Batman: Arkham Asylum or Why is this game so good?

In the excitement of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, I walked away with 4 new games, one of which was Batman: Arkham Asylum. I'd heard universally good things about it, both from friends and from game journalists. Despite the positive reviews, I was definitely skeptical, especially since I'm not a huge Batman fan. I mean, I like it as much as the next guy, but I was both tired and bored by the time Dark Knight was over. Regardless, I'm happy to admit now that I was wrong. Really, really wrong.

Arkham Asylum is AMAZING. Draenoth calls it the best licensed game he has ever played and I think it's hard to disagree with that point. They took everything that is great about Batman and put it into this game. They took everything that makes games like this boring and some how took it out. Case in point: combat.

The game routinely throws groups of unarmed goons at you to fight. Despite a couple of unlockable special moves and Bat gadgets, combat is pretty much a one button affair. You push the attack button, then push it again in the direction of a different guy and repeat. By any measure of game design, this seems like it would a recipe for tedium, but it just isn't... and I don't know why. Maybe it's the cinematic nature of the combat or the slow motion power swings, but every time I land a debilitating blow on the final thug, I both make a smashing noise and jump up in my chair a bit. Sometimes I giggle. It's just wildly fun in a way that few games have ever been.

Outside of combat, there are tons of collectibles that unlock Batman back story, Riddler riddles that you have solve, and lots of little puzzles that require you to use your Bat tools to the best of their abilities. When you play this game, you feel like a bad ass, which is pretty much all I could ever ask of a game.

The only hiccups I've had at all with the game so far was the install process: it seems to require some Visual Studio redistributable, .Net and PhysX drivers that it didn't install on it's own, even through Steam. All of the installers came with the game though, so after finding and running them, it seems to work fine. Also, the game pretty much requires a gamepad, so don't pick it up for PC without one (if you don't have an XBox 360 gamepad for your PC, just go get one).

I'm super excited to finish this game; as far as pure fun goes, I honestly haven't played ANY other game this year that compares.