The MOST IMMERSIVE in the Series | Batman: Arkham Asylum Retrospective Review

[Music] hahaha [Music] [Music] for decades now batman has been a household name and one of the most popular comic book characters of all time he's had many successful comic book stories tv shows and movies but surprisingly had never really achieved a breakout gaming experience many batman games were released between the years of 1980 to the early 2000s but the vast majority of them received low to middling reviews from both critics and fans alike warner brothers was still anxious to push batman into the gaming space though and in 2007 made a deal that gave publisher idos interactive access to the batman license idos was anxious to publish a batman game and approached rocksteady studios about taking on this new game rocksteady studios was a fairly new company at the time though having only been founded in 2004 at this time rock city had only released one game urban chaos riot response a first person shooter that released in 2006 after releasing that game they began working on prototypes using unreal engine 3 for potential next-gen games on xbox 360 and ps3 idos liked these prototypes and asked rocksteady to present their ideas for a batman game after that presentation idos liked the direction rock said he wanted to go with batman and full production began in late 2007 with so many batman games already in existence and with so many failing to hit the mark rock said he was under pressure to find a way to succeed with batman where so many had failed when asked how they approached the idea of a new batman game and whether they looked to the prior games for ideas creative director sefton hill had this to say to be completely honest we didn't look at them for inspiration or what to avoid or anything like that we started by focusing on who is batman what is batman what does batman bring to a game how can we push that experience once we did that and started working on the game and the core mechanics it just got better and better and we never lost focus on what it is to be batman we think we've created an awesome experience to help realize their vision they decided to bring on pauldini to write the story who was best known for his time writing batman the animated series when asked how he became involved with the game and why he chose to do it paul had this to say i was approached first by dc comics who had the idea for creating the story for an original batman video game it sounded very intriguing to me because at that point most of the batman games weren't original i think there were like a handful that did not owe their existence to a movie or a tv show or something like that dc really wanted to create something right from the ground up but build it around very familiar batman elements it was also decided fairly early on to make the setting of the game arkham asylum gotham's home for the criminally insane in an interview with usatoday.com paul describes why they chose arkham asylum it's the holding place for many of batman's worst and most deadliest enemies and it presented the challenge of putting batman into a box if he were out loose in gotham city there were other places he can go he could possibly make allies with the police or go back to the bat cave but arkham is self-contained we put it on an island a little like alcatraz so he is really confined creative director septon hill further sums up this idea with a great quote to gamespot in batman arkham asylum we really focused our effort on creating an intense pressure cooker atmosphere by locking batman in the mad house and allowing the joker to turn up the heat the decision was also made to give this game a darker grittier more realistic tone and the team took inspiration from the arkham asylum graphic novel a serious house on serious earth a lot of attention to detail was paid to arkham itself and the team felt that it was really important to nail that atmosphere in an interview with cbr.com art director david higo describes how they approach designing arkham the first main goal while designing the visual direction of batman arkham asylum was to work on a glue that would join two diametrically opposed styles the comic book style and an ultra realistic render the traits of the characters and the environmental architecture had to be extravagant enough to embrace the essence of the batman universe but at the same time we wanted to try and give the game a very realistic touch in the texture treatment and in the details everything had to feel consistent and in a sense real the second goal in the art direction was to recreate the dark and gothic feel that is inherent to the batman universe in general and arkham asylum in particular we wanted the game as dark as possible to really suit the twisted mood and atmosphere of the asylum the building by itself had to feel as insane as the lunatics it holds david further goes on to describe the influences for the designs of batman and joker stating that jim lee's version of batman was a strong reference point since that batman design depicts a muscular trained strong character that wouldn't feel out of place in extreme combat situations for the joker they took a lot of inspiration from the killing joke graphic novel for his design to further bring these characters to life rocksteady decided to hire two big name voice actors for batman and the joker kevin conroy and mark hamill respectively conroy and hamill voiced these characters in the batman animated series which rocksteady were huge fans of pauldini also describes to usatoday.com the decision to hire conroy and hamill i think that was decided within five minutes of our first meeting rock said his team had seen the animated series there's never been a better joker than mark hamill and kevin has always been batman to us kevin conroy and mark hamill are two legendary voice actors for these characters and will discuss their performances in much more detail throughout this video as well as many other aspects of batman arkham asylum such as its innovative free flow combat creative storytelling and impressive sound design amongst other things but after two years of development batman arkham asylum released the ps3 xbox 360 and windows in 2009 due to its massive success it's had a couple different re-releases since then such as the game of the year edition as well as a remastered collection titled return to arkham for this video i decided to go with the game of the year edition on pc which is where the majority of the gameplay clips in this video came from although i think the remastered version of the game is a great way to play it and it definitely has improved graphics i personally never liked the remastered faces of batman and joker especially batman's though his mouth looks a lot bigger and more frowny and it distracts me too much from the game i also feel like the remaster loses a lot of the dark shadows that helped to evoke the overall darker mood that the original release had so i prefer the game of the year edition in that sense too the pc version still allowed me to boost the graphics a bit so i felt it was the best overall choice for this video i also played the game using an xbox controller so if you see any xbox button prompts that's why if you enjoy this video i'd also appreciate it if you gave it a like since that helps the channel and you can also feel free to subscribe for more superhero retrospectives like this one but now let's discuss what rocksteady and pauldini gave us with the story our story begins in the streets of gotham moments after batman has captured the joker we also get our first easter egg of the game paulie's diner which is likely a reference to paul deeney the writer of the game's story and batman the animated series we'll actually get to go inside paulie's diner in the third game since it serves as the introductory level in batman arkham knight for now though batman has joker in the batmobile and is on his way to arkham asylum to return him to his cell if you're unfamiliar with the location arkham asylum is home to the criminally insane and houses the vast majority of batman's costume villains joker is no stranger to the asylum and is considered their most notorious patient with the joker on his way back to lock up gotham can breathe a sigh of relief but batman has a hunch this may only be the beginning of a long night batman feels like the joker has a trick up his sleeve and decides it's a good idea to escort him back to his cell just to be safe we're now in the shoes of batman and will spend the next few minutes following joker throughout the asylum along the way we'll be introduced to a variety of noteworthy characters and get some useful background information for example we can overhear warden quincy sharp ordering his guards to keep joker locked up this time not because he's concerned for the safety of others but because he's running for mayor and thinks that another escape could hurt his chances of being elected warden sharp is an original character created for this game and we'll talk about him a lot more as we continue the story we also see security guard aaron cash for the first time cash is a character from the comics debuting in arkham asylum living hell in that comic he's considered arkham's most effective guard and doesn't take any from the inmates at one point though his hand is bitten off by killer croc and he spends the rest of the story with a hook for a hand this will be referenced a lot in the game and we can see that he does indeed have a hook for his left hand here as well there's also dr young who looks really terrified of the joker as he passes by she was another original creation for the game and will learn a lot more about her soon as well as joker is being wheeled through the hallways of arkham some of his thugs pass by in the opposite hall and joker mentions how it's funny that a fire at black gate prison caused a bunch of his henchmen to be transferred to arkham he's clearly suggesting that he caused the fire at black gate as a way to get them all here and that he has some sort of devious plan already in motion we continue forward though eventually making it to the elevator right as killer croc is being brought up the same one who bit off aaron cash's hand croc is a massive imposing enemy and the only thing keeping him at bay right now is a shock caller that the guards have control of croc clearly has a lot of distain for batman threatening to hunt him down and eat his bones from here though we continue into the elevator to return joker to his cell as a side note i'm sure this entire sequence could have been wrapped up in a quick cinematic but i'm so glad that rocksteady decided to have us play through it it's incredibly atmospheric as we walk through the asylum for the first time and we get a lot of great character development from the joker as he talks throughout it i love how it quickly introduces us to multiple characters and teases what's to come and i think it was a really smart way to open the game i'm sure it was tempting to start off with a big action sequence like a lot of games do but i think the slow burn approach did an excellent job at setting the tone for the rest of the game hold it there sorry batman arkham staff only i assure you if anyone's qualified listen i appreciate the assistance but he'll unsettle the more violent inmates i think he's talking about you bats don't be a stranger you're always welcome here gotta say it's good to be back you okay he surrendered almost without a fight i don't like it at least he's back where he belongs joker's loose alert [Laughter] the choke's on you [Laughter] now that joker's escaped he starts by sending some of the inmates to fight us this is our introduction to the combat of the game an innovative new system that rocksteady calls free flow combat we'll talk more in depth about it in the gameplay section of the video but it's a pretty simple system where you'll primarily just be using two buttons there's an attack button where batman will punch and kick enemies and there's a counter button that you'll press when an enemy is about to attack you each successful attack builds up your combo counter and the idea is to build up your combo by not taking any hits chaining as many attacks together as you can the developer stated that they wanted this system to be relatively simple to demonstrate how effortlessly batman is able to take down his enemies i think it effectively gets that point across and even though i say that the combat system is simple i wouldn't say that it's too easy it's actually incredibly fun and tests your reflexes as well as your ability to monitor the battlefield if you button mash too much and aren't focusing on your surroundings you'll struggle to survive the fights so for that reason i'd say it's an engaging combat system despite its simplicity after taking out all of the enemies though joker drops the electrified barrier and baits us to come find him we'll of course continue to pursue him but we can also do some light exploration beforehand one of the things that i love most about this game is the level of detail on every part of the asylum and how it adds to the lore of its universe for example one of the cells in this room once belonged to the riddler since we can see he's painted green question marks all over it we'll never see the riddler in person during this game but he will make his presence known a little bit later on and this is only the first of many easter eggs that we'll encounter as we continue our pursuit of joker we're interrupted by another escaped inmate victor zaz he's taken one of the guards hostage and is threatening to electrocute him to death saz won't be too difficult to handle though and he acts as our tutorial for stealth combat batman can grapple up onto the gargoyles around the asylum to stay hidden and deal with enemies from the shadows in this case we'll perform a glide kick in disas and then finish with a swift punch to the dick to ensure he's out cold even though we handle him pretty easily here victor's ass is a terrifying individual in his mind death is a gift and he kills people as a way to liberate them from this mundane world also if you look at zazz's body it's covered in tally marks and each tally represents a person that he's killed after killing someone he also likes to pose their bodies in lifelike scenarios and we can actually find a couple of them scattered around the asylum grounds although zaz is taken care of things only continue to get worse as we next get a video message from harley quinn the joker's girlfriend harley informs us that she's captured warden sharp and that her and the joker are officially in charge of the asylum now she also takes a moment to flaunt her new outfit which was a redesign for this game even though harley quinn is now an extremely popular character for dc comics she actually didn't originate in the comics she was instead an original creation for the batman animated series first appearing in the episode joker's favor where she helps joker enact an elaborate scheme to blow up commissioner gordon and other members of the police force in that show she was given the classic red and black jester's outfit which we can actually get a glimpse of in her hidden room for this game they decided to make her sexier by giving her an outfit that's a