Arkham DLC hands on

As we’d been forewarned, the new free downloadable content (DLC) for Batman: Arkham Asylum hit Thursday. There are two Challenges in the content.

The first is a pure survival match. You’re locked in a relatively small room into which thugs keep dropping. You start with a manageable number and, if you’re fast enough, you can keep their numbers at a fairly manageable – for a while at least. The real problem is that after a while lunatics are also added to the room. The Joker’s normal Blackgate thugs pass out if you hit them enough and you don’t have to worry about a takedown, but the lunatics keep reviving. You need to take the time to do a proper ground take down on them, but the sheer weight of numbers in the room makes this increasingly impossible.

The more interesting of the two Challenges is the second one. This features an entirely new map, a warehouse like area around a courtyard. It’s a fairly standard predator challenge, but the medals are a little more interesting than normal. You’ve got to knock a henchman off a ladder, do a vertical take down through a glass roof, and leave a particular henchmen until last. It’s not particularly hard, but the fun is that it’s a map you won’t have played before. I’m happy that I managed to get to 273rd place on the ranking for that Challenge – I’m normally down around the  15,000 place. I suspect that’ position will drop quite fast as more and more people download the maps.