The joy of reviewing games as and when you play them rather than in a hurry for deadline is that you have time to actually finish the game completely (and there are a lot of reviewers that don’t), before sitting back, mulling it over, and finally saying exactly what you want to say.
The drawback of reviewing games as and when you play them is that the guys who wrote their reviews based on three lunch hours worth of play have already made all the good jokes, which is why I’m stuck withthe choice between Burt Ward ‘Holy Score Whore’ puns, or a wandering apologia as the style for this review.
I’m going with the apology. Why? Well, I previewed Batman: Arkham Asylum several weeks before it came out, after spending a few hours at Eidos HQ in Wimbledon with a preview code. Guess what? I got it wrong!Not hugely wrong, just a little bit wrong. A smattering of minor wronglets dusted throughout my preview. But still, wrong. Now I could pretend that it never happened and just write a fresh review here that extols all the same virtues everyone else has already banged on about, but I thought it would be more interesting to write a review that contrasts the impression I had from a two-hour preview with the impressions I had when I finally finished the whole game.
In my original preview I described the faux infra-red ‘Detective Mode’ that you use to hunt for clues as being ‘...too useful to turn off, yet having it on all the time gets in the way of the gorgeous graphics.’ It was a gameplay mechanic that got between you and the game...except it wasn’t. The slightly Metroid Prime nature of Batman: Arkham Asylum means that you’re frequently returning to previously played areas to do new things. On a two hour play where you’re seeing each area for the first time you seem to be using the Detective Mode constantly. On a full 10 hour playthrough you’ll find that familiarity with the environments limits your need for the goggles, and you’ll get to just enjoy the rippling capes and neon-gothic environments in their full glory.
I also said that the game feels‘strangely room-based’, as if it’s simply funnelling you down corridors to the next combat arena, essentially forcing you into the role of someone who has to play a series of mini beat-em-ups and has to commute to each one. Again, first impressions are totally misleading-sure, you walk through corridors to get to that initial brawl in the holding cell. Then you walk through corridors to get to the dust up in the Transfer Loop.You’d be forgiven for noticing that you’re wandering down linear pathways, emerging into broad areas full of people trying to kick your arse, then delving back into the corridors again. An uncharitable mind might feel like they’d been conned into playing a JRPG, albeit without the bumshots. But once you open up the whole island, once you’re fighting on rooftops, in sewer systems, atop guard towers and in greenhouses, graveyards and courtyard, that whole beat-em-up feel is replaced with an addictive mixture of exploration and combat.
Finally, in my preview, I predicted that the game was heading for three stars. The sort of score you give to a perfectly competent, enjoyable game that provides you with plenty of entertainment but doesn’t manage to get you in the guts, let alone take over your life the way the very best games do. Well, that’s where I was really wrong-Batman: Arkham Asylum is a five star game. Granted, not a top rung five star game the way Fallout 3 or Grand Theft Auto IV or Age of Empires II were, but I did find myself going to bed late and getting up early to squeeze extra game time in, and when a game makes you rearrange your time to make spare hours, that’s when it gets a five from me. Batman: Arkham Asylum not only made me rearrange my time, but it pulled off that rare coup-after I’d finished the main story, I put in an extra couple of hours to finish off the Riddler puzzles too.
So, what did I get right in my preview? Well, the combat is lively, fluid and animated with a wonderful degree of detail and variety, the set-pieces are marvellously inventive. The graphics and voice acting are great, the rain of achievements is perfectly pitched and there are a thousand tiny nods to all of Batman’s many incarnations in comics, films and on TV. Brilliant.