If insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results well........ then I'm not insane cuz I expect what I get from doing the same thing over again in Arkham Asylum. And that is having fun, and it works every time! OK review over! Naw but for reals, in terms of a random shot in the dark that caused a spark to create a raging fire, then you'll probably need a true super hero AKA the fire department. And in the center of that fire will glow brightly: Batman: Arkham Asylum. Released for PS3/360 and PC on August 25, 2009 to HUGE success. Developed by the pretty unknown at the time Rocksteady Studios, they sure made a masterpiece out of the thin air, and what a unique game to shock the world with. Rythmatic gameplay with a great story and tights, what else could you want? Well how about we pull our cowls down and drop kick glide thingie into a bad guys face and find out what is in store for us over at Batman Arkham Asylum.

Ill just flat out say that this game looks great. Not actually the usual kind of amazing graphics, although they still are pretty good to this day. It's the amazing Gothic architecture all around you that makes this game feel so great and looks it as well. The whole game takes place on the Arkham Island and inside the Asylum so you get some very specific but very memorable areas to explore. Some of the best looking areas are easily the Intensive treatment area and Arkham Manor. Both look pretty unique and the Intensive treatment area for sure looks like somewhere I don't want to be. The manor is super huge and looks like somewhere that keeps some hidden secrets! The main hub area that keeps all the locations tied together looks pretty cool as well, and the rest of the world is constantly changing as the game goes on so that's pretty neat. Some areas don't look as good as the others though, like the farther down you go the more it looks, the sewers are really bad and the less I talk about Crocs lair the better! Speaking of Croc, how about we talk about those character models! If there is something that looks iconic its Batman and Joker in this game. Batman looks super unique especially in this game, as he kind of looks the most 'normal' in this game and the others give him more of his Arkham feel as they go on. The Joker looks super iconic, kinda like a mix of the animated series Joker with how you'd think a Arkham Joker would look in this universe. His face can look a bit weird at points in the in game graphics but during cutscenes he looks OK in the face. Harley Quinn obviously looks great, and unique to this game, not really looking like any other Harley. Croc looks great in this game, Scarecrow looks nice and creepy. And the Riddler is invisible in this game! As the game goes on Batman will take damage during the cutscenes and his batsuit will get damaged and his cape will slowly get ripped. It's a super cool design and I wished more games did this, I'd already seen stuff like this in Uncharted before but how Batman goes from normal looking to beat up by endgame is just great. They do it in all the series and it's kind of the most tame here but I still like it. I guess I might as well say that the Riddler trophies look OK as well, they are burned into my memories but I dunno if that's from all the good they do. The HUD and menus have a kind of comic book feel to them, the upgrade screen has different pictures for each upgrade and like half look wild. And on my old low quality TV I had no idea what the Inverted Takedown picture was supposed to be. As two final random mentions I'll say that I love just about everyone in their character portraits in the character bios, everyone is super buff but doing something super cool in their pictures, and that Batmoble am I right! So this Gothic wonderland is full of cool looking freaks and one buff geek, and you get to watch it all go down in pretty good quality. From the towers outside to the deep insides of the hospitals morgue Rocksteady took their time and made a 8 out of 10 looking game. The only big thing really is that you spend so much time in Detective mode on your first playthrough that everything is just going to be blue! After the like first 2 though you can finally enjoy the graphics I guess though huh!

