...because first I'm going to precede this blog with a large spoiler warning for anyone who shall read this article. Anyone who hasn't beaten Batman: Arkham Asylum should not read this because it talks directly about the ending of the game. Plus, if you're reading this and haven't beaten Batman yet, shame on you.... go beat the game... now... it's a great game.



People seem to be bitching that the final boss in Arkham Asylum was a lame out-of-character thing simply designed to fit the role of "final boss". So the wambulance has been out for a little while now and I say to you all STFUAJPG! The Arkham Asylum ending wasn't that bad because there was simply no other logical way to put together said ending. Any other final battle or ending would have been even further jarring given the direction the plot was going and would have been an even worse ending.

First in regards to Joker's self-titan-injection being out of character; we're talking about the Joker here, a character who has made a career from of being out of character and doing off-the-wall things when going up against The Goddamn Batman. Whether or not you believe Joker is just bat-shit crazy or has some sort of super-sanity that makes him crazy, you'd have to believe that if Joker was cornered against Batman and had the chance to make himself a physical superior to Batman he'd take it! In regards to the actual battle itself, yeah it was kind of lame fighting a bunch of guards and just getting a few punches in on Mr. J. However his actions during the battle were pretty in character given that he's a giant attention whore through-and-through and that a news chopper might actually distract him from killing Batman.

Secondly, having the Joker as a final boss in a video game is flawed inherently. Joker, in video game terms, is a terrible final boss; he poses no direct physical threat to Batman, is a flee-instead-of-fight character, and relies on gimmicks more so then brute force. When you strip away the whole Batman feel of the game and just look at the formula that makes Joker, he is a terrible recipe as a game villain. The Titan Joker battle was the best possible way to have any kind of engaging climactic Joker vs. Batman battle because any of the more traditional comic-book like final encounters would have been even more lame then what Arkham Asylum currently has.



---Have Batman straight up fight Normal Joker? Unless you wanna see the Clown Prince of Crime punched around for 5 minutes then no, that would have been stupid.

---Have Batman solve some elaborate puzzle and then simply throw cuffs on Joker? Yeah, that would have been extremely anti-climatic especially considering the whole premise of the game revolved around Joker pretty much getting caught by Batman without a fight.

--Have Joker stand back and shoot his gun a lot while Batman tries to fight through a bunch of thugs to get to him? Unless you'd want a copy/paste of the Poison Ivy battle, then I doubt you'd want this.

Face it; while Joker is a terrific storyline villain he is a terrible video game villain, and the ending to the game was the best possible outcome we could have had. However come the inevitable sequel to Arkham Asylum (Batman: Gotham City, perhaps?) there are other members of Batman's rogues gallery that would make much better adversaries in video game terms.

---Hush (close quarters gun-fu/martial arts battles)
---Mr. Freeze (dodge ice beams, slide around in packs of ice, and fight a guy in a big metal suit)
---Ra's Al Ghul (big elaborate sword fight)
---Clayface (can turn into any weapon)



Arkham Asylum utilized what it had to probably the best logical potential. Now don't get me wrong, there can be room for improvement come a sequel. Also, was I the only person who was bugged by the fact that Clayface in this game was not Matt Hagan?

So, from this day forth all complaints about the bosses in Arkham Asylum are re-directed towards this random video of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Japanese commercial. In fact, it's so random that the only link I can make to it and this blog is the fact that Arnold played Mr. Freeze.