Kiwi's Archive

A good demo that I hope cements the basis for the following games

The more I was playing the game, the more I kept thinking that Batman Arkham Asylum felt more like a demo for the following games, or that it was just a showcase for NVIDIA's newest PhysX (RIP) technology, rather than what the devs and designers fully envisioned. Don't get me wrong, it was a very nice and welcomed experience, but in the back of my mind I was always thinking, "Hey, this is cool! I want to see how they expand on it in the next game," or "This feels great; such a shame I don't get to use it more often," which means that the ingredients were there; the only thing missing was mixing them all up and letting Rocksteady cook for a little longer.

If we take gliding as an example, it feels great to use it. You feel as though you are the thing that criminals fear at night; you -the player- can feel how Bruce Wayne aura farms the night and criminals as he descends with no problem... for the two whole seconds that you get to properly use it. Levels don't have verticality; you are almost always in a tight corridor, and when you aren't, you are better off running from point A to point B instead of climbing a building to then drop down while gliding, because you'll miss out on exploration rewards on the ground or be exposed to gun-equipped henchmen who will shoot you down as if it was Bat-Season.

I can see what the devs and designers were aiming towards (a definite improvement and evolution of those classic arcade beat 'em up games with a -semi- open world and great movement tools) and I can't help but be excited for the following game. Though, while I was on stream I kept theorizing something along these lines:

"This game is good. 'City' will be the best for fans of the series. Knight and Origins will have the best gameplay, but the games will have been serialized so much at that point that they'll become somewhat repetitive. Still really good games, but they'll give off 'Assassin's Creed' vibes rather than a game designed with pure love and passion like the first and second ones were. And since NVIDIA killed PhysX, Rocksteady's suits didn't have any reason to greenlight a new Batman game."

And I sure hope I'm mistaken; I would not like a series that started so strongly to fall for the corporate serialization of art that's been plaguing the industry for the past decade.

So, if you want to know my opinion of it I think it is a good enough game for its duration. I don't think you'll be disappointed or regret playing it, but it will leave you with a somewhat bittersweet taste after finishing it, like getting a new jigsaw puzzle and seeing that the pieces are there and kinda fit, but they don't fully connect with one another. Sure, you can still see the big picture, but there are small gaps or cracks if you contemplate it for a second. The end product is really solid, but even then I cannot stop thinking that this was more of a demo than the fully realized vision that the director or devs intended. I seriously want to play the 2nd game -and following games- to see how they polished those jigsaw pieces to fit nicely and not only create what they intended in the first place, but expand on it.

If you are wondering why I think that, just keep reading. I don't think I'll be spoiling anything relevant here since the story is very simple. But if you want to give it a try yourself, there's links to the side so you can buy and try the game out on your favorite platform.

Any way, here's Wonderwall a dissection of what I think about this game.

Let's start with the easy topic: the writing.

I didn't have the chance to get excited about it. It was clearly aimed at people who were familiar with the comic books, not even the movies (of which I've only watched "Batman Begins", not even the entire trilogy), and I've only ever read one X-Men comic book, which isn't from the same company. So I will judge the writing through the lens of someone who has no other context for everything that's happening other than pop-culture knowledge and the sources that the game provides.^[1]

And let me tell you right now, it does not give enough or accurate information for my kind of people. If it wasn't for a viewer, Poison Ivy's powers wouldn't have been properly explained, as I thought that someone who likes men, or a demisexual, would be a better fit as her appointed therapist. With the audio logs and descriptions that the game provides, I understood it as, "She's very seductive, so she has people doing her bidding," and not what she really does, which is, "She gives off pheromones that only very strong-willed people can resist". One is physical attraction the other is more akin to chemical, almost imposible to resist attraction.

Same with Victor Zsasz. The audio logs where he's featured in and his description made him seem like a misogynistic maniac who wants to kill women... and then he is assigned a female therapist... whom he then stalks and tries to kill. Who... would've... thunk. In reality, he's just a maniac who wants to kill people, regardless of gender.

Other than that, the entire plot is laid out like as comic book. The Joker concocts a plan, so Batman tries to stop him. Joker and his goons kill some people, Batman beats up bad guys and discovers Joker's plans. He ruins those plans and then beats up the Joker. There's no character development, and the only "drama" occurs whenever Scarecrow is on screen. I think this structure is fine for this type of game. You are playing as Batman, not Bruce Wayne. Despite them being the same person, it doesn't make sense for Batman to be bawling about his dead parents. Also, the entire thing happens in a single night, so there isn't any room for sob stories. Time was not spent on the plot, and that's fine. As I've said before, Batman Arkham Asylum seems to try to be an evolution of beat 'em up games, not a narrative thriller. Speaking of beat 'em ups...

How does it feel to beat up bad guys in this game?

