In their review of Arkham Asylum, Game Informer called the game “this year’s Bioshock.” While I’m not juvenile enough to believe that their editorial content is motivated entirely by advertising dollars, they are occasionally given to insane statements of hyperbole.

I went into the same game with suspicion. Superhero games are typically plagued by the curse of the licensed title. They are rushed out by the dozen, cookie-cutter stereotypes of their respective genres. While there have certainly been good ones, they have rarely been memorable. Bioshock is a memorable game. It is borderline-ludicrous to even suggest that there can be a Bioshock each year, as though it were Madden.

Is Arkham Asylum really this year’s Bioshock?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I was up until three o’clock in the morning last night playing this game. I know that the last game that inspired such a marathon session for me was Bioshock. If so, perhaps that comparison is apt. Is Arkham Asylum really this year’s Bioshock? Maybe. Is it a damn good game? Absolutely.

Making a new Batman game was a no-brainer. Dark Knight firmly returned the Batman character to the public consciousness. Eidos could have put out a quick cash-in. They could have literally put anything on the market, and it would have sold like hotcakes. Instead, they gave the developers at Rocksteady the time and money to put out the best possible product. It shows. Arkham Asylum’s production values are top-notch. The graphics and sound, the entire presentation, was put together with no regard for the cost.

The Unreal Engine provides technically spectacular graphics. Actually, the art direction is the area where the comparison to Bioshock is the most apt. This game looks a lot like Bioshock. The entire game takes place at night on an island that fell into decay about a century before the game begins. There are some downright creepy environments, lighted only by nearby spotlights or flickering fluorescent bulbs. While the buildings are afflicted by the “crazed video game architecture” disease, they look awesome and are ripe for exploration. At the same time, I hate the character designs. One part of this is the typical Unreal Engine problem. Every character looks like they were rolling in a tub of Vaseline. Their skin is slicker than a porn star covered in oil. The fundamental problem, however, is that the character design just sucks. Most of the characters, good or bad, look like these massive, muscle-bound caricatures of human beings. It’s not a deal breaker, but everyone in the game looks like a combination of the Gears of War cast with a mid-nineties Liefeld comic.

The storyline is probably the worst aspect of the overall package. The fact that Paul Dini, the guy that penned some of the best Batman stories of the past two decades, wrote the story just makes it worse. The writing itself is fine. The dialogue is pretty good, and the fact that it is voiced by most of the cast of the animated series helps it go down easy. The actual plot is what sucks. It’s nothing but a simplistic collection of events designed to push you from boss to boss until you finally take down the Joker. Yes, your archenemy took over Arkham Island, but he seems to have done it for the sole purpose of making you run from point A to point B to point C while fighting famous Batman villains.

Frankly, though, the graphics, music, and storyline are just the icing on the proverbial cake. I spend a lot of time fussing over things like dialogue and narrative themes. It’s logical, I’m kind of a word person. Sometimes I forget that video games are intended to be an interactive medium. While it would be awesome if every single game was this perfect amalgamation of story and gameplay, sometimes it is okay for the plot to just be a vehicle to move you from fight to fight. Arkham Asylum is one of those games. It doesn’t matter that I’m not given any particular goal beyond “stopping the bad guy,” no particular reason to advance the narrative forward. With gameplay this perfect, having fun is enough of a reason.

The basic structure of the game is what we have come to call a “metroidvania.” You skulk around this massive open world, exploring every nook and cranny, and stomping a few faces along the way. You have an immediate objective at all times, but you are basically given free reign to run around and explore the environments. While not in first-person like the Metroid Prime trilogy, there are a number of obvious parallels. Batman is the world’s greatest detective; it’s often been joked that he has a sixth sense, an ability to sense danger and weigh every situation from multiple angles. The developers took this literally. At any time, you can shift Batman into “detective mode.” While in this mode, objects that can be interacted with light up. If you can blow a hole in a wall, you’ll see glowing cracks along the side. Likewise, you’ll be able to spot grates that you can crawl into or security boxes that you can hack. One other major advantage – enemies will be highlighted, even through walls.

