With just over two weeks left until release the Batman: Arkham Asylum : The Game hype engine is now operating at maximum RPM spinning its brass wheels and leather fan belts at such velocity that the very earth around the monstrous wrought iron contraption has begun to vibrate. As part of the press push along with a surfeit of new video content and the announcement that the special geek edition will come with a replica Batarang ( no really ) the official game demo was released for all platforms yesterday–PS3 and Xbox360 users will find it nestled in the annals of their console’s respective download service and PC users can get it here or here .
Needless to say I have played the demo in question and I feel the powerful need to write slash unreservedly nerd out over it. And since there’s no one else here Internet that shit’s on you.
In the many many videos he’s interviewed in Game Director Sefton Hill talks about how his main goal has always been creating a game that honours Batman both as a character as well as a cultural icon. He’s taken many steps toward this namely hiring DC Animated Universe Mastermind (and current scribe of DC’s Detective Comics line) Paul Dini to pen the game’s story and dialogue as well as bringing in dozens of martial arts experts to motion capture "hundreds of hours" of animations that will lend some believability to the Caped Crusader’s status as the world’s greatest martial artist. Still while hiring pros to nail the aesthetics of the game is a big step in the right direction games’ primary expressive tool is interactivity and all the well-written dialogue in the world couldn’t help a Batman game succeed if the player’s interactions with the gameworld didn’t feel distinctly Batman-esque. Fortunately for you Bat-fans it’s the demo’s tremendous ability to communicate Batman’s essential Batmaniness that has my brain secreting such viscous rich nerd juices.
Firstly it should be said that despite Dini’s influence the story sections that were shown in the demo didn’t do very much for me. The voice acting is uniformly superb (DCAU vets Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamil return to voice Batman and the Joker respectively) but the dialogue is pretty ordinary comicbookey exposition. The Joker is unambiguously evil Batman is good but kind of scary Commissioner Gordon is avuncular and competent. No surprises. The introduction is quick and punchy and the game doesn’t waste too much time before it lets you start being quick and punchy with criminals’ faces. This is where the game starts to show itself as something potentially very special.
For one thing the incidental dialogue in the game is much improved over the longer scripted scenes it opens (and closes) with. The asylum inmates (who have overpowered the guards and are now under the Joker’s command) chat idly with one another when they don’t think you’re around and whisper nervously when they know you are. At one point two prison guards are gunned down in front of you before you can kick a ventilation grating off and their brief exchange with their antagonists is appropriately chilling. It all adds up to the one thing Asylum does better than anything else: Atmosphere.
The game itself seems to be split into three different modes representing three different aspects of Batman’s character: "Detective" mode "Invisible Predator" mode and "Combat" mode. Each gameplay style is seamlessly integrated allowing the player to switch between the three depending on the context. See a bunch of cowardly superstitious criminals who haven’t gotten their daily dose of face punches? Run in and start cracking skulls. Did one of those criminals happen to have a machine gun you didn’t see? Flip on the cowl’s built-in "detective vision" and an overlay drops down over the world highlighting enemy status points of interest like weakened walls or ventilation gratings and objects in the environment that can be grappled to for a quick getaway. Once you’re safely out of the fray and hunkered in the shadows you’re effectively in "Invisible Predator" mode allowing you to stealth around picking off enemies by tossing batarangs sneaking up and smothering them in your Bat-pits gliding down from a high place to deliver a swift two-foot kick to the chest or the always-awesome hanging upside down from a gargoyle and snatching up someone foolish enough to wander underneath you only to leave them hanging there by one ankle (otherwise known as the AAHUDFAGASUSFEWUOLTHTBOA).
The first of these systems we’re introduced to is combat and it’s here that the incredible attention to detail Hill and his team have put into the game is the most obvious. Though more moves supposedly unlock throughout the game combat is handled mostly by three buttons. There’s the attack button the counterattack button and the menacingly swing the bat-cape to temporarily stun an enemy button. As you pummel one enemy their friends won’t politely wait for you to finish and blue lightning bolts will appear over their heads briefly as they attempt to sucker punch you allowing you to counterattack. Hit the button in time and Bats will dynamically counter whatever it is that enemy was trying to do. Usually this amounts to a quick block-punch block-kick or block-elbow move but depending on what the enemy was doing it can get a lot more intricate. In the demo this is limited to the hight and angle of attack determining what counter animation will be played but even then the combinations–and the fluidity with which Batman transfers between them–seem endless. Here’s a video of Sefton Hill describing how the technology works:
Batman: Arkham Asylum Exclusive ‘FreeFlow Combat’ Walkthrough
Though the dynamic (and really really fun) combat goes a long way to empowering the player its hardly the game’s most effective communication of what its like to be the dark knight. The second–and most prominently showcased–feature of the demo is the invisible predator mode and it’s here that we really see how effectively Hill and co. can express character through the language of interaction. Batman is a superhero sure but he doesn’t have any supernatural powers and taking a burst of gunfire to the face or a shank to the ribcage is a sure way to instantly send him along to an untimely bat-grave. By making Batman is so powerful in certain situations and so vulnerable in others what developers Rocksteady have managed to do is subtly guide the player toward approaching situations the way Batman would in the comics organically generating action scenes that afford the player total control over the bat-avatar while maintaining the impeccably crafted sense of place and character. Even those without much interest in the comic books will find themselves stealthing around picking off the high-priority targets one by one and generally behaving as Batman does not out of the desire to role play but because that’s simply the most effective way to approach the game. Here again is a video of Mr. Hill showing rather than telling:
Batman: Arkham Asylum ‘Extended Silent Knight Challenge Room Walkthrough’ video
The third and so-far the most tightly guarded feature of the game is the detective mode. In the demo it’s mostly used to find the weirdly ubiquitous gargoyles that Batman perches upon (do you really need a special vision mode to find a giant stone monster indoors batman?) or to track enemy movements through walls. Other uses have been hinted at for months but Rocksteady have been keeping pretty mum about the details. The gadgets on display so far seem to be more of the quasi-realistic variety endemic of the Nolanverse or the quasi-science fiction of DCAU (sorry no shark repellent) though the PS3 exclusive Joker challenge maps look as though they may have some nuttier toys to play with.
In addition to the hilarious gargoyle overpopulation the only other problem with the game that’s immediately apparent from the demo is the strange way that faces are animated when character’s speak. It could just be because everyone in the game looks like they eat trucks for fun but when their lips move it looks oddly like the skeletal version of the Terminator trying to recite the Jabberwocky .
The only other potential foibles come from over-speculation. Which because I can’t think of any other way to conclude such a monstrous amount of gasbagging I will do now: Will the designers be able to keep inventing challenging enough scenarios that as Batman’s skills develop throughout the game the impeccable balance between threat and power stays constant? Will the boss fights reflect the unique combat or will they devolve into battles of health bar attrition? How many friends will I lose as a result of unprovoked batarangings? The answers to these questions and more in a couple weeks same Bat time same… Oh god enough already. August 25th.
