Over the weekend I played the PC demo for the upcoming Batman: Arkham Asylum game from Eidos Interactive. You can get your own copy at their official website. So was it any good?
Oh slag yeah! G4TV.com is reporting that the PC version is going to be delayed until September 15th (US) or 18th (Europe), depending on where you live. This is due to adding NVidia’s “PhysX technology”, which they say will add an extra level of realism to the game over the consoles. I haven’t played the consoles to compare, but the PC version is a thing of beauty.
Is it dark? Well, yeah, and normally that’s not my thing. However, dark is what Batman is supposed to be. It’s necessary for the narrative. And from the demo they use it properly. While I still wonder what the heck Dr. Arkham was thinking when he approved the design of this place (it’s certainly not a pleasant looking place, which I would think a nuthatch should be to help the patients feel more at easy and thus respond to treatment but I’m not a quack psychologist, so what do I know?), but it certainly sets the mood for the game.
This is not a kids title by any stretch, but at least in the demo I didn’t see anything beyond the “T for Teens” rating it has. People do get shot and killed and the sub-boss has a guy strapped to a shock treatment chair (no spoilers beyond that just yet), but nothing graphic. Granted the look of the place makes it look worse, as does Mark Hamill’s usual portrayal of the Joker. Kevin Conroy also returns as the Dark Knight and does his own usual bang-up job.
There is one complaint I have to make, and I’m not sure if part of it isn’t a glitch that messed up the Logitech controller I have, but trying to make Batman walk using said controller is confusing. For some reason, when you push the stick forwards, Batman walks towards the camera and away from it when you pull the stick back. It has to be a glitch somewhere, because the keyboard controls work just fine. (But why use that when you have a gamepad?) The part that is an error on their part is that there is no way to tell it what controller your using, so the instructions are given using an X-Box 360 for Windows controller (is that just a regular X-Box controller, or is there a different kind for PC’s?), which means letters instead of numbers and I have to try and remember which is the “button” and which is the “trigger”, as well as remembering “A” is “3” on my controller for example. Considering how well the controls otherwise handle, that’s disappointing. I also hope the final version allows me to alter the control scheme to something I can better control. I actually don’t have an issue with the layout once I figured out what it was, but I do like the option in case I need it. It certainly helps me with other games I own.
That’s all I’ll say for now. I’m going to let you play the demo for yourselves, and I’ll do a Saturday Night Showcase on it, complete with spoilers. Until then, enjoy and tell me if you encounter the same movement glitch, please.
EDIT: Making screencaps was too much of a pain with my current set-up, so I didn’t do the Showcase review.
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