One Page Reviews

It has been some time since my last review, and in that time I've had a lot of time to acquire games and hardware to review. Only now am I caught up enough in day to day life to review them. To save some time I will be trying something a little bit different. There will be a grand total of 5 game reviews in this article. Each review will take up a single page, and each game will be wrapped up with a small blurb on the conclusion page. Get ready for a game review marathon!

First up comes the newest Batman game, Arkham Asylum. The Dark Knight has seen some better luck in the video game field than most other super heroes. I believe it has something to do with the relatable, but admirable characteristics of Batman and his day to day alter ego Bruce Wayne. You do not spend any of the game playing as Bruce Wayne, which is a good decision. Ol' Bruce may be an interesting character, but testing your abilities to impress at fund raisers doesn't exactly translate over to games well.

The entire game takes place on the island prison 'Arkham Asylum'. In the opening scenes we learn that Batman has captured his arch nemesis the Joker, and is escorting him to his new home at Arkham. To the surprise of no one at all, the Joker escapes and proceeds to take over the whole island. Of course all the major villains ( who are already in Arkham ) are released. The stage is set, and Batman must track down the Joker, battling all the major baddies and zounds of silly henchmen along the way.

This over the shoulder third person style game seems to play a lot like an interactive story / puzzle game. For the most part you will be doing three things in the game. The best parts of the game are what I like to call the major encounter scenes. In the major encounter scenes you are in a situation where one or many foes are placed in a setting in which you must use cunning and skill to overcome major adversaries as obstacles. These scenes are my favorite because of the number of different ways each scene is presented. My favorites include the Killer Croc sequence, and the portions of the game involving the Scarecrow. Initially I was a big fan of the stealth takeouts and battling with Bane. Unfortunately they both repeat and lose edge. Bane is a giant human tank, and the method of fighting him is repeated in many different encounters throughout the game with only little variations like adding mindless henchmen into the fray or changing topography. The stealth portions consist of picking off henchmen wielding machine guns one at a time and then ducking back into the shadows until the remaining henchmen drop their guard again.

The second portion of the game consists of puzzle sections in which you use your growing arsenal of tools and detective skills to navigate through logical puzzles. For these portions you will use a secondary view known as 'detective mode' quite predominantly. In detective mode your view of important geographical points and objects is enhanced. You also gain x-ray vision showing through walls and characters. You could run around the whole game in detective mode, but it becomes a bit annoying if left on when you don't need it.

Joining these two sequence types together is what I think of as exploration sequences in which you can freely explore areas of the island until you locate your next plot point. Little tidbits of combat, jumping, and puzzle sequences are sprinkled in to make it seem less like the filler that it is. For the most part it works. It's fun wandering around beating up inmates and then gliding off to the nearest cliff.

Overall the pace, control, and entertainment value in the game is high on all fronts. I do wish there was an opportunity to actually drive the Batmobile, or at least fly the Batwing. The setting and plot for the game was a stroke of genius. Each character seemed to fit in to the flow of the game very naturally. Gameplay is tight, and visuals are very good and reasonably smooth even on modest hardware. My biggest complaint is that some side quest aspects weren't fully fleshed out. Discovering all the stone markers around the island didn't really add much of anything to the game. Also people using ATI graphics miss out on the little PhysX graphical enhancements.

Moving on to review number 2.

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