The Video Games I Play: Batman Review: Arkham Asylum vs. Arkham City

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Harley with Warden Sharp in Batman: Arkham Asylum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

I have quite a bit to say about these two games... I sorta should break it up into 3 posts, one about Asylum and one about City, because I beat City while back, while having only beat Asylum about a half hour ago... Yet another video game franchise I played backwards. Just the kinda guy I am, I guess.

First, I should say... I got Asylum home a few days ago, and played the bajeesus out of it for probably about five hours. The X-box did not save my progress, so when I came back the next night, I was at square one. Normally, I'd have just turned it off and gone to read or something, but these games are ridiculously fun. I almost didn't mind re-playing the beginning content at all. Although, I could have done with a "Skip" function for the introduction sequence...

Anyway here are my thoughts on these two games.

Story
I don't know much about the Batman cannon. I never read the comic books, though I did watch the original TV show when it was on Nick at Night years ago. I probably saw a couple dozen of them. I also watched the cartoon that was on in the early / mid 1990s. I am familiar with most of the characters. However, before playing these games I had never heard of Oracle, Crock, Bane, or the Al Guhls. I don't recall them ever having appeared on the shows I watched.

Not only that, but I never even realized that Liam Neeson's character in the Dark Knight movies was Ra's Al Ghul until yesterday when I was trolling IMDB. I'm not the quickest when it comes to these things, OK?

However, the story line is at least enjoyable in both games. I got into the story, I got into the characters, etc. The dialog in Asylum was kinda weak. Batman had a lot of lines where he sounded very cliché, but other than that, the story worked for me. I'm sure there are die hard comic fans out there who hate it for some kind of "that never happened" reason or what not, but for the typical gamer like myself, it did the job.

Controls
Like I said before, I played Arkham City first, which was probably a mistake. The combat system in City was probably the most polished, fluid combat in any game I've ever played... Which isn't saying a whole lot since I can count the games I have played in the last 15 years in less than a minute. But even still, I think a person would be hard pressed to come up with a more enjoyable, rewarding combat system.

That said, the combat in Asylum was pretty close. You can tell that THAT was the breakthrough combat system of its time, and they only just put a polish on it for City. There were a few things I missed, having gotten used to them being there in City, like the bat claw grab, clothesline, and slam move, and how you could throw 3 batarangs in fast succession, and the quick use of gadgets by holding LT and hitting a key... but all in all, it wasn't difficult to shift gears into the Asylum combat.

I will say, I was disappointed by the boss fights in Asylum. Each "big" boss had his/her own "thing". The mini-bosses were basically all the same. The mini-boss is a Titan-filled inmate. He runs at you, you hit him with a batarang, and get out of his way. You hit him, climb on his back and ride him around while he stumbles around beating on things. Rinse, repeat. Then later, you come to another "boss fight" and it's another of the same thing, but this time there are added thugs. Next time, there are thugs, and you're in a smaller room... Then next time, not only are there thugs, and the room is small, but now there are two big guys... Rinse, repeat.

Now, the Harley fights were basically beat up thugs, although in the second one, the floors would electrify, so beat up thugs and move from one platform to another as necessary.

I really enjoyed the first Scarecrow fight, it was complete with a really weird introduction, hallucination, etc... Not really sure what was up with running around the busted building landscape, felt a little like an old-school side-scroller (e.g. Contra), but I thought it was neat. Dunno if there was any significance to the fact that you beat the round by getting to the batlight and shining it on his torso... But OK. So I did the first one, and that was cool... The second one was introduced by Bruce re-living his parents deaths, and then more side-scrolling, avoid the gaze, and then OH! Thugs. Then more side scroll, then the batlight. The last was more of the same. Rinse... Repeat.

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Harley Quinn (Photo credit: Hersson Piratoba)[/caption]

Zsasz was a pretty big disappointment in both games, if you ask me... In Asylum, you hit him with a batarang, and lights out. In City, (once you find him) you do a "takedown" and that's it... Although in City the path leading up to him is pretty cool.

The croc fight wasn't much of a fight at all. You basically had to skulk around the sewers and avoid him. When he found you, it was always from about a hundred yards out, you throw a batarang with him, it activates his shock collar and he falls into the water. Rinse. ...and repeat.

The Ivy fight was interesting in that you avoid the strangling vines, throw batarangs, and avoid the projectile spores. After a little rinsing and repeating, you get to avoid thugs too... And rinse and repeat. Then you get to put explosive gel on her protective shield and detonate. Then guess what? That's right, rinse, repeat. Do it again.

