I was in my local EB today and got the chance to spend some time with a early demo of the new Batman game. The demo was a combat only demo, so it didn’t have any of the stealth elements in it. First off let me say that if you played Heavenly Sword you already have a good idea of how the combat is. Except this is a much more polished mechanic in Batman AA.

You have a punch (Square), counter (Triangle), dash (X), and cape stun (circle). The demo was a disc only so it’s not for download yet. It consists of four levels of you beating the snot out of Joker’s henchmen. The Freeflowing combat is just that. FREEFLOWING!!! Batman transitions from move to move seamlessly. When an enemy is about to strike you a few blue bolts of lighting will flash over their heads. Think Spiderman’s Spider Sense and that is what it looks like. When this flashes it cues you to press the counter button. For me this is where the true Freeflow came in.

Instead of Batman jumping to the counter move frames of animation he flowed into them. Meaning he was in the middle of a punch and drew back the punch to counter. For myself I can honestly say I have never seen such natural movement implemented before. It was truly like watching a well choreographed movie fight. The dash button is standard fare, with the ability to double tap into a run.

The Cape Stun is quite an intriguing move. Batman grabs the edge of his cape and spins around flaring his cape out. This then stun the enemies in his immediate proximity. Basically it’s to give you some breathing room. The enemies CROWD around you and generally attack in numbers. From what I saw it was two to three at a time.

This demo really brought back the feel of the old school beat’em ups with some new twists to keep it fresh. I feel this is definitely a game to keep an eye on.