I'm no fan of Batman.  Or, more specifically, I'm no fan of the way Batman has been portrayed almost consistently since Frank Miller grim n' grittied the character in The Dark Knight Returns.  In case you hadn't noticed, Batman is a millionaire playboy who deals with personal tragedy by devoting his life to dressing in a spandex/leather/rubber bat suit and punching a clown.  There's nothing grim or gritty about this premise.  It's laughable.  And with a few exceptions, the Adam West '60s cheesefest understood this better than Miller or Burton or Nolan ever did.

Not that Batman stories should always be told with a side of cheese.  There's a way to translate absurdity into adventurous fun.  Take Indiana Jones, for example.  There's nothing realistic about an archaeology professor moonlighting as a bullwhip-toting, guns blazing swashbuckler.  But we go with it because the stories are told with a wink.  Batman should be a cross between Indiana Jones and Sherlock Holmes.  But with a cape.  Despite the fact that The Dark Knight made a jillion dollars and featured an incredible villain, the movie is mostly balls because it's no fun.  It wants to be Heat, but there's still that rubber bat suit and the clown punching.  Far from being adult, it's as juvenile as a little kid clomping around in his daddy's shoes.

From the early looks, I expected Batman: Arkham Asylum to be more of the ridiculous and depressing same.  Just setting the game in the technogoth nightmare that is Arkham Asylum automatically Hot Topic-ed the thing past my comfort zone.  And the veiny, bulbous character models seemed like something out of Rob Liefeld's testosterone and cum-stained sketchbook.  But when I heard Paul Dini, one of the driving forced behind Batman: The Animated Series, was scripting the game, my hopes began to rise.  Then I heard this would be a brawler with stealth aspects, and I went back to not caring at all.

So that's how I went into trying the demo, which was just released on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network this morning.  Utter apathy.  But to my surprise, the game might actually be pretty decent after all.  Whodathunk?

Before we dive in, the usual caveats of a demo impression apply here.  This is only a brief snippet of a few of the game's opening moments, so there's no telling how it'll play out in the long run.  But the demo seems to include examples of all the basic modes of play.  In other words, you're given the framework the rest of the game is built upon.

We start with a cinematic of Batman driving a shackled Joker to Arkham by way of his Burton-esque Batmobile.  As he's handing the Joker over to Commissioner Gordon and the Arkham security crew, Batman wonders aloud about whether this might be a trap.  The Joker gave himself up a little too easily, it seems.  So when the clown takes down the guards dragging him off to his cell (in such a way that these guards seem incredibly incompetent, I might add) and runs off to turn the Asylum into one giant Batman trap, our costumed hero isn't too surprised.

It's a stupid premise, sure.  Batman seems to have laughably poor judgement skills.  This has to be the six or seven thousandth time he's known he was walking into a trap but went along with it anyway just for shits and giggles.  The problem is that the Joker brutally murders untold numbers of guards in his rampage through the Asylum.  To my mind, those guards' blood is on Batman's be-gauntleted hands.

But who really cares?  This is a video game, and I appreciate the quick setup.  It's refreshing after sitting through an almost three-hour Batman film all about how losing your girlfriend and getting burned turns you into the kind of two-dimensional villainous cliche that abducts people and holds them at gunpoint in a warehouse.  Seriously, The Dark Knight's version of Two Face was no more emotionally complex or believable than your average MacGyver villain.  God, I hate that movie.

Anyway, it's also nice to hear the familiar voices of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as Batman and the Joker.  I don't know if the rest of the game's plot will live up to even the worst animated Batman episode, but the voices do a lot to add to the game's appeal.  The character models, however, still look like 'roided out ass.  Even Commissioner Gordan has shoulders so wide he must turn sideways to fit through a door.  Batman's costume is covered in seams and rivets and veins, and his forearms are made Popeye huge from gigantic gauntlets.  The overall look of the game is by far its worst aspect, which, I suppose, is almost praise.  After all, the worst part of every previous Batman game has been the game itself.

So, what about the core mechanics?  Is a stealth brawler as shitty as it sounds?  Not at all.  B:AA wisely keeps things simple but amazingly polished.  Hand-to-hand combat is basically performed with an attack button and a counter button.  If a baddie's coming at you, press the counter button to avoid his attack, send a few punches his way to knock him down, and knock him out with a simple two-button press.  Animations are fluid, and the combat feels solid.  It's not complex, but there's the possibility of stringing together some nice combos, and I'm sure the core abilities will see some upgrades as you progress through the game.  It's quick, too, which is what a brawler should be.

The same control philosophy carries over into the rest of the game as well.  See some of the Joker's deadly chattering teeth on the ground (imagine the mind-numbing lengths Christopher Nolan would have gone to in explaining the psychological origins of those...), pull a trigger to aim your batarang, and pull another trigger to let it fly.  As long as your targeting reticule was in the sweet yellow spot when you fired, your batarang will find its mark.  Simple.

It may seem limiting in this day of sandbox games, but B:AA is divided into a sort of room structure.  As you progress through the Asylum, you'll come upon various rooms of different sizes full of enemies set up just for you to take them down.  Some rooms may be tiny and full of thugs for you to punch before you progress, but others are structured like a mini playground for you to slink and swing around in your continuing effort to relieve the pain of your parents' deaths by pounding on the criminally insane.  This is where stealth play comes in, and it works beautifully.

With the press of a button, you'll switch to "detective vision".  With the aid of technology, Batman will then be able to see all the things Sherlock Holmes could have seen with his own human eyes.  World's greatest detective, my ass.  Anyway, this mode allows you to see all the objects you might be able to interact with in a room.  Loose ventilation grates, grapple-ready gargoyles, enemies lurking around corners.  Everything you need to strike fear into the hearts of those who might be afraid of a hormone case in a Halloween mask.  When posed with a room full of armed baddies, you have some options for taking them down.  The easiest way is probably to grapple up to the ceiling and take them from above.  Again, this couldn't be easier.  Just aim at a ledge or gargoyle, press a button, and you go zipping right up.  No need for a complicated swinging mechanic.  Just point and zip.  Not only does this take the needless frustration out of a mechanic very few games seem to get right, it also makes you feel like a bit of a badass.

From your perch, you can swoop down at enemies and kick them in their sorry faces, or you can hang upside down as they pass underneath you and Swiss Family Robinson their asses.  (You cannot, however, build a kickass treehouse.)  If you want to remain on the ground, you can always sneak up behind them for a Splinter Cell-esque stealth takedown.  Or just punch the shit out of them.  Your choice.  The more enemies you kill in a room, the more afraid the survivors become.  Your detective vision tells you how nervous or scared someone is.  Really freak  them out, and they'll randomly fire their weapons into the shadows.  Just like I do on those vodka-fueled nights when the demons come.

The demo gives you a few opportunities to try out all of these modes, and it colored me impressed.  I still have a couple of reservations, though.  While I like the room-to-room level structure, it might make the full game seem a little too on-rails.  A chance to pick the order of the rooms you tackle might help that.  Also, big-budget action games like this tend to fall on the short side.  It's very possible to make a great game that only lasts a few hours, but these days it's hard to justify spending $60 on something you can finish in an afternoon.  DLC challenge rooms have been promised, though, and that could extend the life of the game.  It will also be fun to try different approaches to each room.  As always, mileage may vary.

I still don't know whether Batman: Arkham Asylum warrants a day-and-date purchase, but the demo sure makes it seem like fun.  Sure, I wish they would have gone a different direction with the art (something like Prince of Persia's sketchy cell shading would have been perfect), but different character skins would make some lovely DLC.  Try it out yourself and see what you think.