'Batman: Arkham Asylum' - Game review

9 out of 10

Wow. Brilliant, just a few minor hiccups for developers Rocksteady to polish up next time. The best Batman game ever, the best comic book game ever, one of the best third-person action adventures ever.

Not only is this a good Batman game, it's actually a good piece of Batman fiction for any medium. It goes slightly wonky at the end, a bit too 'gamey' but it's forgivable, since it is actually a game. In fact it's one of the few disappointments in this amazing product - that it so strictly follows the conventions of gaming and doesn't push beyond them very often.

It does have the odd moment of stepping outside convention and when it does, it's brilliantly done, so I hope there's more structural innovation next time.

Fortunately, it executes gaming's conventions absolutely brilliantly. A huge amount of care and attention has gone into polishing every single aspect of the game. Everything it tries to do is done flawlessly. The combat is simple to get into but has enormous subtlety and depth to it (as you will learn when you play the Challenge Mode levels) - enough to make you want to replay to see what would happen armed with your new knowledge of the systems. Characterisation, writing, voice acting (mostly) are excellent. It's also the first game I can remember where dying was actually enjoyable, such is the quality and imagination in the death screens.

It really feels like Batman. He's the world's greatest detective (the game contains a variety of optional mysteries to solve) and he's also totally awesome at kicking ass. Nothing rattles him, he dominates his environment and his enemies, spreading fear as he goes. This crucial feeling of being the Bat is totally nailed. It's therefore a slight disappointment that you can't use the shadows the way you can in a Splinter Cell game.

This is one of those rare games where the environment also feels like a character. Arkham comes alive, beautifully realised, completely coherent and intriguing. There are only a couple of bits where it feels constructed for a game, otherwise it is organic and convincingly old.

And this brings us to another problem with the game. Maybe it's not a problem but it feels like one to me. There's a 'detective mode' that lets you scan your environment for enemies and it is so useful and so well executed that there's rarely any reason to switch it off, meaning you end up playing the whole thing in a schematic x-ray view and miss all the beautiful artwork. It puts a little bit of a barrier between you and the game world, which is a shame. I think it needs solving somehow next time.

Overall though, this game is utterly fantastic. With a slight rethink regarding detective mode, a bit more playing fast-and-loose with genre conventions (particularly with regard to boss battles) and some thought about how to use light and shadow, the next game could be something very, very special indeed.