Is this some Danny Elfman music or some music from a Elf named Danny? Well its not literally made by Danny (either of them) but its a super good soundtrack. To be honest unless its the title screen theme I cant specifically say one song or another that I like but there's a lot of good music in the game. A lot of it is atmospheric, but in a good way, like everything about the Scarecrow sections rock and the music does as well. Really puts you in the moment, same thing with the intense moments when Croc is chasing you in his lair. And the sounds of the environment in between those songs are pretty nice as well, and the sounds that you get in combat, masterpiece. The sounds of the security doors in different areas opening up are as memorable as the sound of some poor goons arm shattering! Batman's gadgets sound pretty good to, I personally really like the sounds of the explosive gel going off, and the sound of detective vision scanning an area will forever be engraved in my mind, for good or bad reasons. Next up is the amazing voice acting in this game, easily at least top 15 voice acting in a game. I only put it around there because of the other games voice acting, and Chaos Breaks peak voice acting. They really couldn't of gotten a more amazing cast of actors to voice the main cast. Kevin Conroyas Batman and Mark Hamill as the Joker is all I need to say for this whole section and I would of gotten the point across. They both played their respective roles before and will in the future of the series and I couldn't want it any other way. Hearing Kevin Conrays Batman all game is just great, he's just so gruff and monotone that I cant get enough of it, and a lot of his lines are just great as well. And the Joker, oh boy he sure needed more screentime, even though he has loads, he needed loads more! And them bouncing off each other is just great as well they really feel like they are their respective characters, who have known each other for a long time. Joker and Harley Quinn are great together as well, Harley is voice acted by Arleen Sorkin who was her in the animated series. Sadly she only played her in this game, but I feel like her voice in this game matches her so well. Everyone else is great, Croc is probably the best in terms of side villains voices, Bane and his bruja-nes is fun, and Scarecrow and his emo-ness is also fun, and Poison Ivy is..... Poison Ivy. A neat little thing about all the villains is they all have really fun game over screens where they mock a dying on the floor Batman. Obviously the Jokers are some of the best, and its not a voiced one but the one where Bane literally breaks the Bat is gnarly and I love it. What about the menu sounds? Bats, lots and lots of bats. So that's what I gotta say about the sounds of the game, great soundtrack AMAZING cast and while I didn't mention it before the enemies have some super memorable if over played lines in combat. So I'll give the Sounds of Arkham Asylum a 9 out 10.

Do I replay this game a lot? OH YES I DO! This may be the first game in the series but i feel like its good enough to play. Its also kinda different, especially in the controls then the rest of the series, that i sometimes feel the urge to specifically go back to this one. Honestly next to Arkham City, Asylum is my most played game in the series. I actually feel its the lack of stuff to do in this game that makes it so replayable, just the needed stuff from an Arkham game and nothing else. The world is super huge like it is in Knight nor does it have a slightly odd made overworld map like City. There also isn't a million side missions to do like in the rest either. Making it a fairly straight forward experience with a bit of side tracking involved if wanted but not needed. The game itself is also basically a Metroidvania, so you backtrack enough to where you'll probably get extra stuff you didn't before. So by endgame you're definitely The Batman and want some more playtime with him. I've easily played this game at least 10 times and i feel 10 more in my future, there is just something so solid about playing this game that I can never just play the game for a little bit. From beginning to end there's a certain level of polish that makes playing as Batman so addicting. From the base combat to the stealth sections that are super tense there is always something to come back to for another playthrough or in a challenge map. While later games do basically everything bigger, and mostly better the way this game is set up is unique enough to want to play again. The combat controls and base controls are set up different from the later games that I personally enjoyed and some thing I dunno why they changed. But I do feel like they made better changes then what they was in this game, like some combos to use gadgets are different, and all are easier to pull of in later games. There also isn't a million different enemy types to fight late game like the others make you ( *cough* Arkham Knight.) So there aren't any points where the combat just suddenly comes to a stop when you lose a combo or suddenly are surrounded by dudes with stun batons and shields. Even if its not for the combat ill just come back for the pretty decent story and amazing voice acting! So with all that said ill give the additctive factor of Arkham Asylum a 8 out 10. I really feel like how the controls are handled in this game is enough to play it again sometimes, if not, maybe you want to see how the Arkham story started again.

