Batman Arkham Asylum

$60, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows

Teaches: logic, problem solving

CTR Rating: 92.5%

CTR Review

It's Batman vs. Joker in this beautiful one-player brawling game, set inside the insane asylum of Gotham City, also known as Arkham Asylum. You control Batman, as you attempt to stop the Joker and his helpers from taking over the prison. Our testers hoped that Batman would come equipped with gadgets, and this game met their expectations. You can toggle between Batarangs, the Batclaw or explosive gel aerosol, and solve puzzles using x-ray scanning, fingerprint scans, Amido Black spray and a pheromone tracker. There are four game save slots, and three challenge levels. We tried the easy level, and found it to be very forgiving. The violence is on-par with the movie; but no excessive blood. A FreeFlow combat system lets you chain together combos and battle groups of the Joker's henchman. The controls on the PS3 version are easy to pick up and play, but figuring out the combo moves takes practice. In addition, the six-axis motion sensor is used at several points in the game such as when Batman flies to a new location. Other cool features include the ability to become invisible, and the ability to choose between swooping down from the sky to take out a bad guy, or, say, smashing through a wall and stunning him with a gadget. Exclusive to the PS3 version is the ability to play as The Joker in eight Challenge Maps that are available for download at no cost through PlayStation Network, and the Batcave Outpost Apartment which features the Batsuit, the Batmobile, the Batwing and other selected gadgets. This title was one of the most requested in the Mediatech collection, for well over a month. Buy it. Created by Rocksteady Sudios, who worked with Eidos, for Warner Bros. Entertainment. Visit the website at http://www.batmanarkhamasylum.com/start. Prices are $60 for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, and $50 for the PC.