I’m a Batman Fan – And my Brother is to blame as I read his comics of the Nineties and the Graphical Novels of the same period. My only other experience of Batman was the 60’s version with Adam West. The Comics introduced me to the real Gotham. Not only real Gotham but to the real villains in the Bob Kane universe.

To start with, Batman: Arkham Asylum isn’t like Lego Batman. I was reminded of this when my wife watched me playing and asked what Rating it was – This is not a game for kids.

I think it would be fair to say this is a Batman based version of the Splinter Cell games, with stealth and cunning winning over the ‘ATTACK’ style of many 3rd person games. Batman starts out equipped with his trusty Baterang and through building up his points earns upgrades. These can be ‘spent’ on additional toys (the explosive gel / grapple) or upgrades (better armour / faster decoding). You get to choose what you’d like but they aren’t all available at once and get unlocked as your get further into the game. Ignoring the ‘end of stage’ bosses (these are your main villains such as Poison Ivy, The Croc, The Scarecrow,etc) there are only 2 other types of baddies. Inmates and ‘Venom’ injected inmates. Although this sounds limited the normal inmates come in a variety of guises which make them harder to defeat. Some are armed with knives and have to be stunned before attacking and others get armed with Cattleprods which can’t be attacked face on otherwise you get stunned!

I’ve just completed the main game with about 50% of trophies. This has taken me about 20 hours. I so far have about 20 bronze and 9 silver. I did this on the ‘normal’ setting and I’m looking forward to re-visiting some areas to get all the bonus items and unlockable features. I’ve got loads of Trophies still to collect and many of these are on the challenges, not the main story line. I chose to ignore these until I had completed the game and I must say they are very hard. There are 2 types of challenges, one based on beating up gangs of thugs and the other on taking down thugs.

The Beat-Up challenges gives you the opportunity to get 1,2 or 3 bats depending on the scores you get. These rely on you building up combos and repeated attacks over 4 rounds. You get additional points if you aren’t hit at all during a round and also extra points for varying your attacks.

The Takedown challenges place you in one of the many halls with Gargoyles and as the challenge name implies, you get your ‘Bats’ from various takedowns. Pressing the ‘Select’ button gives you the full breakdown of what the 3 takedowns are and they vary in each challenge.

I’m still working my way through these and have about 8-10 ‘Bats’ but will keep working towards them all. It adds another side to the game which would otherwise just be the normal single player campaign.

I give this game 4 out of 5 stars. It has massive re-playability and the scope to challenge even the most skilled gamers. The Graphics are excellent and the sound effects/voice work is amazing – Mark Hamill reprises his role as ‘The Joker’ from the animated series. I’ve found it is the little touches which have made this game as good as it is. The time spent in development has really paid off in the finished product. This game is a must for all PS3 owners and is up their with Bioshock and Half-life2 in the immense detail that has gone into polishing the game.

Treat yourself – you deserve it.
It is available from Amazon Here – Batman: Arkham Asylum