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My Thoughts on Batman: Arkham Asylum [PC Version]

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[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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