Console games don’t often do well on the PC. Some have but most tend to feel a little lost, the same can’t be said for Batman: Arkham Asylum. I don’t think I have ever played a Batman game before, the potential is brilliant but as we all know that doesn’t mean much when it comes to developing games. A demo has been released (a nice buck to the recent trend) and I have spent quite a bit of time playing it, so here’s a little write-up.
Arkham Asylum is very impressive visually, it uses Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 which gives great performance and impressive capabilities but it’s more than that, the developers have done a very good job of capturing the dark style of Batman and the levels ooze this style. On a performance note, it runs very smoothly (as does UT3) on my computer. At my native resolution (1680×1050) I was running on very high settings but no AA for visuals and normal PhysX levels, I was getting over 30FPS sometimes in the 40s when there wasn’t much action. The 8800GT is a great card, but it’s falling behind the newest cards by a fair margin and still I get great performance. It is slightly annoying that you cannot access the graphics options in the game, you have to run the launcher. XP has an icon in the start menu, but in Vista it makes good use of the Games section. I have dragged an icon onto my desktop and I can still access all the options by right-clicking.
The cut-scenes have been given a lot of attention in Arkham Asylum, some of the voice acting is brilliant. The first time I saw a trailer I didn’t think much of the voice of the Joker, but it seems that was either an early recording or just a poor set of lines because in the demo he was brilliant, Mark Hamill provides the voice of Joker. The other voice acting was also well done and the scenes did a good job of conveying the story, which revolves around Batman taking the Joker to Arkham Asylum only to find that the inmates are in control. It is a slightly predictable way of containing the action but the details make up for it.
Combat is simple but satisfying. Some will find the lack of depth off-putting but I found it fun, you do have some control, left-clicking performs an attack and you can use the arrow keys to direct Batman between multiple foes. Stringing together combos plays a big part, it’s not about performing preset moves though but keeping the action flowing.
If someone nearby is about to attack you, little waves flash above their head, right-clicking when this happens performs a counter attack. On it’s own this does very little damage but added to the chain I’ve already mentioned they add some very nice style to the fights as well as being a useful attack\defence. You see the fighting is dynamic, counter-attack when someone is about to kick you from behind and you catch their leg, doing the same when attacked from the front can change the way things play out and the more times you jump between opponents the more involved the acrobatics become. As I said it’s very satisfying. The opposition do suffer the common brawling pitfall of surrounding you before politely taking it in turns to attack but these fights tend to be just a small part of the rest of the game, so I don’t feel it matters too much. I have played through the demo several times (each time telling myself to stop or I’ll spoil the full game ) and found that it’s less a case of ‘how would you like to hit them?’, and more ‘who would you like to hit first?’. It flows a lot better if you relax and just deal with the situation rather than carefully plan your attacks, that comes later…
I have only mentioned the standard PC controls so far but as this is a console game, and more importantly a Games for Windows game, controllers are supposed to be very well supported. I do plan to buy one eventually and I do think it would slightly improve play, however that is being pretty harsh on the PC controls since they are excellent. As PC gamers we have suffered a lot at the hands of shoddy console ports, apart from the fact that Arkham Asylum does not seem to be going that way, they have still taken the time to get the PC controls right. The one part I don’t like is the combined Run, Action, Jump button, I would have preferred ‘run’ to be on Shift and the action button on spacebar (default), but as it is I just assigned it to shift and make do. One small part I don’t like. The game also features some minor button-mashing exercises, quite why I don’t know but they don’t happen very often so they never became annoying.
Batman isn’t all about the brawling though, he still takes the time to do a bit of detective work, hence the detective button. This activates Batman’s visual overlay which highlights specific areas of interest. Following a control box you can follow the cabling through walls, interactive objects are also highlighted as are people. When you first encounter armed guards their weapons show up as red, but after a short explanation the enemy show up as completely red for the rest of the game. Staying over a person for long enough will bring up a box with their statistics such as weapon (if any) and heart rate. When I first saw that it could tell the person I was near was nervous I thought maybe that would be a part of the game, attacking from all sides to scare them which would possibly lead to them shooting wildly in all directions, but sadly that does not happen. I spent a few minutes throwing batarangs at some guards (they didn’t leave their post which was a little silly) and nothing happened. In the demo detective mode doesn’t see much use beyond spotting enemies through walls (very useful) and identifying gargoyles.
The gargoyles play a large part in the stealth aspect of the game, providing you use your grappling hook to climb up whilst no-one is around they won’t see you while you’re up there. This is a slight let-down as it makes the game too easy, even if they spot you climbing up and start shooting all you have to do is swing to another quickly and they lose you again. They do help you perform some nice manoeuvres though, using your cape to glide silently into a guard gives you an open opportunity to take them out without anyone knowing, until they find the person unconscious. That was something I had forgotten about Batman, how he never kills anyone (although I’m sure there have been exceptions in the comic book series), quite how he maintains this controls whilst breaking every bone in their body I don’t know but it adds to the situation nicely. The other use for gargoyles is to hang from them, then all you have to do is wait until someone walks underneath and then you drop down and enclose them in your cape before dangling them from a rope. All of this, plus the normal action and silent takedowns if you sneak up behind someone gives you a reasonable amount of freedom, and if the trailer at the end is anything to go by there will be a few more options available.
