Batman: Arkham Asylum

This game came out of nowhere, at least on my radar. How many Batman games have there been, that have just been complete trash? Really, you could say the same thing for any comic-based game. In the early nineties, I was heavily into comics; I was also heavily into video games. So combine the two and you have greatness, right? I must admit that the SNES (and to a lesser degree the Genesis, incompetent as it was) was chock full of side-scrolling super hero romps. Unfortunately I thought they were all mediocre at the time and really didn't get into them.

Indeed, the big X-Men arcade game that supported a plethora of multiplayer goodness was so good that I actually brought $10 worth of quarters from the bank to the mall to play all day. That dream was crushed, but I did have a bucket load of quarters. The same excitement could not be reproduced on the home systems. I tried Spider-Man games, Wolverine, X-Men, etc and they were just a big collective meh.

So superhero games were ignored, rightfully so, through the 32 and 64-bit years, until Batman: Vengeance came out for the Cube. Why did this game get me excited to the point where I actually paid money? One thing: cape physics. Really. I'm not kidding; perhaps I was a bit dull, or the urge to play as Batman after so many years of pitiful games got a hold of me. We can't be certain except that I only played for a short time: this game was wretched. 

So back into the abyss of superhero games, and I was fine with that. Then people start talking (and by people I guess we refer to the internet) about this new Batman game, but as the internet goes as an often unreliable hype machine, I pay no heed. I don't even understand what type of game it's going to be: I don't care. But then it starts hitting me, and I download the demo. I refuse to play it. It's childish, but I wasn't about to be disappointed.

Then Cale, bless him, starts ranting about this game, describing it in its detail and I must play it. I still don't understand how the game plays: I hear murmurs that you slowly walk through the Asylum and just dispose of guys. What? Arkham is not big enough to do that for an entire games-length. Well, I could describe my confusion on how the game mechanics would be, but then I played the damn thing and I was sold in a heartbeat. We played for hours, and it was so detailed, so in-depth, so gripping, I didn't want to stop.

He let me borrow the game then my life was game over: every night for hours, until I conquered this game. I threw the controller in rage, I sat on the edge of my seat, I cowered during the Scarecrow's mind bending nightmares. After finishing the game, and with exhausted breathing I watched the credits roll, I knew, this was the superhero game I had waited for.