Batman: Arkham Asylum

Playtime: 15 Hours

Finished 31 January 2025.

Played on the Steam Deck, which ran it perfectly fine using Proton GE despite it being listed as Unsupported. Played on Normal difficulty and reached 80% completion total, obtaining all 20 equipment upgrades and finding 209/240 collectibles. I'm not planning to finish out the collectibles or challenges, and there are no other story expansions so there's nothing else worth doing in postgame either.

This is the first of the Rocksteady Batman Arkham games, and it definitely leaves a lasting impression - it's not hard to how this game earned its legendary reputation. Chasing a relatively similar tone as Nolan's Dark Knight film trilogy, the story of this game is quite serious and very dark, especially when considering the implications of Joker's goal of contaminating Gotham's water supply with the Titan virus. This is reflected in the overall aesthetic of the game as well - the entire game takes place on the island on which Arkham Asylum is built amidst an inmate revolt started by the Joker & his gang, which is a perfectly creepy and oppressive setting.

One of the things I appreciate most about this game is its scale and pacing. As can be inferred from my playtime, the game as a whole isn't actually very long - and keep in mind I spent some extra time near the end of the game to grab some additional collectibles to get all of the suit upgrades before Joker's party. Much of this is fundamentally limited by the scale of the world - as the first game in a new series, developed by an unproven studio, it's quite natural to assume a limited budget and tight timeline on its development. It's very fortuitous in that regard that Arkham Asylum ended up being a perfect setting, providing a perfect backdrop for the atmosphere and the presence of the villains encountered. And despite the massive roster of villains you face, including the likes of Harley Quinn, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, and of course the Joker, all of them feel like very real threats without overstaying their welcome.

The gameplay is generally quite smooth but definitely not perfect. It follows a pretty typical action-adventure gameplay style, with combat perhaps reminiscent of the God of War games. Combos are pretty simple, and combat flow relies heavily on the use of timed counters to flow between enemy-to-enemy. Other games of this style with more polish are pretty common nowadays; you can see its influence in the PS4/5 Spiderman games, for example. Keeping in mind that Arkham Asylum is a 2009 game, it's remarkable how well the game handles Batman's movement between enemies - for the most part, dodging and countering feels very responsive, and hits have a very satisfying impact. Unfortunately, as fights become larger in scale, I started to notice how the combat system kind of begins to break down a bit - auto-targeting begins to fail regularly and counters don't register properly (for some reason) when fighting a giant mob as opposed to an isolated 2-3 man group. I think it was a bit of a mistake for them to have a couple of the bigger fights at the end, which kind of weakened my impression of what was otherwise a very functional system.

The other half of the gameplay consists of the stealth and exploration - note that this is a semi-open world game. It's not quite as free as Spiderman, yet not quite as linear as God of War. You're given a pretty small world to explore, with Arkham consisting only of three major overworld areas and several levels. Over the course of the game, Batman finds upgrades to his gear that not only help in combat, but are also vital for traversal or for revealing locations - kind of like a Metroidvania, but where all the important upgrades are gathered automatically during the story. This means that some of the collectibles are unreachable when you first enter some areas, encouraging you to go back and explore later on in the game - note that things are paced quite well, so there's lots that you can collect as you play through normally too. Batman's kit also assists somewhat in stealth and alternative takedown methods - explosive gel can be used to blast walls and ceilings to knock people out, and various upgrades can be used to distract or otherwise take down enemies within a group. There are several motivations for stealth section given in the game, with a big one being how they handled the threat of enemies with guns - they are extremely dangerous (given that Baman is wearing Spandex) yet quite limited in number, since most inmates haven't broken into the arsenal yet.

It's pretty obvious what the story of a game like this would be, and it's probably not worth going into too much detail about each villain you encounter here. In general, I think their portrayal in this game is very true to their characters (with perhaps a darker twist than usual); since I don't have much interest or knowledge about superhero or supervillain storylines, I really can't say more than that. Batman is a pretty empty slate in this game on the other hand, tending to be very direct and businesslike in all of his interactions with other characters; this game doesn't really examine his character or personality in too much depth, other than some hallucinations during the Scarecrow sequences about his early childhood that are quite familiar to anyone with any knowlede of Bruce Wayne's background.

Initially, it took me a little bit of time to properly warm up to this game, but I really enjoyed it after I started getting the hang of things. The quality of the game is very consistent and I really like the atmosphere of the Asylum. There's this creepy but not outright scary vibe that I get from this game that sells a feeling of danger that Batman is able to face up against. It's kind of worth noting that the inmates also get scared when Batman starts picking them off, so the atmosphere goes both directions in this game. With a bit of time to desalinate from the endgame encounters, I really find it difficult to talk smack on pretty much anything in this game other than perhaps a minor lack of polish, which is easily forgiven. I'm very much looking forward to playing the rest of the games in the series down the line.