Eidos Reveals Batman: Arkham Asylum News

Eidos has announced the untitled Batman game that was originally muted in a SCi trading update last month. While it's not the official tie-in for The Dark Knight, Batman: Arkham Asylum certainly looks set to provide an interesting alternative to the film licensed game that's almost certainly in development at EA's Pandemic studio.

Eidos has handed development responsibilities for the game to London based outfit Rocksteady Studios (Urban Chaos: Riot Response), and the team has certainly pulled out all the stops to give Batman one of his biggest challenges to date on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

After the Joker surrenders himself, Batman delivers his arch-enemy to Arkham Asylum only to find that he's been lured into a booby trapped island incarceration for the criminally insane. Here, Batman will face-off against a daunting line-up that includes The Penguin, Riddler, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy, and of course the Joker himself.

We've spotted some early suggestions (from our dedicated research on wiki) that the combat system will be based around three commands (attack, stun, and throw), while there will be some RPG style character progression to the Bat's skills.

In order to break up the combat, Rocksteady Studios will be using Batman's detective skills as much as his brawn to keep gamers stimulated. An investigation mode will reportedly allow players to see enemies through walls and identify weapons that they're carrying.

Paul Dini is co-writing the game and he certainly comes with an impressive CV, including previous work on Lost and the much loved Batman: The Animated Series.

Eidos is currently listing a vague 2009 release window for the game. However, when the game was spied in last month's SCi trading report it was slated for the second half of SCi's 2009 fiscal year, which could be any time between January and June of next year.

Rocksteady Studios' official site currently displays a countdown timer with Batman's symbol on its homepage. The timer is counting down to 10:00am BST on Friday, although we assume this will be when the official site for the game goes live.

"In Batman: Arkham Asylum Eidos and Warner Bros. are building a true action adventure game experience worthy of gamers and fans," said Phil Rogers, CEO of Eidos Interactive. "Players become Batman, like he has never been seen before in a video game, as he fights through intense circumstances in Arkham Asylum utilizing his intuitive detective skills and aggressive melee attacks."

Warner Bros' stake in Eidos' parent company SCi will certainly have eased licensing issues with the game:

"Batman: Arkham Asylum offers players the chance to battle Gotham's worst villains with Batman's physical and psychological strength in a graphically distinct and story-driven game," said Martin Tremblay, President, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. "We look forward to working with Eidos on expanding DC Comics' world-renowned character Batman in the game space with a noticeably different feature set in an incredibly dark interactive environment."