blend of a schoolgirl and a nurse outfit with some nods to her original look before you get too horny though you should know that her motion capture was performed by one of the male animators this animator was art lenovat who not only performed some of the motion capture for the game but was also the senior cinematics animator rocksteady stated that they felt that the animators were often the best people to perform the motion capture since they know what will work best for the game and the technology however they still use stunt men martial artists and acrobatics for some of the more advanced movements in the game but after our message from harley batman calls his ally oracle at the bat cave oracle is barbara gordon commissioner gordon's daughter although he doesn't know that she's working with batman barbara at one point even held the mantle of batgirl until the storyline of the killing joke where joker shot her in the spine paralyzing her from the waist down barbara didn't let that stop her though and now aids batman as his technical expert at the bat cave monitoring things around the city and feeding him useful information in this case she lets us know that joker told the police that he's planted bombs around the city and that he'll detonate them if anyone sets foot on arkham island this explains why batman receives no aid from police reinforcements or any other dc superheroes while he's trapped here as we continue through the asylum we'll eventually reach a point where we have to save some guards who are trapped in a room filled with deadly joker toxin our goal is to traverse above the gas and turn on the fans in the room to clear it out this is also our introduction to gliding since we have to glide across a gap to reach the other side sounds easy right well not if you pirated the game it turns out that rocksteady implemented an anti-piracy mechanic where batman will be unable to glide in pirated copies one unfortunate pirate learned this the hard way by complaining on rocksteady's forums that he's encountering a terrible bug where batman won't glide across the room and keeps falling into the gas a member of the rock city team jumped in to say this the problem you've encountered is a hook in the copy protection to catch out people who try and download cracked versions of the game for free it's not a bug in the games code it's a bug in your moral code it's a pretty clever anti-piracy system and it's funny how it essentially gets pirates to out themselves publicly continuing on though we eventually catch back up the joker as he stands on a cage he opens it to reveal a monstrous creature that he somehow managed to create although it looks really intimidating it's pretty straightforward to defeat it'll occasionally charge at you at which point you'll whip it in the face with a batarang and attempt to dodge out of the way it'll crash into the wall giving you an opportunity to beat up on it after doing this a few times the creature will start to experience some sort of internal malfunction well that was unexpected wasn't it after joker escapes he pops up on the tv monitors again to show us what he has planned next not only is joker captured warden sharp but we witness commissioner gordon get captured as well the person knocking out the commissioner was a security guard named frank bowles the guard that we accompanied as we escorted joker at the beginning of the game frank was paid off by the joker from the beginning proving that joker has been planning this riot for a while batman informs oracle of the situation and she's understandably worried for her father batman needs to find a way to track gordon down quickly so he decides to return to the holding cells where gordon was attacked as batman we can use our detective vision to analyze the room and we find frank's flask that he accidentally spilled on the ground using this we're able to follow the traces of alcohol left in the air by frank's bourbon to follow him while we follow his trail there's also a cool missible joker interaction nearby while you're running down the halls you'll at one point hear a phone ringing if you go up to the phone you can hear joker respond to someone who called the find his asylum i'll get back here when i find the rest of them we'll end up tracking bowl's bourbon sent to the entrance of the asylum where we first brought joker in thugs now litter the area and it seems they've managed to get a hold of some of the guards weapons guns are extremely damaging in this game so your best bet is often to use stealth and take these enemies out quietly you're given a lot of freedom with how you want to incapacitate enemies in these stealth sequences and can often use the environment to your advantage for example dropping through a glass ceiling to take one out it's a lot of fun watching the enemy scramble to figure out where you are and where you'll attack next and i think rocksteady really nailed the feeling of being batman in these moments after taking out all of the henchmen we continue following our trail of officer bowles however it seems that joker figured out how we were following him and decided to kill him to cut us off thankfully one of the guards opens up a doorway for us to continue through this path takes us outside overlooking the asylum and we're given a moment to really soak in how beautiful arkham island looks despite the chaos the designers really did an excellent job with what they set out to do the gothic victorian architecture of the buildings really fits the tone of the game and still feels realistic i also appreciate that it never feels too comic boogie in its appearance and that they didn't go too over the top with the gothic vibes they really managed to strike a nice blend in arkham's visual design and i think it's perfectly done at this point we're also let off the leash a bit and are free to explore the island as we see fit we can glide for longer distances and go into any of the buildings that we want in the comics arkham is usually portrayed as one big mansion but for this game rock city decided to have multiple buildings comprise all of arkham island i think this was a great idea since it gives you more of a feeling of exploration instead of being stuck inside one building the whole game it's also really fun watching the arkham grounds evolve over the course of the story right now things are relatively calm with security guards patrolling the area but as the game progresses we'll start to see that shift as soon as we land on the grounds we get a notification that someone is attacking the batmobile so we head to that location next to investigate there we'll find a bunch of thugs beating on the batmobile so we take them out for revenge afterwards we investigate the area for any clues to gordon's whereabouts gordon's clever and left his pipe on the ground for batman to find like with the flask we can trace the tobacco content in the air and follow it to gordon's location batman also decides this is a good time to grab a new gadget from the trunk his explosive gel this gadget allows us to blow up weak walls and access areas that were previously inaccessible to us this leads us to another part of the island and curiously we can see some inmates painting and nailing boards on the walls of the visitor center you can choose to ignore them if you want or you can take them both down and investigate the visitor center further if you do you'll switch to first person mode and the experience is surprisingly spooky come in sit down take off your mask so bats i was thinking you really could use a friend in here someone to talk to share secrets with shall we start with the big one who is that behind the mask why do you feel the need to go out into the world and fight people like me do you really think you can win we'll see [Laughter] after he shuts off the screen you can still explore the room a bit but there's not much else to it still it's a really haunting claustrophobic environment that feels like something out of a silent hill game i never felt comfortable in it so it was successful in creeping me out after leaving we'll continue following our trail towards gordon which brings us into the medical facility inside we rescue some doctors from more of joker's henchmen who inform us that three other doctors have been captured and taken to other parts of the building one of the doctors happens to be doctor young the one who we saw earlier who seemed to be so scared of joker on our way to rescuing her we can also see video footage of dr young explaining a new experimental formula that she's developed to help cure the inmates of their psychosis she calls this experiment project titan and that the project made a real turning point after the arrival of a specific patient that she refers to as patient x after rescuing dr young and the other doctors she becomes adamant that she needs to return to her office to retrieve her research notes despite the risk of running into more of joker's men batman hates the idea but aaron cash offers to escort her to her office and keep her safe with the doctor secure batman heads into the elevator to continue his search for harley quinn and gordon inside the elevator joker tells us to face our fears as the area fills with a mysterious gas it seems that jonathan crane aka the scarecrow is on the loose and has doused the area in his fear toxin there is no crane if you're unfamiliar with the character jonathan crane used to be a psychology professor who had an interest in fear and how the brain responds to it he also developed a fear toxin that causes the user to hallucinate their worst fears come to life which is why those patients and nurses were going crazy in that room this is only the beginning though as things become really weird really fast since after we leave this room we first see gordon getting dragged away begging for our help batman's eyes have also started to glow red indicating that something's not right when we make it to gordon we see that we're too late and that he's already dead batman feels like a failure and decides to call oracle to tell her the bad news the next room we enter is the morgue which seems to be a dead end not only that but we can hear the ghosts of the moor continuously order us to leave naturally we do exactly as the spirits say but upon leaving we end up back in the same place this time though there are three body bags in the center of the room in the first bag is bruce's father thomas wayne who tells bruce that he should have acted like a man and stood up to their murderer the day that they were killed in the next bag is bruce's mother martha wayne who begs bruce to help her in the final bag is scarecrow who jumps out at us causing us to recoil a bit once batman regains his composure we can see that all the body bags have disappeared but behind us things have gotten even worse bruce seems to be slipping further into the hallucination but his mind has left him a way out via the bat signal at the top of the crumbling asylum at the center though is a giant scarecrow and this is the first time that we get a good look at him in the game he's also received a pretty awesome redesign and i especially love the freddy krueger s glove on his right hand but with needles instead of blades it's scary but also serves a practical purpose of allowing crane to inject his victims if they're in close proximity in this section though scarecrow's true weapon is his gaze since if he spots you you'll instantly die your goal is to traverse the ruins of the asylum and try to make your way up to the bat signal without being spotted once you make it to the top you'll face the bat signal towards scarecrow and the light will blast him away which i think is meant to be symbolic of batman casting light onto his fears afterwards batman wakes up in the morgue and things appear to have finally returned to normal there's a nice sense of calm now that we're back in the real world and oracle calls in to check on us inside the morgue is also a pretty cool easter egg to a more obscure villain in the comics warren white aka great white shark my first time playing this back in 2009 i didn't really get what this easter egg was trying to convey but after looking into the character it's actually pretty grotesque warren white was a crooked investor who scammed a lot of people out of a lot of money during his trial he thought he was clever by pleading insanity to avoid going to prison but this meant he'd be serving time in arkham asylum a place worse than prison inside the asylum warren was harassed by many inmates at arkham and was at one point locked inside mr frieza's old room which is kept at a sub-zero temperature due to the frostbite pieces of worn started to fall off including his ears nose and lips causing him to resemble a shark he later even filed his teeth to a point to complete the look things worked out for him in the end though since he becomes somewhat of a kingpin in arkham asylum but i think inside the jar is meant to be the body parts that fell off of war and white which is pretty gross continuing on though batman leaves the morgan discovers that it wasn't commissioner gordon that he found dead but was instead one of the arkham guards gordon was actually only a couple rooms away the whole time with harley watching over him she's been waiting here and given orders to kill gordon if anyone spots batman they could just kill gordon now and be done with it but joker thinks it's a fun game to see if batman can find a way to save him without being spotted regarding saving gordon joker has this to say which includes a curious easter egg hell i may even give you harley it looks like you could use a new sidekick the line about needing a new sidekick is likely a reference to the second robin jason todd who joker killed in the story arc death in the family that story will actually become much more important in the third game batman arkham knight so it's cool to see it referenced here even though i doubt rocks that he knew at the time of this game that they'd continue that arc there's also another easter egg in this room and it's this stuffed teddy bear this bear actually belongs to bane and as a child he named it ozito bane was born inside the prison panoduro and ozido kept him company as he grew up there it seems he's kept it throughout the years and its appearance here is a bit of foreshadowing of what's to come batman easily takes down harley quinn and rescues gordon but gordon informs us of something strange in the center of the room and they both go to investigate it it wants doctor young's login never mind that get behind me now bane [Music] i thought he broke out of black gate cut me down who did this to you she drained the venom from my blood must stop her sorry has bane the good doctor won't be a problem much longer how do you like my puppet what say we cut him down run foreign [Applause] this takes us into a boss fight against bane even though he looks really imposing this boss fight isn't too tricky in fact it plays pretty much identically to our fight against that monster that joker unleashed on us earlier in the game you'll wait for bane to charge at you at which point you'll hit him in the face with a batarang to cause him to crash into the wall from there you can beat him up and jump behind him to detach the cables from his back those