This is absolutely essential. Combat is a major part of this game, but Batman is not foolish enough to directly fight enemies that have guns. He’s just human after all, and bullets hurt like hell if you’re a mere mortal. Try to fight a group of guys with guns, even just one guy with a rifle, and you’ll be back at the loading screen in seconds. The stealth element of the gameplay comes in during these situations. Honestly, these were my favorite parts of Arkham Asylum. You see, there is one crucial difference between stealth in Batman and stealth in a game like Metal Gear Solid. Your goal isn’t to sneak by. When Batman is lurking in the shadows, when you are lurking in the shadows, you are on the hunt. There is nothing more satisfying than throwing a sonic batarang into a corner, swinging over to an overhanging gargoyle, and dropping down to choke a baddie when he comes to investigate. The use of stealth in Arkham Asylum is to fuel the hunt. It is this unique sort of primal experience. The Chronicles of Riddick is the closest experience that I’ve had in a game, but it just didn’t give you the same feeling.

Sometimes, however, you just have to punch a dude in the face. You walk into a room and there are twenty guys just standing there. None of them are carrying guns, so you don’t need to skulk in the shadows. You can just leap in and start a brawl, and amazingly, it’s just as fun. The hand-to-hand combat is built on a simple combo system. Press one button to punch guys, another to dodge, and another to counter. If you string together attacks in close succession and counter at the right times, you will build up a counter. Once that counter reaches a certain threshold, you can press combinations of buttons to unleash “takedown” moves. While leaping around, you can also toss batarangs to stun opponents or shoot your grappling hook to pull someone toward you. Taking down thugs will net you experience, which can be spent on new combat moves or item upgrades. It’s not a very complicated system, but it is easy to understand and there is an undeniable satisfaction in rendering a guy unconscious by kicking him in the armpit.

Batman has a massive rogue’s gallery, and it would be a shame to waste its denizens. As in Metroid, Arkham Asylum will occasionally throw these guys at you in the form of crazy boss battles. Ostensibly, these are set up like the standard combat, but with a massive monkey wrench thrown in. These battles are not easy. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you will end up repeating them over and over. However, like all great games, the bosses here have patterns, and the key to winning is in memorizing those patterns. I had a great moment yesterday where I was getting my ass handed to me by Poison Ivy. I then realized that she was firing these spore pellets at specific times. I didn’t beat her right away. It still took a couple more tries to bring her down, but it was immensely awesome when I did.

The Metroid similarities don’t end there. Like in Nintendo’s sci-fi series, progression through new environments depends on an array of gadgets. Likewise, each new gadget that you acquire allows you to open up new sections of prior buildings. Arkham Island is a pretty massive, complex set of buildings, caves, and ruins. The gadgets that you collect are things that Batman would logically use to get around. These are things like an explosive gel to blow down weak walls or a “line launcher” to zip between isolated platforms. You’ll get a hook to pull down grates that are bolted to walls and a hacking tool to open locked doors. The game doesn’t exactly force you to backtrack, though you will occasionally return to buildings later in the game. However, there are little riddles and trophies hidden in each area by The Riddler (who else?), and it is actually kind of fun to backtrack just to use your new gadgets to find these collectables. Why? I guess there is a bit of a collector’s impulse there, but it is also because of how Batman moves through environments. You end up spending more time shooting between points with your grappling hook and gliding across wide spaces than you do walking. You don’t just run, you fly.

I grabbed coffee with a pal of mine earlier today, and Batman came up in the conversation. I mused that Arkham Asylum might be my “game of the year,” but I quickly followed that up with, “But, this hasn’t been an amazing year for games.” You know what? Screw that. Sure, this has been kind of a weak year for game releases, but that should never be a qualifier for this kind of thing. Why should I have to justify having fallen in love with a superhero game? Why should the past sins of the pseudogenre hold back every new title? Why can’t a licensed game be the best title released this year?

So, I’m going to stick with my guns. There are a bunch of potentially awesome games coming out over the next few months, but Arkham Asylum is unquestionably the best game that I’ve played in the first eight months of 2009. Its story may be rubbish, and the character models are ugly, vaseline-covered mimicries of the human form, but that frankly doesn’t matter. Every once in a while, you need a reminder that this is a medium built on interactivity, and on gameplay that is intended to be both fun and challenging.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is one hell of a reminder.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is in stores now for the Xbox 360 and PS3. A PC version will hit stores on September 15th. The Xbox 360 version was played for this review.

For more information, see the official website.