Batman: Arkham Asylum
There was a time when seeing Batman on the front of a game box was about as welcome as discovering your blind date was Killer Croc. Batman starred in some truly awful games on PS2, and after a promising-looking open-world game based on Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was sadly cancelled, it started to look like ol’ Bats was cursed to never star in a classic videogame ever again.
But then, like a grown man in a chiroptera costume suddenly diving from the sky to save the day, developer Rocksteady swooped in with arguably the greatest Batman game ever: Batman: Arkham Asylum. “Still the best Arkham game in my opinion,” raves reader Nicholas Thieme. “It was almost a horror game thanks to the fantastic atmosphere, story, and cast. To me, it’s the perfect Batman game.”
A hot take worthy of Firefly? Hardly, as our readers couldn’t wait to rave about this Bat-classic. “Amazing story and voice cast and the gameplay was magnificent,” says Sam Bean. “It made me love the Batman series again.” For the four readers who haven’t played it, what’s so good about it? Well, Batman has caught the Joker and has kindly escorted him to the infamous psychiatric hospital, wherein Joker finally gets the therapy he needs and becomes a stable member of societ… oh, wait. Actually, the Joker takes over the asylum and Batman is
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forced to take it back, fighting a series of iconic Bat-villains along the way.
Great combat, great stealth, great performances, great boss figh… well, actually, the boss fights are rubbish. But the rest of the game easily makes up for it. “Superb,” agrees Jon Gates. “City is still the definitive Batman game, with Asylum and Knight very, very close behind.”
Gamers debate this all the time: did this excellent series lose something when it became less linear? Some of our readers believe it was a necessary step to inspire some of the great superhero games we have today. “Batman walked so Spidey and Miles could run,” says Hear hear!
Cecil Davison.
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