It’s finally accessible to the public. The demo to Batman Arkham Asylum. we can now get a glimpse at the game and see if the hype is waranted.

I mean, the game looks good on paper, and the previews and such made it look quite interesting. Well I’ve gone through quite a few playthroughs of the demo, so here are my first impressions!

See if the game is worth all the hype, read on!

What’s in the demo?
Some people might’ve already played a Batman: AA demo. One has been available for a little while. But only at certain Gamestop locations, and lots of people didn’t get to try it. Well, the demo that was just made available is a completely different demo.

The Gamestop demo include 1 challenge room. And that’s it. The new demo though, includes roughly the 10-15 first minutes of the game (minus the “interactive” cut-scenes). So from the time the Joker starts taking over the Asylum to just before the boss encounter, against some random big dude. So you get: 1 battle against a few generic enemies, talking to a few people, 1 incredibly simple sneaking mission, a bit more talking, and 2 enemy encounters where stealth is the main part.

The demo takes about 15-20 minutes to complete on your first try. Second try and more should take around 10 minutes(since you skip the cinematics on the second time around…unless you really like looking at Harley Quinn ). Not too long, though I’d really like it if we could get that one boss battle just after where the demo ends. Overall there’s enough to show you how the game plays and such, and should be enough to tell you if you want to buy the retail game.

How does it play?
It’s a third-person action/stealth game. The controls are relatively simple. The sticks make you move around and move the camera.  The square button is your attack, Circle seems to be a stronger attack though I haven’t really used it, Triangle, sometimes in combination with R2, does takedowns. X is the dodge button, and you can hold it to run. Holding L1 prepares your current tool (only the batarang is available in the demo) and R1 uses it. You can also quickly tap L1 to instantly throw a batarang. Pressing R1 also uses your grappling hook. And the various face buttons all have uses when hanging on a gargoyle. Finally, you crouch with R2 and you switch to Detective View(which gives X-ray heat vision(yeah, both at once) ). This might sound like it could be complicated, but it actually plays really smooth and feels quite natural. I can’t really say anything bad against the controls, that’s for sure.

Oh, and ALSO: No. Fucking. Automatically regenarating health. Instead, you keep your health no matter how low it gets, and when you finish sections, or something, I’m not 100% sure on that, you get a bit of health back. This really encourages you to be as stealthy as possible in all the stealth encounters, otherwise you’ll get to the following sections with  lower health.

Stealth
The stealth gameplay is competent enough. If you’re stealthy enough, you’re rewarded by… not getting shot in the ass. So the gameplay… well, most of the time you’re hanging on gargoyles and using Detective vision to see your surroundings, to decide when and where to take out your enemies, finding openings, using your environment to your advantage and stuff like that. It’s actually quite well done. My only complaints here would be that the AI are fucking morons, they’re just really simple. Though I really like how, as you take out enemies, the remaining ones change their state of mind, becoming terrified and stuff, which changes the way they talk and act.  Also, if you get caught, you’ll probably get shot a bit, but running away is a simple matter of hanging on to gargoyles an swinging to other gargoyles until the enemies don’t see you anymore. That’s a BIT of a let-down, but not a big problem.

Other elements of stealth include crouching to do less noise and stay out of view, and if you manage to sneak close behind someone you can take them out with a Stealth Takedown, which also doesn’t alert other enemies (unless they see you do it, of course). There’s a few other types of takedowns when trying to be stealthy… like the incredibly NOT stealthy “break through the glass ceiling to fall on someone” takedown, and the badass “ninja capture and enemy hanging” takedown you can do when an enemy is close to the gargoyle you’re hanging on (though the hanging won’t kill them…).

Overall the stealth looks quite good, I just hope that the retail version will have more intelligent enemies in those sections, or at least later in the game.

Combat
That’s one part I was really wondering about, since Eidos was hyping this a lot. The “freeflow” combat system is just about as simple as old arcade beat-em ups. Basically, during combat encounters, you’ll be mashing the square button a lot to kill things, and pressing different directions on your d-pad to instantly change target. The system works pretty well and as you build your chain (hitting multiple attacks without missing hits or waiting too long between 2 hits) Batman does some pretty cool attacks. Batman also has… some kind of spider sense I guess >_>… and when an enemy is about to attack, you can press triangle to counter. Also, if you knock an enemy down, you can hold R2 and press triangle for a takedown.

It’s not a BAD system, but it’s a lot more simple than I expected. Trying to get a long chain going can be pretty fun. In the end it’s button-mashing, but it’s the good, arcade beat-em up, kind. Thankfully it’s not the focus of the game(though, from what I understand, the challenge mode’s main focus), otherwise it might get stale fast.

Overall impressions
Graphically, this game looks great. The character models look awesome, and the animation is smooth. The art style is dark and gritty, it definitely takes the audience seriously. IT definitely FEELS like a Batman game. And the few(2) Batman vilains we’ve seen look quite cool… I like Quinn’s new look(sure, some people might prefer her original look, and I understand their feeling), Joker looks like a badass mix of all the previous Jokers (and his voice actor sounds great). Can’t wait to see more.

I quite like the gameplay. My complaints are really nothing big or game-breaking, though I really hope the AI ramps up a bit as the game advances. The stealth is fun, the combat is simple but actually not too bad and the overall gameplay and atmosphere is great.

We might have the second best Batman game in our hands. The hype might actually all be true for once. Batman doesn’t have THAT many great games based on him, but this might be a really good entry him.
It doesn’t seem like a MUST buy, but it looks like quite a solid game for Batman or stealth game fans.

We’ll get a full review for sure once the game is out.

jobocan Console, Games, Preview, impressions