Batman: Arkham City

Licensed games, as a general rule, aren't anything to write home about. But video games have been especially cruel to Batman in the past. "Batman: Vengeance" featured frustrating combat laden with clunky animations and vehicles that handled terribly. "Batman Begins" was an all-too linear stealth game that required Batman to take out enemies in the exact manner and order he was intended to,because his Kevlar armor wasn't enough to save him from being killed just by having a gun pointed at him. So, this was what it was like to be Batman?

Then, in 2009, against all odds,Rocksteady released "Arkham Asylum." Instead of being a tie-in to existing movies or comics, it took place in the developers' own unique version of Batman's universe. Turns out to make players feel more like they were in Batman's shoes, it just took a good combination of stealth game play and brute combat, with a healthy dollop of fan service thrown on for good measure. It was, without a doubt, the best Batman gaming experience there was. Until now.

"Batman: Arkham City", blows it completely out of the water. An improvement in every way imaginable, it picks up where the last game left off. A huge section of Gotham City has been walled off and is now patrolled by heavily armed security teams. The city's captured criminal element has been transferred in from the old asylum and Blackgate Prison. Batman, naturally suspicious, finds a way inside to investigate, and he finds a gang war being being waged by some of his most notable arch-enemies.

Those who have played "Arkham Asylum" will be familiar with the basic game play, divided between two main components: free-flow combat and stealth, or "predator", tactics, enabling Batman to take out throngs of thugs head-on and pick out armed enemies from the shadows with equal ease. Free-flow combat is mainly accomplished by alternating between an "attack" and "counter", combined with a direction, to move from on enemy to another, breaking necks and cashing checks (in for upgrades). Fighting also makes use of Batman's "wonderful toys", with different gadgets being mapped to simple button combos. New gadgets and upgrades are collected throughout, providing more variety and a heavier emphasis on Batman's weaponry than in the last game. There are also new types of enemies that must be "stunned" first using specific combos, which keeps fights from being identical button-mashers, but sadly also slows the pace a little.

Predator tactics come into play when Bats enters an area being guarded by armed foes. While Batman has ballistic armor that can be upgraded, for the most part running into the line of an armed baddie's fire leads to a quick death. But the game gives you enough freedom to feel like Batman, hiding in the shadows not out of fear, but in order to strike fear. There is an even larger variety of "takedowns" than in the last game, allowing Batman to take advantage of elements of his environment such as ventilation shafts, gargoyles, and plywood barriers to pick off stragglers and watch their allies grow progressively more terrified.

The biggest improvement between games is the massive open-world that provides the setting for the game. Although some building can only be accessed as the story and your inventory allows, for the most part, Arkham City is your oyster from the moment you get in. Using a combination of gliding, diving, and grappling, you can battle random clusters of thugs for XP, follow up on various side missions as you discover them, or just admire the scenery. Most of the key locations you'd expect in Gotham City can be found walled off in Arkham, and Batman fans will definitely be in awe. I spent the first few hours gliding around the city, listening in on inmate's conversations, and occasionally swooping down to put the fear of God into them. Now THIS is what it's like to be Batman.

While there were references to just about every character in Batman's universe in the previous game, here just about all of them appear. To provide a list is to spoil many of the surprises, but returning enemies include the Joker, voiced in a stand-out performance by Mark Hamill (yes, THAT Mark Hamill.) Since he's announced his retirement from the role, this will probably be your last chance to get goosebumps listening to his pitch-perfect interpretation. Harley Quinn also returns, with a new (and, in my opinion, improved) costume, and also a new voice, with the Batman: TAS "Batgirl" Tara Strong taking over the role. Kevin Conroy also fits nicely back into the role of the titular character, who he voiced in TAS and the previous game. Another great performance comes from Nolan North, who voices my all-time favorite Batman villain, the Penguin. Here reinvented as a racketeer with the hint of a London accent and a cigar and broken glass bottle to replace the old cigarette holder and monocle, respectively, is a character that's still Oswald Cobblepot but is not to be trifled with. Chances are, between the main story line, the Easter eggs scattered throughout the city, and side missions, if you've got favorite Batman characters, they're in this game, and they're done justice.

The storyline is from TAS writer Paul Dinni, and ranks alongside of some of my favorite Batman comics. Like in "Arkham Asylum", fantastic use is made of the characters in the "Game Over" screens, now with a larger cast of enemies to taunt you, your taunter usually being determined by whose henchman defeats you. Unlike "Arkham Asylum", a fantastic game up until its anti-climatic ending, "Arkham City" only ever gets better as you progress through it. The only way this game isn't for you is if you absolutely hate Batman, great game play, and stunning graphics.

Why are you still reading this when you should be playing right now?

Pros:

• Great story and characters
• Great combat
• Excellent voice acting
• Fantastic boss fights
• Very good open world
• Ballsy ending

Cons:

• Some lacklustre side mission bosses

Verdict: The greatest Batman (and superhero) game to date, improving in pretty much all ways on the original.

10/10

Batman Arkham City took everything that was great about it's near perfect predecessor and improved it beyond belief. Instead of being confined to a relatively small island you are now in a small area of Gotham City specifically made for the scum of humanity. On the surface there doesn't look like much to do in this small space, but the area is teeming with henchmen from Two Face, Penguin and Joker and they're all going to try and kill you at any chance they get. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Long story short, after the events of Arkham Asylum, Warden Quincy Sharp was named Mayor of Gotham and decided that the old asylum was unfit for prisoners. Thus he created Arkham City, a blocked off piece of North Gotham for Batman's worst foes to thrive. He then placed the mysterious Professor Hugo Strange in charge and now deadly gang wars break out as everyone fights for control of the city. Batman must enter the city and find out Strange's real plan, along with stopping his old foes from killing each other.