cables feed a drug called venom into bane's body which amplifies his strength once we remove all the cables from bane he's down for the count but he's been crashing into the wall so much the room is beginning to collapse on itself batman grapples out and makes it to safety batman and gordon returned to the surface feeling a sense of calm with bane buried under the rubble or so they thought as bane breaks free and grabs batman thinking fast batman fires up the batmobile remotely from his gauntlet sending it crashing into bane resulting in bane in the batmobile sinking to the bottom of the river from here batman puts gordon on a boat to evacuate the island with gordon finally safe batman plans to follow up on some new leads he's uncovered thanks to his interaction with bane bane revealed that dr young isn't the good doctor that we thought she was and has instead been draining the venom from bane's body to use in her titan project experiments bane is the patient x she was referring to in that video we saw earlier and for some reason joker wants to get his hands on venom as well batman decides to investigate doctor young more but he'll need to return to the bat cave to do so luckily he thought ahead years ago and built a makeshift batcave hidden in the grounds of arkham island once inside batman uses the bat computer to research what dr young has been up to and what her titan formula consists of as batman makes his way up to the surface oracle calls in to inform him of the story behind dr young it seems she initially took a couple of payments from joker regarding her titan experiments with the end goal of joker being able to use it to recreate an army of titan monsters dr young got cold feet and tried to back out of the deal but joker wouldn't let her he planned this riot at the asylum with the sole purpose of getting his hands on the titan formula and creating his army with this new information batman rushes back to arkham mansion where doctor young and aaron cash were heading to retrieve her notes it seems their journey back into the mansion wasn't flawless though as our first order of business is to save aaron cash who's been captured again once free he tells us that dr young fled to her office by the time we make it there it seems she's already left but she at least managed to get to her notes before joker batman decides to scan her office for her fingerprints in order to follow where she went next also inside her office we can find a mask mounted on her wall based on the villain roman cyanus aka black mask this is likely a replica based on its large size and the fact that roman's mask was accidentally burned to his skin during a confrontation with batman fun fact roman actually carved the mask from the wood of his dead father's coffin black mask played a big role in the arkham origins prequel game which i have a video on if you'd like to check that out too we'll talk more about black mask again in the future games though since i know he at least shows up again in batman arkham city we continue following our trail of dr young which brings us to the library inside we find a book where she hit her formula batman burns it so he doesn't have to worry about anyone getting their hands on it anymore joker doesn't seem too concerned about it though and instead tells us that victor zazz is on the loose again and has taken dr young hostage joker's goal now that the formula notes have been burned is to get zazz to torture her into telling him what the formula is batman exits the library to find dr young but as he leaves things start to get real trippy again the title card for this hallway now reads wayne manor and it seems we've been doused with the fear toxin again as we turn the corner the hallway appears to be never ending and as we walk the environment around us starts to shift eventually this hallway turns into crime alley the same place where bruce's parents were shot and killed leaving him an orphan we even play as young bruce wayne for a short period of time as bruce remembers a conversation he overheard at the police station after the murder [Music] come on kid this way take a seat in my office is he okay he'll be fine kid like that with all that money he'll be just fine shut up now he's eight years old and all alone money won't fix that whatever you say gordon his butler's on his way to pick him up you hear that he's got a bugger i'm sorry i just need to ask you some questions can i get you anything you okay i know you don't feel like answering me but it's the only way to catch who did this [Music] [Applause] i don't know it's this city there's something wrong with it and listen son call me jim i really love how these scarecrow sequences put us in the mind of bruce and have us relive this tragic moment in his life alongside him everyone knows batman's origin but this is done in such a unique creative way that it feels fresh and it makes us the player really sympathetic for bruce wayne in this moment i also like how this memory of the police station demonstrates bruce's trust in gordon and how he's always been an ally from day one as with our last interaction with scarecrow though this is only the beginning as we have to fight our way out of the nightmare again the sequence plays out similar to the last one where we have to avoid scarecrow's gaze and make our way up to the bat signal there are some additional elements to keep it fresh though my favorite being when scarecrow animate skeletons from the ground to fight us since this is all a hallucination this means that the skeletons are likely real people that batman is coming in contact with in the real world without realizing it as well this is further reinforced after blasting scarecrow with the bat signal since we awake randomly inside the mansion's clock tower afterwards it's fun to look back on this scarecrow sequence because we can see how batman is moving through the real world within it for example batman is constantly ascending in the hallucination like he would be to get to the top of the tower and the swinging pendulums and gears of the clock tower in the real world have manifested into the nightmare world so really cool attention to detail by rocksteady in an already extremely impressive gameplay sequence now that we're back in the real world though batman has to find a way to escape from the top of this tower since the hatch he entered through is locked somehow the only option we have is to cut the cable holding the giant bell sending it crashing down to the bottom i feel like there was probably a more graceful solution but the bell gets us to where we need to go next in our pursuit of victor zazz and dr young we quickly find them in the warden's office where zaz holds her hostage and threatens to kill her luckily this isn't a problem that a batarang can't solve you monster you evil evil evil monster he's not going anywhere you can stop now sorry i'm so sorry i saw bane i know i i joker threatened me i wanted to stop the experiment i tried to give him his money back joker doesn't take no for an answer he wants an army a horrible twisted force to destroy gotham but he couldn't do it without the formula i hid it but so now he has venom and your formula god he has gallons of the stuff there's a lab hidden in the gardens it's locked off but the security key codes for the entire island are in the warden safe what else is joker planning how should i know you think anything he says makes sense i think he's insane oh my god get out of the way when batman awakes he finds harley quinn standing over him she and some of her men have warden sharp and she strikes him with his cane so hard that it breaks off harley and the warden leave and were left to deal with harley's thugs after taking them out we confirmed that doctor young is dead from the explosion but luckily she told us about joker's secret lab in the gardens before her death still to get there we need a way to bypass the asylum security gates something only the warden has the passcode for we need to try and rescue him from harley as soon as possible so we investigate the area for clues batman scans the broken piece of the cane that harley hit the warden with and luckily it contained some of his blood on it which we can scan to form another trail inside the room is another fun easter egg and it's this puppet named scarface scarface belongs to the villain arnold wesker aka ventriloquist and the two work together as a criminal duo the wood used to create scarface was from the remains of the old gallows at blackgate prison where many inmates were executed due to this it's often unknown if there is a dark supernatural presence within scarface or if the ventriloquist just projects his own personality onto him kind of similar to the real world's annabelle the doll who's believed to be possessed by a demon it's strange that the warden would have this in his office but it's cool nonetheless there's also a really interesting hidden room in this office but we'll get to that a little bit later on in the video for now we follow the warden's blood trail which leads us to the penitentiary outside of it we rescue a nurse who is trying to help a security guard to safety batman tells them to hide in the medical facility and we head inside the penitentiary once inside we quickly learn that the penitentiary has a whole new level of psychotic inmates inside of it and just the audio of this next room alone is daunting it's such an abrupt and chaotic transition from what we've experienced in the rest of the asylum and it's really well done apparently the loud screaming and yelling during the scene was a recording of the entire development team as well which i thought was a funny detail as chaotic as this room is though we can at least take solace in the fact that the lunatics are all locked up and we can continue on into the next room surprisingly that room contains poison ivy who's concealed in this dome when she sees us she begs us to help her plants on the island stating that they're screaming in pain batman thinks this is nonsense and leaves her to her cell this leads us into the security control room where warden sharp is being held captive he's not the only one here though as we meet a really unique villain in the asylum clayface clay faces a villain who can shapeshift into different people and as of right now he's impersonating aaron cash in hopes that will set him free if you revisit clayface he'll often shift into someone else either warden sharp or commissioner gordon it's pretty funny especially when he tries to convince you that the other warden sharp is the fake one believe it or not there's actually an even stranger prisoner in this room and that's this guy his appearance is really striking causing many players a lot of confusion as to who he is because he's not a character from the comics this was actually a rock steady inclusion based on a contest that was held in 2008 where the winner would have their face modeled into the game somewhere the winner was a man named luke oliver and this is where rocksteady decided to insert his face model but outside of luke and clayface there's still the warden who we need to talk to we find him inside the security room where we can also see harley as she walks by poison ivy's cell this interaction between harley and ivy is likely a slight nod to their friendship which also debuted in the animated series it included an episode titled harley and ivy where harley and the joker broke up leading harley to partner up with poison ivy essentially forming their own dynamic duo this relationship has since evolved much further in the comics with them forming a relationship in more recent issues as far as the animated series though it's a pretty great episode and i enjoyed the bond that harley and ivy had in it so it was fun to see a smaller interaction between them in this game however our problems have just amplified as all of the lunatics have been released alongside poison ivy still we managed to get half of the security override code from the warden allowing us to use our cryptographic sequencer to bypass the asylum security doors as we leave the warden locks himself inside the room for safety and we continue back into the penitentiary this takes us to our final confrontation with harley in the extreme incarceration room i'm not sure if you technically call this a boss fight since we never get to fight harley but it's pretty cool nonetheless in this room each of the three platforms can be electrified quickly incapacitating you if you stay on one for too long harley sends our henchman out to come fight us and we have to fight through these waves of enemies while paying attention to the platforms if the platform you're on begins to glow it's about to produce an electric shock so you have to drop what you're doing and run to the next platform the fun part is the henchmen are equally vulnerable to it so you're all running together it's also pretty fun to try and trap the henchmen on the electric platforms as well so even though we never actually faced harley in combat as the player i enjoyed this section quite a bit but after beating all of harley's men she has no choice but to confront us herself hey hands up the merchandise that's my party list quiet with harley taken care of let's take a moment and look at that party list that she has we can see multiple names some that are crossed out and they each either have a smiley face or a frowny face next to them each name is significant so let's start from the bottom and work our way up luke oliver is the weird inmate in the security room that we talked about a few moments ago making this his second cameo appearance arnold wesker is the ventriloquist and owner of scarface the doll who we saw earlier oswald cobblepot is the penguin who will see a lot more in the future games of the series even though we never see oswald in arkham asylum we can still see some of his equipment in one of the cases in the mansion his top hat and weaponized umbrellas waylon jones is killer croc we saw him earlier of course and will unfortunately see him again pretty soon then there's also basil carlo aka clayface the inmate who keeps shape-shifting into different people to try and get us to release him above that is jervis tetch the mad hatter a criminal with a fixation on the novel alice in wonderland theming himself after the mad hatter from that book next is harvey dent aka two-face two-face actually gets brought up pretty often in the game but will never see him physically until arkham city lastly there's selena kyle aka catwoman she's also absent from this game but like penguin we do get to see a case with her equipment in the mansion off to the right it seems there are more names on the list but we never get to see that side of it we can still see the first letter of a couple of the names though one starts with p and since the list uses each character's real names and not their code names i think this could be pamela eisley aka poison ivy then at the bottom looks to be the letter j which i think is most likely referring to jonathan crane aka scarecrow it could also be for joker who sometimes goes by the alias jack white but i doubt it was necessary to put himself on the list as far as why some names are crossed off and some aren't i think it just has to do with who's at the asylum at the time of joker's