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Reviewed On: Xbox 360. Also available for PlayStation 3 and PC.

In a Nutshell: This is a combination third-person brawler and action-adventure game. The brawler mechanics tend to dominate, particularly at the beginning, but it eventually transcends them to deliver a rich interactive story with deep exploration. Most battles are settled with your fists, but there are options to play the game "your way" - by choosing stealth tactics to sneak up on an adversary to perform a silent takedown or using a well-placed batarang, grappler or explosive to surprise an enemy head on. Or just button mash, up to a point. (More on that in a minute.)

The game is initially frustrating as areas abound that you can see but not access. But as the story unfolds, so do your options to enter new areas and hiding spots. What truly salvages this game is "detective mode," which provides a special visor view that turns the world blue and makes it easy to spot bad guys (who appear as blue or red skeletons depending on whether they are packing "heat"), hiding places, secrets, etc. You'll use this mode to hunt specific clues to advance the story, but without it players like me would be lost much of the time.

Learning Curve: The basic brawler mechanics are easy to pick up, but hard to master. The basic moves serve you well for most of the game - but if you don't learn advanced moves and counter strategies, the end game will be intensely difficult. Fortunately, this doesn't interfere with your enjoyment of 90% of Arkham Asylum but it could lead to frustration as you're stuck with an almost complete experience that has little hope of a satisfying finish. Switch to the videogame equivalent of a cold shower (a little Bejeweled 2, perhaps?) and then jump back in and get the job done.

The Save Game: The save system isn't very busy gamer friendly. The game does perform background saves at checkpoints along the way, but it can be hard to tell when you've triggered one. There is no Save and Quit option; when you quit, you're warned of the potential for lost progress. And lose progress you probably will, at least some of the time. Be prepared to repeat some sections if you don't have large blocks of uninterrupted time at your disposal.

Family Factor: This game is rated T for teen. The beat-'em up aspect is pretty benign, but Batman does get knifed, shocked and shot up by armed goons, and there are some nightmare sequences that make this game not suited for younger eyes (at least if you don't want to risk giving them the night terrors, signing you up for those middle-of-the-night soothing sessions!). Pre-teens can probably handle it, especially if they've already been exposed to the darker of the Dark Knight comics.

Buy, Rent or Skip? This game is a solid rental unless you're a completist who needs to collect every Riddler pick-up and best all of the bonus challenge modes you start unlocking late in the main story. If you find it for less $20 or less, you'll get your money's worth.

On a Personal Note: I went into this game with a lot of Batman baggage. Having suffered through so many bad Batman games over the years, I stopped paying attention to them. When I started hearing good buzz about Arkham Asylum, I decided to give it a try and downloaded the demo. The interactive title sequence (somewhat reminiscent of Half-Life) where you walk Batman around while bits of story unfold was interesting. But, alas, the brawler mechanics just didn't grab me and I ended up putting it into the "no thanks" pile.

But the praise for Arkham Asylum continued, so I tossed it into my Gamefly queue. I decided to play on Easy so I could focus on the story and not worry about having to repeat a bunch of boring beat-'em-up sessions. About half an hour in, I started to get why people love this game.

Arkham Asylum itself is a huge sprawling campus on an island with lots of areas to root out and secrets to find. I played with detective mode turned on for most of the story.

Zipping around armed enemies from one stone gargoyle to the next never seems to get old. Lose the enemies, and then sneak up and trap them with an upside-down stealth takedown or glide into them, finish them with a knock-out punch and then zip to safety before the remaining henchmen spot you.

Most of the boss battles are Zelda-like concoctions - once you find the weak spot or pattern, you'll just do what's required, rinse and repeat until the enemy falls. The game is generous with the hints if you get stuck. A few nightmare sequences play with your expectations and change the gameplay in a significant way; these are fun little side trips that extend the game and help it transcend its brawler roots.

The final battle is another story all together. If you haven't studied your moves and learned how to take down henchmen armed with knives and shock sticks, you are in for a world of hurt. I had to re-learn how to fight, with emphasis on maneuvers that stun or perform unblockable takedowns, to finally complete the game - which was, on the whole, enjoyable and ultimately worth the effort.

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