Batman: Arkham Asylum

One negative thing you could have pointed out from what we said so far about this wonderful game is that it would take you 9 hours to beat it. Yes sure, that could be a negative. But look at the bright side. After beating the game once, maybe twice if you decide to play on the hard level you have many other things to do here. First you have the riddles to go back and solve. Finding them all and solving them could take you quite some time.  For all you achievements/trophy hunters, yes some of the rewards here are linked to how well you solve your riddles. Next, you have the impressive combat challenge rooms. Using scenes from the game itself, you are put against multiple enemies over a certain amount of time to see how well you can do. The bigger your combos and score, the higher you will be placed on the online leaderboard and so on. An exclusive addition to the PS3 version of the game is the Joker as a playable character in the challenge mode.

We lost count how many times Batman: Arkham Asylum impressed us visually. The graphics in the game itself and cut scenes are just straight out impressive. Batman and his suit are highly detailed, and the same can be said about all the other characters in this game. Slowdowns and lag are nonexistent even if over ten characters are going after you in one room. Playing both versions of the game, we can say the 360 version looked slightly better but overall the difference is too small to really point out during every scene. Oh and to make you PS3 fans a little more happy, the Dual Shock 3 was our preferred controller playing out this game.

Moving on to the sound department, words cannot possibly describe how impressed we are with this game’s sound capabilities. First off the voice acting is a work of art. The Joker actually comments about any progress you make in the game and hearing him giving guards hints while you hide in the dark is just an experience every gamer out there should try out. And it’s not just about the variety here; the quality of each and every line is excellent.  Some of the Joker’s lines actually made us crack up, something we rarely do playing a game (Hint: Batman! What is your biggest fear?) Other than that, the sound track manages to set up the rest of the game pretty well. In a nutshell however, the last time we were so impressed with a game’s sound was two summers ago playing BioShock.

To be honest, and after making that last BioShock comment, we really do feel the developers of this game had played the hell out of that 2K games masterpiece. Some of the rooms around the island really reminded us of environments we saw and loved in BioShock. Add that to the crazy people running around, the hospital theme, collecting tapes and you have yourself a big daddy look alike in Batman himself.

Summer is not usually the gaming season. Each and every year the only thing we hear about in summer is big announcements and the launch of a new Madden. Well it is safe to declare that this gaming summer just ended with a bang. Batman: Arkham Asylum is not just the best comic game ever, the game actually managed to rank high in our best games of all time list.  Whichever system you own and regardless of your gaming budget, the Dark Knight’s latest adventure is not one to be missed.