Traditionally, Batman games have sucked. Nothing has portrayed the combat and feel of being the Caped Crusader very well. Enter Warner Bros. and Batman: Arkham Asylum. The dark, gritty world of Batman and the brutal hand-to-hand combat has finally been done right. I played a good bit of the game at E3, both single player and the Challenge Rooms, and fell in love.

The first thing I noticed was the cape; it’s never been done right and always had collision detection issues. Warner Bros. got the cape spot on, so you won’t have to worry about that anymore. It certainly made me smile. The demo I got to play was at the beginning of the game after The Joker takes over Arkham. I got to beat up on a few bad guys, scale the room and use the darkness to my advantage. It felt like Batman should. The Challenge Rooms were very similar (I played with both Batman and The Joker) where you take on as many bad guys (or security officers while playing as The Joker) until you’re out of health. Pretty fun and I can see it having a decent amount of replay value.

The best part, which I was worried about, was getting around heights and parts of the room. In the early level I played, there were quite a few ledges and gargoyles strewn about. To get there, look at them and hit RB/R1 and you’ll use your grappling hook and get up there silently. Moving from place to place works the same way. Simple and effective. Once from a perched position, you can drop down in silence and take out enemies. This brings me to the only problem I had with the game as I played it, which was the enemy AI being pretty dumb. I understand you’re a huge powerful superhero, but if I take down 3 enemies behind you, I’d think you might have any idea that something is afoot. Maybe higher difficulty settings will fix that.

This is definitely the Batman game that everyone has dreamed of for years. The combat is great and the story is true to the canon of the character (more so the comics than the recent movies). I didn’t want to put down the controller once I got my hands on with Arkham Asylum. Hopefully Warner Bros. will release a demo so everyone can play, but you need to put this on the “must buy” list.