Batman Arkham Asylum: Epilogue

Remember how I said there was no way I would go back through Batman in order to pick up all of those “stupid” Riddler achievements? Well, this post is me eating my hat. I DID go back and complete ALL of the Riddler challenges, including some quite difficult ones. Spoilers and shame within.

I guess it started when I hit “Continue Story” after I saw the finale. I do that sometimes in games I finish just to see what will happen. It turns out that you’re dropped back on the map, with all of the major enemies gone, to clean things up if you like. So I run around a little bit just to see if there are any new fight scenes (there aren’t, by the way), and when I check my map, I notice there are a bunch of bouncing question marks indicating Riddler solutions. I have a little time to kill, so I go for a couple and down the obsession hill I go.

The key here is that they provide a set of secrets maps that show where the trophies are. Without that, I never would have pursued it. I can’t stand to search for these things blind. But the map makes it a checklist, and a checklist I will chase with my tail wagging the whole way. It takes me about four hours to get every single one, and at least according to me, it’s worth doing for two reasons:

1) Some of the puzzles are quite cool. There are some annoying jump puzzles, but there are also some interesting actually puzzles, like crossing an electrified floor or reaching a far corner on a high ceiling without an obvious path. The best are the question mark challenges. A question mark will be divided between the curved part of the mark and the bottom dot. These parts will be placed in separate locations in a room, visible only in detective mode. The goal is to position the game camera so that the dot and the curve appear right next to each other to form the question mark.  I don’t know original this is, as I never do these kinds of achievements in games, but they are quite fun to puzzle out.

2) There is a narrative reward for the completing the riddles. You get more story. To a story lover like me, there is nothing better than that. If you get every single Riddler Challenge, you recapture the Riddler. That is pure sugar in terms of reward.  There’s also a very Arkham Asylum narrative reward when you get all the Spirit of Arkham markers scanned. That one is good enough that I won’t even spoil it here.

For continued play, there are also the challenge modes. They give you a dose more of fighting and predator fun. Personally, I need a narrative to keep me going, but it’s Batman goodness, so if you’re not a plot freak like me, you should definitely check them out.

Okay, now I’m done. On to the next game!