Superman’s bulletproof and Spider-Man’s funny, but in the war on evil, we want Batman on our side. Why? ’Cause he’s scary. He wields terror like a weapon — he’s the Dark Knight in spirit as well as costume. And he backs it up with the perfect mix of brain and brawn: the World’s Greatest Detective…who’ll beat you senseless if you prey on Gotham’s weak.

Delivering the stark, often sinister, atmosphere in which Batman operates has proven to be a tall task for game developers, but Rocksteady’s upcoming Arkham Asylum tackles the problem head-on with an original story by none other than Paul Dini (of Batman: The Animated Series fame). As the title suggests, it’s set entirely in the island institution housing all of the hero’s notorious villains.

Vividly rendered with Unreal Engine 3, the game begins with Batman escorting a newly captured Joker into Arkham, alongside a cadre of armed guards. The Clown Prince is suspiciously, almost chillingly, gleeful, and the tone is distinctly ominous. As you pass the massive Killer Croc, he whispers: “I’ve got your scent, Batman. I’ll find you. I’ll rip your skin, eat your bones.” Naturally, you’re hoping to avoid this 10-foot tower of reptilian menace, but when the Joker breaks free and traps you in the asylum, you know you’ll face them both soon enough. They’ll eventually be joined by Harley Quinn, Zsasz, and other undisclosed nemeses — plus the requisite throngs of flunkies.

Ah, flunkies. They can be the bane of superhero games; after all, who wants to fight nameless minions when the big bads are waiting? But Arkham’s dark tone pays off here, too. Though combat was only around 10 percent complete in our demo build, it already exudes a streetfight feel that’s straight out of the Christopher Nolan Batman films. You’ll bend limbs and land brutal finishing moves (like a punch to the back of the neck, or a swooping-in glide kick), but it won’t just be button-mashing: inmates will rip objects off walls and pose different challenges, and you’ll have to stun some, throw others, and so on. Thankfully, you’ll have an array of Batgadgets, including a batarang (great for downing enemies) and explosive gel (to remotely blow holes through walls).

Of course, that’s just combat — a small part of a game that’s at least 50 percent stealth, we’re told. Arkham isn’t just an open-world game in the sense that you can visit all parts of the island: hospital, dock, manor, harbor. Using your grappling hook, you can traverse the vertical areas above each room, which allows you to, say, avoid a room full of the Joker’s Smilex gas — and then, from on-high, hurl a batarang that triggers an extraction fan, dispelling the fumes.

Better yet, being up above it all lets you be a “silent predator,” as Rocksteady calls it. In one of our demo’s cooler sequences, Batman entered a room and used detective mode — a sort of sensory overlay that shows you where you can go and what you can interact with — to identify grapple points near the ceiling. He grappled to one of them, and then secretly observed the Joker’s henchmen down below. Descending upside-down from his perch, Bats yanked a thug off the ground and tied him to the ceiling; then he swung to another grapple point and tied up another thug. Though you can secretly disable foes by snagging them off the ground, knocking them out, and then hiding their bodies, the point here was to leave them hanging so their comrades would notice — and they did, at which point they became visibly agitated and began roaming around nervously. For fun, our demo-conductor even flung a batarang through the rope holding one of the thugs, sending him crashing to the floor. Ouch!

Eighteen months into development, Arkham looks surprisingly deep, dark, and ambitious — words rarely paired with this videogame license. “There’s a lot more [here]…than there’s ever been in a Batman game,” says the team at Rocksteady. Let’s hope the promise pans out; we’d love to see, at long last, the Dark Knight get his due.