Is the story on par with the Dark Knight trilogy or up there is the schumacher films? Well at some points it can honestly get to both! But the base line plot is that. Batman has captured the Joker after he tried to attack Gotham City Hall (read Road to Arkham to learn more) and is on his way back to Arkham Asylum. After bringing him in something doesn't feel right to Bats as the Joker gave up to easily, guess Batman wanted him to blow up a few more buildings or something. After a reeeeeeeeeeally long opening that sucks on later playthoughs where we find out a bunch of Jokers men has been moved from Blackgate after a fire. And a Killer Croc that has Batmans scent. The security tells Bats that he cant go on as he will upset some of the more violent inmates, like the Joker isn't crazy himself! And sure enough Joker breaks out of captivity and chokes out one of the guards, turns out Harley is out and is helping Joker on his super secret top secret mission. After continuing on into the Welcome center Bats sees that Commissioner Gordon is captured by a corrupt cop named Officer Boles, aaaaaaaand a little bit farther ahead he is found dead, as he wasn't useful anymore, and probably cuz he hit on Harley according to lore I guess. Batman catches up with Joker who shows off one of his cute little toys, a over sized monster looking dude with green veins and huge arms and glowing eyes. After not fighting him cuz we are smart, the dude has a heart attack and the Joker runs away again. Around the time Bats is getting out of the Welcome Center we learn that Joker told Jack Ryder that he has bombs all over Gotham and if anyone tries to intervene with Arkham Island he will blow them up. At this point Batman is still looking for Gordon, after stopping some mooks from hurting themselves on the Batmobile, by hurting them himself. He finds Gordon's pipe (it was a gift from Barbra) and follows the scent of the Tabasco (don't worry we already did this with someones drunk breath by this point!) And that's where I'm going to end the normal plot review. I feel its a good cliffhanger to go find out more if you haven't, by playing it or keep reading if you really want to know.

Spoiler:
After going into the Medical Wing and helping some doctors who was held hostage one being named Dr. Young, Batman ends up in a elevator that takes him to a WHOLE NEW WORLD! No it just turns out that its just Scarecrows fear toxins that he inhaled in the elevator. But its a whole lot, he thought he basically saw Gordon getting killed, found out Oracle cant pay her phone bill to save her life, and sees his dead parents........... again. But after that roadblock he sneakily beats up Harley and finds Gordon tied up, him and Gordon then find Bane all tied up as well, why is everyone always tied up around here! But after letting Bane down he shows his gratitude by trying to break Batman but this time he breaks him. Which I guess implies that this Batman got his back broken by Bane in the past, just a neat little thing to point out. But by breaking him Batman ran his Batmobile into him and both crashing into the sea. Batman takes Gordon to the pier to be taken back to the mainland. Batman says he has a batcave on the island because he knew the plot would happen and something about being trying to kill themselves on the island so he felt he needed a base here, somehow they are related i swear! Gordon says something about Bruja and Batman says something about a witch but ain't no way Gordon heard any of Batman monotone over the loud boat engine. When Bane was still hanging out to literally dry, he said and it was physically shown that he was being drained of his wannabe steroids that is called Venom. The doctor Young was the one doing it so now Batman is going after her to see where she is, as it turns out she was using Venom to make this stuff called Titan which is basically Venom squared. After using Detective mode to follow her finger prints to where she was keeping the Titan formula at he finds the formula and burns its so the Joker doesn't have it Joker says he doesn't care cuz he will just have Victor Zsasz get the formula out of her. He's a guy who has tally marks all over his body and has a special place for one mark that will be Batman once he kills him. But first Bats deals with yet another Scarecrow section where he yet again sees his parents death, but this time kinda physically shown what happened. After doing that Bats does the actual scarecrow section and fighting skeletons and a random Titan skeleton. After taking Zsasz out via a upgrade, Dr Young tells him some random stuff about Joker being crazy and something about the formula and a safe in the room they are in and once she opens it then BOOM! Dr Young is dead she had outran her time in Jokers eyes. Turns out that Joker was secretly supplying Dr. Young wit money