takeover all the names that are crossed off aren't physically in the asylum while the names that aren't crossed off are people we see throughout the game the smiley faces seem to correspond with this as well the numbers i think just reference each character's cell number or inmate number since i couldn't find any other significance beyond that but i think that pretty much sums up the party list there's another cool easter egg in this room though and that's the cell of mr freeze freeze isn't in there right now but it's interesting to see just how frozen over his cell is it's no wonder warren white lost a lot of his body parts from staying in there too long in an interview with telegraph.com writer paul deeney actually mentions how he originally intended for mr freeze to be a villain that we'd face in this game but ultimately decided against it since frieza's motivations don't align with the jokers here's the quote mr freeze for example would have been wonderful to have we alluded to him in the game but he didn't fit mr freeze is motivated by different things he doesn't really have that much of an axe to grind with batman batman is an irritation and an impediment to him but not an enemy that he hates he doesn't have the hatred that the joker has for batman he's not like the riddler who is obsessed with proving that he's smarter than batman freezes off in his own universe he has what he wants to accomplish and he rarely even cares what the other villains are up to if batman gets in his way he'll take him out but frieze doesn't really fit as part of this game as much as i would have loved to have seen mr freeze in this game i think paul is right that he wouldn't have fit in the grand scheme thankfully he'll have a much more prominent role in the sequel batman arkham city continuing on though harley mentioned that there's a secret lab in the gardens so we head there next when we exit the penitentiary we sadly see that the nurse we saved earlier didn't make it his body is on the ground nearby with a lunatic standing over it this probably means that the lunatics overran him when the joker set them free it's a sad detail but i think it's a pretty interesting one that shows the increasing severity of the asylum as the night progresses we get another example of this when we enter the botanical gardens if you come here first thing at the beginning of the game there are multiple guards on duty they don't seem to be paying too much attention though since one of them gets spooked as soon as you enter the room if you talk to them batman will tell them to keep an eye on the room due to the riots however when we enter it now it seems those guards ended up falling victim to victor zaz as we can see some of them posed with tally marks nearby we've already taken care of zazz but joker's men have taken control over the botanical gardens so we need to clear them out and locate the secret lab one of the first rooms we enter is the botanical glass house a giant room with a lot of guards that we need to stealthily take out this is probably one of the more unique looking rooms in the game and it contains some cool easter eggs one of which is in the center of the room the statue of saint michael slaying a dragon i point this one out because it's a statue that amadeus arkham had placed in the asylum back in its early days within the serious house on sirius earth comic amadeus saw the statue as symbolic of overcoming your own internal trauma something he had to do as well in the comic he says quote just as the archangel subdued the old dragon so shall i bend this house to my will i will bring light to those dismal corridors of my childhood i will open up the locked doors and fill the empty rooms and set above tall an image of the triumph of reason over the irrational so it's really cool to see that statue make it into the game and i'm glad that it's remained intact over the years another fun easter egg is this tea party setup meant to reference the villain mad hatter who was one of the names crossed off on harley's party list in an interview with telegraph.com writer paul deeney states that he originally had bigger plans for mad hatter during this level when asked if there were any characters he wanted to put into the game that didn't make the cut he says this mad hatter is another character we talked about one of the ideas i pitched was a garden maze that you could wander around in which could have been a good location for poison ivy she could make the maze grow in different directions but in the center there would be this bizarre tea party that the mad hatter was hosting for batman ultimately it didn't really fit the tone of the game so we left it out i actually wish this would have been in the game it would have been such a fun odd situation to stumble upon and i think it would have been a really memorable moment i can see why it ultimately didn't make the cut though especially since may's sections and games can be hit or miss but it's still cool to imagine how that level could have played out while we're on the topic of easter eggs there's another more sinister one in the gardens it's this statue and tribute of constance arkham amadeus arkham's wife on top of the plaque is the name mad dog etched into it this goes back to the serious house on sirius earth comic where we learn some of the origins of arkham asylum and amadeus arkham one of his first patients in the asylum was the criminal mad dog who brutally murdered amadeus wife and daughter the story is that after returning home one day amadeus found his wife cut into pieces with the name mad dog carved into her similarly we can see this statue is missing its head mad dog in some ways is like the joker an uncurable psychopath amadeus still tried to cure him at the asylum though and during six months of the man before finally strapping him to the electroshock treatment chair and burning him alive it's covered up as an accident and amadeus feels no remorse amadeus is interesting to me since it feels like there's almost a parallel between him and batman due to their conflicts with different inmates at the asylum unlike amadeus though batman never crosses the line and kills them amadeus eventually went mad himself becoming an inmate in his own asylum we can even see his cell in the game covered in all these circular patterns as amadeus was slipping into insanity he started having nightmares of a bat so he began carving these circular patterns into his cell using his fingernails believing it to be a binding spell to protect him from the bat perhaps amadeus wasn't that insane it was instead seeing visions of the future involving batman also it makes you wonder if batman would suffer a similar fate to amadeus if he were to ever break his no kill rule it's often suggested that batman is just as insane as the criminals that he throws into the asylum and that maybe he belongs in there too that's actually a big theme of the serious house on sirius earth comic joker takes over the asylum in that story too so if you enjoy this game i definitely recommend you give it a read i'll link it in the description as well if you'd like to check it out eventually we're able to find joker's secret lab hidden behind a door in the gardens joker wasn't expecting us to find him quite this early but he's still got a trick up his sleeve he injects his two inmates with the titan formula and they both hulk out into mindless brutes joker then escapes into an elevator and if you pause it you can see he's boxed up a bunch of the titan formula as gifts for different criminals from what we can read he's sending boxes to catwoman two-face and i think that middle one says riddler we're then left to battle these two titan enemies but they're not too difficult we'll deal with them the same way as last time by getting them to crash into walls and then punch them while they're down we have one new move though since we now have the ability to jump on their backs and guide them into accidentally slapping each other this is what you'll be doing for the majority of the battle and it essentially boils down to a slap fight after knocking them both out though batman discovers that they've been using a venom plant hybrid for the titan formula which means our next best bet is to find poison ivy to help us it's all right my darlings i'm you now my poor darlings yes i know he's found us but i won't let him hurt you i'll kill him first ivy i know dr young mutated these plants to produce venom yes and i heard it through the grapevine the evil woman paid the price i need you to help me create an antidote why should i let joker have his fun i'll enjoy watching you squirm you've been in the dark too long every plant on this island will get the same unless you cooperate there's a plant growing deep in arkham island only it can counter the effects of this titan strain where do i find it oh and killer crocs lair you didn't think it would be easy did you go back to your cell or i'll be after you next after our meeting with ivy joker sneaks in to talk to her as well and injects her with his titan formula this has mutated her plants and now there are giant vines breaking through the walls of the asylum when we get outside it's even worse with ivy's vines wrapped around the architecture of the entire island batman knows that things will only continue to get worse so we need to rush the killer crocs lair in search of a chemical for an antidote croc cell is underground in the sewers so we have to head back [Music] [Applause] we're now playing as the joker as we escort batman to his cell instead of warden sharp on the tv welcoming new patients it's now scarface the doll the new head of security at joker asylum in the opposite hallway we can see some of the other new inmates commissioner gordon dr young and aaron cash escorting batman alongside us is harley quinn who's probably the most qualified person in the asylum now prior to becoming joker's right-hand woman she worked as a psychiatrist at the asylum which is how she met and fell in love with the joker it's fitting to see scarecrow here as well since he was formerly a psychologist and he's here to give his evaluation of batman as we switch to batman's point of view sorry he never fully got over his parents death it at this moment joker does what he's always wanted to do and pulls a gun out to shoot batman dead this takes us to our death screen which usually provides helpful hints on the left side and this hint tells us to use the middle stick on the controller to avoid joker's gunfire and obviously a middle stick doesn't exist before moving on i just want to talk about how incredible this whole hallucination sequence is having the game fake crash was such a surprise the first time i played it i remember playing this game for the first time on my xbox 360 a console that was known to break down especially from a bug nicknamed the red ring of death so i was extremely terrified when this glitch first occurred this is fitting though since the developers wanted the player to feel the effects of the fear toxin and the player's biggest fear during a game is a loss of progress or their console being bricked the sequence almost didn't happen though during a reddit ama with creative director sefton hill he mentioned that a lot of people on the team felt like they shouldn't do the fake crash and that they had to get special permission from microsoft and sony to let them do it i'm so glad they did though because it's such a cool moment i also love how this sequence almost perfectly mirrors our first moments of the game but with numerous twists for example the way the bat signal is turned upside down and made into a scarecrow mouth at the beginning also the way this evaluation scene mirrors the opening one as well it's incredibly well done and it's so trippy to experience it's a relatively short sequence but it's probably the most memorable one in the game in my opinion after our death scene we dig ourselves out of our grave and we're in for an even more intense nightmare environment compared to the others one of the first things we'll find are cells containing lunatic versions of batman and it's pretty jarring to see him losing his mind in these different animations i think the craziest one to witness though is this one where he seems to be eating a rat after leaving this area we begin our platforming section where we have to avoid the gaze of scarecrow and reach the bat signal i know describing it that way makes it sound redundant but like last time rock city does a good job of making it feel different it's a more challenging level with fewer things to hide behind which makes traversing forward feel risky every time before reaching the bat signal though scarecrow realizes in the real world that batman is about to snap out of it so he injects him with more fear toxin this brings us to a combat challenge against waves of skeletons after completing each wave a bat signal will blast scarecrow after the third one we break free from the nightmare world again upon returning to sanity we see scarecrow puzzled at how batman has been able to resist the toxin he injects us again and then runs off even though it may seem unrealistic that batman has been able to shake off the effects of the toxin he's been able to do so in the comics before as well so it's not uncommon i think this isn't thanks to his unbreakable determination which goes in line with another quote from sefton hill where he describes how he believes that batman's greatest strength is his mind if he's got a superpower it's his determination and dedication you always know he's about five steps ahead of everyone else in the room and it's that which i think makes him so aspirational that idea that if you put your mind to it you can achieve anything that's exactly what batman has done back in the real world we can also see that the room is now littered with different enemies confirming that all of the skeletons we've been fighting in our mind have been real people all along as scarecrow runs off he tells us that he's not finished yet and that he's heading to the sewers to pour his fear toxin into the waterline to affect all of gotham with a sphere toxin this is obviously bad but it's also coincidentally where we need to go for the antidote so we chase after scarecrow along the way we can actually find crane's hideout hidden in one of the vents near the elevators it seems he's been planning this for some time now and he's been surveilling batman around the asylum however we'll catch up to crane next in the sewers near killer crocs lair one step closer and this goes into the water the cave will fill with your deepest darkest nightmares and you will never reach your precious venom roots [Laughter] don't do it crane well at least we don't have to worry about scarecrow anymore batman's more concerned about the antidote anyway so we continue into crocs lair before venturing all the way in batman thinks ahead and places a homing beacon near the entrance and also sprays a ton of explosive gel on the floor which will come into play later on now that we're fully inside crocs layer we need to avoid confrontation with them and collect samples from the rare plant spores scattered around the catch is that we can't make too much noise or else it'll attract croc to our location and he'll eat us for the sake of science i