Batman: Arkham Asylum

[Moses Shuttlesworth]

Damn when are we gonna get a demo?

[Bornindamecca]

that's a damn good question, Moses.

[Tha_Kid]

iwantitiwantitiwantitiwantit

[Flawless]

New Eurogamer Preview

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On the one hand, there's something maddening about turning up to Eidos' Wimbledon headquarters to play Batman: Arkham Asylum and discovering that it's another two challenge rooms - self-contained, unlockable leaderboard-based action set pieces - that I'm here to play, rather than the single-player story mode itself. But on the other, there's something unusually reassuring about it: I'm desperate to play Batman: Arkham Asylum, a licensed superhero videogame. This may actually be a first.

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Relatively little has been said in public about how the story mode plays out, but we can infer a lot from the manner in which the challenge rooms are unlocked and the states in which you face them. There are 16 rooms in total, and some are opened up based on progress, while others become available when you collect a certain number of Joker teeth hidden around Arkham. Staggered between these will be other Brucie bonuses, which develop Batman's battlefield vocabulary through variation, physical enhancement and new gadgets. In other words, there are regular rewards, and they take some digging out.

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Close combat in third-person games usually goes one of two ways - complex hackandslash, or one-hit-killery - but Arkham Asylum is closer to capoeira, as Batman spins and pirouettes through the Joker's goons, following your analogue direction to a specific target and improvising the encounter based on a catalogue of contextual blows, providing you hit the single attack button within a certain window. Distance isn't a factor, and combos follow, counting up at the side of the screen. Complication stems from counters, the need to stun certain enemies with your cape-spin, and the availability of multipliers, throws and takedowns once you cross combo thresholds. Throws can be used to toss enemies over barriers or into electric fences, and the more elaborate takedowns bend backs and twist limbs to breaking point, the savagery of the spectacle matched ably by the grace of the animation and the wet crunch of fist and boot on muscle. Gadgets like the batarang and bat-claw trigger-button moves encourage experimentation, which is useful because you accumulate score bonuses for things like variety and avoiding damage. Both Combat and Invisible Predator feed into leaderboards, with global and friends filters, and the best scores will rely on those bonuses.

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You can travel between grapple points at surprising speed with a few stabs of the right bumper, so it's tempting to go for the most iconic kill, witnessed last month, where Batman hangs upside down and hoists the target from his feet, leaving him dangling by a cord, where he will attract attention and terrify the other henchmen. You can then encourage them to disperse by firing a batarang from afar to snap the rope, and hopefully notch up a falling-body kill in the process.

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But what's especially promising about Arkham Asylum is the things you don't immediately concentrate on as you compete for fast times and heavy combos: there's no slack in the economical controls, which allow you to dance around and disable enemies, and hunt with predatory poise through a minimum of button presses; the camera is right-stick controlled and seldom if ever gets in the way; and developer Rocksteady's use of the Unreal Engine not only articulates the steaming noir of Batmans of comic and screen, but delivers it with complete coherency. As a variation on the traditionally brutish Unreal aesthetic, it's stylistic enough to outstand lingering memories of both The Dark Knight and Gears of War, but polished enough to stand up to direct comparison. It is, overall, looking and feeling as significant as any other game we've previewed this year. So yes, we've long since overcome our scepticism of this as another licensed game, and even the tantalising reveal, focusing on short sections and piecemeal challenges, has enhanced the game's mysticism. Rights-holder Warner is keeping a tight leash on The Message, but whispers from those in the know outside Eidos cradle influences as diverse as Half-Life and Metroid. There is much that could yet deflect Batman: Arkham Asylum from comparable accolades, but what we've seen so far is certainly capable of scaling to these lofty benchmarks.

[Happy29]

Now can we get a good Superman game?

[Moses Shuttlesworth]

Quote: Originally Posted by bjowers29

Now can we get a good Superman game?

that would be sweet.

[Bornindamecca]

Quote: Originally Posted by bjowers29

Now can we get a good Superman game?

Probably not. Most people don't understand how to do Superman in any form. So they default to him fighting robots all the time.

[frostbyte06]

Quote: Originally Posted by Bornindamecca

Probably not. Most people don't understand how to do Superman in any form. So they default to him fighting robots all the time.

I've been wishing they would make a good Justice League game, if somebody did that right it would be cash cow.