Reply to: “Persuasion and videogames – the batman example”.

I disagree that the batman game: “Arkham Asylum” encourages players to an un-batman style of running straight at mobs of enemies, fists flailing. Having recently played both batman titles “Arkham Asylum” and “Arkham city” I was impressed how much the game reflected the comic books as well as the 1990’s animated series I watched as a child. Playing both games on the highest difficulty, the game can only really be played stealthily. And the range of tactics, abilities and compositions that can be devised for taking out the bad guys are limited only by creativity. Shure playing the game on easy, you can walk up to an armed gunman and kick him in the head with little difficulty. But playing the game on the harder settings gave a much more “Batman” feel to the game, remaining true to the comic book hero. Personally I didn’t once get bored in devising ways to knockout the bad guys, and it was always fun to discover new ways of employing that magic utility belt to creatively dispatch enemies.

But the Arkham series does not limit itself to just being sneaky. Many times throughout the game the best course of action is to directly fight a room full of people. Times when there is no place to be sneaky, and all you can do is ruthlessly attack, counter attack and block as goons come at you with bats, knives, cattle prods, riot gear, fire extinguishers and whatever else they can pick up.

So that’s why I disagree with Kevin that the Arkham games persuasion was problematic and didn’t stick to the logic of the comics. Not only that but the game was an amalgamation of works from the Batman universe. Although one could quite confidently say that the Adam West Batman tv series didn’t factor into the games design, if it had I would have had a can of trusty “Bat-shark repellent spray” that time I had to fight a great white.