GameSpy's Take
You're Batman.
That's it. No convoluted backstory or lengthy exposition to explain Bruce Wayne's tragic history for the 80 millionth time. When you fire Arkham Asylum up, you're thrust immediately into the Joker's hostile takeover of Gotham City's titular nuthouse -- and if you don't know what any of this stuff is, tough break. It's actually better off because of this minimal setup, too. Where most licensed videogames try to shoehorn in every conceivable piece of related fiction, Arkham Asylum delivers precisely what its story calls for, and trusts you to fill in the gaps. In fact, this action-adventure is so smart, so well-written, and delivered with such an obvious love for its source material, I daresay it is both the best licensed game ever made, and arguably the best game of its kind in our current console generation.
A lot of that owes to the name on the script: Paul Dini. Best known as the co-creator of "Batman: The Animated Series," Dini knows -- perhaps better than anyone alive -- what goes into a good Batman story. And this twisted tale drills down into what it's like to be Batman, rivaling Christopher Nolan's big-screen bat-duet in storytelling quality. The fact that "Animated Series" vocal vets Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and Arleen Sorkin (Batman, the Joker, and Harley Quinn, respectively) reunite for this game is just a bonus.
I won't spoil the specifics of the story here, except to say that you're confined to Arkham for the duration of the proceedings. The Joker must be stopped, and you -- the Dark Knight -- follow the carnage trail all over the asylum and its environs, dividing your time between beating down bad guys and investigating the island's myriad mysteries. The expert craftsmen at Rocksteady Studios waste no time establishing Arkham as a creepy place; it's one of the most detailed locales ever created for a videogame, split up into various facilities covering everything from the general inmate population to an intensive treatment ward to a botanical garden (which comes into play later in exactly the way you think it does). Arkham information videos play on televisions throughout the facility ("a quiet patient is a happy patient"), insane screams echo in the hallways, and the cells of Arkham's most notorious inmates are impressively nuanced.
Most of your time is spent combing the halls for clues, in hot pursuit of the Joker (and the other not-so-friendly faces he's enlisted in his scheme). A blue-hued "Detective Mode" directs you through the story by highlighting objects of interest, which range from fingerprint traces to security consoles to structural weaknesses in walls and floors. Batman's ever-expanding arsenal of gadgets (which grows at specific story points and through a very minimal experience system that allows you to purchase upgrades as you progress) offers ever-increasing access to the asylum's nooks and crannies; most of the narrative mysteries are structured such that they're never too hard to figure out, and once you've unlocked your full arsenal, you'll find a whole lot of collectible stuff to revisit cleared compounds for.
Oddly enough, the "go find all the collectibles" drill -- the most starkly videogame-y aspect of what is an otherwise serious-as-ever Batman story -- is handled with considerable grace. Dini and company appoint the Riddler as the caretaker of Batman's extracurricular activities; though he never appears in the flesh, haughty Edward Nigma taunts Batman to solve various riddles (as simple as scanning the correct object in the environment -- though they're not all simple to deduce) and collect the question-mark trophies and patient interview tapes he's hidden all over the place. It's a clever way to utilize the character, and while he (thankfully) never becomes a physical threat, the Riddler acts as a persistent ancillary nemesis throughout the game, handily shoring up an otherwise sore-thumb mechanic.
The actual physical threats are Arkham Asylum's only real shortcoming. The stealth-based encounters with armed goons are pretty cool; they involve some fun cat-and-mouse mechanics, and find you picking off thugs one by one, silently taking them down or stringing them up from the rafters, and then disappearing to watch their cohorts panic. But when an out-and-out melee breaks out, it really boils down to pure button-mashing. Yeah, the game makes some noise about a combo system, and gives you some swanky one-punch knockout upgrades to unlock. But nine times out of 10, you can just mash a couple of buttons and watch Batman win. The boss fights -- save for a fairly cool showdown with Poison Ivy -- are especially unimaginative, and usually boil down to "the villain is throwing a bunch of guys at you." Only a trio of Batman rogues actually enter physical combat themselves, and it's never one-on-one.
Speaking of which -- and to circle back to my original point -- Arkham Asylum uses exactly the characters it needs. I suspect a lot of folks may express dismay at the omission of well-known figures like Robin, Catwoman, the Penguin, Mad Hatter, and Two-Face, but it's really for the better. The game uses its carefully chosen cast to the fullest -- aside from the dumb boss fights, anyway -- and it never feels bloated. It's an uncharacteristic amount of restraint for a licensed game to show, and my fingers are crossed for a badass follow-up that finds Ra's al Ghul terrorizing Gotham proper.
In fact, Rocksteady just needs to rename itself Batman Studios and hire Paul Dini to write annual sequels. The lackluster combat isn't enough for me to slag an otherwise stellar game; the fact that I'm still glued to my TV, trying my hardest to achieve 100 percent completion (something I reserve for only my very favorite stuff), should tell you that I got over that little pockmark pretty fast. If you're a Batman fan, this is the best treatment the World's Greatest Detective has ever received in videogame form -- and if you're not a Batman fan, Arkham Asylum will change that. This is how to make a licensed game.