I played through Batman Arkham City a few weeks ago. I got it the day and came out and was so freaking excited since I absolutely loved the original Arkham Asylum. I was not disappointed. Well… maybe a little bit. But not really. SPOILERS will be in RED.
Arkham City is a game that I would put on my list the top 10 games ever made (that I’ve played). Althogh, since it’s a super hero game, it doesn’t have a lot of competition in that genre since all super hero games genuinely suck. But this game. By god! It’s almost a masterpiece! (still talking about Asylum). The sequel, Arkham City, took all of what made Asylum good and built on it. It kept in the combat (which is amazing) and improved on it further! Now you can take down 3 enemies at once as well as other new special ability additions.
The combat in Batman is superb. I can’t stress that enough. In a lot of games, I tend to dread fighting. Sometimes I’ll even go out of my way to sneak around enemies so I won’t have to fight them. Games put in experience point systems to try and coax you into fighting people, which Batman does as well. However, another way to coax players in to fighting is to make the combat so much fun to play! In this game, I will willingly fling myself into an enormous group of enemies and salivate as I beat the living shit out of all of them with the fluidity of a dancing flame! You don’t even have to be skilled! You can take it slow and careful in an attempt to time your strikes just right in order to build up combos for greater attacks OR you can just mash the shit out of the buttons and pummel everyone in sight! It’s really the perfect system.
Playing as different characters is fun. I remember hearing someone say before this games’ release that Catwoman felt the same as Batman in combat situations, so I wasn’t expecting much, but whoever said that was obviously an idiot. Yeah, she has the same controls, but she has unique moves, quicker actions, and a unique set of weapons. Outside of combat, she is pretty much like Spiderman the way she climbs up the sides of buildings and uses her whip to swing around rooftops. If you download the Catwoman pack before playing the game, it includes all of her story chapters into the game, giving you a break from the Batman story line. After the game is completed, you can free roam around the city and switch between the 2 characters at will.
Robin is only available in the challenge maps, which is a shame. He actually fights very well and has a sweat staff that he uses to smack people around. He even does a sort of spin kick thing ala Neo from Matrix Reloaded. He’s slower than Catwoman, but quicker than Batman. A nice medium. Hopefully we will get to play more as him in the next game (assuming there is a next game)
Arkham City had a set of comic books that prelude it. They kind of worked to connect the end of the last game with the beginning of this new one and I definitely recommend them if you haven’t yet started this game. They don’t reveal anything pivotal, but they do set the scene nicely so you have some idea of what you are getting into. I thought of it as a pretty cool idea.
This paragraph is kind of spoilery? Maybe? But it only spoils the opening scene, which I don’t think is much of a spoiler, but it’s important. The opening scene is one the best scenes in the game. It is VERY reminiscent of the opening scene to Half Life 2 where you are shoved through a containment camp and you are pretty much helpless but to obey the orders of your captors. This time however, you are Bruce Wayne being locked into Arkham City. What makes this good is the whole idea of “interactive cut scenes”. Most of the time, cutscenes take the control away from the player as a movie plays. Half Life 2 doesn’t have cut scenes like that. All of the action happens in front of you as you are still in control of your character. If someone is speaking to you, you can either stand and watch them, or you can wonder around the room while you listen. The game still gets its cutscene information in, but the player always stays “in the game”. This first scene of Batman is exactly that, and that is why it’s amazing. The only problem is, it’s the only scene like it in the whole game. LOL!
The graphics may not be up to par with games like MF3 and there may not be destructible environments like in BF3, but this game is gorgeous. It was kind of weird when they would have some cut scenes pre rendered and some rendered in game, but it wasn’t jarring or anything. The prerendered character models were amazing! Especially Batman’s mouth when he talked. Great work. Some character models were visibly less detailed than others. This is made even more apparent in the games Model Viewer Mode where you can actually unlock the character models and zoom into their little details (just like in Arkham Asylum). Lesser villains had models that weren’t as well done as main villains like the Joker for example. But they all looked pretty damn good.