Adding to the main game are several nice side aspects. Traditional stuff;
and also some nice viewable models.
This is the first game I’ve considered pre-ordering in quite a while, when I first saw the demo was out I didn’t think I’d bother playing it, but after reading some glowing comments I decided to give it a go and was very impressed. It’s a little lacking in some areas but the game has such atmosphere that I will almost certainly purchase it at some point, if not pre-release. The demo is available from Steam or various standard sites (I used this one), and if you would prefer to purchase it on one of the consoles I have read that the demo is available there too, I sincerely recommend you give it a go. On a side note, there is a collector’s edition available, which contains a rather dangerous looking batarang, I’ll be keeping an eye on the price of this in case it gets any better closer to release. Now if you don’t mind I’m off to sit in a corner singing to myself, nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-BATMAN!
I played the demo last night and must say I really enjoyed it. The PhysX is a killer though even on a GTX275 it is not smooth on high settings. On normal PhysX settings I can have 2xAA turned on and it is still nice and smooth. I might be putting my recently replaced 8800GT back in the computer as a dedicated PhysX card (not sure if my PSU is up to it yet) to see If I can have some AA at the same time as high PhysX settings.
The game itself is fun but I did feel that it was a bit of a “Press M1 to win game” situation, with everything being done for you depending on context removing some of the skill in deciding what to do. This really put me off in Assassins Creed but I think (hard to tell from the demo) that they may have got the balance right between easy controls and complicated game play in this one.
As for your issue with the gargoyles making the game too easy, I understand that the demo is locked to the easy setting and most of it would be considered the tutorial anyway. I suspect that goons later on in the game will be more observant and there will probably be less gargoyles about as well.
Hanging off the gargoyles to get someone is brilliant, I just wanted one of the Joker’s goons to say “Where are you!?” so I could put on a gravel voice and say “HERE” before grabbing him. In fact that whole last room in the demo reminded me of the section in the docks in Batman Begins.
“I’M BATMAN!
Sounds like a good plan, and may be something we’ll all have to do eventually. I suppose it’s actually a good recycling plan, old card becomes PhysX.
Did you get to see what the enhanced PhysX do? In my game enemies ragdoll, tiles shatter into several pieces when I hit them individually with a batarang, just makes me wonder what else they could improve.
It doesn’t require a high IQ to play, but sometimes that is the sort of game you want to play, and as you say they seem to have gotten the balance just right. From the trailer at the end you can see that detective mode will be used quite often.
The gargoyles are fun, but there are only really two moves you can perform and it seemed to me like I was performing them too much. On some of my play-throughs I followed behind them and did silent takedowns just to vary things a little. Of course that could be the problem, I played demo too much. There is the grappling hook which could make things more varied.
If it is set to easy then higher difficulties could make it more interesting. Dumb enemies are a lot of fun but sometimes they were really dumb, hopefully on the higher difficulties they will actively search for you if you attack them from behind a corner.
That said, it was an enormous amount of fun, and practically every comment I have read about it has been positive. Can’t wait.
I think the cape was better with PhysX on high, the steam was definitely more dense and I think there was just generally more stuff lying around, nothing game-breaking if you didn’t have it but of course they have to make the game play the same with it off or they loose ATI users. When a open hardware physics standard is made (I think it is coming with DirectX 11) I guess we will start to see games that can use hardware physics calculations for game-play rather than graphics, at the moment they would just be cutting off too much of their market.
The first reviews are in for the XBox and PS3 versions (96 and 90 respectively), I expect the PC scores will be a little lower, PC users expect more from a game (I mean look at Halo, XBoxers love it but it comes across as a generic FPS to someone who has played some of the better ones on PC) but I guess they will be still hugely favourable.
I think I am going to pre-order this one, the question is do I get the CE or the standard…
Heads I get the CE, Tails the standard [/Two Face].
The thing about Halo is, people played it on PC and didn’t like it, people have been playing this demo and enjoying it so I think it will do well.
I think you’re right that it won’t be scored quite as high, but I would expect high 80s at least. Unless there is something we don’t know of course…
I won’t get the CE at it’s current price, but if it drops to around £30 I’ll consider it, probably a definite purchase at £25. (Wow, how very uncommitted of me…)
I found a PhysX on/off comparison vid, not helpful when it comes to normal/high though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vINH6Z9kqgI (HD recommended)
Nice video all the same. I don’t remember noticing if the fog moved when I played, I’ll have to go back and see. Looked impressive in the video.
[…] discussed some of the pros and cons of PhysX with jon_hill987 in the comments after Arkham Asylum, they were used fairly effectively there, moving smoke, breakable floor tiles etc. but without any […]
I ordered the Batarang edition from play. I really shouldn’t have, there are plenty of better things I could better spend £50 on but there we go.
And I cancelled my order…
I found a review from someone who got the XBox collectors edition and it turns out it is a hunk of plastic that can’t even be detached from the stand. I’ll have to get out the bench grinder and make some Batman Begins style Shuriken instead.
Guess you’re crime fighting plans will have to go on hold for a while. 😉
It’s probably a health and safety thing, I can just imagine the newspaper headlines if a child had decided to give it a throw…
I suppose in this nanny state they would consider it a bit dangerous…
I probably should point out I wasn’t exactly intending to throw it about, I just don’t want to pay £20 for something that tacky.