EA’s The Dark Knight game may be in limbo, especially considering it’s never even been formally announced, but fret not Batman fans, there will be another option. See, EA only holds the license to make games based on the movies. Eidos, on the other hand, has the rights to publish games based on the Batman comic books, and that’s just what the company is going to do. As part of a co-publishing deal with Warner Bros. Interactive, Eidos has announced Batman: Arkham Asylum, a “dark, action-packed videogame adventure” for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
“In Batman: Arkham Asylum Eidos and Warner Bros. are building a true action adventure game experience worthy of gamers and fans,” said Phil Rogers, CEO of Eidos Interactive. “Players become Batman, like he has never been seen before in a video game, as he fights through intense circumstances in Arkham Asylum utilizing his intuitive detective skills and aggressive melee attacks.”
Rocksteady Studios, the team behind Urban Chaos: Riot Response (one of my favorite sleepers from last generation), has been assigned the task of creating this new Batman title, a game that follows the caped crusader inside Arkham Asylum, which has been taken over by the Joker and other infamous super-villains imprisoned within. Details are still pretty slim, but according to the latest issue of Game Informer which got the exclusive unveil in advance of Eidos’ official press release, the game is supposedly taking cues from BioShock‘s style of storytelling and world design in the way Arkham Asylum is being built as a contained, believable world much like Rapture. Sure sounds like a great idea, hopefully Rocksteady can pull it off.
“Batman: Arkham Asylum offers players the chance to battle Gotham’s worst villains with Batman’s physical and psychological strength in a graphically distinct and story-driven game,” said Martin Tremblay, President, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. “We look forward to working with Eidos on expanding DC Comics’ world-renowned character Batman in the game space with a noticeably different feature set in an incredibly dark interactive environment.”
Watch for Batman: Arkham Asylum to ship sometime next year. Better keep an eye on Rocksteady’s company website, too. If you visit www.rocksteadyltd.com you’ll notice the Bat signal with a countdown timer. Right now it’s around 79, 300 seconds, which translates to around 22 hours if my math is correct.
Matt Litten is the full-time editor and owner of VGBlogger.com. He is responsible for maintaining the day to day operation of the site, editing all staff content before it is published, and contributing regular news, reviews, previews and other articles.
Matt landed his first gig in the video game review business writing for the now-defunct website BonusStage.com. After the sad and untimely close of BonusStage, the former staff went on to found VGBlogger.com. After a short stint as US Site Manager for AceGamez, Matt assumed full ownership over VGBlogger, and to this day he is dedicated to making it one of the top video game blogs in all the blogosphere.
Matt is a fair-minded reviewer and lover of games of all platforms and types, big or small, hyped or niche, big-budget or indie. But that doesn't mean he will let poor games slide without a good thrashing when necessary! 
Really don’t know what to think about this. I mean, what is the source material for creating Arkham Asylum? If you look at something like the one-shot graphic based solely on Arkham, then yeah, there’s a lot of nutty and mad history that could easily make the game quite scary at times. At the same time, if you have Arkham, then who is housed in it? I mean, it’s not like Batman is the only graphic to ever use Arkham. Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman also used Arkham Asylum!!! So will we see those coming into play?
Will they use the history of Elizabeth Arkham and Amadeus Arkham as a basis for the backstory of the place? Will there be a backstory to the place in the first place?
What are the chances of seeing Solomon Grundy for once, dammit?!
To top it all off are two huge questions:
1. If this is really an “FPS” like many sites have been proclaiming…HOW CAN YOU MAKE A FIRST-PERSON GAME OUT OF BATMAN THAT DOESN’T SUCK?!
2. How big can you REALLY make Arkham? I mean, you are talking about comparing an entire world under the sea from Bioshock to a place that is pretty much about 200 rooms and something like five stories tall! I just don’t see anyone being able to make a very long game out of this at all!
Oh…and Rocksteady is making this? *ugh* Sorry, Matt, but I can’t agree with your on Urban Chaos. The gameplay was fine, but the concept was just too worn out.