The Asylum Revisited

Recently, I was called by the siren song of a Playstation sale to pick up Arkham Asylum and Arkham City for around $10 in total. I had not played this game since I got it on the Xbox 360 in 2010, and I wanted to see how this 3D Metroidvania held up after 15 (!!!!) years. Arkham Asylum was developed and released in what amounts to lightspeed (2 years) in this day and age. Nobody knew what to expect, or even to expect a game like this. Superhero video games had been released by the truck load in the late 90s-early 00s, but by 2009 that well had seemingly run dry. A lot of these games, like Spiderman 2, the Hulk and (God forbid you play this) Fantastic Four paralleled theatrical releases. But the Dark Knight movies coming out around this time didn't exactly lend themselves to a video game adaptation. 3D Metroidvanias were even more scarce. The World's Greatest Detective himself hadn't featured in an enjoyable video game since he had nipples on his suit.

This did not dissuade Eidos, who managed to secure the rights to publish a Batman licensed game In 2007. Eidos next tapped Rocksteady Studios to develop what would become Arkham Asylum. Riddle me this Bats: how many video games had Rocksteady developed prior to this sleeper hit? If you guessed more than one, you would be wrong. Can you imagine a studio with such little history being trusted with a major IP in 2024? Rocksteady was most "famous" for developing Urban Chaos: Riot Response, a run of the mill first person shooter in a year chock full of them. The studio itself spun out of Argonaut Games, who's own claim to fame was making the discount Mario 64 series Croc, and Star Fox on the SNES. Not exactly a pedigree that screams success. But hey, times were different when you could develop a AAA game in 2 years.

The premise of Asylum reads very much like a direct to DVD spinoff of the 1990s Batman animated series. The Joker was captured and delivered to the aforementioned Asylum far too easily for Bruce Wayne's tastes, and his intuition was correct. The Joker and his battered girlfriend Harley Quinn manages to take over the Asylum and cause chaos by releasing most of the imprisoned supercriminals from Batman's rogue's gallery including Bane, Killer Croc, Scarecrow, and Poison Ivy. It turns out putting them all in the same mental institution was a bad idea. I won't give away the rest of the story, but suffice to say that Batman will run out of bubble gum pretty early on. Arkham Asylum draws a lot of inspiration from the comic books and cartoons; it also feels very much like a spiritual successor to 2000's Spider-Man on the N64 which had nothing to do with the movies and similarly felt like a comic book adaptation.

Now for the good: Like the best Batman adaptations, Arkham Asylum exudes atmosphere. It's not exactly a horror game, but it is constantly dark and rainy, and like a Metroid game Batman is often alone with his thoughts in a creepy dark corridor. Unlike a Metroid game, his thoughts are constantly interrupted by Joker mocking his every effort on the intercom. A favorite of mine is that when you die, the villain that kills you shows up on screen to insult you.

The voice cast is unusually star studded as well. Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy (RIP) reprise their roles as Joker and Batman which always takes me back to the TV series. Harley Quinn's voice actress also returns from the show. The other actors (including Troy Baker, because he's in everything) do their best impressions of BTAS characters. The game is laden with easter eggs like audio recordings of interviews with the supervillains, as well as fun cameos like Clayface being locked up in a cell.

Arkham Asylum stretches the true definition of a Metroidvania because you don't have to return to most of the locations in the game afterwards, but it's very rewarding to do so. Scattered throughout the levels are Riddler Trophies (he also makes fun of you as you collect them), audio recordings, Riddler challenges, and optional upgrades. Smartly, you can collect a lot of these on your first run through, and you'll see several more that you want to come back to later. The map works well enough, and the game makes it easy to return if you're a completionist.

The bad: Frankly, this is close to a 10/10 game, especially for its time. If I had to pick a bad, it would be the boss fights. They are too easy. You can usually figure out the boss' cadence after 1-2 tries, and the only way that Arkham Asylum makes it more difficult is by reinforcing the bosses with trash mobs. The final showdown with Joker is a particular disappointment. It is easier than the miniboss fight you have right before it. On the bright side, the boss fights aren't QTE reliant like other games that came out during the 360 era.

The ugly: on the other hand, there's a lot of ugliness here. Arkham Aslyum's combat and movement is clunky. Even the act of walking doesn't look quite right, something Rocksteady would fix in the sequels. The combat works well enough, but the dodging is relatively imprecise even when you time it correctly. Additionally, the stealth missions feel like they were introduced to pad out the game. They're fun at first: Batman is weak to bullets, so in a room full of gun toting thugs you need to sneak around from above (where they magically can't see you) or below to take them out. This goes by quickly enough, but eventually the rooms can contain 5-7 bad guys. On top of that, taking out just one of them means an alarm goes off so you have to wait for Joker to fire off a quip and the bad guys to freak out, and slowly walk away before you can do anything else.

Obviously, this is not something I can really hold against the series. It was only Rocksteady's first attempt at an action adventure title. They would go on to clean a lot of this up in Arkham City. Arkham Asylum was released the same year as Uncharted 2 and Assassins Creed II, and having played all three of those titles (hell, I played Uncharted 2 in 2021), Asylum comes out on top in terms of replayability for me in a way that the other two just don't. That might sound like sacrilege to what Thrak likes to call "Sony fanboys", but collecting Riddler trophies will always be less annoying than the impossible-to-see-due-to-brightness-level treasures in Uncharted. Arkham Asylum is the stone cold classic nobody saw coming, and I enjoyed every minute of my replay. I highly recommend giving this game a go if you see it on sale. If there's a lesson to be taken from the experience, it's that Batman's universe should've kept lobotomies around for some of these psychos.