Batman: Arkham Asylum

[Corporal Flashback]

Can't believe people don't get the fighting system. It's fantastic and a huge liberation from the curse of "miss a punch, get hit while your character finishes the punching animation".

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

The fighting system is great, but it takes some getting used to as your first instinct is to hit/dodge/hit/dodge while it's all about stringing punches and counters and stuns in one uninterrupted ballet. Then when the combo stacks up, you get these UBERMOVES which make you even more of a badass.

God such a great game. Maybe I'll be able to find the time to go through once more before Arkham City is released.

[Swallow]

I'm replaying this at the moment and it really is one of the most fantastically well-realised game worlds I've ever had the pleasure of tooling around in. Coming straight from playing the disappointing, unconnected Assassin's Creed Brotherhood I appreciate the design even more. Of course, it's a smaller playground but using the Metroid trick to keep certain areas unavailable works a lot better than AC's memories. Anyway, that was just an aside, I realise the AC/AA debate has been done to death, I just wanted to make the point that I love playing in Rocksteady's world. It still looks incredible (I'm playing it on PC for the first time) and I'm still amazed at the attention to detail and the fact that Rocksteady's Batman doesn't feel incongruous in the company of other great Batmans. (BATMANS!)

[SMD]

So I just died and the little hint said to use the middle stick to prevent that. I look at my PS3 pad and can't decide which one is more middle than the other.

Edit: woopsie.

Edited spoiler in...

[Swallow]

And... just got 100% completion, on normal. Did Shock & Awe Extreme on my second go. 8) Still a wonderfully fun game.

[alxbly]

So, I finished this earlier today and collected all of the riddles and chronicles. I really enjoyed the later parts of the game, as Batman started to get powered up with combo upgrades and new tech. The fighting system is really good once you get used to it; towards the end I was easily stringing together 20x combos on normal difficulty. There's some minor annoyances such as cutscenes at the start of checkpoints (at least they're skippable after a few seconds) and it's easy enough to end up playing most of the game in detective mode just so you won't miss anything. Overall it is a very good game but I still have to admit to slightly preferring Assassin's Creeds sweeping vistas, immense scope and the choices it offers for completing most objectives. Because Batman is more linear the world does feels a bit tighter and better realised... and Arkham Asylum's hand to hand combat is much more satisfying.

I definitely see where the love comes from.

[SaintM]

the batcave

[Kinketsu]

the batcave

I love the build up to all that. First you start out OK, then it goes into "oh shit" mode, next your scrabbling to try and get something out of your car boot. Finally you get to the Batcave and get tooled up so it's all "Alright motherfuckers, it's on now!" and you go out and beat all the mans. The pacing and style of the opening few hours are brilliant.

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

Some amazing foresight too by Bats to build a backup Batcave right underneath Arkham Asylum. Even this rather ... laboured plot-twist fits right in with the Batman backstory though.

Looking back the most amazing bits were still the hallucinations triggered by Scarecrow. Even though the Scarecrow bits themselves weren't very hard at all, it felt so intense and disorienting, because any weird shit could happen. The bit where he walks down the asylum hallway and it slowly changes into an alleyway where his parents were killed ... goosebumps.

[Mars]

That bit was amazing... Actually, all of the scarecrow bits were.

[Fusty Gusset]

^ ^^

Not a massive fan of Batman and his world (bar the usual movie stuff) but the realisation of the Scarecrow in the first game was...dare I say it, bewildering and legitimately scary. Never felt like that in a game before and certainly never thought it could happen in a 3rd person game...hmmm yeah pretty unforgettable.

[Majora]

The alley hallucination was great but I thought the final hallucination was even better. Did better wtf in that sequence than Eternal Darkness did over the whole game.

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

Final (?) hallucination spoiler:

The 'my Xbox is fucked' one? That was indeed brilliant, especially as I already suffered from 3 or 4 RRoDs by then and also suffered a corrupt Batman save once, forcing me to start over. I really thought I was done for, my game and/or my Xbox fucked - until I noticed the subtle changes to the intro after the 'reboot'. A genuine WTF LOL moment.

[Lothar Hex]

Oh God yes, that bit was brilliant especially as I had recently replaced my 360...then when the first cutscene started playing and it said press "J" to skip, I tweaked, but for that first few seconds, dear God.

[GrannySmiths]

the first scarecrow hallucination really unsettled me it was probably the mix of it being in the morgue and the voices. I got pretty freaked out I wanted out of there! so you can imagine my dismay when I left it brought me straight back into the room!

[dayte]

Hint: To dodge Joker's gunshot, press the middle stick.

[mdn2]

Arkham Asylum and City collection appears to have been leaked.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-04-18-batman-arkham-hd-collection-revealed-via-leak

[SeanR]

apparently pre-orders start tomorrow.

 

ps. the ads on that site. fucking hell.

[Down by Law]

I love those games but the DLC was a total bust. If they included Origins as well I might have gone for it as I never played the DLC for that (heard it's the only half decent one) will stick with my 360 copies.

[Sabreman]

Why not make it 361.

[DarhkFox]

So it doesn't include origins?  Missed opportunity.  I have them all on steam if I ever wanna reply them again anyway. Still haven't finished Arkham city due to the PC crap though.

[Yobo Ahoy]

Always found it a bit unfair the way they disowned Origins. Original it certainly wasn't but they were some decent set pieces and despite feeling a little disjointed in places it was still great fun to play. 

[DarhkFox]

Think I enjoyed the campaign more in original that city. Just my opinion anyway.

[MDY]

Trailer for the Remaster comparing the graphics to the originals..

 

The move from custom UE3 to UE4 seems to have caused several unfortunate changes.. The character detail seems reduced due to the different lighting and you also lose some of the fog effects that were nice and atmospheric too..  

 

 

[Alex W.]

Wow, it's lit completely differently. Much less shadow detail, none of the deliberate blue/green cast in the scenes, and much less bloom. I wonder how much of that is an inevitable part of changing the engine, and how much is a deliberate change to make the originals look more like Knight.

[Blu3Flame]

The same thing happened when Shadow Complex made the jump to UE4. Completely different lighting.

[cohen205]

Is it me, or does the original look better?

[SeanR]

original here...

[Nick R]

Not that anyone would notice these things on an average playthrough, but here are some of the differences (mostly for the worse) I noticed in that video:

 

0:56 - Remaster loses (or at least really tones down) the reflection in Hugo's glasses

1:20 - Joker's hair looks wispier and generally more realistic in the original (the lock hanging over his forehead)

2:47 - New shadows on Batman's cape. Different lighting source?

3:30 - No gargoyle glow in Detective Mode? In slow-mo, the wave effect as it's activated also looks a bit buggy.

5:40 - No movie projection on Clayface

[BitterToad]

Guys you seem to be confused... the remaster looks loads better. Because you see the remaster is in Unreal 4. The old games are in Unreal 3. So the new games look better by default.

 

1 better.