3. Scarecrow Hallucinations - Batman Arkham Asylum
Most who have played through Arkham Asylum will point to the Scarecrow hallucinations as one of the game's strongest and inventive sequences. What makes these confrontations are the build up as Batman has to endure mental torment and relive suppressed memories in Scarecrow's nightmare world. The actual confrontation with Scarecrow involves the player staying out of his gaze, this not only raises tension but forces the player to concentrate on where Scarecrow is gazing as well as Batman himself. On Hard difficulty Scarecrow takes a lot less time to do his searching, meaning that when the player does move they have to move fast. Part of the thrill of confronting Scarecrow was that the player never knew quite when they'd encounter him. I imagine everyone was as bewildered as me when, before the third confrontation, the game 'froze' and restarted. But it turned out to be just a joke with an inversion of roles for the Batman and Joker. This was effective in that the Scarcecrow scares not only the Batman, but also scares the player into thinking their game has crashed. What is also interesting about fighting the Scarecrow is that Batman is still technically walking through the real game world, the Scarecrow would often divert him from his pressing objective, making it even more crucial to get back to business once he was defeated. Nothing in the series has been quite so stunning as the Scarecrow sequences in Arkham Asylum. In terms of both gameplay and narrative they served to keep the game exciting and intriguing.
