If you didn’t know already, a copy of the upcoming PC game Batman : Arkham Asylum leaked on a well known private torrent tracker several hours ago. Usually this should be hot news among gamers as the leak happened two full weeks before the game’s official release date – however this does not seem to be the case. The leaked version (what appears to be a cracked Direct2Drive build) is apparently buggy, unstable and has some features missing. There seem to be a lot of hidden triggers embedded into the game, just to pwn pirates who try to play using illegitimate copies.
These are not minor issues we are talking about. There are some nasty showstopper bugs that’ll fuk up the entire game experience for good. For example, anyone using the initial leaked version would lose all save progress once the game was restarted. You either have to finish the game in one go or keep it minimized till you are done. And can you imagine a batman game without gliding? Well in this version you can’t glide (or perform any of the actions that are associated with gliding such as the glide kick). This will sometimes make progressing across certain areas near impossible. Another major restriction in the leaked Arkham Asylum build is that you can’t seem to turn on PhysX effects – yes, even on PhysX enabled video hardware you won’t be able to see any of these effects. As we have mentioned before, this game looks like sh1t without PhysX. In addition to all these bugs, some gamers have reported random crashes, crashes to desktop (CTD) and so on.
In short – don’t bother with this. Buy the game or wait.
Update: How to enable PhysX
If the option to turn on PhysX is missing from the in game menu, try the following.
- Browse to directory C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\Eidos\Batman Arkham Asylum\BmGame\Config
- Open UserEngine.ini file with a text editor such as Notepad.
- Change the line PhysXLevel=0 so that it reads PhysXLevel=1
- Save and close the file. Run the game
Note: Forcing PhysX on a non-PhysX supported video card is not recommended. Also please make sure you have the latest PhysX system software installed on your machine.
EDIT: Some users on several gaming forums have reported crashes after enabling PhysX. We don’t know if this was due to forcing PhysX on an unsupported card, not having the latest system software installed, or is caused by a glitch in the release. If you notice lots of crashes after enabling PhysX, turn it off by setting PhysXLevel=0 using the same method above.
How to solve ‘Not Enough Free Space’ error during Batman setup
Some users have got the following error when trying to run setup: “There is not enough free disk space to install this product, please choose another drive with sufficient space”. Surprising fact is that this error sometimes pops up even if you have more than the required disk space free on your hard drives. If you aren’t willing to free up several dozen GBs on your drives, there is an alternative solution you can try.
- Download and install Universal Extractor as specified in this article.
- Manually extract Batman setup file with Universal Extractor.
Note that the above tool can be used to manually extract many types of installer packages, not just Batman : Arkham Asylum.
UPDATE 2 : Folks have managed to solve most problems but here is another new one – quoted from TL comments section:
"well another problem. (i think) when you get to the point at arkham north at the point where you need to batclaw the upper access point and enter the mansion, there is no mark for the grapple. i found that the mark is misplaced. it's marked towards the entrance to the island, and when you press it, it just grapple you all the way to the other side and thru the the walls and than you just falls off the map and come back at the other side of the island. and it's always like this. either it's me (i doubt it) or it's another hidden protection trigger."
Note: Please do not ask for or post download links to pirated or leaked copies here. This post is for informational purposes only.
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