wanted to test what would happen if we made too much noise though and yep he yanks us below the water to devour us so we definitely want to stay as quiet as possible during the sequence that's not to say we won't encounter croc at all though since he'll occasionally pop out and rush towards us the only way to stop him is to quickly throw a batarang at his electric collar which will stun him into falling back into the water as we continue deeper into the lair though croc will start to jump out more regularly and sometimes far away and behind us these were some of my favorite moments because the music flares up and you start to panic as you try to figure out where killer croc is before he grabs you it makes for some really tense moments and it was a lot of fun i also really love this moment where croc destroys your path back from one of the plant spores the solution is pretty easy since you just need to use the line launcher to zip across the gap but for a brief moment you can see croc reach out to grab you which is pretty hair-raising after a while we collect the final spore sample and batman activates the homing beacon at the entrance to guide him back when we make it back to the entrance the iron gate locks us in and killer croc sprints towards us batman planned ahead for this though and detonates the explosive gel on the ground to cause croc to free fall down below this goes back to septon's quote about batman being five steps ahead of his enemies and it's cool witnessing batman plan ahead like that with croc finally down for the count and our plant spore samples in hand batman returns back to his makeshift batcave to synthesize an antidote he's able to do so but unfortunately the process is really slow and he's only able to produce one antidote before ivy's vines show up and wreck the computer one will have to be enough though and we head back to poison ivy to administer the antidote to her plants before we can do so ivy slaps the antidote out of our hand and tells us that she was wrong to think that the titan formula would hurt her plants instead it's made her plant stronger and she aims to demonstrate that by killing us on the spot ivy takes refuge inside the mouth of the giant venus flytrap and this leads to our boss fight against her one that i'm conflicted on whether or not i like the fight itself looks really cool with plants rising from the ground to try and grab us while ivy occasionally blasts spores at us outside of being able to control plants ivy also has the power to control people with the pheromones from her kiss and the men of the asylum must have been easy prey since we have to fight a lot of male doctors and security guards that have fallen victim to her seductions visually and thematically this fight is great and i'm sure it took rocksteady a lot of effort to create gameplay-wise though it's always been one that i've dreaded going into since it feels like it overstays its welcome the fight lasts for quite a while and it gets very repetitive dodge the plants that are trying to grab you then run in circles to avoid being shot by plant spores and wait for ivy to open herself up and quickly hit her with a batarang also i think it's kind of silly that ivy leaves the safety of her plant repeatedly just to point and laugh at us regardless i don't think i would be hating on this fight so much if it was about half the duration since i think that would make it feel less repetitive after doing enough damage to ivy though the plant will fall down and batman sprays the protective shell of the plant with explosive gel to blast it open this severely damages the giant plant and it falls through the ground taking ivy with it the rest of the dome starts to crumble as well so batman grapples out of the building and back onto the island grounds we're then greeted with fireworks above the asylum which is joker's way of signaling where we should head to next following the fireworks leads us back to the visitor center where some inmates are hanging out to welcome us this is such a strange hilarious moment that i absolutely love in the game one of the inmates even acts like a bouncer stopping us at the door to see if we're on the list he then shows us the list and we're the only name on it i also really like how we can see the transformation of the visitor center take place over the entire course of the game at the beginning there are only a few planks up and as the player you're not quite sure what they're doing yet but as we revisit this area over time we can see it evolve and take shape until it's completed towards the end of the game it's a really awesome detail and it just shows how much fun rocksteady were having when designing the island when you go inside the visitor center doors the hallway is now lined with inmates decked out in party gear cheering you on batman's not one for surprises though and if you want to you can attempt to beat up all of the thugs in the room if you're successful you'll even get an achievement for it now that we've successfully crashed the party we can enter the visitor center and approach the tv joker head like last time this time though joker reveals himself to actually be under the tv and he probably was the first time that we were in here too joker then starts to slowly exit the room since he's rigged the television to explode this explosion blasts a hole in the wall though so we follow joker to his makeshift throne room this takes us into a combat sequence where we have to fight joker's men as well as two titan enhanced security guards all while joker watches from atop his throne of mannequin parts after taking them all down though joker still has a couple more surprises up his sleeve nicely done bats you deserve a prize your old pal commissioner say he looks all run down let's pep him up no batman get away here we go we're gonna have some fun now kitties you're trying to resist a change that's not fair come on get in so you want to play hardball bats do you your car tickle tickle oh you're ruining my big night monsoon flattening down the crapper i just wanted to bring down your grim facade and for once let you see the world as i see it giggling in a corner and bleeding but you've denied me even that i have nothing to live for using the titan formula joker is now mutated into titan joker a taller stronger version of himself with giant sharp claws as well joker is anticipating batman's transformation into a titan monster as he takes us up to the top of the building where he's built an arena for the two of them to have their final showdown to witness it all go down news helicopters have begun swarming the island as well batman has managed to resist the transformations so far but ultimately decides that he's better off fighting the joker as a normal man so he uses the antidote on himself joker's surprise but he doesn't let that ruin the event this leads to our final boss fight of the game against titan joker like with the other boss fights this one follows a pretty simple pattern as well joker will start by swinging his claws around which are very difficult to avoid since he has so much range now after taking a few swipes at us though he'll jump on the roof and send his henchmen to come fight us while we're preoccupied with them joker will get carried away and start showing off for the cameras on the news helicopters this is our opportunity to catch him off guard so we grapple him down to the ground this causes his claws to get stuck in the wood giving us a moment to hit him we'll do this a couple more times throughout the fight and it's a pretty decent final battle overall but it's one that's been controversial amongst fans it's often looked back on as a weird way to end the game and honestly i think i have to agree although i did have trouble putting my finger on what exactly was so bad about it it's one of those things where i know that i don't like it but i'm not quite sure why i think ultimately it just feels out of character for the joker and it's a fight that i'd expect more from a character like killer croc or bane so in that way it's not a satisfying turn of events i think it also just feels like an easy out for the writers instead of crafting a final battle that plays to joker's strengths they just made him buff so he'd be more of a physical threat to fight strangely we barely even fight titan joker though we dodged some of his slashing occasionally but mostly it's a fight against his henchmen like with poison ivy it's visually a pretty cool battle and i like titan joker's design but it feels too out of character for the joker which takes me out of the game and it feels like an unsatisfying end to it it's especially disappointing because the rest of this game has been so creative unique and well written that it's a shame to not see rock city stick the landing i think they almost had it too because the prior level in the visitor center felt more like what i expected from their final confrontation a massive brawl orchestrated by the joker for us to overcome before dealing with him individually i think a blend between these two levels could have worked well with us fighting a bunch of henchmen while joker lobbed explosive toys at us from his mannequin throne since that's essentially how the titan joker fight went anyway you could even add a mechanic where we need to lure the titan monsters into crashing into joker's throne causing him to fall into the arena with us where we could take him down for good the last game that i covered was batman arkham origins and i think it's a good example of how to pull off a satisfying final confrontation against joker i won't spoil it here just in case any of you are wanting to play that game for yourself but my point is that there are ways to conclude the game against normal joker that feel true to the character while still feeling satisfying to the player regardless this game is still superb and is miles away better than any other batman game before it so even if the ending with titan joker feels somewhat lackluster it's not ruinous to the rest of the game or its story and after throwing titan joker into the ground for the third time it's time for batman to finish the job with the titan formula joker is much more resilient so batman has to think of a way to quickly take him down for good batman decides to sacrifice his gauntlet by spraying explosive gel on it for one explosive final punch and that concludes the game and takes us into our closing cinematic thank god i was so worried i'm fine barbara the gcpd finally has control of the asylum doctors are treating the injured but it looks like it'll take some time all super criminals are back in custody quite a mess in there and the venom enhanced inmates are returning to normal though for some the process can be quite painful dad how are you doing i'll survive see you tonight barbara shame about your car can i give you a ride thanks jim but i have one on the way get some rest you deserve it by harvey dent aka stay safe [Music] after the credits there's a scene teasing the return of another character as they grab a container of titan this character can be one of three villains and it's randomized each time you play so you'll either see the arm of bane killer croc or scarecrow reach out from the water i think the most significant of those three is scarecrow though because for one i thought he was legit dead and two his story thread continues in a significant way in batman arkham knight but ultimately that concludes the story of batman arkham asylum overall i think rocksteady and pauldini did an outstanding job on the story of the game they really nailed the feeling of batman's world as well as the feeling of being batman i think arkham asylum was the perfect setting for the game because it puts you right in the heart of his world arkham asylum houses all of the criminals that he deals with on a daily basis and trapping him inside there is such a novel idea to the point that i wish they would make a movie with the same premise it was so much fun going through the story never knowing what you'd encounter next especially with how masterfully rocksteady transitioned into those scarecrow sections i think if there's one area where rocksteady really hit a home run it's with the scarecrow missions i was so engaged with the rest of the story that i was always caught off guard when batman would start to hallucinate rock said he does give you a subtle clue that it's about to happen though since each time you can see a mist of gas into the room and batman will start to cough it's really easy to miss the first time playing so it's a fun detail to see on future replays not only are these scarecrow missions really trippy and unique but they also do a good job at giving bruce wayne additional character development by showing you his deepest fears and regrets it's a good example of show don't tell and storytelling and it went a long way to make me connect with bruce moore as perfect as everything with scarecrow was handled i think the rest of the story did a good job too i was engaged throughout it and i rarely felt like i was being sent on fetch quests or missions to pad the length of the game each mission felt like it furthered the plot in an organic way and i was extremely immersed in everything it threw at me i think pauldini was an excellent choice to write the game as well and i've always been a huge fan of batman the animated series that show was a big part of my childhood but i'm really glad that everyone involved with the game decided to make it feel darker and i really respect the wb and dc allowed them to do so in a lot of ways this game feels like a continuation to that show but as if it's aged up with me of course it's not actually part of the show's continuity at all but having the writer and some of the voice actors involved with it returned for this game gave me a lot of those vibes even if you never watched the series and came to this game fresh though i think you'll still find a lot to love about it since it stands on its own in fact i'm sure this game was an entry point for a lot of people to the world of batman and i wouldn't be surprised if it created a new generation of batman fans the same way that the animated series did for me and many other 90s kids so yeah the writing for this game and the world building were perfect and even though i had some criticisms about the way it ended it's far from ruinous and i think it's overshadowed by the greatness of the rest of the game but with that being said there's still a lot more to this game as well as some story beats still defined after beating it so let's start to dig into the gameplay of arkham asylum upon beating the game you can return back to arkham asylum and tie up any loose threads that are still dangling specifically the riddler we never see the riddler in person but after we find officer bowles dead the riddler hijacks our communications [Music] yes it is i edward migma the riddler and more importantly your intellectual superior my genius has allowed me to easily hack into your primitive communications to prove he's smarter than us he's hidden riddler trophies all around arkham and provided us with riddles regarding noteworthy artifacts in the asylum for example his introductory riddle tells us to not cut ourselves on this sharply observed portrait the answer to which is a