Genre: Stealth/Action
Developer: Rocksteady Studios
Publisher: Eidos Interactive

Arkham Asylum's Unreal Engine implementation has a "wow factor", both in terms of rampant shader use and extreme resolution, that masks some uncomely scenic artwork, choices of colors, and mismatched themes on display. It's not all bad, however, as the scenery is suitably surrealistic-- not quite comic-book like, yet not quite real-world either. This aspect is almost enough to help one overlook the loathsome, mannequin-like character designs.

Arkham Asylum's soundtrack is the kind of forgettable, dime-a-dozen Hollywood orchestral work heard in movie trailers, and the supporting voice work is lumbering at best. That means Arkham Asylum's most notable aural feature is its ceaseless voice acting from Batman's iconic menesis, "The Joker". This voice acting is provided by none other than Mark Hamill, and would be impressive if it wasn't so frequent.

In an age where game designs are becoming more and more simplified, Arkham Asylum arrives and makes use of every single button on the 360's controller, some of them for more than one function when combined with presses from other buttons. To counteract this, parts of the title are almost constantly directing the player as to what buttons to press, contributing to feelings of being chaperoned, feelings mostly established by the game's highly scripted nature. Despite the babysitting, the core stealth and combat mechanics are highly gratifying if not particularly intuitive.

Part Splinter Cell and part Ninja Gaiden, with Max Payne inspired character backdrop sequences, Arkham Asylum is at its best when it drops the player into an open enviroment full of shadows, ducts, and perches, and lets him prey upon a pack of unsuspecting baddies, through the use of clandestine stealth tactics or head-on combat via an engaging though somewhat overly-facilitated melee system. Disappointingly, most of the game feels so scripted and linear that these mechanics are a bit underdeveloped and difficult for the player to consistently enjoy and master.