Both Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) and Golden Axe: Beast Rider (2008) have fairly, let's say rich ancestry. The original Golden Axe is an unforgettable classic that you might still dick around with in the company of two friends and cheap beer. Batman games have a long history of, more or less, being about Batman.

So how do the two newest installments in these franchises measure up? (Hint: Beast Rider's Metascore is half of Arkham Asylum's.)



I dug out my analog capture equipment for this one. Sorry for the shitty screenshot quality.



STORY

Batman: Arkham Asylum is an excerpt from Batman's eternal struggle, eternally retold, against the supervillains of Gotham City. The Joker takes center stage, but many of Gotham's other prominent celebrities show up too, from Commissioner Gordon and The Riddler to that fucked-up crocodile man that no one likes.



The plot is basically Die Hard, with the Joker (Hans Gruber) taking over Arkham Asylum (Nakatomi Plaza), trapping Batman (Bruce Willis) inside. Bats spends the rest of his now-ruined evening trying to defuse Joker's sinister plan. Along the way he'll gather evidence, save civilians, beat the shit out of prisoners, fight a giant plant, and maybe even learn a little something about himself. If the game was a Hollywood movie, some newspaper you've never heard of would call it a "TOUR DE FORCE!" - French for "like Star Wars" - of storytelling.

Golden Axe: Beast Rider follows a day in the life of Tyris Flare, warrior of Axir. The game opens to her being frightfully late for a very important date with a giant dragon, the god of her all-female, no-bras-allowed clan. But her confusing ceremony is interrupted when the dragon is kidnapped by the minions of Death Adder, who is ravaging the already-lifeless land and trying to ... kidnap dragons, apparently. Tyris vows to defeat Death Adder, but first she'll need the power of the - wait for it - Golden Axe.



Obviously the axe has been split into several pieces, so, a quest happens. In the ensuing hours, Tyris meets with the dwarf and that other guy from the original Golden Axe, with whom she has brief, nonsensical conversations. She goes on to fight skeletons, lizardmen, fire demons, dinosaurs, wizards, ghosts, and some helpless dudes in light armor who were clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time.



GAME WORLD

Arkham Asylum is set in an asylum for the criminally insane, on an island that also has a mansion and a huge greenhouse because, why not? The game's locales are skillfully differentiated and extremely well-detailed, from generously-placed security monitors, to blood smeared on a hospital corridor.



Batman can interact with his environment by grappling up structures, blowing up walls, and sneaking through ventilation shafts - he can even use Samus Aran's Scan Visor (presumably the two met at a grappling-hook convention) to view detailed information about his surroundings in real time.

Arkham Island interconnects all the game's set pieces, so Batman can return to them whenever he likes, to find the Riddler's garbage. Gotham City better be preparing a massive littering fine for this asshole.

The world of Beast Rider is predominantly brown. The game's levels are separated into a half-dozen major areas, from a brown canyon, to brown mountains, to a brown fortress. One of them is called the Wastelands (no shit!).



Some levels take place in the City of the Dead, which is gray, instead of brown.



COMBAT

Rocksteady's "Freeflow Combat" system allows Batman to punch, elbow, blind, flip over, and toss goons like some sort of ballet-dancing Chuck Norris. Simple visual prompts show when certain actions will be most effective, but how a fight plays out is really up to the player. Batman's foes can even be taken out by his rockin' bat-gadgets, as if getting kicked in the head just wasn't humiliating enough.



Tyris's skill with a sword (or the eponymous Golden Axe, for uh, one level of the game) is something that Secret Level actually did an okay job with. Enemies will glow a particular color before attacking: Blue means that you can parry and counter an attack, Orange that you can evade, or Green that either will work. Quick reactions to these prompts are what help keep the game interesting. Well, tolerable.

Harder enemies will attack so quickly that you barely have a chance to do anything - heaven help you if Tyris is surrounded by these fuckers, which turns Beast Rider into a perverse reimagining of Guitar Hero with multicolored skeletons. There's also a Red attack that can't be parried or evaded, so Tyris will get raped by those until you figure out that, no, your timing is right - it just doesn't do a goddamn thing.



BEAST- OR ZIPLINE-RIDING

Batman can (after he finds it) use a zip-line to zip between towers and across chasms. He can also fly. Glide, anyway, with his cape. How awesome is that? Pretty fuckin' awesome, that's how.



Tyris can ride beasts, hence her game's otherwise-inexplicable subtitle. Said beasts don't appear to like being ridden very much. Driving one of these feels slightly better than rolling a large boulder, but not quite as good as pushing a rusty shopping cart.



T&A

Poison Ivy is about 75% naked, and has underwear made of leaves. She's also green. So yeah, hot, but in a sort-of uncomfortable way. Like that one porno you accidentally downloaded where... well, you know.



The star of Beast Rider is Axirian warrior Tyris Flare, or perhaps more accurately, Tyris's luscious hind-quarters. Naturally, beast riding calls for a form-fitting leather ensemble.



Gotta give this one to Tyris.



CHECKPOINTS

Arkham Asylum has autosave checkpoints whenever you enter a room, and sometimes more within. It is basically impossible to lose your progress, short of telling Gary Busey that your hard drive called him a pussy.



Several of Beast Rider's ~30 levels are excruciatingly long sequences of running through valleys and killing retarded skeletons, with no checkpoints, capped by a fight or a trap that will probably give you a game over. (There are continues, but if you use one to finish a level, it stays gone for the rest of the game. What?)



LEGACY

Prior to 2009, video games about Batman had a reputation of being, well, licensed games. Shitty, in so many words. Arkham Asylum's lavish production values, sensible game design, and evocation of Batman's ultimate badassery, have sullied this long-standing and shameful tradition. In creating a great game, Rocksteady has failed to capture the true spirit of Batman games.

Meanwhile, the recent re-release of the original Golden Axe on Wii's Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade reminded us all that, despite our fond memories of kicking dudes in the nuts with a portly dwarf, the game kind of sucked. Granted, back in 1989 its stiffest competition was taking apart a fucking wall (also known as Reverse Tetris). Regardless, Beast Rider does manage to recreate that feeling of overly familiar, utterly dated game design.

It is also (almost*) the only Golden Axe game with no multiplayer. If Things You Remember About Golden Axe was a Family Feud topic, the "Multiplayer" answer would be worth at least 80 points.



*In 1991 there were a pair of Golden Axe spinoff adventure games. Did you know about these? What the fuck, right?



IN CLOSING

In Batman, you can beat up Mark Hamill. In Golden Axe, you can watch a dwarf exclaim "Blood and shit!"

You decide.