portrait of warden quincy sharp which we can scan using our detective vision to confirm doing so rewards us with lore regarding that character that we can view in the menu screen there are a total of 240 riddler challenges comprised of scannable riddles riddler trophies and my least favorite of them all these ones where you have to position yourself at a specific point to create a question mark in the environment these always took the longest and still took a while to accurately scan even when found there are also some more obscure challenges that don't seem to relate to the riddler but they still count such as destroying all of joker's chattering teeth finding patient interview tapes and scanning chronicles of arkham the latter two of which we'll talk about more in depth shortly if you've watched my video on arkham origins you'll recall that i wasn't a huge fan of the riddler trophies in that game or really their inclusion in any of the arkham games for that matter i think this game is kind of the exception though with some caveats since this was the first time riddler trophies had been used in a game i remember them feeling like such a novel idea back in 2009 it was so thematic and felt in character with the riddler and i still feel this way about them here too i think it was a great idea to use them as collectibles because it incentivizes you to explore every nook and cranny of this beautifully detailed and realized arkham asylum not only that but you'll also unlock more than just character profiles when finding them riddler challenges are how you can view character trophies in the game's menu as well as combat and stealth challenges to hone your skills i think what sets the riddler trophies and arkham asylum apart from their use in future games though is their sense of added world building here like i mentioned arkham is so expertly detailed that it does a lot of subtle storytelling on its own you also get a strong sense of the untold stories within the asylum by just wandering around its various corridors and i think the riddler trophies further expand on that for example it was so interesting to come across the cells of batman's various villains each of their cells were unique and match their personalities and you can almost picture what it was like when they were here like calendar man a killer who only commits crimes on the holidays has a cell decked out in calendar pages or two-face who's decorated his cell to have a clean side and a messed up side to showcase his fixation on duality there's even the vote for harvey dent posters based on his time as gotham's district attorney there are so many cool little easter eggs defined by enigma's riddles and if you're a fan of batman lore you'll really get the most out of them another example being this whiteboard for the night shift there are a lot of names on this whiteboard but the riddler's focus is on dr t elliott referencing thomas elliott a neurosurgeon and childhood friend of bruce wayne who later becomes the villain hush in the top right corner of the whiteboard in the patient column are some other significant names like jervis tech the mad hatter basil carlo clayface warren white the great white shark and garfield linz the villain firefly firefly is a pyromaniac and even has his own little nook where you can find his equipment and some newspapers about him one even features a picture of the joker and also a title regarding roman cyanus aka black mask being on trial just these two easter eggs are full of little mini easter eggs and i really love this attention to detail by rocksteady and it goes to show just how much they love the batman mythos if you're not familiar with these characters from the comics then i'm sure a lot of these easter eggs will go right over your head and honestly a ton of them did for me back in 2009 as well so i'm glad rocksteady chose to add character bios for each of these characters after scanning a riddle pertaining to them in these bios you can read a brief synopsis of their backstory as well as their specific stats and skills there are a ton of these to sift through containing popular characters and more obscure ones so whether you're a giant batman fanboy or experiencing this world for the first time you're likely to get a lot out of these bios and i know i personally found them to be very interesting to read probably the coolest thing about the character bios though are that some of them include patient interviews that you can listen to only a select few have them namely the ones that play a role in the game and these audio files do a great job of giving us a better sense of their personalities since we've had limited time with the riddler i'll play one of his tapes so you can get a sense of what i'm talking taped interview about patient's name is edward nigmar at this point in time i've yet to decide if mr enigma is a suitable candidate for the titan process i'd like to talk about your childhood miserable all accounts that is where your fascination with riddles began i believe discussing those years could explain your compulsive behavior very well my father hated me always called me a i was determined to prove him wrong so i entered a contest at school a 20 prize to the kid who could figure out an almost impossible logic problem i won of course and that pleased your father hardly he was convinced i had cheated he kept yelling you must have cheated admitted you you cheated i swore i didn't and he hit me for lying i'm sorry to hear that edward don't be he was right not only does that tape give some insight into his personality but there are a couple other aspects that i found interesting in it the first is how it begins with dr young stating that she's unsure if riddler is suitable for the titan process this could be a nod to the comics where bane actually injected riddler with a dose of venom making him a physical threat to batman for an issue there's also the part where he says his father was yelling about edward cheating in that contest this is something that edward will do to us as we make more progress on his riddles with my favorite being where he accuses us of using the internet what you're nearly done like with his father he's probably right as i'm sure a lot of people did use internet walkthroughs to help them find all of the riddler trophies if you actually manage to collect them all batman will trace riddler's location and send the cops after him and you get to hear edward get arrested you did it you must have cheated there is no way you could have beaten me well you asked for it batman my final challenge for the whole of gotham is just seconds away what silence the police you cheated you couldn't have outsmarted me please open up no i should open the door now now down to the ground down on the ground no tell me how did you work out where i was do you hear me [Music] i think for the first game this is a suitable reward and it's satisfying beating riddler at his own game i think the future games in the series do a better job of making the riddler trophy hunt feel more rewarding in the end though which is important to me because it can be really tedious collecting them all 240 is a lot and as much as i love exploring arkham asylum i was happy to be done with riddler by the end of it i think some of the problem in this game is that the asylum transforms so much as the game progresses especially when ivy's plans take over that it can be tough to retrace your steps back through the asylum and not get lost there's a mini-map but it only helps so much as you try to navigate through various vent shafts and exploded walls since the main pathways are often blocked so it's a lot of backtracking and map analyzing which gets old pretty quick that being said this is probably my favorite riddler trophy hunt in the series because i feel like it does so much world building in the asylum i feel like that starts to change a bit as the arkham series goes on but we'll save that for a future video there's still one other mystery left to solve in the asylum though and that's the mysterious chronicles of arkham that are scattered around the island when you find one and scan it you'll get an audiophile from a mysterious voice claiming to be the spirit of arkham each chronicle reveals the backstory of this character and at first you're led to believe that this is the ghost of amadeus arkham but as the chronicles progress you start to realize it's someone completely different in the present day this mystery man has a very similar backstory to amadeus arkham and believes himself to be the spirit of arkham the one who must continue the work started by amadeus to cleanse the city of its insane criminals after collecting the second to last chronicle the voice will call upon your detective skills to attempt to deduce his identity and meet with him in person after listening to all of the messages you'll likely come to the conclusion that it's the new warden of the asylum quincy sharp he's still where we left him locked up in the security room next to clayface so we head there when you arrive he's already gone but he scrawled a binding symbol into the ground similar to the ones that amadeus would make but with batman's name written in the center if you scan it you'll get a final message from sharp as he requests that you take inspiration from his chronicles and continue his work quincy states that his story began when his mother lost her mind and he returned home to care for her the same way that amadeus did for his mother that's actually why there's so much beetle icrnography associated with arkham because in the serious house on sirius earth comic young amadeus witnessed beetles falling from his mother's mouth as she was trying to eat them amadeus sees the beatles as a symbol of rebirth relating it to his mother being reborn into a state of madness seeing their mothers go crazy over time seems to be the catalyst for both amadeus and quincy's fascination with the insane the similarities don't stop there though as quincy also returned home one night to find that his wife and children had been brutally murdered quincy also brought the murderer into the asylum in an attempt to cure them and the criminal was eventually deemed sane and free for release on the day he was said to be released though he instead took a fountain pen and stabbed quincy's secretary the security guards then rushed in and beat the criminal to death as quincy watched at this moment quincy realized that the only way to cure these inmates was to kill them in his chronicles he mentions fantasizing about killing killer croc and burning poison ivy alive he even makes an attempt to kill joker one night in a cell but was thwarted by scarecrow in one of the chronicles he gets really dark the first time he finds harley secretly meeting with joker back when she was still working there curse me for a fool how could i not see it until now the monster had a confederate i hid in the darkness near his cell and saw with my own eyes one of the doctors whispering to him she looked at him through the transparent barrier with tenderness with dare i say desire my skin crawled with revulsion as she kissed the glass fighting the urge to dash the woman's head with a glass i let her continue the damnable clown might have shared secrets with her that would be useful once the mad dog has been executed i'm sure the woman will reveal what she knows to me if not willingly then certainly under electronic persuasion after that a lobotomy i think i'm not sure if quincy is even aware of this darker side of his mind or if it's instead a split personality that takes over either way it's a really great mystery to uncover and i like that rocksteady gave us an opportunity to feel like a detective a major skill of batman's that's often overlooked this isn't the last that we'll see of quincy either since he has greater aspirations firstly to become mayor but also to get approval for his arkham city concept an idea to section off part of gotham and throw all the criminals in there this is the premise of the sequel and surprisingly rocksteady left a major tease for this hidden in the warden's office it's actually hidden so well that nobody found it for months and rock said he had to eventually tell players where to find it if you go into the warden's office you need to place three charges of explosive gel on this wall and when it explodes it'll reveal a doorway into the warden's secret room inside you can find concept art and blueprints for arkham city which was a really cool tease at the time because so little was known about the sequel quincy sharp will later be successfully elected as mayor so we'll see this story play out in the next game but now that we've uncovered all of the mysteries within arkham asylum what else does the game give you to sink your teeth into to start you can replay the game on hard mode which is naturally more difficult but i love that it takes away the attack indicators above enemies heads making it less obvious when they're about to attack this forces you to watch the entire battlefield and try to analyze each enemy's body language to determine if they're about to attack the same way that batman would it's definitely a lot more challenging but it's also a lot more fun and makes each successful combat encounter feel more rewarding it's my new preferred way to play and i definitely recommend giving it a try if you've played the game before and want to revisit it there's also the challenge mode consisting of combat maps and predator maps for stealth after beating the game for the first time you will have also unlocked the only alternate outfit in the game exclusively for these challenge maps the armored suit which is actually pretty awesome and feels closer to what he wears in batman arkham knight starting with the stealth challenges though not only is your goal to covertly take out all the enemies in a room but you're also given three objectives to try and complete in each level these are things like pulling an enemy down from a ledge or yanking an enemy with the bat claw over a side railing it can be pretty easy to just run up behind enemies and quietly take them out so i'm glad these challenges push you to try more advanced takedown styles and they really show off how in depth the stealth system really is in the game you have a lot of options for taking down enemies in these levels and it can be fun to experiment with each one and see just how quickly you can clear the room i think these stealth missions also do a great job of making you feel like batman tactically analyzing the room while utilizing your utility belt and the environment for each scenario if you have the patience you'll get a lot out of these predator missions and some of the harder levels really put you to the test what really made things tricky for me though was when the henchmen started placing bombs on the gargoyles in the room taking away the security of being able to grapple up to them and watch over the room if you try to do that now you'll have to immediately glide away as making contact with them triggers the explosive removing that garga oil from the environment the seemingly minor addition to the level made me realize just how reliant i was on the gargoyles in each level and having them removed significantly up the challenge i thought these predator missions