Batman: Arkham City

If you thought Batman Arkham Asylum was one of the greatest games ever then you are highly mistaken!

This game is very dark and very intense, a lot of the features from the first game that made it so good appear in this game also, plus the new plot line, new twisted characters and intensity make it one of the best games i have ever played!

This game is clearly 10/10! Without a doubt.If you have not played the first one then you do not know what you are missing! You must play it right now!

Thank You.

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.

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

Wow. Talk about a game completely living up to expectations. The twists at the end were so intense. I don't know, everything about the game was so perfect for me. The story could have been a little longer probably, but I'm sure it was at least ten hours which for a game like this is very impressive. Plus I didn't do any side stuff, which I'm sure will give me another five or so hours at least. The gameplay was brilliant, kept everything feeling fresh and exciting.

Even the basic combat with thugs never got repetitive (which it did quickly in Asylum), and unlike Asylum, instead of just button-mashing you actually have to use a lot of strategy in even the most basic combat. When surrounded by a group of thugs you have to employ Waynetech and prioritize who to go after, instead of just hopping around like in the first game. You also don't have the easy move of being able to use Detective Mode nonstop, which is a huge step up. There's a lot of thinking and strategy needed for many parts of the game and there were definitely a few moments where I had to stop for a few moments to figure out just what to do.

The detail was out of this world, from the dark and perfectly toned scenery to just the simple things like thugs talking about the villains while you fly overhead. I'm so surprised that a game of this nature was fused with such rich and diverse detail. A lot of people, myself included, were disappointed by the lackluster boss fights in Asylum and to say that they stepped up their game with this one would be to really under appreciate just how much they improved on that front. Every boss fight was fantastic (except for the last one, ironically) and challenging, keeping things fresh and utilizing all of the weapons in your arsenal. These aren't just ordinary boring fights like they were before.

With all of that being said, the highlight of the game is absolutely the story. From the brilliant opening to the haunting final shot, I've rarely been more immersed in a story in a game like this one. The emotions were very high, you felt like real things were at stake here and the twists and revelations in the final act were remarkable. Everything from the confrontation with Strange until the last shot had me on the edge of my seat and my mouth hung open. This story is up there with some of the greatest works to come out of this franchise, as far as I'm concerned. A case of a company truly listening to the complaints on a game and fixing every single thing about it. This is one of the closest encounters I've had to something I would call a perfect game.

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