Batman: Arkham Asylum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_Arkham_Asylum

This game has been getting excellent reviews across the board however I played the demo and although it looked cool the gameplay was too

button-smashing/beat-'em-up/take-you-by-the-hand-and-show-you-where-to-go-and-what-to-press

style that I didn't see warranting anything above a 6 or 7. (it was a nice touch to have the batman: the animated series voice actors tho)

Anyone check this out?

As someone who owned Batman Forever on PC in the 90's, I have sworn never to play another Batman game ever again. And I'm sticking to it.

roomie preordered, it will be coming home tonight. i played a demo of it and it looked very nice.

  On 8/26/2009 at 1:55 AM, Iain C said:

As someone who owned Batman Forever on PC in the 90's, I have sworn never to play another Batman game ever again. And I'm sticking to it.

It is actually good one

it looks amazing but game play is button mash crap.

Yeah, played a demo of it at Gamestop a few weeks ago. Graphics were nice but my hand was tired after about 10 minutes of it as I was just mashing the attack buttons.

That's what I thought. And I found it anoying how it tells you where the enemies are & what can be smashed/interacted with in "detective mode". Also, you can only use your grappling hook when it has R1 in your face letting you know there's a conveniently placed gargoyle above you. I can't believe this game is getting such good reviews.

Yeah, to me it looked and felt like they remade Final Fight and then when that didn't go over well with the studio they overhauled it to be Batman. I prefer a more sneaky/crafty/stealthy Batman to this roided out mess.

LOL exactly

I've wanted to play this game for months.

GameInformer reviewed it at 9 out of 10, and that almost never happens.

This and God of War 3 may be the reasons I get a PS3 before the Wii.

it's cool when yer fighting and you do a combo and everything goes matrix style.

why is this getting such high reviews?

seems fruity

  On 8/26/2009 at 3:36 PM, assegai said:

That's what I thought. And I found it anoying how it tells you where the enemies are & what can be smashed/interacted with in "detective mode". Also, you can only use your grappling hook when it has R1 in your face letting you know there's a conveniently placed gargoyle above you. I can't believe this game is getting such good reviews.

fool you played a 10 minute demo and you're shitting all over it? somehow i think there might be more to the game than the 3 rooms you go through in the demo. whatever. i'm psyched about this game and would have already bought it were i not saving my moneys for school.

  On 8/27/2009 at 3:04 AM, olson said:

  On 8/26/2009 at 3:36 PM, assegai said:

That's what I thought. And I found it anoying how it tells you where the enemies are & what can be smashed/interacted with in "detective mode". Also, you can only use your grappling hook when it has R1 in your face letting you know there's a conveniently placed gargoyle above you. I can't believe this game is getting such good reviews.

 

fool you played a 10 minute demo and you're shitting all over it? somehow i think there might be more to the game than the 3 rooms you go through in the demo. whatever. i'm psyched about this game and would have already bought it were i not saving my moneys for school.

school?

come on man, get yer life sorted ;)

You're all wrong, this game is fantastic! On the one hand it's unbelievably polished. The graphics are awesome, super sharp textures, nothing is out of tone. Incredible atmosphere, amazing sound fx, speech and music. And it's very well directed. I've got a hunch DC is trying to use this to promote this Dark Asylum thing (but too lazy to look it up.) Well they made it very very high budget. I feel like Batman. It makes me walk slow because I look cool walking. That's a good thing.

Gameplay side is great. The fighting isn't boring button-bashing because it relies on timing to make combo's. It's very engaging combat. This is in another league than that awfull uninspired Wolverine. Gameplay is also varied, and never strenuous. And everything you do is cool.

It's detailed, rich and great fun. Best cinematic game experience I've had in a long time. I'm sure there are some criticisms to be made, but right now I'm to enthousiastic about this game to realize that.

Penny Arcade posted this a few days ago. I found i pretty amusing:

The Circle of Life

  On 8/27/2009 at 2:37 AM, vamos scorcho said:

why is this getting such high reviews?

 

seems fruity

I was sort of thinking the same thing. I played the demo, I liked it, and I know I can't judge a game by a demo but I didn't think it was going to get a score higher than 80%. But you know, Eidos has been known for messing with game reviews: There's the great Kane & Lynch catastrophe at Gamespot, there's the fact that they've been voting for their own games, and they tried fixing the score for Tomb Raider on Metacritic.com. About two months ago I read this:

  Quote

Several mags have their review code already, but have to sit on their reviews until a hateful embargo expires at the end of the month. But Eidos, ever the helpful fellows that they are, have been offering a way around this embargo. If you dedicate the cover of your mag to Arkham Asylum and guarantee a score of at least 90%, Eidos will allow you to run the review early.

And surely, someone took the bait. Only 14 days later an English game magazine, Games Master, got an exclusive first review and they gave the game 96%.

that's very interesting. Eidos bug the hell out of me.

Ubisoft has been doing the same thing for years.

I've been waiting for this thread as I wanted WATMM's opinion.

From the gameplay I've seen the game did look quite easy (item here, ledge here), and possibly boring. I'm not sure how entertaining the effortless fighting could be.

I've heard that it isn't very long either and I'd like to know how much of the game is taken up by being stealthy and how much is a button-tapping brawl.

I might download the demo, actually.

Edit: But yeah, I've been very surprised by the reviews. To be honest, from what I've seen, this game isn't worth all the hype. It looks as though, judging from the gameplay at least, that it could've been made 5+ years ago.

It'd make sense if Eidos have been making shitty deals, that reeks of them, as I've seen good reviews from places I wouldn't expect as well as the mainstream adverts.

360 right? I could possibly lend it to you.

Possibly the best superhero game I've ever played. The attention to detail is stunning, and Mark Hamill is immense with voice acting for the Joker.

Storyline is fresh and with the Riddler stuff in the game it breaks it all up pretty well. Button mashing X with large groups of enemies was kinda strenuous though, and the Titan things are just Bane v3.0 really. The Scarecrow parts fucked with me head a little bit as well.

  On 9/3/2009 at 7:37 AM, Wall Bird said:

Penny Arcade posted this a few days ago. I found i pretty amusing:

 

The Circle of Life

hahaha

I rarely check penny arcade anymore because unless you play every single videogame you miss a lot of the specific humor.

i was mainly excited about this due to the voice actors from the animated series. The demo sure looks amazing but I agree about the button mashing. I'd still be interested to play the whole thing through just for the actors

"Eidos has been known for messing with game reviews: There's the great Kane & Lynch catastrophe at Gamespot,"

what was the deal about this? Maybe I missed something, but I had fun with kane & lynch, but to my understanding there's alot of hate towards the game.

i beat it last week and am playing through it again. while the combat isn't deep by any means it's more than just button mashing. it's more about timing and stringing together fat combos so you can use special moves like throws and instant takedowns. once you throw dudes into the mix with knives and shock sticks that can't be countered or attacked from the front it gets interesting.