It's very satisfying. The punches, the parries, and the quick Batarangs all feel natural and easy enough to get used to while feeling powerful. Rooms filled with enemies can be underwhelming though. It turns what it could be a fantastic action-packed scene into an endurance test of how long you can pay attention for, since enemies won't attack you all at once and will politely wait for their turn to punch you.

I just wished there was more enemy variety. As it stands, this game has 7 enemies for the entire 12:22hrs that the game lasted for me. There are:

• Normal henchmen
• Stabby henchmen
• Electric baton henchmen
• Gunners
• Snipers
• Maniacs
• Titans

Snipers can be ignored for this discussion since they only appear in the hub section of the game and you can't really interact with them until you are at melee/Batarang range, in which case they just turn into normal gunners (gameplay-wise), so there are really six types of enemies.

Gunners aren't really used for beat 'em up sections since engaging in melee combat with them is literally bringing a punch to a gunfight, which means the Dark Knight will turn into "Dead to-Night" if you engage them head-first. They are mostly left for the stealth sections (which I'll talk more about later).

So that leaves us with five enemy types: henchmen, electric henchmen, stabby henchmen, maniacs, and Titans. The latter are reserved for boss fights... so four normal enemy types + a boss.

Accompanying those five enemy types, Batman also has five main combat movements: the ol' trusty Batarang, a punch, a parry, a stun, and an evade.

• Normal henchmen can be put down by just punching them. You don't think; you just press a button. Unless you see blue lightning over their head. In that case: no thought, only parry.
• Stabby henchmen can only be attacked after stunning them. If you try to attack them while they are not stunned, they will parry you and counterattack. And let me tell you, they hurt a lot.
• Electrical henchmen carry an electric baton. If you try to hit them, even when they are stunned, they will block you and stun you for a second. You have to evade over them to punch them from behind.
• Maniacs are more akin to wild animals than henchmen. They will wait around a corner to get the jump on you and try to asphyxiate you. You can parry them before they get to you and just finish them off while they are on the ground.
• Titans are this game's bosses. They are huge brutes who'll grab bodies off the ground to throw them at you, only to then get angry and charge toward you themselves... until you blind them with a Batarang and they stun themselves against a wall. They will incapacitate enemies for you and they are always the same throughout the entire game, even in the final battle.

Notice how I didn't mention anything about items? Or the interactivity of the environment? Or any other classic beat 'em up gameplay elements? Enemies can pick up weapons from defeated foes, but you -the player- cannot. You can only steal a weapon when you parry and trigger the animation, only for Batman to then discard the weapon, even if it was just a rusty pipe. There are some instances where the environment plays a part in how you engage in combat, but it's in very limited instances. Maybe an electric door or fence and that's it. The exception being Harley Quinn's Arena. That level had an electrified floor that kept switching on and off in different sections. But again, that's an exception, not the rule.

If it's an evolution of the beat 'em up genre, then how come it has stealth?

As we all know, Batman's whole shtick is that he doesn't kill, so going up against five armed enemies is committing suicide. To bypass this, the game provides a couple of stealth sections which are some of the, if not the best, I've had the pleasure to play (despite getting my ass kicked multiple times).

A bit of a rant here: I love the theory behind stealth games. Nothing feels better than the tension of hiding in the shadows while trying not to be caught. That feeling of being an unseen source of terror for enemies as you either kill or incapacitate them is amazing. It's like sneaking toward the fridge to eat that last slice of pizza without anyone noticing, or playing a game of tag at night. That being said, games don't usually achieve that feeling.

The most common sentiment that I remember while playing a variety of games stealthily is the feeling of uncertainty, not of my skills but of the terrain. Knowing the patrol patterns of enemies is easy; just observe for a few seconds and learn. But learning your environment is the hardest part. You never know what's around the corner. Is there a hallway with an enemy facing toward that lone dude? Idk, but fuck it, let's go for it before that other dude turns around... Oh shit, I've been seen. No time to think, run! Go into the room and exi... it's a dead end.

Some games do give you an ample chance to learn the environment, such as Hitman or the first level of Rise of the Tomb Raider (just the first level tho), where you can leisurely walk wherever you want before putting any plan into action. But other games, such as Dishonored ^[2], don't seem to have any other way to learn the scenario other than "fuck up and reload, lmao", which can break immersion and cause frustration despite perhaps being the intended way to beat certain levels.

