Everyone knows who Batman is in at least some capacity. This is mainly because of his popularity due to the fact that he's not that complex of a character. He's a rich playboy by day, and a symbol of fear at night, who also really hates clowns. So it's easy to pick up almost any Batman trade paper back or graphic novel and pretty much be set. So in comes the subject of this article/review: Batman: Arkham Asylum for the PS3/ X 360/ PC, and I can honestly say that you don't have to be a Batman fan to play this game. Most of the villains that are in the game have been in at least one of the movies, with the exception of Killer Croc, Zsasz and the ever great Harley Quinn.

   I found the gameplay to be great in Arkham Asylum. The game mixes stealth mechanics and fistfights with large quantities of enemies very well. It's no end of fun to watch the enemies travel below you, waiting for them to separate and falter so that you can pick them off one by one, and then finish the last terrified enemy. Which brings me to another feature that I really liked: emotions. I feel like this has been used before, but here it really works. When you first enter an area that has a bunch of guys that you are expected to take out using stealth, all of your enemies are calm. However, as you take them out they become more and more frightened until the last few are terrified, abandoning each other and shooting randomly into the area.

  The dialog in this game tends to be a mixed bag, some lines are great and some are cliché, but it's the voice acting that really makes it great. The role of the Joker is being reprised by Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) who played the Joker in the fantastic Batman: Animated Series. Mark Hamill does a great Joker, probably doing one of the closest performances to the actual comic book that's ever been done. While I love Jack Nicholson's and Heath Ledger's performances as the Joker, neither would be quite as right for this game as Hamill. Kevin Connroy, the voice actor for Batman, is leagues above Christian Bale, he sounds dark and threatening without having to have terrible throat cancer while doing the role.

  This is going to be a shorter paragraph, because there's only one word necessary to describe the setting: great. It's dark, creepy, and gritty. However this could also be a fault because the setting is never really scary when you're Batman and all of the enemies are far more scared of you than you are of them.

  The best levels in the game are when you start facing the Scarecrow. You may or not notice a brownish-grayish-gas coming out of a vent, and then Batman starts seeing weird images. He finds himself in settings that may or may not exist, and afterward he finds himself somewhere else. These levels are scary and just plain awesome.

  The story isn't necessarily bad, it's just dull. There isn't much to it, Joker has some chemical that turns people into mutants, he plans to take over Gotham, etc. In fact if it wasn't for the before-mentioned voice acting, you could probably just skip most of the cut-scenes.

  While the game does get a little harder as you progress, it gets repetitive after a while. The fistfights turn into muscle memory, the stealth areas become lather-rinse-repeat and the boss fights are all the same fight done over and over again.

  Well for those of you who may be interested in picking up the game I hope my review was helpful.