Completed Batman: Arkham Asylum demo. This game looks really awesome as a dark Batman title. I'm pretty sure it will wipe out all it's predecessors which have ever released. The voice acting is a true highlight in this game & graphics have the typical UE3 feel. Frame rates are very consistent, in my case, it was always 60fps. The only thing I disabled was Ambient Occlusion & Hardware PhysX (for obvious reasons). The detail provided to the Asylum is amazing. Although Batman seems to be pumped with a heavy dose of steroids, which shouldn't come as a rudimentary shock, as most of the UE3 protagonists have similar physical attributes.
The gameplay involves both stealth combat & full out action. The melee combat is nothing new. It's just a combination of 2 buttons on the 360 controller that should do the job, 'X' & 'B'. 'X' is for standard punch kick combos & 'B' stuns the enemy by spinning Batman's cape over them. The action feels pretty similar to Watchmen: End is Nigh, you perform some combos & it heads into slow motion finishers. So nothing new in this department.
The real fun begins when stealth kicks in. It seems they have tried to make it as simple as possible. All you do is hit 'LB' to switch to Detective mode. In this mode, your screen turns to a purplish color & you'll have a detailed view of the environment. In this mode, you can clearly have a view of the interactive objects & key clues to solve some puzzles. It's more like a detailed X-Ray vision. In the demo, you can latch onto Gargoyle statues by simply hitting 'RB' & performing kills from there. That can either be zipping down & grabbing an unsuspecting enemy OR gliding towards an enemy (at a distance) & leveling him with a drop kick.
You could also perform stealth kills by sneaking up behind an unsuspecting foe. But if you're spotted in a heavily guarded area, then you'll be gunned down faster than you can yell "BAT!". Also our health regeneration fans, prepared to be disappointed. In a long time, an UE3 based game without health regeneration ability has arrived. From what I've witnessed, you have a semi-circle of health meter gauge on top which will diminish if you take a hit & replenish once you clobber down the enemies.
Am I forgetting something? Oh yes! You can use your Batrang too by holding down 'LT' to aim & 'RT' to throw it. I guess that covers pretty much everything from the demo. You can unlock some character Bios while you're at it & check out their profiles later on.
Overall, I'm impressed from the demo, but I'm also disappointed because it ended the demo on the exact point when Joker was unleashing a deformed monster towards us. So guess what, the demo would leave you begging for more. It didn't even give us one freaking boss fight, NOT ONE BOSS FIGHT! So that doesn't justify the 2.03GB size. And to rub it in, the end of the demo gives us a taste of things to come with the small preview of the full game. So now we wait, wait till September 15 dawns on us.
