I’m not a fan of beat-em-ups, nor am I a fan of stealth gameplay, so when I first saw Batman: Arkham Asylum, I didn’t think the game was for me. However, people kept recommending the game to me, and then at some point, Steam had a nice sale on it so it was an impulse buy at the time, and now I decided to play it.

Let’s just say that I’m rather surprised by how much I liked the game. Usually, I become very frustrated when I play beat-em-ups, and stealth is almost impossible for me, but this game actually does those two gameplay elements very well to the point where I completely enjoyed it (except for a single stealth part very far in the game). The thing that frustrates me most about beat-em-ups is that while you’re fighting, you always get smacked in the back by some guy you don’t notice. That ruins your combo and thus making you feel helpless and frustrated, kinda like a nerd being bullied and trying to fight back, only that he couldn’t. The combat in Batman: Arkham Asylum solves this problem by giving a helpful indication of any incoming attackers, and it slows down the combat at some points to give you a chance to counter with a dedicated counter button. The result is a very enjoyable and a very smooth combat experience. You might think that this would make the combat easy, but it doesn’t, as it becomes more and more difficult, as enemies start to use weaponry like knives, stun batons, and guns.

Stealth in games usually frustrates me even more than beat-em-ups, because I can never figure out how people catch me. You can say that I totally suck at stealth and I just can’t figure it out. Perhaps the stealth in Batman was made very easy, which is why I enjoyed it. It gets harder slowly, but I still enjoyed it nevertheless. Stealth games usually come with very complicated controls in my opinion, but Batman made it simple enough for me. If you’re a fan of hard stealth games like Metal Gear Solid, however, you may not find this very enjoyable, I think.

The story is made from specifically for game and not based off any specific Batman show, comic or movie; I’m not a big Batman fan, but I still enjoyed this game a lot. The story was very well made and the characters are great. The voice acting is also good too, especially with the voices of the joker and harley quinn. The soundtrack was good as ambience, but nothing memorable.

I’m not a fan of Unreal Engine 3, but I liked the graphics in this game. If you have an Nvidia card, you can take advantage of this game’s PhysX feature which makes the graphics even more nice. Unfortunately I couldn’t enjoy that, as I have an ATI card. I wish less developers would use PhysX.

In the game, there are lots of secrets you can collect, although this is optional, and I didn’t bother with it as I sort of hurried through the game. I didn’t really see the point anyway.. as far as I know there is no reward for getting all the secrets, but I may be wrong on that.

The replay value in this game is great, there are lots of challenges you can play and enjoy after beating the game. Since I missed a lot of the game during my first playthrough, I may come back to it someday and complete it a hundred percent.

Simply put, this game is great and I think everyone would enjoy it, whether you like or hate beat-em-ups and stealth. I would highly recommend it. If you’re playing the PC version, I’d suggest you play with a controller as the game is more suited for it.