Batman A. Asylum Demo Impressions

I have been on and off about this game, but I had to play the demo regardless of how many hours it took for Xbox Live to let me download it. It's a hefty download at 1.5 gigs for maybe 20 minutes of gameplay, but it was worth the wait.

Arkham Asylum has never been a heavily defined area in the Batman franchise in the batman films and probably not in the TV series, regardless the story signifies that Arkham has become technologically fortified to the point that even the joker quips over how hard it is to break out. But the Joker also hints in the demo that why would you want to escape such a fortress when you could control it instead, that is established quite a bit in the story.

I have to say, hearing the TV series batman who doesn't have throat cancer like Bale's makes you really enjoy playing batman. Batman looks pretty cool, as well as the art style of the game even though it does a lot of gray and black. There is also a lot of interacting in the game in terms of talking with A.I.'s in the game, and oh man detective mode. I like the idea of detective mode for two reasons, the first is because it lets you see around the corner and see how your enemies and friends are reacting. That is helpful if you are trying to be stealth oriented, it also helps when attacking enemies because the demo only allows the glide kick. Say the detective feature lets you know that one of the enemies is nervous, you'd think its just anecdotal information but no, I attacked someone nervous and I ended up taking damage. The Detective mode helps you be inventive of your surroundings but also allows the psychological element of the game to help you predict enemy behavior. Attacking a nervous guy has him on edge, so when I attacked him he panicked and shot me a bit. The first guy in the room was calm, and when I attacked him it was a silent covert operation and nobody noticed till they found his unconscious body.

Thats all good but, as you could see from earlier walk through videos this is also a beat 'em up game. I had played Turtles in Time reshelled earlier today and stressed how boring and bland the combat was, Batman only had a little bit of straight on combat in the demo. It was satisfying in slow motion finishing movies, it has silent takedown moves and the glide kick as well as your bat-a-rang working good as a cudgel. But the end of the demo, the terribly short demo as far as i'm concerned, hinted that there is much more beat 'em up variety than the demo demonstrates. How do I know this, well first of all the next enemy the joker throws at you knows your there and the Joker is there too. So we know batman isn't going to run and hide after trying to chase down the joker since the beginning of the demo. But at the end of the demo you are shown this guy (or something like him):



YOU KNOW THERES ALOT MORE VARIETY IN THE COMBAT!

Seriously, that is a guy you take head on. So there is some serious head on combat with art in the combat as well as batman's gadgets. And the demo for the little it showed presented so well I was damn near at tears when the demo was over. Well I gotta say, this game is on my list again. Someday I will have it, but try this demo and decide for yourself. As for me, i'm sold on it.