Batman: Arkham Asylum Review

Arkham Asylum is where licensed games stopped being a punchline. Rocksteady built two systems and made both excellent. The freeflow brawler turns a room of thugs into a rhythm exercise, with counter prompts and cape stuns keeping Batman moving, and it has been copied by so many studios since that its originality is easy to forget. The predator rooms are the better half: armed guards below, gargoyles above, and a fear meter that drops as you take them out of the dark one at a time.

The island is a Metroid map that opens as gadgets accumulate, which gives an asylum tour real structure instead of a corridor. Paul Dini's script and the animated series cast, with Mark Hamill audibly enjoying himself, produce a Joker who is funny rather than edgy, and the Scarecrow sequences remain the most inventive thing the series ever attempted. The Titan boss fights are the weak link and every review said so. It is still the template.