The joker fight. Avoid Joker, beat up thugs, then pull joker down with the batclaw, and beat him up. Then? You guessed it... Do it again. And again. I mean, seriously... Why, after being pulled down the first time, would Joker chase Batman a little, only to say "Hold on, I'm going to go turn my back to you again, while my thugs fight you..." What, cause thugs have worked so well up until then, right? And then... he does it a third time.

Now, in City, there was some rinsing and repeating, but not nearly as much... Yes, there was the guy who ran at you, threw things, and you hit until you could ride him... But there every boss had a different mechanic, unique to that boss alone. Although, there were a couple of times when you ran into that guy, but it really wasn't all that over done.

Overall Experience
I enjoyed both games immensely, and I can definitely see myself re-playing both over the next few years, so don't take any of this to mean I didn't like Asylum... But I kinda felt like for Arkham Asylum, the developers and writers got together and said, "Ok, we need at least forty "things" for this game..." And the developers said "Well... Can't we just do ten things, and you can repeat them, four times each?"

Here are the reasons I felt this way:

Mini-Boss fights were all the same.

Although each main boss had their "thing" and you only found that boss once, it was two or three variables, and you did it three to twelve times.

The god damned wind-up joker teeth are ALL over the frigging place, and SUPER annoying. I hated them in City, but holy crap.

I realize it's an asylum, and there are nut-jobs all over the place, but they all have the same mechanic... They yell gibberish and jump at you.

Very limited dialog from the thugs. When you killed one, Joker would say one of three different things, and they would always say "You heard Joker!" even if it didn't really make sense.

When you die, there were very limited smart-ass remarks from whatever boss you were dealing with at the time.

I also have to say, I'm really kind of shocked how similar so many things are between the two games, right down from how Batman stands when he gets a new gadget and looks at it, and the hidden Riddler stuff.

I am not typically interested in the Riddler trophies and riddles in City, although since I have beaten everything else at this point I have been pursuing them, mostly because there's still more to do, he's got hostages and eventually I get to save em, etc. I feel like there's no real motivation in Asylum to go back and gather them all.

You can tell that Rocksteady took what they learned from Asylum and really made some (in my opinion) fantastic changes in City. They carried over a few things, removed some things that didn't really matter, and basically turned a very good rough draft into a spectacular final copy. Here are some of the things I noticed that they changed for the better in City:

Two words: Cat Woman.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="208"] Ra's al Ghul as he appears on Batman: The Animated Series. . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

They did away with the inmate interview tapes. These really just kinda bothered me because I didn't care to listen to them, and they were sometimes playing when I was trying to pay attention to what someone else was saying.

They got rid of the Arkham history plaques you snap a picture of and hear about Arkham history... For some reason they were a spider on a web.. I'm sure there's a reason, but I just don't know it.

Every boss is unique, and the story leading up to them is engaging.

They toned down the damned Joker teeth.

They added the 3-stun maneuver.

Added Quick fire action to the gadgets.

Added the run and slide function.

Added the dive-bomb in glide mode.

added the weapon break combo

Added the bat-swirly thing combo... though, I never use it.

Added the ability to grab Riddler trophies with the batclaw.

Harley got a make-over for City. She's far more trampy looking. Good, bad, you be the judge.

Added smoke bombs.

The main story arcs can be done mostly in whatever order you want. City was FAR less "on rails" as Asylum. In Asylum, you only ever had one objective. In City, you can have several. There are clearly some story lines that are designed to be a constant throughout the whole game, which I like because even once your done with the main story arc, you can still end up with things to do, like while finding trophies so that you can get to the next Riddler challenge, you will find ringing phones, political prisoners being beaten, the identity thief victims, Azrael leaving symbols, and Dead-shot victims.

I do like that they reused SOME of the same old mechanics, like the slow walking on ice is carried over from walking around in the sewers. There were things that I thought were cool, and I'm not sure why they took them out, like the triple batclaw, and using it to break walls.

In closing: part of my motivation for playing Asylum was that there was clearly some history the characters referred to from the game, like Bane saying that Batman hit him with the Batmobile. (Which was cool, by the way)... And I wanted to check it out. However, there was no mention of Catwoman in Asylum (at least that I saw) and I thought Ivy was mad at her for not watering plants or some such... I didn't get any clarification on that.