Batman Arkham Asylum: Hands On

The most anticipated superhero game of all times is nearly here and we’re given a taste of things to come via a (painfully tiny) demo that’s available on XBL, PSN and GFWL. In all honesty, I wasn’t terribly impressed when I played through the demo for the first time. It was only when I went through it multiple times did I soak up all it had to offer.

The demo kicks off right at the start of the game with Batman checking the Joker into Arkham Asylum. Before any sort of celebration takes place, the Joker escapes captivity and flees deep into the asylum. You soon find out that this was a trap all along and now armed with your mad detective skills, you head right after him into the mouth of madness.

While pretty short, the demo allows you to try out a few of the game’s pivotal mechanics like the free flow combat system and stealth. You see while Batman is an ace fighter, he prefers getting the jump on his enemies especially when they’re wielding fully automatic weapons. By simply switching to an X-Ray mode, you can scope out an entire room in an X-Ray view and segregate the armed hostile from the innocent guards.

From then on you can choose your course of action be it a direct head on approach - that’s really not recommended - or a stealthy approach. By using your grappling hook you can latch onto stone gargoyles above and even swing from one gargoyle to another. While perched on one of them you can choose to simply glide down and kick them smack in the face or hang upside down to perform an inverted takedown. As and when you reduce the amount of enemies in a particular room, the rest of them start panicking and are more likely to make careless mistakes, making them easier targets in the bargain.

When not feeling particularly stealthy, Batman can deliver a whole world of pain, courtesy of the game’s Free Flow combat system; it’s simple, effective and looks really fluid (think Assassins Creed but only without a sword). To tackle enemies in different directions keep spamming the X button (the strike key) while pointing the analogue stick in those directions. When an enemy is about to strike down upon you, you’ll receive a quick prompt on-screen and that’s when you press Y to deliver a highly effective counter-attack. Beat them down enough and you’ll be able to take them down in a stylish slo-mo melee attack.

As and when you come across important enemies or friends you’ll automatically be updated with an entry in the Character Bio screen that sheds a bit of history on that character. This is very helpful for us Batman noobs who haven’t read every Batman comic made till date.

Arkham Asylum has been made using the Unreal 3 engine and it looks phenomenal. In fact Rocksteady has done such an awesome job of things, I didn’t even come across delayed texture loading synonymous with games using this engine. Character models are insanely detailed and Arkham Asylum itself looks magnificent, brooding and downright creepy at the same time. Controlling Batman with a controller is a tad better than using the mouse and keyboard and thanks to the game’s GFWL (Games for Windows Live) support, you can simply plug in your 360 controller and start kicking ass.

Even though I enjoyed the crap out of the demo there are a few things I didn’t care much for. For starters the game felt too simple and Batman felt insanely overpowering for his own good. But then again this was just one level so I’m guessing things will get stickier later on in the game. I wasn’t a big fan on the game’s camera as well that’s a bit too close to Batman – especially while he’s walking. And for some reason, there’s no option to pull it back also. Weird! And finally, perhaps the biggest disappointment stemmed from the fact that after playing the demo I realized I was going to have to wait for nearly two more weeks to play the game. Sucks even harder for PC gamers who have to wait till the 25th of September to play the game.

Either way I’m terribly impressed with what I saw and if this is an indication of things to come, Batman: Arkham Asylum is gonna be one hell of a game you really don’t wanna miss, Batman fan or not.