were a lot of fun but personally i've never been very good at them and my patient starts to wane pretty quickly after a couple deaths i salute my fallen enemy [Laughter] however i also wouldn't consider myself someone who's good with puzzles where i think the predator challenges are very puzzly since you'll be using your gadgets to try and manipulate the ai enemies into the proper positions to configure the swiftest way to take them all out these missions are very well constructed though and if you're someone who likes puzzles and strategizing i think you'll feel right at home in these predator missions however i personally tend to gravitate more towards the combat challenges like you would expect there are a variety of these as well all taking place in locations we visited in the main story this time though were faced against larger waves of enemies to test our skills in combat there are three challenge objectives in combat as well but they're score based this time to get the best possible score you need to not get hit never drop the combo and try to vary your combat by incorporating gadgets into the mix at the end of the entire challenge if you completed all waves without taking a single hit and or never dropping a combo you'll be rewarded with even larger bonus point payouts as cool as it is to aim for the high scores i still had a lot of fun just engaging with each combat level and enjoying what it had to offer for example you can revisit the level against harley quinn with the electrified floors instead of hopping from platform to platform though you're given a timer before the entire floor electrifies so you have to try to take out all of the enemies before the timer expires which i thought was a fun test of speed and reflexes you can also return back to joker's secret lab to battle a much larger quantity of enemies with the added bonus of titan monsters entering the fray there are also the extreme challenges which are the same levels but with added difficulty like more enemies or harder enemy types and a gun rack for enemies to grab guns from these really put you to the test and the gun racks alone add to the pressure since bullets can easily interrupt your combo from afar if they don't just outright kill you i also really enjoyed how rock steady decided to toss in a recognizable face in some of these levels occasionally throwing victor zazz into the fight he's not much different from the other enemies in the game but his appearance adds some unique flavor to the fights and i always tried to save him as the final takedown if i could or just throw him off the ledge i'm sure he'll survive somehow there are also six additional dlc challenge maps that you can play through but i think the combat challenges were the most unique there's a smaller scale level that takes place in crime alley the same location where bruce's parents were killed so it's satisfying taking down waves of criminals in their honor there's also this level called totally insane which is fitting for the amount of time that you can potentially put into it this level provides an infinite number of inmates to drop into the arena and only ends when you run out of health this is an excellent endurance test to see just how long you can last both physically and mentally where i think the latter is the true challenge since the longer the fight went on the more i struggled to keep my focus it's a lot of fun but not a level i would jump in too often the final dlc map is easily my favorite primarily because of its thematics but it's another good test of skill we're back in scarecrow's world fighting against his hordes of skeletons the twist this time though is that the challenge ends as soon as we take damage it's definitely challenging and mentally adds more pressure since one minor error could end the entire run still it's a lot of fun and i really enjoyed popping back into the nightmare to further add to the replayability of these challenges though you can also play as joker exclusively for the ps3 or through the return to arkham remaster which is where i pulled this gameplay from joker can be used in both the combat and predator challenge maps excluding the dlc ones in combat joker is a lot of fun and has his own unique combat animations his movements are much more zany and wacky compared to batman as joker cartoonishly moves from enemy to enemy it's effective though and it's a lot of fun to watch especially his takedown animations which incorporate things like eye poking or the electrified joy buzzer in the palm of his hand i especially love that the enemy types have been swapped around having joker fight security guards instead of inmates the same way zaz showed up for batman joker also gets to fight commissioner gordon and occasionally air in cash depending on the level joker's combat feels more restrictive compared to batman though primarily through his gadgets for example joker has his pistol which can be used to shoot an enemy from afar when needed and it even has fun animations as joker performs trick shots with it however it only has one bullet so once it's used it's useless for the rest of the match this makes joker a lot trickier to use in the harder challenge modes but i still had a lot of fun using him in combat i also found it to be a really awesome detail where if you die while playing as joker batman will show up during the death scene joker can be used in predator missions too but i found it to be much harder to pull off joker doesn't have the ability to grapple up in a way like batman making it difficult to navigate efficiently joker has three gadgets at his disposal though but there have limited use as well using joker's glasses you can simulate batman's detective vision and see where enemies are in the area the only issue is that you have to manually put these on each time and you can't walk around while using them so they won't be very helpful if you end up on the run there's also a chattering teeth bomb which you control and manually detonate near enemies this is probably his most fun gadget but again it's a one-time use like the gun speaking of which that's his final gadget which operates the same way that it did in combat it's loaded with only one bullet so you need to make it count it's also incredibly loud so be prepared to run after using it despite how limited he feels joker's still fun to use and his stealth takedown animations are entertaining to watch and usually end with him doing a dance near their body i had fun experimenting with joker's stealth gameplay and i'm sure there are ways to make it work but i found it to be significantly more challenging than i expected i think joker stealth gameplay is more of a fun novelty to try out instead of being a viable character on par with batman which makes sense thematically but also means you're probably not going to use him much but i'd still recommend trying him out just for the unique experience especially since joker won't be playable in any of the game's sequels going back to the core gameplay though i think i ultimately love the combat challenges so much because the free flow combat system is so perfectly executed this was so innovative at the time and even though the future games have really taken it to the next level it still feels great here i love how simple the controls are since they allow me to more easily focus on the environment to plot out my next move or react to incoming attacks batman's attack animations are excellently performed too making him look like a master martial artist i also love how batman doesn't hold back breaking enemies bones and aggressively striking them to make sure they stay down for the count something i think a real batman would have to do against this quantity of enemies the combat looks so seamless too the way batman's counter-animations react to the type of attack the enemy throws at him for example if they throw a punch batman will grab their fist or arm if they try to kick at him he'll catch the kick it looks so smooth and organic and the free flow combat system is easily one of rock's eddie's crowning achievements in the game believe it or not though the combat could have looked much different in an article by andrew raynor for game informer rock steady tells him that quote combat went through three distinct revisions the first one being a full rhythm action game the second one was prototyped in 2d which popped up whenever you got into a fight and involved colored circles bashing into each other this actually formed the basis of the final system so it's pretty interesting to picture how this combat might have looked in the early days but i'm very pleased with how it turned out in its final form alongside the combat i also want to take a moment to appreciate just how incredible arkham island itself is and how the gameplay evolves within it one of the things i enjoyed the most in the game was watching the island transform throughout the story as much as i always cringe when people say this the island does actually feel like a character itself the way it evolves alongside the other characters we talked about this a bit with the inmates dressing up the visitor center but there are multiple other examples visually there's also the statue of warden quincy sharp that starts out nice and pristine but as the night progresses we can find it defaced with clown makeup symbolizing how joker is now in control of the asylum ivy's plants are an obvious example of this as well since their destruction permanently alters certain parts of the island in some cases altering how you navigate certain paths what i like most though are how the enemy types are incorporated into the transformation of arkham island showcasing its descent into chaos when you first set foot on the grounds you'll see a ton of security guards patrolling the island giving you a sense that not all is lost however after going into the medical facility and spending time in the bat cave you'll return to find that the inmates have taken over the grounds and are armed with sniper rifles in the guard towers things will continue to get worse when joker releases the lunatics from their cells and now we have to deal with them around the island these little bastards were the worst too popping up out of nowhere constantly to jump scare me then lastly are ivy's plants that were scattered around the island when she was pumped up on titan overall i really liked how the threats on the island slowly escalated and i think it was a nice progression even with the increasing threat i really enjoyed traversing the island too i had a lot of fun exploring the outside grounds to see what all it had to offer and it ended up being my favorite place to hunt for riddler trophies i think it was mostly the freedom of having so much room to roam instead of being confined to the interiors of the other buildings it's so satisfying to grapple up high and glide around the island and i remember being desperate for more opportunities to do that in this game since it felt so cool i must not have been alone in that since all the future games in the arkham series ended up being open world fully capitalizing on this feeling and although i really enjoy that freedom in the future games there is something really captivating about the smaller scale of this game since it's confined to a smaller area everything feels more detailed and lived in each building feels like it has its own story to tell and you can spend a lot of time analyzing the minutia of the environment to get a better sense of the day-to-day life inside the asylum it's clear that a lot of time and effort went into these small details of designing the asylum and that the team also had a lot of fun with it as much as i love the future games everything's so focused on the asylum here that i feel incredibly immersed in its world it's hard to explain but this game feels so unique compared to the others and i think that's largely due to its smaller more linear scale alongside its visual style that feels darker and more gothic compared to arkham city and knight arkham island is so captivating to explore and experience and it's another area that rock city nailed perfectly so much of this game was executed flawlessly by rocksteady and it's a big reason why this game is considered such a classic even to this day but if there's one area that i think deserves some criticism it's the game's boss fights although i like the selection of villains in this game i never felt particularly engaged by their individual boss fights i think a lot of the problem is that i never felt like i was truly fighting that enemy most of the boss fights revolved around me fighting more henchmen while also dealing with a boss in some way bane's a good example of this since he plays very similar to the titan monsters where we just need to hit him with a batarang and let him charge into a wall while most of the fight is against the henchmen titan joker is very similar since we never actually fight him he just swats at us a few times and then sends in his goons ivy probably comes the closest to the unique boss fight that i'm looking for but her fight unfortunately felt too prolonged although they're major villains i don't think i'll count scarecrow or killer croc here since they're never actually a fight and are instead more traversal-based i do however want to say that i think croc and scarecrow's levels are excellently done and i wouldn't change a thing about them so my criticisms are mostly centered around the combat based bosses that being said i don't think any of the boss fights are bad they're just a bit underwhelming all of them are visually fun to watch but i think the gameplay aspect felt lackluster given how innovative and outstanding the rest of the game is it's a bit disappointing that the boss fights didn't meet that same standard however i do think that this is a common criticism that rocksteady took to heart since the boss fights in the future games are much better so i want to give credit to rocksteady for taking the time to analyze what didn't click in arkham asylum and working to turn that around in the future games but i think that sums up my thoughts on the gameplay and extras of batman arkham asylum so let's get into the audio [Music] having a little trouble up there joker you're expecting maybe two face there's no escape joker silly bat i don't want to escape i'm having way too much fun i even have you here to keep a smile on my face not for long really we'll see tata oh i forgot to say just in case you were planning on following me i've arranged a little insurance gordon is on his way to harley as we speak officer bowles if i see you trying to follow me he dies harley's looking forward to it maybe i'll film it and post it on the internet i think one of the biggest draws for me when this game was first announced was that kevin conroy and mark hamill would be reprising their roles as batman and joker from the 90s animated series to me they've always been the voices of batman and joker so it's exciting to get to relive that in video game format we'll start with kevin conroy who i think does an incredible job in the game he makes batman sound very calm calculated and motivated which i think suits the character both inside the game and out kevin conroy naturally sounds like this too which you can hear for yourself in this