A lot of information concerning Batman: Arkham City has been announced and hinted at over the last year, so much that I was afraid I’d know everything about the game by the time it was released. Thankfully, the game turned out to still be a brilliant experience and just as enjoyable as if we had been told nothing. Every feature of the game makes it feel like a new toy; the visuals were amazing and ultimately the game was a perfect and natural progression from Arkham Asylum.
The painful minutes spent downloading Catwoman and Robin finally ended with the game’s first level featuring none other than the titular femme fatale. The game begins with the fast, flexible Catwoman who fluidly moves around the game in a manner so different from Batman’s handling that I was instantly taken by surprise. Considering the two have largely similar controls, the way the characters ‘feel’ is shockingly different. She has her own set of gadgets and quirky things she can do that Batman can’t, such as crawl upside down on wire ceilings.
...and display much more cleavage than Batman could ever hope to pull off.
I won’t give anything important away past the first level or so, but the introduction is immersive and interesting. In Asylum there was that long scene at the very beginning that involved you escorting the Joker down a corridor. It wasn’t exactly boring the first time, however, you were forced to walk and it did take a while. This time you aren’t even Batman; you are Bruce Wayne, complete with what looks like an Armani suit and handcuffs.
The queuing and scene changes are punctuated with fighting off several enemies (while handcuffed) which breaks up the game’s story nicely. Then you become Batman again. I’ll say this about the story mode – and this is excluding actual plot spoilers – Batman gets smashed in the face with alarming frequency. It must be an effort to immerse you further into the game or something, seeing as how it’s more personal to experience being hit in the face when the cut scenes are in first person. Not that Arkham City has to work hard to make you feel like Batman. I’m a 5’2” female and I ‘was’ Batman for most of this game. Unless he was failing to dodge or counter, in which case, I was shouting ‘at’ Batman.
Speaking of which, the game’s combat is still brilliant and plays as an improved version of Asylum, but there is some additional complexity. While Batman seems more eager to counter in Arkham City, he occasionally outright refuses to do the new double-counter and ignores the second opponent I wanted him to include in the action. (I found that Catwoman was more willing to perform the double counter than Batman.) The way you’re supposed to take down various thugs has changed as well.
Whereas in Asylum you had to “stun” certain enemies with “batarangs” in order to take them down or even attack them properly, it’s more than ever a case of fancy dodging motions, something I feel is the result of more swords in this game. I automatically tried to take them down the other way instead of learning how to use the dodge and had to learn the hard way.
The plot itself – again I’m going to avoid actually giving anything away here – is extremely enjoyable. It has just the right amount of “comic book-ness,” it’s a little bit twisted, and the villains are just plain fun to beat the crap out of. The Penguin and the Joker are brilliant bosses and I think Mark Hamill’s Joker became my favourite Joker ever while I was playing Asylum.
Although originally worried that the Joker wouldn’t be as awesome as he was in the first game, I was soon proven incredibly wrong. I think Two-Face could have been featured more; he is a well-loved character who didn’t get much face time – pun very much intended. Hugo Strange, for the little time he featured in the game, was very well done and voiced professionally. The Ra’s Al Ghul section and the Hatter Side quest replaced the Scarecrow sections for sheer visual insanity.
While on the subject of side quests, Arkham City’s fit very well with the main story. Riddler challenges are unavoidably distracting and you get cool extra gadgets and things if you do some of the others. Also, I am a big fan of some of DC Comic’s lesser known characters and smaller series, so seeing Bane and Deadshot in the game made me pretty happy. I haven’t finished tracking down Deadshot in Arkham city yet, but he’s one of my favourite DC characters. Also, they kept his brilliantly horrible facial hair, something that the recent DC comic universe reboot failed to do.
No-one makes Deadshot shave.
Graphics wise, Arkham City looks utterly amazing. The city is detailed and the characters are wonderfully translated into Arkham’s style. I especially like Harley’s new look and also, as controversial as it might sound, I like the look of Robin in this game. The henchmen are incredibly varied. There is a wide range of body types and there is a lot more scope for different henchmen costumes because they aren’t all stuck in the asylum this time. They all have different costumes depending on who the henchmen are working for.
Since I’m a female, you’d probably expect me to go on a feminist rant about Catwoman and her blatant over sexualization – but she’s awesome. While she’s overtly sexual, she pulls it off in a very powerful way. She is very fun to play as and also does something fairly cool somewhere towards the end, despite her large array of dreadful puns.
Also Talia Al Ghul is fairly badass most of the time. I’d complain about Batman’s lack of fondness for the ladies but he is Batman after all. He (kind of) makes up for it at the ending I mentioned…in a twisted sort of way. Said ending made it impossible for me to complain about Catwoman’s sexy crawl without incredible hypocrisy because of my shameless amount of giggling. Incidentally, make sure you have your audio on and you do not go and make a cup of tea or something while you wait for the credits. It’s worth it to listen for a while.
Pros
-The combat and controls are even better.
-The plot is engaging and just damn fun.
-It looks great.
Cons
-I would have liked to have heard more of Oracle.
-Sometimes the AI would magically become alerted to you being directly behind them in the stealth missions.
-I would very occasionally get lost, but this is an incredibly minor complaint.
Overall Score: 9.5/10
Recommendation: Buy the hell out of this game.
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