My grandson got me into this version of the Batman Arkham series. I had just completed Arkham City, and he brought over his Asylum and wanted to play. There is nothing creepier than an old asylum as a background to a dark game. No blood and guts or anything to speak of, but plenty of creeps. Joker is wheeled in for the 280th time, but escapes and wreaks havoc releasing all of the crazy's and of course all of his fellow criminals including his hot little babe, Harley Quinn. As is typical, the authorities are either taken out, or worthless, so its time to call in The Bat. Assignment, clean up the mess, and get all of the criminals back where they belong, including, Joker who is your main nemesis.



Artwork is really well done, lots of dark overcast and grey areas outside, and plenty of creepy dilapidated buildings to explore, clean up, and secure. As with all games, you start with the basics, basic fight moves, and a basic weapon. Batman typically does not have a lot of weapons at his disposal. In this game he is limited to a handful of the most useful tools, such as the Batarang, Double and Tripple Batarang, Bat Claw, Chemical Gun for dispensing explosive Gel, and the Cryptic Decoder. These you get as you play along into the game and reach certain goals. If course, these are needed to get into areas that you otherwise cannot get into without them and their special abilities. There are only a few upgrades, the multiple Batarang you first start with a double blade then advance to a three blade, and the Cryptic Decoder has a longer range capability upgrade. Most other upgrades are Suit related and fight related abilities. Still important, but not as many weapon upgrades as you would or will find in Arkham City.



Game play is standard fair for a Batman game. He must work within his weapon and physical capabilities. This is not going to be some 300 weapon, 200 different button combos to learn game. The game is based on using the basic Batman tools, less any vehicles, and his physical abilities. This is a welcome change for me personally. I like and prefer a game with limited button combo's and good game controls. I also prefer to not have to drive, fly and beat a clock. All of those annoying things are not in these Batman Arkham games. Controls are generally very straight forward. There are not as many combo's in this first of the series game as there are in Arkham City. Your pretty much limited to punching, and evading, but they designed the game to utilize the counter attack the most as opposed to fancy combo's. This may take some getting used to if you played Arkham City first, or are used to a lot of insane button pushing configurations. I only had trouble with the control features in one area. The Killer Crock Lair. The sight kept popping into zoom view when Crock would pop up behind me and I had to turn quickly. I tended to push the toggle a little as I move it and this was frustrating as Crock was fast and would kill me before I got things back and turned toward him. This area was poorly designed having a huge maze full of fast acting attacks with NO MAP. It was very difficult to find out which way to go as you had no time at all to stop and catch your bearings. Other than that area, I had no difficulty with any of the other areas in the game, and solving the puzzles and completing the challenges. Boss fights were tough enough for me, not a push over, but beatable if you learned the skills and obtained the upgrades as you played along.



The game designers made good use of the games environment. You have three main areas to work in and each one had a few buildings, in addition to two tunnels, and a cave system which included the Bat Cave. You will need to learn how to navigate between these areas, and some of them are not easy to get into without a lot of running around. But during game play there will always be challenges in each area, and they change each time your required to go to or through an area for the next task. So just because you cleared out an area once don't be complacent and think its going to be cleared the next time you enter it. This running back and forth may seem like repetitive and boring stuff, but its not because these areas do keep changing until you get to the end of the game. Then all areas remain clear and you can then go back and search for the collectables for the Riddlers Challenge and of course play the special challenges located iin the options menu.



The Riddlers Challenge is a basic challenge of collecting a group or group of objects hidden in the game by the Riddler. In Batman Arkham Asylum there are a lot of different hidden objects. They are Riddlers Trophies, Hidden Messages, Riddles, Patient Interview Tapes, and The Area Maps. Each area will have a hidden map that you can find that will reveal the location of all of the above collectables. Most of these you should have been able to pick up during the original game play. When you have this map for an area, you can look at your game map and these hidden objects will appear as Question Marks at their location. It does not tell you which of the objects they are though so you'll need to learn to know what to look for to give you a clue. Some of these are a little misleading. You can see a Question Mark on your map for example in the Medical Facility. But its in a location where there are multiple levels. You will not know which level the object is on, so you'll have to travel to each level and search. In the medical facility, this is easier said than done as the elevator is destroyed early on and getting up from the sub basement levels can be challenging. Collecting all of the objects for the Riddlers Challenge unlocks some goodies. I collected what I could as I played through, but just before the end, and the last Boss Battle with Joker, I took the time having collected all of the upgraded tools, and abilities, and went back to each area and collected all of the Riddlers Challenge objects.



Once you have completed the game and the Riddlers Challenge you can go to the options menu and choose the special challenges there if you like.



Over all I was very pleased with this game. I felt the game play was generally very good, and no areas outside of the Killer Crock Lair were considered ridiculously hard. All areas are accessible after you complete most of the game so you can go back and explore and find the hidden objects which was fun. These challenges were set up much better in this game than they were in Arkham City where getting to many of the Riddlers Trophies was more of a pain than it was worth. I found the game was just right as far as length, much more would have been dragging it out a bit, but a little less would leave you feel that you didn't do enough. If you like a good game with decent but not overly hard challenges and the stealth way of taking out enemies, coupled with the seek and find aspect of the game, you will enjoy this game a lot.