for the Titan formula testing under the name Joe King (its a pun on joking In case it took you 10 play troughs and 15 years to randomly figure it out one day.) She stopped doing stuff for him and answering his emails when she found out it was him. He didn't like that and thus started to make a plan to steal the formula. During the time of Bats being out of it the Warden Quincy Sharp is taken by Harley Quinn, but a Jurassic Park rip off cane to the face gives Batman a trail to follow. Harley and Ivy have a girl to girl talk and Quinn lets her out. After finding Quincy and listening to him whine and getting new play toy. And then Harley gets done recreating Wreaking Ball and Batman totally not knocking dudes into bottomless pits. She blabs about some super secret she shouldn't blab out and Bats scans her fingerprints for a guide. And Batman follows her fingerprints to the Botanical Gardens, there he tells Ivy to go back to her cell unless she wants to bare knuckle box. She goes on about her plants, probably some dandelions and Morning Glories. Bats also finds out from her rambling that the clown has been running tests on her plants to, and has basically mixed the two and he wants to make some crazy hybrid army of Doom. The only way to make some kind of antidote would be to get it from spores in Killer Crocs lair. Bats gets ready to leave when Joker injects one of Ivy's roots with Titan and she goes wild and takes over the whole island with her roots and plants. Somewhere around going to Croc it turns out that all the boxes of bombs the Joker had throughout the city was actually just filled with Marzipan and kitten, which is super funny and on point with Joker. Also around this time Batman does his final Scarecrow encounters which is so awesome I wont even spoil it here in case you somehow don't know what it is all these years later. After we beat it Batman realizes he has a hold of Scarecrow who tries to put more Fear Toxins in us. After showing him we just don't care anymore and are Batman, Croc pops up and takes him away all Jaws like. Great timing to as Scarecrow was going to drop a bunch of Fear Toxins into Gothams water supply. Once Batman goes all Metal Gear on Killer Croc he takes the spores back to the lab and makes a whole single antidote and Ivy's vines destroys his base. Batman goes back and batarangs/explosive gel her to near death and sees that preparations for the party is complete! What party? Well its been hinted to throughout the game as some mooks are always building onto the entrance to the Visitors Center and the secret Quinn goes on about is the secret party Joker is throwing for Bats. If you ever went into the Visitors Center before this point then a really iconic Joker with a TV on his head will be there all talk to Batman about a lot of stuff throughout the game. Everything here happens in first person mode as well. Once in there and Batman beats up some party goers, he interacts with TV Joker one last time. It turns out its the real Joker and the TV is a bomb, once it goes off Batman stumbles through the broken glass and wall to see that Gordon has been captured again and that Joker wants to shoot him up with Titan. Batman jumps In front of the dart for his old man buddy and the Joker thinks its funny til Bats resist the transformation, so Joker injects himself as well and takes Batman up to the roof to beat him up on live TV and show the world this terrifying looking final Joker boss. Batman uses the cure on himself to stop the transformation and finishes the Jokers reign of tonight's terror with explosive gel on the fist to the Jokers teeth. An awesome way to end a crappy final boss! Gordon monologues about how some people are OK and others will take longer to go back to normal A.K.A. the Joker, like he was ever normal to begin with.Then Batman leaves the island to go be Batman in Gotham. And the last scene we see is of someone stealing a crate of Titan, its a hand that pops up and its random who's it is from: Croc, Bane and Scarecrow. Personally I believe it to be Scarecrow, but it being Bane is a slight possibility, I definitely don't think its Croc, he basically doesn't come back the rest of the series in terms of the plot going forward.

So that's the plot of Arkham Asylum, it really sets up the rest of the series, so many tiny plot points that goes in some interesting places and so much to get to in the future. Rocksteady gave us a solid plot in this game and a solid follow up in Arkham City. Batman and Joker are great in this story, and Titan is super fascinating to learn about, they might of been able to get 1 or 2 more villains in this game like Two Face or something, but what we did get with the ones we did get was good enough. Even though Croc could of gotten more screen time and what not. All in all its a great story, Ill give it a 8 out of 10.

