[STEAM] Batman: Arkham Asylum Marked the End of the ‘Sh*tty Licensed Game’ Era

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This is an IGN opinion piece from Ryan McCaffrey, who worked at Official Xbox Magazine from 2002-2012 during the original Xbox and Xbox 360 era before joining IGN, where he remains “the Xbox guy.” In the run-up to Xbox’s 25th anniversary, he’ll be sharing his memories from the platform’s first quarter-century.

Not every band hits it big with their first record. Sometimes it takes an extra album or two for the right storm of creativity to create lightning in a bottle. So too is this the case with video game development studios. Treyarch is one notable example: it was best known for making mostly mediocre licensed superhero games (ironic, given the subject matter of this column) before it broke out big as Infinity Ward’s partner on Call of Duty.

Another is ***-based Rocksteady, which didn’t really have any big hits to its name before its Batman: Arkham trilogy turned it into a game development superstar. Prior to its work with the bat, the studio made a pretty mediocre first-person action game in 2006 called Urban Chaos: Riot Response. You played as a riot-control team member, tasked with saving civilians in a city overrun by a gang.

I remember playing it back at Official Xbox Magazine. First-person shooters have long been my favorite genre, so during my days at the OXM office I’d give anything that used the first-person perspective a try. That led me to all kinds of incredible games I might’ve otherwise ignored, such as Breakdown for the original Xbox. But Urban Chaos wasn’t Breakdown. Nor was it good. OXM gave it a 5 out of 10. (IGN was kinder, awarding it a

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.)

Quite how Rocksteady went from the mediocre Urban Chaos to

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– by a country mile – is something of a mystery. What happened behind the scenes that saw its staff graduate to such creative heights? Whatever the reason, that team – led by director Sefton Hill – went on to prove that Akham Asylum was anything but their one hit wonder. While the series would eventually stumble just a little bit with that damn drawn-out Batmobile section near the end of

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, you won’t find anyone with an unkind word to say about either Arkham Asylum or its sublime sequel,

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.

In fact, both are so good that, two generations later, a constant debate remains regarding which of Rocksteady’s first two Batman games is the pinnacle of the series. Some say Asylum is the best, others cite City. Both are right. (I’m in the City camp, for what it’s worth, as I prefer its larger open-world and I think its extremely dark story is even better than the stellar plot we got in Asylum).

Batman: Arkham Asylum rewrote the comic-book-game rules because it solved the gameplay puzzle. But we’re here to talk about Rocksteady’s first game and the ground it broke. No matter whether you played it on an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3, you got an absolutely stunning game in the graphics department. It utilized Unreal Engine 3, and matched the engine’s graphical grunt with phenomenal art direction to create a game that felt like a grittier, more grown-up version of Batman: The Animated Series.

Speaking of which, casting Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill absolutely took Rocksteady’s brilliant game to the next level. In a sense, it legitimized it. Here were the two legendary Batman and Joker voice actors we’d grown up with on The Animated Series, now in an incredible Batman adventure we could play. And not just one we could play, but a much darker Batman universe than what was in the cartoon – age appropriate for the now-adult fans.

But as perfect as the voice casting was, and as gorgeous as the graphics were, Batman: Arkham Asylum rewrote the comic-book-game rules because it solved the gameplay puzzle. Whether you were leaning on the investigative side of the Dark Knight – perched atop gargoyles, scanning rooms with Detective Mode, and dropping down to grab unsuspecting foes before leaving them strung up for the Gotham City Police Department to collect later – or pulverizing packs of criminals with the combo-driven parry/hit/finish/chain-to-the-next-guy combat system, Arkham Asylum delivered on putting you inside Batman’s cowl in a way that no other video game had ever done before. And for those of you of a certain age, like me, you know

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, prior to

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.

In short, Batman: Arkham Asylum was both a breath of fresh air and a revelation. It deserved every accolade it got at the time. Without it, we’d have never had the thrills of the wider Arkham series, and probably would never have got Insomniac’s Spider-Man. And while they’re inching closer to being considered “retro”, you can fire up any of the Arkham games today – yes, even the very first one I’m talking about here – and they still hold up in both gameplay and story. Only the graphics might let you down in 2026, a full 17 years after it first released. That’s rare for any game to be able to claim with any legitimacy, but Arkham Asylum earns it.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of IGN's weekly Xbox show,

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, and a co-host of

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. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on

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at

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.

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