All this is to say that Batman Arkham Asylum didn't set out to be a pure stealth game. But they succeeded at doing stealth sections. With Batman's detective vision, you can see through walls, so you know where enemies are at all times^[3]; you also see the entire level layout, eliminating one of the hurdles I just mentioned. However, after one or two takedowns, the Joker (who's in control of every camera in the Asylum) will alert his goons that some of their comrades have fallen and give the exact point where you last were. This triggers a new side to the stealth sections, turning a simple "I go there, they don't see me, take him down, who's next?" into an exhilarating "Okay, now they are all grouped up and have weapons... I need to separate them. Learn their movements and not get caught," which sounds a lot more like a puzzle game than a stealth game. That is what makes Hitman, the first section of Rise of the Tomb Raider and these sections so much fun for me. You have the ability to overcome the odds by being patient. You have the knowledge of the layout. They fear you. They might be looking for you, but you are the intelligent hunter.^[4]

Unfortunately, while the stealth sections are easy to navigate and learn, the map as a whole wasn't. Many a time the level design didn't make it clear on where I had to go to to move the story forward.

The labyrinthic and oppressive design of the Asylum.

As I mentioned in my opening statement, this game primarily takes place in tight corridors. Even the camera feels intentionally claustrophobic, positioned at a close angle that I didn't particularly appreciate. I often found myself traversing levels while crouching, simply because doing so forces the camera to zoom out and provide a better view of the environment.

Navigating those hallways wasn't easy, that is to say that despite the game having an incredible grappling hook felling, an amazing glide and a fast zipline, traversing interior levels was incredibly slow and boring. If you wanted to go from one building to another, you'd have to walk the entirety of the building towards the exit, go into the hub -where you'll finally get to use some fun movement tools- and then go into the other building and get back to walking.

This is detrimental to backtracking, which is mandatory if you want to collect of all E. Nigma's (balls) trophies or read every Dr. Arkham document. "Marvel's Spider-Man" is a great example of how a decently big world can be fun to navigate when the movement is fun and engaging (I don't remember using the fast travel once during my playthrough). Maybe collecting backpacks is not your thing, but swinging from one building to another while you build up speed is fun on its own, the backpack at the end of the rainbow is just an excuse.

And once you got to that backpack you also had a marker to know where to aim your camera towards so you can see it and get it. Which leads me into a bit of a tangent here, but stick with me, it is related with the topic at hand.

I remember a debate on social media a few years back regarding the use of white / yellow paint in game design. Twitter experts argued that it dumbed down interactivity because it lead the player by shouting "Hey, go here!" or "You can interact with this, but not that!" I disagree with that sentiment. Visual markers are essential when interactive elements blend too a little to well into the environment. Depending on the art style, a lack of guidance can be incredibly frustrating; "pixel hunting" isn't fun, and the feeling of being lost in a simple labyrinth is even worse.

In more than one instance, neither the map nor the objectives were clear enough about how to exit a level or enter a building. I had particular trouble navigating the Greenhouse post Titan Poison Ivy. The opening in the floor wasn't obvious to me, and I spent about half an hour wandering in circles before giving up and duckduckgoing the solution.

Like 6 hours later I had to come back into the greenhouse and I confused the route that said opening made me take. I mistakenly thought I had to go back through the sewers and enter through that same floor opening, leading me to spend nearly an hour searching for a hole in the wall... Right. Beside. The entrance... Sure, this can be scaled down to "skill issue" and you might be right. But this entire section is to highlight my problems and my opinions, which are subjective and did have some issues with how the game presented its navigation, so it wouldn't be honest to ignore it. All this to say that...

The visuals of this game aged spectacularly.

I've recently played Tomb Raider (2013) and let me tell you, Batman Arkham Asylum looks way better while being four years older. The art style and direction really carry the game's graphics and push it to have a very distinct visual aspect. I do feel as though the color palette needed some more time in the oven. Sometimes it was too green, and a little variety in backgrounds or ambiances would've been nice, even for a single level (there definitely was an opportunity to shake up things in the Greenhouse and last levels).

Closing thoughts

There aren't any... I'm still very new to this and I don't know how to close this review. My TL;DR was placed at the very beginning of it, before I even began speaking about the writing.

Would I recommend the game? Of course. If you want to know more about what I deem a "good" game, I suggest you read "Why you should care about my opinion..." It's a small (or not so small) extract regarding how I evaluate media in general.

With all that said, I can't wait for Batman Arkham City and see how they've expanded on everything I just mentioned. I'm sure it'll be a great game.

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1. Though, midway through my gameplay I did read some of the comics that my grandad left me before he died: Year One, The Man Who Laughs, The Eye of the Observer, Year Two, Mortal Cycle (the one with the Reaper), A Death in the Family, A Lonely Place of Dying (holy! I just realized I've read a lot...), Azrael's Sword, and I just started the Knightfall series with Bane's Revenge. I plan on reading The Killing Joke and Watchmen (1986). Some titles might be off because the comics were in Spanish. ↩︎

2. I've not played the second game, and it's been a hot minute since I've played the first one so I could be misremembering ↩︎

3. This is akin to the "Ping" hack in Cyberpunk 2077. While stealth is an option in that game, I do like going in head-first with a shotgun and watch people fly away from the blast, so I don't have that much experience with it. ↩︎

4. Maybe recommended me similar games? ↩︎