With this being the first game means that this is probably the most shallow in the series right? Well no cuz Origins: Blackgate still exists, but in terms of main main games then yes it is. Most shallow yes, but least imaginative/re inventive nope, that's the first Origins for that one. If anything this is for sure the most re inventive game in the series as it literally became the 'dark souls' of games like this. Like if your game wasn't trying to kill you just for opening up the case all Mimic like, then you were grooving to the rythem of the games war drum like you do in the Arkham games. And for a good reason as it all started here. When those games were trying to be Arkham whatever was out at that time they were trying to replicate the wonder of the combat. Let's look at the combat then, when you get into a combat encounter its time to throw a punch, once you do you have to punch right when Batman lands a punch, once you do keep that up and boom, that's the bare bones version of it. As you chain more of those hits together you can flow a bit farther and a bit faster and a bit harder with each swing as well. Once you get up to a X8 (x5 later in the game) you can do a large variety of different takedowns some straight up breaking weapons........ and bones! During your combo you can also chain your gadgets into the mix and this is soooooo good, even in this game it almost feels infinite the different amount of gadget combos you can put into your combo. I really like the batclaw being a double tap of the right trigger and I wish they didn't change it to the combo of top right bumper and Square in later games.Tapping the left trigger throws a batarang, which is the only quick-fire that stays the same button all series...... technically. I used to think of the quick-fire batarang to be useless and a combo killer. And its still the occasional combo killer but it can be nice to keep a combo if no one is close and you throw one. They can also knock people over who are holding up something they are going to throw at you. And if its an explosive....... well Batman didn't kill them the shrapnel to the skull did. If its not you dealing the damage its the enemies trying to do some, when they are getting ready to swing at you then the tops of their heads flash and you press Triangle to parry the attack and keep your combo going. The higher the combo the more EXP you get to level your Bats up. There is a good amount of abilities to get from leveling up. It's a bit weird that you have to get inverted takedowns when you have it by default in all other games. You have generic upgrades like your health, or upgrading the amount of batarangs you can throw. But you get other neat ones like new takedown's for combat or new ways of taking people out steathfully. I personally never get the health upgrades and always get inverted takedown first, then go from there, usually getting the faster critical hits upgrade next. By endgame it doesn't feel like the ball is in your court, more like its a golden snitch that wants to go to you. But that's good as your going to need all that help you can get when you take on the amazing boss fights in this series, with stuff like BANE! Who's honestly a pretty good fight, gotta stay away from him while he's attacking and wait for him to charge at you then, you hit him with a batarang and rip out some of his Venom tubes while he's stunned. Some mooks will come out to fight you part way through the fight. It'd say that the Bane is at least a 7 out of 10. Man so I'd that's it then the rest of the fights must be as fun right? NOPE!!!!! They are all the same as the Bane boss fight, but with less mechanics than Bane's boss. Everything is just a Titan enhanced henchman who just charges at you and then you gotta batarang him, but this time you gotta ride on their back. They can hit other Titans and henchmen but that's really about it .The only type of boss that's different is Poision Ivy who you really just dodge around her attack and spam batarangs at her til you beat her in a cutscene. And the last boss? Just bad, more big Titan dudes but less stuff to do during it. The last thing to really talk about is the Riddler Challenge. Which are a group of riddles and trophies hidden throughout the game by the Riddler so that...... Batman doesn't get bored trying to stop a crazy clown and a killer Croc with a distaste towards scarecrows and spines I suppose. OK the real last thing to talk about are Challenge maps, which you get unlocked throughout the main story by collecting the Riddlers mental breakdown pieces. They are just either Combat maps where you survive a certain amount of waves of mooks and try to get as high of a score as you can. Then there is the Predator maps where you try to not get caught and take out everyone in the room and do it fast and stylish as possible. You really only play these if you really want to do some Arkham really fast and in short bursts I feel. I do like to play the Combat maps sometimes though they are fun, I just feel you get way more fun by just playing the game in general. You get scored in both and if you're into 100% a game then you will end up doing all of these as well, and there is a good amount of them, especially with DLC included. You can also play as Armored version of Batman in this mode and the Joker if you have the actual PS3 version of this game. He has a different load out of stuff and some of the enemies get switched out with people like Gordon and Cash. Really that's all I got to say about the depth in this game, there's a good amount of stuff to do in this game and a good amount to do out of just the main storyline. there for sure is more to do in the later games but I feel the small size of this game really works in its benefit in my opinion. So by saying that I'll give the depth a 7 out of 10. More like a 7.4 out of 10 but 7 is still OK in my opinion.