clip where he describes the intense working sessions of this game compared to the animated series well in here it's a few days of just me and that's you know six to eight hours a day and in a half an hour show it's a two-hour booking session with eight actors just today we were in here for hours doing only my lines that's much more than you'd ever do in an in a half an hour animated show that does sound pretty exhausting honestly but kevin makes it seem natural in the game mark hamill also had quite a lot of voice work to do but it sounds like he had a lot more fun performing them compared to conroy it was even stated by lead narrative designer paul crocker that they put more joker into the game once they realized just how incredible his performance was and how much he was enjoying it it's also really fun to watch mark hamill voice the joker in the booth so here's a small clip from the game what took you so long [Laughter] i think joker had all the best lines in the game too and he was legitimately able to make me laugh throughout it for example here's my favorite line of his in the game tell me bats what are you really scared of failing to save this cesspool of a city not finding the commissioner in time me in a thong [Laughter] i think there's no understating how great mark hamill's performance was in this game joker has a ton of voice lines and shows up a lot whether that be over the intercom while you're exploring the island or on the tv screens as you're progressing through the story but i never got tired of him it's always a joy to see him pop up and i was always extremely captivated by the joker in this game mark does a great job portraying the playfulness of the joker while contrasting it with the darkness within him i absolutely love how joker was portrayed in this game and as good as the writing was i think a lot of the credit goes to mark hamill as to why joker is so enjoyable to experience i also think that nailing the voices of batman and joker was a crucial aspect to the success of this game and that conroy and hamill were the perfect choices although we put a lot of focus on them in this video they're actually not the only ones returning from the animated series we also have arlene sorkin reprising her role as harley quinn here when harley debuted in the animated series arlene was the one who voiced her so arlene was the one who really characterized harley through her voice and is the inspiration for how she's been portrayed in media ever since then including margot robbie's version in the movies arlene retired in 2011 though with this game being one of her final performances as harley quinn she does a great job though and it sounds like she had a lot of fun in the role i think some of my favorite moments are her various interactions with joker which were pretty funny as [Music] [Music] don't well sweetie you know i only have eyes for you this cast doesn't just comprise actors from the animated series though and there are plenty of new voice actors who do a tremendous job in the game as well one of my favorites is wally wingert as the riddler to me wally perfectly captures what i want from the riddler someone who sounds nerdy cocky and insecure all at once without sounding whiny or annoying while he nails that betrayal to the point that i was actually excited every time riddler would hack into my communications just to taunt me i also think that one of the most satisfying sound effects occurs when you find a riddler trophy and pairing that with a new riddler voice line was always the cherry on top it's especially fun hearing how cocky riddler is at the beginning of the game and then how he starts to transition into panic as you get closer to solving all of his riddles can you hear that detective it's the sound of me clapping at your success oh you can't that's because an idiot would have found that trophy what you found 75 of my challenges this can't be right i'm sure this won't be a surprise to anyone who's been following this channel for a while but steve bloom is in the game as well this time voicing killer croc as always steve does an excellent job in the game and i really like how scary he makes killer croc sound i've got your scent batman i will hunt you down i also forgot to mention it earlier but there's a really cool killer croc jump scare if you try to enter the catacombs too early in the find game [Music] rip your flesh like paper another recurring voice actor in these videos is fred tata sior who voices bane and arkham asylum i like bane's voice in this game and i think fred does a good job at making him feel scary and enraged but also slightly scared himself based on the circumstances in which he was brought to the asylum bane had a very limited role in the game but i think fred did the most with what he had and bane ended up being a very memorable character for me i also want to give some credit to kimberly brooks who voices oracle like riddler we never get to see oracle but i think she's an engaging character that i was always interested to hear from kimberly did a great job as oracle so i was excited to see that she returns to reprise her role as barbara gordon throughout the rest of the arkham series and even voiced batgirl in the injustice fighting game i also thought it was interesting how kimberly voiced young bruce wayne during that flashback scene [Music] [Applause] i don't know it's this city there's something wrong with it speaking of which let's talk about the music and sound effects of the game starting with that flashback sequence this game does an excellent job at creating atmosphere using its audio design so i've picked a few moments that i think showcase that one of my favorites is this flashback scene with such incredible sound effects music and voice acting that really immerse you in the moment also keep an ear out for some familiar voices with kimberly brooks voicing young bruce wayne kevin conroy voicing thomas wayne tacia valenza the voice of poison ivy voicing martha wayne and dwayne shepard senior the voice of aaron cash voicing the mugger joe chill this is such a haunting moment that we get to relive alongside bruce and although the visuals are really trippy and thematic i think it's the audio design that really grips me please there's no need for this stay where you are oh shoot i'll give you whatever you want oh god be quiet [Music] [Music] [Music] next i want to play a clip that showcases the atmosphere as you walk the grounds of arkham island although we often think of the way music is used to set a mood silence is also very effective as well which seems to be the mindset used in batman arkham asylum often you'll be walking around the island and hear no music just the sounds of the environment such as the wind blowing the water rushing in the distance and your footsteps as you walk i think this is great because it makes the asylum feel spookier and it's surprisingly immersive so when the music does flare up though it can feel really epic and charge you up i think this next clip is a good example of that and at times almost sounds like it's taken inspiration from the tim burton batman films this clip also lets you hear some of the crippling sound effects within the fight scenes which are very well done too [Music] [Music] he's here [Music] this next clip plays during the end credits of the game and i think it's a great theme that really captures the mood of batman arkham asylum [Music] lastly i just want to play a short clip of the moment when we first see arkham island and can explore it the music sets the mood perfectly and it's visually one of my favorite shots in the game [Music] overall i think the voice acting and the music were excellently done the entire voice cast turned in great performances and i don't think anyone did a bad job the music was composed by nick arendelle and ron fish and i think they both did a spectacular job at creating themes that perfectly captured every moment in the game i also respect that they went for more subtle subdued themes that you almost wouldn't notice in the background even though i can't say that the themes from this game are something that will go on my itunes their music succeeded in reeling me into every moment of the game which i think is even more important if you were to go revisit batman arkham asylum today it may feel a bit dated to you you may miss the open world of the future games and the way you can fight multiple enemies at once instead of them running at you one at a time however i think it's important to keep in mind just how revolutionary of an experience this game was at the time and how it elevated the quality standards of superhero games moving forward prior to batman arkham asylum the two most recent batman games were the batman begins movie tie-in and lego batman the video game both of which are good games in their own right but neither succeeded in making you feel like batman in fact none of the batman games before arkham asylum succeeded in that with many being massive flops furthermore superhero games in general were seen as hit or miss at that time with a lot of them viewed as half-assed cash grabs and certainly not game of the year material rocksteady didn't go the easy route with batman arkham asylum they could have very easily made this a quick linear combat game with familiar batman characters and called it a day instead they dug deep and really analyzed what makes batman batman and how to bring his world to life when you play batman arkham asylum you can tell that every layer of it was carefully thought out and detailed from the design of the architecture the lighting the character models the little easter eggs within each level the carefully crafted story the audio design i mean the list goes on forever it was even revealed that one person spent two years primarily working on the physics of batman's cape to ensure that it moved in a natural way the care and attention to detail that rock said he placed in batman arkham asylum is incredible and it's evident throughout the entire game the game is also incredibly innovative especially the free flow combat system which plenty of games tried to replicate after asylum released batman arkham asylum isn't just a great batman game it's a great game period even managing to snag a couple game of the year awards the same year as uncharted 2. it truly is an impressive feat what rocksteady managed to accomplish especially considering that they were an unknown studio at the time i have a lot of respect for the amount of work and dedication that they put into this game and you can really feel the passion fun they were having while creating it emanating through every level this game will forever be a classic in my eyes and i think it's one that every batman fan should experience even if you played the later games first it's really incredible to see where it all started especially knowing how much bigger rocksteady would build upon this foundation for later games surprisingly though this game still manages to feel unique and stand on its own compared to the other ones visually it evokes a darker mood with its lighting and more gothic designs but also feels like it plays different with the explorable map being smaller in scale and more linear in a sense things feel more focused and cinematic in this game more than others i feel like i'm controlling a movie while also at the same time it feels like a graphic novel come to life in fact i think i ultimately feel the most immersed in this game compared to the others for the other games i replay them for their open world and enhanced gameplay but i always return to arkham asylum just to be in its world again to relive the spooky almost supernatural atmosphere of the arkham grounds as well as the grimly detailed corridors within each of the buildings there's a beauty to the ugliness of the asylum and i regularly find myself coming back for more i also think this is one of the most engaging stories in the series the plot moves organically and there are plenty of twists and turns along the way these scarecrow sections are of course the most memorable and creative moments in the game but the rest of the story had a hold on me as well being trapped for the night inside the asylum is probably batman's worst nightmare but it's the premise that's excited me the most out of all of them batman arkham asylum is truly a work of art on every level and was a big step forward for superhero games it may not be perfect in every sense but it goes above and beyond in so many areas there's absolutely no way that i could score it lower than a 10 out of 10. if you're a batman fan or just a fan of the arkham games series and you haven't tried this out i'd highly recommend you give it a shot especially if you're someone who really likes to get engrossed into a story but i think that sums up my experience revisiting batman arkham asylum so what's coming up next on this channel well there are a couple things that i have in mind with doctor strange and the multiverse of madness releasing soon in the reveal that patrick stewart's professor xavier will make an appearance i want to take a brief detour into x-men for a video or two starting with the highly requested x-men origins wolverine a game that is often praised for being an excellent game tied to a terrible movie so that's what's coming up next but for all you batman arkham fans i want to reassure you that we will continue this series before too long with batman arkham city and arkham knight and that i definitely plan on circling back to them arkham city and arkham knight are both very large games with a ton of content packed into them so i know those will take me quite a while to make each one so i want to tackle those when i feel like i can take my time with them when new superhero movies are releasing i like to try and time relevant retrospectives alongside them since i know that's when myself and others will be the most interested in hearing about those characters so i didn't want to try to rush arkham city out and then russian x-men game out since i think that would lessen the quality of those videos so that's essentially where my mind is right now and i'm looking forward to revisiting all of those games soon thank you so much to everyone who has watched this far into the video i really appreciate you spending this time with me and i hope you enjoyed yourself if you're in the mood for more retrospectives like this one i have plenty others to choose from including batman arkham origins which serves as a prequel story to batman arkham asylum if you enjoyed this video i'd appreciate it if you gave it a like since it helps the channel out more than you'd think and you can also subscribe if you're interested in more videos like this one but anyway thank you so much for watching and i'll see you in the next video [Music] wow [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Always Nerdy

Views: 953,133

Keywords: batman arkham asylum retrospective review, batman arkham asylum game, behind the scenes batman arkham asylum making of, batman arkham asylum joker, batman the animated series, paul dini, mark hamill, kevin conroy, rocksteady studios, The Batman game, always nerdy, batman arkham asylum ps3, scarecrow, Bane

Id: TE4fHMmjeOQ

Length: 110min 22sec (6622 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 26 2022