The bat finally gets his day in the computer world!

User Rating: 9.5 | Batman: Arkham Asylum PS3
For a while now we have seen many attempts to drag the gamer market into the world of Gotham and its favourite crime loving inhabitants and its hero (drop the super since he has no powers so to speak other than the power to spend unknown amounts of cash inventing weapons and gadgets that the bright minds down at your local gadget shop have not fully thought of yet). The games revolving around the Batman have ranged from mediocre to just plain dull with none truly wishing to give you the full experience of being Bruce Wayne. Along comes Arkham Asylum promising to be "near flawless" as one of the CEO's at Eidos put it prior to release which is always a risky thing to say knowing that now the general nice people us critics claim to be will be complete and utter tossers if we even see one pixel out of place; the bad news is that Arkham Asylum is not near flawless, the good news is it has tried very hard at recreating the Batman universe and has managed to do it to a high standard. As the title suggests the game revolves around Arkham Asylum, the mental institute of choice in Gotham since capital punishment is apparently illegal in the one city in America where mass murderers like to hang out, Batman drops off everybody's favourite psychopath for some treatment when "oh no" everything goes wrong and suddenly Batman is stuck in the complex with all his worst enemies... Now to me Batman seems to get a kick out of dashing these masterminds up outside of the asylum so locking him in there with all the nut jobs is either A. his worst nightmare or B. More entertaining than listening to Alfred Talking about erectile dysfunction!

The graphics are brilliant I must admit, offering up next gen dark and dungy textures and moments of aww as you glide around the open ended area's with Batman taking damage to his gear as he progresses through the campaign, there was a few moments of screen tear admittedly on the PS3 release but nothing too distracting. The voice acting is second to none with Luke Skywalker stealing the show as the Joker always seems to do and Kevin Conroy yet again filling the boots as the voice of Batman in voice form (always doing a better job than Bale and his Batman/John Connor/general I'm angry man voice) The combat is fluid offering up many chances to pummel 20+ characters at a time and make it look as if you are playing EA's Ballerina 2009 it's got that much of a flow to it, at times this can turn into a button mash experience especially on the lower difficulties but then again any person who says a game is Easy when they completed it on easy is not proving anything other than they suck and cannot complete a game without being spoon-fed the answers. The boss fights are my main gripe, other than Poison ivy there does not seem to really be that much of a challenge to any of the boss fights other than dash up the simpletons then start on the big guy especially in the case of the final battle, luckily enough the Scarecrow scenes do show inspiration offering up enough fear and side scrolling originality to make those scenes at least feel like a good break from the hack and knock out of the main game.

All in all Arkham Asylum is the best Batman licensed game of all time, which is as helpful as saying that that person from that thing is good in that whatsyacallit? But truly this is a good game and one of the finest of the year and worth checking out if you are a Batman fan or not.