Review: Arkham Asylum Demo
Arkham Asylum was another game that was on my must-rent list. And honestly, I’d probably buy it if our finances hadn’t limited us. I was happy to see a demo of it on the PSN so decided to give it a shot. Not much more to say, so here we go.
- The graphics looked great – even for a 1GB demo. And if this is how it’s going to be in the game … then it’s looking to be a pretty game overall. It goes to show that people are starting to use the PS3 for it’s potential instead of just porting it.
- The fighting mechanics were enjoyable. I can definitely see that this game is going to have stealth elements to it and I’m a sucker for stealth games. (I’m still a big fan of Thief)
- The game looks to play heavily on his tools as well – the Batarang, using a zipline (or whatever it’s called) to go from platform to platform, or to string enemies up, gliding takedowns or silent drops. It gives fighting a non-linear feel to it – you can pick and choose on what you want to do.
- Demo was too short for me. Only about five fighting areas and that was it. I would have liked to have more to play – but ultimately, the point of a demo is to get you wanting more.
- Considering how much you were able to play – a 1GB+ download seemed a bit extreme. You could play more in Call of Duty: World at War and that had about the same file size as this demo.
- Something about Batman’s appearance bugs me. Maybe it’s the blocky face structure, or how the game looks when you’re running – but something just stands off to me.
Positive Points: 3 | Negative Points: 3 | Final Score: 0
The demo wasn’t super long but I think it did the job of a demo…it provided a pretty thorough glimpse of what the gameplay would be like. So yeah, while you didn’t get to fight a boss or explore too much, you were able to try out a large amount of attacks, stealth moves and encounter quite a few enemies to test your fighting skills on.
The 1GB demo was so big because the visuals were done in real-time (for the most part — the opening scene and any cutscene that had a lot of lighting effects were no doubt pre-rendered at near Blu-ray quality). CoD: WaW didn’t feature anything but the level and a few prerendered After-Effects-ish cutscenes. I don’t think file size is an indicator of game quality but I’m with you on the large file size…if there was a way for Eidos to get that demo down to 500MB, I would have been much happier.
I like the way Batman looks. The Bale Batman looks disfigured to me (in the face — too much rubber in the mask’s jowls?) but this Batman looks like the one from the comics. He’s supposed to look pumped up and soldier-like…he doesn’t have any super powers and has to fight a lot of attackers that are big also. So I think it’s good this Batman looks different than what Batman film people are used to — I do love that they used the Batman/Batman Returns Batmobile though. Pure awesome.
August 16, 2009 at 11:34 pm