The last game left me wanting more. And this game gave me more! More villains! I love Batman villains. The Batman universe has the best set of villains out of any other (with Spiderman coming in second my opinion of course) I pretty much got to see all of my favorites. The only problem however is that so many villains were squeezed in that a couple felt very rushed. I wish they could take the time to flesh out all of the villains equally, but I mean, there’s only so much you can do for one game. They actually squeezed in so many villains that I’m not sure if there is anyone left to do another sequel. They are either going to have to bring back quite a few or dig out some really obscure names for a third title.
The gadgets this time are cool. There are not a whole lot of new editions (and you start the game with MANY of the gadgets you ended with in the last game, which was very cool) but the new ones were definitely pivotal to certain puzzles and they integrated them well into the gameplay.
Boss fights are nice! Every one is different and not just rehashes of the same maneuvers over and over again. In the last game you pretty much just did the same thing over and over with boss fights, but in this one, you actually have to find patterns and figure out how to beat the guys. (I even had to look online at one point because I had no clue how to beat one guy LOL)
The free roaming aspect is done pretty well. Flying around is fun. I felt there were a LOT of enemies strewn about though after a while. I’m all for groups of thugs to beat up, but they put a LOT of armed guys on rooftops around the middle of the game. I don’t like guns a lot because it forces you to be stealthy and that takes a while (for my at least). I started to fear rooftop jumping because there would be gunners around every corner. Kind of irritating, but whatever.
The actual story portion of the game runs about 50% of the completion. THAT was a little irritating. Here I think I have a whole second half of the game to go only to find that about 50% is f’n challenge maps. I for one am not really into the whole “challenge maps” thing, so I pretty much only bought half a game… So yeah, it’s a little disappointing. BUT, I still have Riddler missions to complete I guess. There are side missions as well (I think about 9 or so) Those are kind of fun and are good to break up the main storyline a bit. Certain villains are exclusive to these side missions, and you don’t really have to even do them if you don’t want, but you’re missing out. You can always beat them after the game though of course, but I found it’s best to do them before the end.
Adding to the disappointing aspect and idea of rushed villains: fucking Dr. Hugo Strange. This whole time, Hugo was booked as the MAJOR VILLAIN. He was the mastermind behind this whole operation. HELL! It even came to be that he master mind the entire LAST game as well! It turns out he was Warden’s Sharpe’s psychiatrist and Hugo kind of controlled Sharpe in a way, leading him to create Arkham City and leading him to trap Batman inside of it. This guy is a genious! He can’t be beaten! He’s all powerful! Wrong. It comes time to find Hugo and you climb to the top of this giant puzzle tower, which I guess is daunting, but after playing through Infamous with an even larger tower, it wasn’t that epic. Hugo is at the top, locked in a room with armed guards. I take out the guards using stealth and walking through vents like normal, and then that’s it. I get to Hugo and it turns out he’s not really the main villain and he was doing all of this to try and take over as the leader of the League of Shadows, blah blah blah. So Ra’s sl Ghul kills him and then DIES AS WELL! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK!? After all of that, building up to the smartest fucking villain ever, and he dies in 2 seconds (during a cut scene no less) and the REAL mastermind behind everything dies as well!?? IN THE SAME CUT SCENE!?!?!?!? WHAT!?!?
If you can’t tell, I was pretty pissed at this. Then Joker comes out and fumbles his way into the main villain roll (of course) yadda yadda yadda. Jeez Louise. What a letdown.
Basically, this game starts perfectly paced and AMAZING, starts to speed up, becomes rushed, and then ends abruptly. The ending is decent, but like… it just didn’t build up properly to the conclusion in my point of view.
Pretty much, when it’s all said and done, Batman: Arkham City is still an amazing game. It’s just as awesome as the first game if not better. But it is a little disappointing in the fact that it started so strong only to get more and more rushed as time went on. Still a great experience overall though. And if you are a fan of Batman, this thing is a MUST OWN.
Pros:
One of the greatest and most fun combat systems
One of the greatest casts of villains ever
Starts off amazingly and really hooks you
Improved boss confrontations
Looks great
Cons:
Doesn't continue using HL2 cutscenes like it does in the opening
Begins to feel rushed towards the end
