T w e n t y S i d e d

So that’s our first week of Arkham Asylum. I’m really glad to be covering something we like.

There’s a good bit of tension between this game and Arkham City, to the point where it’s hard to discuss one without bringing up the other. I think this one makes more sense and it has a more focused story, but I find City to be more fun to play and explore. The combat is smoother, the combat is deeper, the enemies are more varied, but the overall plot is muddled.

In Arkham City, it was like the team was compelled to use every Batman villain in existence, including some of the obscure D-listers. The game has Hugo Strange, Penguin, Two-Face, Catwoman, Joker, Harley Quinn, Mr. Freeze, Bane, Zsasz, Hush, Deadshot, Soloman Grundy, Clayface, Poison Ivy, Mad Hatter, Riddler, and Ra’s al GhulAlso Calendar Man is there, perplexingly the only man in all of Arkham City who is locked in a cell.. That feels like extreme overkill. It feels like they were overcompensating. Which is odd, since the first game was great and they didn’t need to compensate for anything.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

This is the first time on Spoiler Warning that we’ve covered a game that Josh really doesn’t care for. The good news is that we’ll get to cover a game that’s really different from our usual fare, and Mumbles and I have a lot to say about it. On the downside, he’s not interested in the game enough to master it, which means he’s probably going to struggle a bit.

I think I get why he doesn’t care for the Arkham seriesWhat I don’t understand is why *I* like it. It’s pretty far from my usual thing, but I really dig it.. Josh favors games with a lot of planning and strategy, but here it’s more about execution. There’s no way to “break” the game mechanically like in a Bethesda title, and you can’t experiment with different builds like in Dark Souls. There aren’t even that many different approaches for each encounter. If guys are armed then you ambush them, if they aren’t you just wade in and punch them. It’s got some low-level tactics involved when you decide how and when to unleash your combo meter, but those decisions are short-lived and only apply once you start to master the rest of the mechanics. If you don’t care for the base mechanics, then the promise of, “Master this reactionary face-punching gameplay and once in a while you’ll have the opportunity to make a small tactical decision” isn’t exactly a great sales pitch.

Yes, there are choices to make when you level up and choose what ability to unlock, but you’re not really going for “different builds” in the RPG sense. By the end of the game you’ll have unlocked everything.

Since I didn’t explain it in the video, here’s how it works:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Arkham Asylum EP2: Officer Frank BALLS”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.