Batman: Arkham Asylum

It took me a while to get around to playing this despite all the critical praise its received since release. The only thing I knew (and liked) about the game going into to was that its production had ties to excellent DC Animated Universe with Paul Dini writing the story and Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and Arleen Sorkin reprising their roles as Batman, the Joker, and Harley Quinn respectively from The Animated Series. While nothing special, the story does set the mood nicely. Batman defeats the Joker and sees him off to Arkham Island and to the famous Arkham Asylum itself, going so far as to actually help escort the Joker into the intensive treatment center in the facility. However, Joker breaks free, overrides all of Arkham's security systems and essentially takes control of the entire facility. Knowing that Joker has more sinister intentions on his mind other than taking over Arkham, Batman ventures into the madhouse to set things right all the span of one crazy night. There's a definite Bioshock vibe to the game in terms of tone and world layout. There's attempts to frighten you with scripted sequences and environment details, audio tapes scattered around and tablets that fill in the story along with a creepy villain calling the shots behind the scenes.

The actually gameplay is very fitting of Batman. Sometimes you have direct encounters with the enemies but other times you use stealth tactics to take out the enemies without being seen. For the direct encounters you usually face thugs with baseball bats, cattle prods, knifes or their bare hands for weapons. When you fight these thugs you try to build up a combo. Every time you finish of a whole pack of thugs you always get an awesome moment where batman slowly K.Os the last enemy in slow motion. For the stealth encounters Batman uses his special array of gadgets to slowly knock out his enemies 1 by 1. Some of the weapons/gadgets include sonic, remote control, triple, double and regular batarangs, bat claws, explosive gel and a grapple gun. You use these weapons in a variety of ways to defeat your foes. Another cool way to defeat the foes is to attack them silently from behind. It really succeeds in making you feel like Batman and not just from the superhero aspects but from the detective aspect as well. It could've been fleshed out a little more, but checking out crime scenes for evidence and following trails with your "Bat-applications" is pretty cool.

The detective part is also where the game's collect-a-ton comes in. The Riddler has left a ton of things around the island for you to track down and riddles to solve and its a hell of a lot of fun to do. A lot of the riddles require more advanced equipment than you have when you first see them to get them, adding a metroid-equse layer to gameplay. The only real downside to game is the boss battles. Most of them feature really strong henchmen charging you. They're all beaten in the same manner and most of them employ that age old cheap-ass tactic of sending waves of regular enemies at you for no reason other than to get in the way. Other than that the game is handled extremely well. Arkham Asylum looks absolutely gorgeous, with art direction that easily rivals the best out there. The facilities and buildings of Arkham Island are expertly designed, ranging from high tech areas to gothic structures. Character models are highly detailed and I like how Batman becomes more and more beat-up as the game progresses and it shows on his suit and cape. The experience I had with the game was one of better I've had from the current generation of games and I only wish I would have played it sooner.