How about the difficulty, is it as hard as being the Dark Knight himself would be in real life? Nope, its a pretty average experience, for sure if you play it on anything but Hard mode, where the indicator to tell you when your going to get hit is gone, and everything hurts way more, for sure bullets. But even on a normal difficulty and on your first playthrough I don't think you'll have to hard of a time on very much, even once the game stops holding your hand I don't feel like you'll die a whole lot because you don't grasp a certain concept or some thing. Everything just clicks fairly early and fairly smoothly. Once you bust out a 50 hit combo your never going back, and once you do a full combo while including gadgets you also never go back. In saying all this, there still is some difficulty in the game, some battles aren't fun and all the bosses just suck, while that's not a difficulty thing, it makes it difficult to do over and over. But on Hard the Poison Ivy boss fight is definitely hard I'll admit that. I did a hard run years ago and the one duel Titan fight in the elevator room on like my 3rd try, but on my last one I died loads for no reason, I feel like it was a me thing though. There's a few Predator encounters where you can't get noticed or some mess of humanoid pixels gets it, but most aren't hard, at least for me anymore. Sometimes the doctors take a trip down in that pit in the suicide collars one, but rather then that none ever get me. The scarecrow encounters probably kill me the most as I'm always trying to hard to get through them super fast, mainly cuz anymore they slow the plot down but also just cuz its fun to see how few rotations of scarecrow you can do it in. And then of course there's the Killer Croc lair which is a Killer of Time! Here's a tip, run until the "!" beeps at you twice then crouch til its gone and repeat, I swear I've gotten it to beep like 4 times without him popping up but 2 for sure is safe, 3 is pushing it. Doing this I swear cuts the time down a lot! But that was a random tip for I guess not a hard part, but boy do I dread it like a hard part every time I replay this game! And that's all for the difficulty of Arkham Asylum, its a fairly average game to play, maybe its because they was making the first of its kind and wanted to not over do it, but this is a average difficulty for a game. Making it a 5 out of 10 difficulty. As long as you deal out more hits then you take in the combat sections and don't get pumped full of lead in the predator sections then you'll have an OK time on your first go around.

And that's how the Bat saved the night again. Without the help of his ever recognizable sidekick, Yuu DePlayah he might not of made it out this time. Well since we did we might as well take a moment to look ever everything once more. Arkham Asylum was a huge hit when it came out, everyone thought one thing but once they had a taste they couldn't go away. Making a few sequel games and a few sequel comics, and even a animated movie later on in the franchises life! So this game started all of that. Years later it got released on next gen consoles like the PS4/5 and all those Xbox 1's under a dual package called Return to Arkham, where it also had Arkham City. And they....... well they play they go down the Sonic Adventure route where the newer versions of older games played way worse then the original version. Batman looks weird, the textures take forever to load up to higher quality, if they load up at all. Occasional crashes, and lack of content like being able to play as the Joker in Asylum on either version and a map or 2. It's not really worth playing that version unless you really need to play it that way. But any who that's Arkham Asylum, if you look past the boss fights of this game then is a A++ game, a 9.1 out of 10 game in my opinion. Now go be The Batman!