batman-arkham-asylum posts

You may remember us reporting a little while ago that Nvidia was going to use Halloween to launch some kind of new product connected to their PhysX support. Well, that product is now outed as graphics card maker EVGA has announced the GTX 275 Co-op, a new card that has a chip dedicated just to hardware-accelerated game physics support.

The GTX 275 has a Nvidia GTX 275 graphics chip just for GPU duties plus another Nvidia chip, the GTS 250, that's set up specifically as a PhysX chip only. The card also has SLI support which means you can have three GPUs plus the extra just for PhysX support.. As you can see the card has the Joker's face just waiting to give you the creeps as EVGA and Nvidia are branding this card as the perfect way to play the PhysX-supported Batman: Arkham Asylum. Pricing for the card will be a bit high (over $300) but it looks like Batman: Arkham Asylum will be bundled with the card.

[Via PC Percepective]

It surprised many in the industry earlier this year. Batman: Arkham Asylum did in both sales and in solid reviews for the super hero action game, a genre known for its disappointing titles. So of course there are rumblings that a sequel to the game from developer Rocksteady and published Eidos might be in the works.

According to Goononline.com, the new issue of the Official Playstation Magazine has a quote from Rocksteady's Sefton Hill. When asked about the possibility of a sequel to the game he says, "I'm not really allowed to comment on that, but there are definitely lots of exciting stories to tell in Batman's world, and I can say that we're really privileged to work on it, and excited about future possibilities." Sounds like sequel talk to us.

It's stayed at the top for the past several weeks and it show no signs of leaving. NCsoft's hit MMO Aion remains at the number one spot (for the Collector's Edtion) on Steam's weekly list of their top 10 best selling PC games. In at number two is the Standard Edition of the game. The number three spot is a new entry, the post-apocalypse MMO Fallen Earth which just recently became available on Steam.

The entire top 10 list is as follows:

• 1. Aion Collector's Edition - NCsoft
• 2. Aion Standard Edition - NCsoft
• 3. Fallen Earth - Fallen Earth LLC
• 4. Batman: Arkham Asylum - Rocksteady/Eidos
• 5. F.E.A.R. 2.: Project Origin - Monolith/Warner Bros. Interactive
  
• 6. Left 4 Dead - Valve
• 7. Resident Evil 5 - Capcom
• 8. Counter-Strike Source - Valve
• 9. Star Wars: Jedi Knight Collection - LucasArts
• 10. Red Faction Guerrilla - Reactor Zero/Volition/THQ

Nvidia's latest driver release for its GeForce series of graphics chips is now available in beta form and this release happens to have some performance improvements for a number of games. The 191.03 drivers, for example, improve the performance of Batman: Arkham Asylum eight percent when PhysX support is enabled.

Other improvements in the driver release include a whopping 50 percent performance increase in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood with SLI set-ups, a 34 percent improvement in Prototype with anti-aliasing enabled and a 14 percent improvement in Fallout 3's indoor scenes with anti-aliasing enabled. SLI support is also added to a number of games in this driver release including Need for Speed Shift and Majesty 2.

There are rare few good superhero games that are based on existing licenses, and there have certainly been no great games involving Batman. You can cringe every time you hear about a Batman game, and it will normally be justified. But not with Batman: Arkham Asylum. This is one of the best superhero games of all time, and certainly the best Batman game ever made. It combines some excellent atmosphere with a truly amazing faithfulness to old-school style, and this classic feel makes it one of the best games this year.

Last week, Batman: Arkham Asylum was released for the PC and quickly got its first free downloadable map pack. Tomorrow, publisher Eidos intends to release a second such free map pack for the super hero action game. The Prey in the Darkness Map Pack will be available exclusively via the Games For Windows Live Marketplace for the PC version.

One of the two new maps will be titled Heart of Darkness and is a Combat FreeFlow level where the Caped Crusader will fight off enemies at the Arkham Pumping Station. The other new map is an Invisible Predator level called Hothouse Prey where Batman will take out his foes silently in the Abandoned Glasshouse. Hopefully there won't be any issues with getting these levels available to download like there were last week with the first map pack.

Update: According to this Eidos message board post, it looks like this DLC will NOT be released for the PC after all. There's no word as to why this decision was made but we will try to find out some more info.

Update 2: Eidos sent over a press release announcing that the map pack would be exclusively for the PS3 only in the US and for the Xbox 360 and PS3 in Europe.

This patch for Batman: Arkham Asylum updates the game to v1.1 and adds in NVIDIA PhysX features. Continue after the jump to view the game trailer showing PhysX effects.

Download Batman: Arkham Asylum v1.1 Patch (270 MB)
Check out all Batman: Arkham Asylum downloads

The Caped Crusader is getting great reviews for his latest PC game incarnation Batman: Arkham Asylum. The game seems to be a sales hit as well. The PC version debuted at number two on Steam's latest weekly top 10 PC games sales list for the just completely past week.

The number one spot is still occupied by the Collector's Edition of Aion as NCsoft's fantasy MMO gets ready for its official launch in the US on Tuesday. The entire top 10 list is as follows:

• 1. Aion Collector's Edition - NCsoft
• 2. Batman: Arkham Asylum - Rocksteady/Eidos
• 3. Resident Evil 5 - Capcom
• 4. Star Wars: Jedi Knight Collection - LucasArts
• 5. Garry's Mod - Garry's Mod Team
• 6. Left 4 Dead - Valve
• 7. Red Faction Guerrilla - Reactor Zero/Volition/THQ
• 8. Aion Standard Edition - NCsoft
• 9. Counter-Strike Source - Valve
• 10. Champions Online - Cryptic Studios/Atari

As promised, Eidos has made available the first free downloadable content for the just released PC version of Batman: Arkham Asylum. The Insane Night Map Pack is only available from the Games For Windows Live Marketplace and is about 110 MB in size. The pack was released on Thursday but apparently there were some issues with some gamers being able to complete the download yesterday. Those problems appear to be addressed as we had no issues downloading and installing the map pack.

Just a reminder: the free map pack contains two new Challenge maps that are available to play immediately when installed in the game. One map, Totally Insane, takes place in Arkham's records room while the other, Nocturnal Hunter, has Batman trying to stay in the shadows while also taking out enemies.

PC players may have had to wait a few weeks to get their version of Batman: Arkham Asylum (it's due out in stores this week) but they won't have to wait much longer to get the super hero action game's first free update. Publisher Eidos has announced plans to release the Insane Night map pack on Thursday, September 15 via the Games For Windows Live Marketplace.

The map pack contains two new maps. One is a FreeFlow Combat mode map called Totally Insane (that's not a joke, by the way) where you control Batman against enemies in Arkham's records facility. The other map is a Invisible Predator mode level called Nocturnal Hunter where you stay in the shadows while taking out The Joker's minions. With the game selling extremely well on consoles (it's reportedly sold two million copies since it's console release on August 25) we suspect this will just be the first of a series of downloadable extras for the game.