4 games in the series one after the other, while continuing to
familiarise myself with Batman and Gotham and the unique characters that
inhabit it.
And there we go…Arkham City just finished downloading.
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