This is the basic plot of the story, but there are a number of sidequests you can take throughout the game. From destroying the last Titan drug barrels with Bane, to tracking down victims of Deadshot. The Riddler returns physically in Arkham City and has placed twice as many riddle trophies and puzzles in the area. He has also captured doctors and people who worked in old Arkham. These challenges are deadly and requires a lot more critical thinking then in the last game. With all these sidequests combined with the main story you're looking at many hours of gameplay and with new game plus you can replay the game with all the gadgets from your first game and keep any riddler secrets you've found.

The challenge areas are the same as the first game, but there are a lot more to be played and with all the new combat and silent predator moves in this game you will have a blast taking down nameless thugs with an even greater sense of being Batman. With downloadable characters like Robin and Nightwing you have a lot more reason to play the challenge maps then in the first game.

I could go forever on how awesome this game is. But this is one of those games you need to play to believe. It has everything for long time Batman fans and newcomers. With a great plot with a lot of twists and faster combat this game has exceeded all expectations and is without a doubt one of the best games of the year, if not all time. And I haven't even played as Catwoman yet.

Until about three years ago, I had never owned any game console that weren't manufactured by Nintendo, or any PC that could play high fidelity video games, so it's been a fascinating experience going back and trying out all of these games from more than ten years ago that I'd heard of but never seen played or tried for myself.

Batman: Arkham City came out right at that sweet spot for open world gaming, when open world game design was actually an artistic endeavor that actually sought to enhance the story the videogame was trying to tell, and not an endless checklist of mindless boxes to tick off and things to collect and busywork.

There are just so many things I appreciate about the way this game was designed. The open world is not vast in scope, one that will take you hours upon hours just to run from one end of it to the other, and I see that as a good thing. The world is compact, well designed, and emanates the strong theme of Gotham's decay, and I really wish far more games today would stop making endless world maps across vast landscapes and focus on making more tightly designed world maps more densely packed.

I also appreciate how the side missions in this game all feel like their own complete stories that intersect well with the main story. I've played through a dozen other massive open world games that contain seemingly hundreds of side missions, like Skyrim and RDR2 and Ghosts of Tsushima, and some of those side missions can be very neat and worthwhile, but the vast majority of them feel identical to one another, you talk to a person, you go to a location, you get a thing, and you go back and talk to the person, you get reward, rinse repeat. There's very few stories or side missions I can recall clearly in any of those games even minutes after finishing them. However, after finishing Arkham City earlier today, I can still clearly remember where I started, where I finished, many of the characters I met along the way, what their stories were, and what the conclusions to those stories were, because each side mission I partook in consisted of characters that actually felt like full characters and not forgettable throwaway checklists handed out by forgettable throwaway NPCs.

What's more, I also find myself wishing more games took the right lessons from this era in terms of length. Arkham City is one of the only open world games I've played that feels like it is the exact length that it needs to be, that doesn't drag on excessively. I don't understand why developers like Ubisoft have decided that all open world games need to be more than 100 hours long and filled to the brim with hundreds upon hundreds of boxes to tick off, things to climb, enemy bases to clear out, repetitive random events, and random mindless collectibles.

On the note of collectibles, even the thing I've disliked most about open world games, which would be an endless list of hundreds of collectibles, doesn't feel completely worthless and out of place in Arkham City. Many of these Riddler trophies were quite fun to collect, as the challenges to collect them weren't excessively repetitive and quite often I actually felt rewarded when I figured out the puzzle.

One last note, I wanted to mention the stealth action in this game, which is something that just never felt rewarding in other open world games I've played. Other stealth action games that obviously ripped straight from this game's playbook all missed two key aspects that made clearing out a room full of badguys without getting caught so rewarding in this game: consequences and escalation. When you get caught in stealth mode in other open world games, like Ghosts of Tsushima, you can just run away from the camp and sneak in from another angle like nothing happened, or you can just fight everybody in the camp off singlehandedly with no real consequences. In this game, if you're caught in room full of armed thugs, you will die incredible quickly, but you still have the chance to repel away or drop a smoke pellet and get away as quick as you can by the skin of your teeth, but if you do, the enemies will be incredible jumpy and start firing into random spaces, and they'll learn from previous tactics they've seen you use forcing you to switch up how to take them out. If they find a body next to a ledge they'll start checking over ledges, or in the vents, or in the rafters, or wherever else you take them out from. It's a way to force you to switch up your tactics and use all of your tools effectively in a way that feels organic.

It's been really neat going back and playing all of these games I didn't get to try out in high school, and getting to see how games have evolved over time, and some of the things that have been lost or forgotten along the way. Arkham City is a prime example of excellent open world use and design, and I really wish that future developers had learned the right lessons from games like this. Bigger isn't always better. I'd highly prefer far more games try to make effective use of smaller maps like this. Definitely recommended to other patient gamers like me who didn't get a chance to play it when it came out.

This game is amazing. It has a VERY large atmosphere, and has tons of side missions and game play.

There is plenty to do and tons of new gadgets and gizmo's and lots of new take downs. Tons of new styles of enemy's and as many things to do as you can count.

Get this game, lots of game play. If you get it you will not be sorry you did, lots of riddles and a LOTTTTTT of challenge maps. Now stop looking at this review and go buy it. Please just play it, it has so many creative things. I don't know what else to say other the to have fun with this game and i hope you like it as much as i do