In the interests of full disclosure, I hate Batman. Okay, hate is too strong a word, but I dislike the character immensely. Long before I was a video game geek, I was a comic geek. I’ll admit that in the hands of a skilled writer (1980s Frank Millar), Batman can be great, but in the hands of a skilled writer, any comic book character can be great.

My main complaint is that Batman can do no wrong. He’s supposed to be the most ‘dark and realistic’ hero in the DCU, but is often portrayed as a model of intellectual, physical, and ethical perfection who the plot-gods make sure always comes out on top no matter what the situation.

But I’m talking about the GAME DEMO here, so I will attempt to keep an open mind, even though I greatly dislike the main character.

The first thing I noticed was an inability to fiddle with the graphic settings. No changing your resolution, textures, or SFX. It’s very possible this is just because it’s a demo, but if that’s the case in the full game, I wouldn’t complain. I tend to think of graphics settings as either accommodating people whose computer doesn’t meet the recommended specs or massaging the ego of those who’ve have high-end systems. Graphically speaking, I think games would be better if there was a single end-user experience.

The second thing I noticed was the ‘character bios’ section. I love this sort of fluff, so I immediately clicked on it. Only Batman and the Joker are displayed. Batman has an expression I interpret as constipated man stoically going to the bathroom, or five-year-old denied his peanut butter cookie. The Joker has two out of five audio tapes of an interview between the Joker and… Magma from X-Men: Legends? It sounds just like her to me, and she’s apparently a doctor now. While the Joker’s tapes don’t interest me – by definition, his psyche is meant to be impenetrable – I hope we get to listen to/discover those of other villains. It might be a neat way to get into their head and have them portrayed as more than one-dimensional punching bags. (It worked in BioShock!)



We start with a brief cinematic in which Batman rushes through the city in his Batmobile with the Joker handcuffed in the backseat. Gotham looks suitably stylish. Not as impressive as Tim Burton’s Gotham, but not just a copy of New York either. Batman himself is very broad and muscular, moreso than I prefer. While he’s not Spider-Man, his fighting style is fairly athletic and acrobatic, and he spends as much time running and swinging as he does lifting heavy objects.

After the cutscene, we’re immediately tossed into a battle with a group of shirtless thugs who all have the same broad, muscular build. I vaguely point Batman at one, click my left mouse button and he punches. I continue to click the button while sometimes changing direction and Batman performs a wild range of stylish moves, sometimes in slow motion. I’m even graded on my combos. It feels like Devil May Cry 4, but requires far less in the way of timing or chaining together moves. There’s an interesting contrast between the stiff, Dead Space like movement just walking/moving, and the very fluid movements of the combat. One moment, I’m playing a comic book, and the next, I’m back to driving my grandfather’s rice combine harvester.

After the obligatory smack-down segment, the Joker invites me to come and find him. I wander into the nearby cells and find something out of Silent Hill. This pleases me, as one of my favorite versions of Arkham is that of a hellish, cruel pit the uncaring citizens of Gotham toss anyone who can’t handle reality. And that people tend to become more violent and insane after being interred in it for awhile. I get a few new character bios, and discover a fairly obvious secret object.

The corridors are all narrow and the rooms seems very small, possibly a stylistic choice, but it reminds me of too many games developed on the old Xbox that had to have tiny areas because of memory restrictions.

I head down to the patient pacification center, which has a giant electrical chair. Zsasz has captured a guard and strapped him down, and will kill him if he sees me coming. Is it the stealth tutorial? I think so! I’m also alerted to ‘detective vision’ which allows me to see through walls and highlights important objects.



I first try to fail the stealth portion to see how the game deals with my failure. I learn to grapple, then hang upside down on a gargoyle, drop and walk in front of Zsasz. I’m treated to a small cutscene of Zsasz electrocuting the guard (the man dies off screen), then the Joker appear in front of a black background and appears to be taunting Batman’s dead body. It’s game over, would I like to retry?

Now, I could understand if this was a critical situation, but it’s a single guard. Why does his death mean the game has to end? To be sure, I’m not asking for multiple endings or for events in the mission to change. The guard dies, I beat up Zsasz, and I continue on in Arkham. Instead, the game makes me replay this part, and I stealth knock-out Zsasz.

The demo then has me sneak attack a few groups of henchmen, and it’s over.

Thoughts so far: Fairly shallow combat, characters, and story. Being the World’s Greatest Detective seems to boil down to using your X-Ray Batvision and interacting with anything that glows orange.

On the other hand, leaping from gargoyle to gargoyle while people fire at me, and sneaking behind thugs to take them down was fun. They seem to have the atmosphere right, and while a bit of the voice acting is questionable, it’s mostly solid.