Title: Batman: Arkham City
Publisher: Warner Brothers Games
Developer: Rocksteady
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
Genre: Action/Adventure Brawler
Release Date: October 18, 2011
Price: $59.99
Rating: T
Batman: Arkham City is the sequel to one of the best games to come out in 2009, and easily the best comic book hero game to come out in recent memory.
Arkham City picks up one year after the events of Arkham Asylum. Since Arkham Asylum and Blackgate prison are unfit to hold inmates anymore, a new prison must be built. Using the fame that Quincy Sharp gained from stopping the events of the first game, he has now risen to become the Mayor of Gotham. With this new found power Sharp walls off a large section of Gotham, dubs it “Arkham City”, and puts none other than Hugo Strange in charge.
Sharp’s plan is by walling off violent criminals in a confined place, they will simply kill each other, thus lowering the inmate population. Hugo Strange, The Joker, and Two-Face all have their own plans for Arkham City, and as the game plays out you get to see exactly what those plans are.
Seeing as how this game is all about discovering and story, I will try to keep this review as spoiler free as possible. Any thing that I discuss specifically will be things that are discovered in the first few story beats and nothing that revelatory. Seeing as how you play as Batman and aren’t allowed to leave the city itself, it’s an interesting way to introduce him physically INTO the city. That’s all I’ll say.
As Arkham City first is revealed to you, it is plain to see that Rocksteady has once again has been able to scratch that comic book itch we never could reach. From the neon glow of lights and the sickly wet look to everything in the sewers, everything looks great. The characters themselves all have as much “character” as you would hope someone created from the pages of a comic book would. Brooding never looked so good. Batman shows a lot more of his trademarked emotion in the way his body language is translated to the screen. The rest of the main and some side characters animate makes you wish other comic heroes and their villains would get the same treatment.
Batman: Arkham City is pretty much more Arkham Asylum, with a few minor tweaks and story twists, and I am perfectly fine with that. What City does, is make an already great combat system better. By adding in different counters and more gadgets to use in combat, each fight allows you to experiment with new combos and brutal ways to knock out your opponents. It took me a little while to get back into the rhythm of the fight, realizing that you can’t simply mash the “A” button and win. Moving around a fight feels fluid, if not a bit ridiculous, but hey, it’s a comic book hero. The ability to double counter and the new blade counters change up the way Batman approaches and finishes each fight.
The larger difference between Asylum and City is the scale of the environment and the things to do with in. Arkham City is much larger in scale and scope. Traversing from one side of the city to the other will take you several minutes even when flying around as the Batman. However, most of your time in the open world city is spent moving from one story mission to another. Once you get to a location where the actual action is, you end up inside buildings and in the sewer system just like Arkham Asylum. It doesn’t detract from the game itself, but mission wise, it’s not as “open world” as you might expect.
Having said that, there is a myriad of things to accomplish, see, destroy and collect in the city proper. From hidden Riddler trophies, to side missions, and actual “crimes” for the “World’s Greatest Detective” to solve, there is no shortage of things to do. None of them stop your progress through the story, and I actually found it easier to ignore the side stuff in Arkham City than I have in any other previous “open world” game before. The simple fact of the matter here though is, there is just too many things to do. This game is a completionist’s nightmare. With over FOUR HUNDRED Riddler trophies and upwards of fifty different other side missions to do, it will take you a long, LONG time to complete them. It comes off as overkill.
It’s kind of funny that the part of the game that I liked the least, was actually a part of the game that wasn’t even included on the disc. I am talking, of course, about the Catwoman sequences. Broken up into four chapters spread through out the main story arc, you take Catwoman on her own romp through Arkham City. However, where Batman’s objectives feel like full missions, Catwoman’s seem to come off more as long challenge rooms. Though at points Catwoman does interact with Batman, it never feel truly connected to what he is doing. I imagine that this is done to cover small story holes in the main quest, but I would think that playing it with out downloading her missions would have been fine, if not a better way to complete the game.
Catwoman just comes off as a weaker less functional version of Batman. While she can still scale tall buildings and fight enemies with the same agility and ferocity, she is a much more fragile character. Catwoman doesn’t have the expansive selection of gadgets that Batman has access to so some times you find yourself looking to accomplish one move to find it doesn’t exist. Catwoman’s story would have been better off as a separate story missions and keep completely out of the main story progress.
There are other smaller gripes that I had with Arkham City, but none as profound as Catwoman. You still spend a lot of time in “detective mode”. Though Rocksteady said they would make adjustments so that you wouldn’t have to. Simply by adding in the over abundance of hidden items, and riddles stashed throughout the over world, the need to be in that mode is more important, even if it is for mostly just side quests.
What I probably liked most about Batman Arkham City was the ending. Again, I won’t spoil anything but it manages to wrap up the story very well. Not only tying it up in a nice bow, but it treats the story and characters with respect. Having spent as much time as I have with the citizens of Gotham, I felt like they did everyone justice, be they good or bad. The post story credits are given the same treatment. Anything can happen in the realm of comic books (see the current “New 52” campaign) but should the story never go any further, I would be fine with that, too. I don’t think I am alone in thinking that Rocksteady should not make another Batman game. I am not naive to the workings of video game production companies, but I just don’t know where they could take the story and the world from here that wouldn’t tarnish the previous two games.
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