Batman Arkham Asylum from a distance was a game that delivered mixed feelings for us at MSXbox-world, it gave us an inclined interest with its ever so fluid and quick combat animations, yet pushed us aside a little with its twist on the classic comic book setting; we were hoping for some Christopher Nolan inspired musings. However, now that we’ve gotten over that, there was one thing we were all sure of, and it was that we hadn’t seen a Batman release for a long while, so it was only natural to be curious.
After a good couple of hours play through on two of the versions – the Xbox 360 and PS3 version, there will also be a PC version available – our curiousness had somewhat been replaced with unsurprised excitement and uncertainty. But as an overall clarification, we were pleased on how it has turned out.
Like some of the gameplay trailers you may have witnessed, the combat is as focused, swift, and well paced when playing, however, most of the curiousness was upon how we’d actually be able to pull off all these moves. On one side, the game could contain a number of complex button combinations, and you’ll be fumbling with the buttons to play the game properly, whereas on the other side it could be overly basic with literally pressing just one button and having the game doing everything else for you. Well, thankfully, Rocksteady Studios have realised this, and they’ve found a good go between to make the setup please everyone, at least mostly.
To allow batman to do his thug to thug battle dance, all you have to do is press ‘X’ continuously, and use the analogue to throw your moves in that general direction. That’s the easy part, and then on top of that you’ll be forced to press ‘Y’ to parry of and/or counter enemy attacks coming your way. So, that is the basic combo to do what looks like the most complicated process in a videogame ever, however, if you want to gain even better combos and take enemies out quicker, you press a ‘light’ – light as in, no more than three buttons at a time – button combo move which allows you to do more fancy things, like disarming enemies or finishing them on the ground. As the game progresses you’ll unlock extra moves.
The thing that makes this game so sophisticated is that you can make the game as hard or as easy as you want it to be, and it doesn’t have to be impossible to progress the story.
If you’ve followed this game at all, then you’ll know much of it takes place in the Asylum itself. On show at the event, they allowed attendees to play from the start of the game until a cut-off point, and some of the game’s featured challenge maps.
The first element we got to try out was one of the early challenge maps, making it straight into the deep end for us. The idea of these is to throw several waves of enemies at you in a small room until the next round, and so on, and they consistently get tougher. It doesn’t last too long, as it can be over very, very quickly, if you don’t follow your moves on quickly enough then you can be caught off guard causing a combo break. Now, we found quickly enough that it’s easy enough to press ‘X’ and the odd ‘Y’ button over, and over again, so wanting to be daring and use some of the advanced combo techniques that flashed on the screen tending to taunt us every now and again. Although, every time this was attempted, we either mistimed the combo or forgot the buttons to initiate it in the first place, as they flash up so fast, we’d waste enough time to be knocked out of sequence. So, it is a game that will take a bit more practice if you want to move on to the classy manoeuvres.
For the other part of the demonstration we had a hands-on play through of the campaign. The game starts abruptly, and gets to the point of why you’re at Arkham Asylum and how everything just goes wrong. Highlighting the basics is you’ve captured the joker and you’re about to transport him to the psychiatric hospital, what you didn’t know is that the Joker has conjured up a trap for Batman once he's reached his destination ending up with the Joker being set free and making you trapped, typically inside the hospital where all the other criminally insane lie. This is where you’re let loose to primarily stop the Joker, yet overcome the unfortunate obstacles that are bound to sway your objectives on the way.
It was nice to see that the tutorial had been built into the actual storyline, and you weren’t traversing through some sort of bat cave type assault course, as that’s an uncreative and un-enjoyable way to learn how to play the game when you want to just jump straight into the action. Starting off in a boarded off room with a load of gated cells and the Joker on the other end just taunting, and before we knew it we were dancing around the floor knocking goons to the floor, exciting stuff. This was pretty useless however, as we knew all the basics from the challenge map.
Upon an electric fence opening, which the Joker happened to be hiding behind at the time, we worked our way through a short corridor to another quick and fulfilling cutscene.
What was showcased, and the small taster of story that we received, the cutscenes were over with quickly. This is thankfully a good thing, because some of the voice-overs weren’t up to standards, especially from the random characters you bump into through your stay at the asylum,although Batman himself was voiced marginally better.He came across slightly too robotic in emotion; however, we’re more than certain the rest of the game will make up for it as his dialogue expands.
Our short but sweet hands-on demonstration of the campaign wrapped up nicely with the introduction of the stealth/predator mechanics that were also very promising. Jumping high from gargoyle to gargoyle, watching enemy patterns, and using the handy investigation view which allows us to track allies from enemies, enemy stats, and even enemy anxiety levels. At opportune moments, gliding down, taking out an isolated enemy, then flying back up high, repeating this until all the enemies had been taken out. Although seemingly repetitive, there were several other ways to eliminate the enemies by leading them into traps, such as setting off miniature explosives as enemies walked by, and causing enemies to scream and/or fire allowing you to take out a few before moving on.
It was refreshingly different from simply taking out every enemy you see in an instance, splitting the gameplay in two almost.
There were parts of the game we hadn’t experienced, but instead witnessed briefly such as some CSI inspired moments where you can assess a scene for any signs using the same investigation view mentioned earlier, this enables you to sniff out clues around the playing area allowing progression of the plot in finding someone, or working out a situation.
This seemed definitely interesting, however we did question the pacing and the effect it will have on the rest of the game, which we’ll most likely find out on its release date.
We're very much looking forward to seeing how all these elements will slot into place, and how the story shapes itself on Batman Arkham Asylum’s final release date of August 25th 2009. You should save the date as Batman fans and those looking for some decent action gaming will have their bat hands well and truly occupied come launch.
Preview By: Lee Burton
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