Batman: Arkham Asylum, PC demo on Steam

Weeeell i didnt have high expectations of this game, even after shiek told me how good it was gonna be. I checked out the trailers and reckoned it looked worth checking out, however.

The fact i had to fart about for an hour just to get through the installation issues and download the new physX driver from Nvidia didnt help. Then, as you get control of "The Dark Knight" for the first time i had the camera spinning around so fast for no reason that i had to go and fart about for help on a game without any official support. On the wise council of some bloke from a forum i unplugged the joystick and to my infinite glee i could bash the brains out of ugly muscle-boxes without feeling sick.

You are plunged into your first combat straight away - no pretences about what 99% of the game will be like, i thought. Actually combat with a drunk and wildy uncontrolleable camera proved no hindrance for the introductory tutorial fight, the enemies were slow and batman is so clever he can chain his attacks to hit anything anywhere in a room with a mere click, needing no help from you. This seemed a little bit one sided, me with a broken camera could destroy a whole load of bad guys by getting RSI in my finger no bother at all, seemed like combat would just be a clickfest whilst Ye Darke Knigget beat Ye Crappe out of psychos in an interesting series of swirls and flicks of cape, often showcased in slow mo Fallout 3 VATS style.

Combat got a tad easier for me when i got the damn camera to stay still, and it seemed less like flailing randomly with legs, claws and capes and more like a bad movie fight scene.

Next came the imaginatively named Batarang, aloowing me dissect little chomping teeth marauding around an office. The trailers show the Batarang to be much better upgraded, but the irritating semi-lock on aiming put me off for the time being.

Then you have to save some bloke on an electric chair from Zsasz, a charming mangled maniac being an interesting hue of red wearing some chains and a metal chastity belt. Seems like it was halloween night at the asylum, no straightjackets in sight, lots of chains and tight leather, sparsely applied to muscle bound... stop drooling Judas, or ill stop.

Anyway, this section introduces "detective mode" which allows you to see people through walls and spot large, handily placed gargoyles on the walls which you can grapple and swing on to. The dramatic act of swining to and from these gargoyles somehow renders you completely invisible to enemies looking directly at you, handy when you must swing around a fairly small room with a vigilant Zsasz, who has kindly placed himself with a garoyle bahind him, from which you can execute a glide/kick.

Then follows some first person crawls through ventilation shafts, some swinging between gargoyles (the designers of the asylum should have been locked in too), a big room filled with gun-toting retards (which run up to deceased comrades saying "wake up!" as you would with your tounge stuck under your lower lip such as when imitating Judas). Then a nice cutscene where batman prepares to fight a pale Super Mutant With Rocks In, then cut short by eidos logos and such disappointing stuff.

Overall:

Pros-
-fairly smooth and stylish combat
-decent graphics
-promises not to be just combat
-Stealth seems to be a large part of the game - not a large part, but a bit.
Cons:
-So pixelated at about 400x600 you cant really see the decent graphics
-Nothing you can do about resolution
-Cant edit controls
-looks like combat will become repetetive and boring quickly
-spinning joystick problems, i know fixing the game up isnt a big priority when
its a demo and its out on "more important" (bah!) consoles, but they better
fix it, because im not going to unplug my joystick every time i want to play
-The big "become the worlds best detective" bit sounds like crap, you press a button
on some gizmo and youll instantly know who what or where the thing youre
looking for is. (im guessing, but its an educated guess ;P)
-Linearity - i have a personal vedetta with game designers insisting on their new
super awesome games being linear. Stop spending time on having greater graphics
than everyone else and make your game more fun, deep, replayable, interesting
or any combination of those.

I am tempted to buy it - but only when its £20 or so.

feel free to stick your own reviews here - especially to compare differences across the consoles and between the demo and full game.