There’s an upside and a downside to playing the “Game of the Year” edition.
Upside:
- Extra content (as the graphic shows).
- Odds are, its popularity is well deserved so you bought a winner.
- The price is lower. With new games going for SIXTY clams each, I can wait until they’re $20-$30 (Lego Star Wars III and Pirates, you’re next!).
Downside:
- Finding those useful hint books border on impossible, hence I have to pester my search engine wizard-wife.
- Other gamers give you a look of like, “Arkham is cool? Well, duh! Where’ve you been slowtard?” Along with inside jokes or memes it created.
- It can take a while before these games are cheaper.
Then there’s the fact I hadn’t played a video game based upon a superhero in years and even then, they weren’t very impressive…they were 2-D sidescrollers for the Eighties’ NES. (Wait, I did finish Lego Batman earlier yet it doesn’t count because it’s more of a Lego game than a superhero game.) Contemporary versions all too often are tie-ins for a movie which either just re-enact what you already saw or they’re terrible pieces of crap whipped together for a quick buck.
Admittedly, Arkham uses the momentum the Batman franchise gained from 2008’s The Dark Knight (something I chose not to bother writing about on my site, too much time passed) but the game publisher(s) didn’t use anything from it. Instead the committee of corporations involved went with the well-loved 1992 cartoon series for the foundation: namely the voice actors (Mark Hamill as the Joker, Kevin Conroy as Batman) and characters (Harlequin, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy). To guarantee its appeal for the hyper-violent, socially retarded videogame base, everything got a makeover from the Hot Topic employee who’s just a little too into the Tim Burton-Crow-Goth thing.
At least the storyline portion is enjoyable, once you get past the long-ass exposition on why Batman has to fight several hundred people. It shares some the same DNA as those early Tom Clancy-based games (minus the Right-wing politics) because stealth usually trumps direct confrontations. Jumping in and beating the crap out of the Joker’s flunkies isn’t wise when they have hostages…you get to keep repeating the scenario until you get it right. The henchmen are also pretty accurate with guns, shivs and lead pipes unlike the comic books. There’s a couple weird surprises involving the Scarecrow’s psychotropic drugs so don’t panic when they happen, it’s this nemesis, not your console crashing.
My only immediate complaint regarding Arkham is the same I have with most of these games (Sly Cooper, Ratchet & Clank), it doesn’t have much re-playability after you’ve completed the narrative portion. There are separate challenges based upon how quickly something is solved or how perfectly you can defeat a dozen flunkies. Yet they lose their luster due to them being redundant. This is why I’m looking forward to the pending sequel Arkham City, more villains from the Batman mythos will appear (Catwoman, Two Face) but I’m hoping it will use Gotham City as a giant sandbox in the same vein as the Grand Theft Auto games.