With the success of Batman: Arkham Asylum which turned out to be a surprise hit when it debuted in 2009, this year we received the even bigger Batman: Arkham City! Arkham City is yet another Dark Knight adventure that plays like a season of the animated series. In layman’s terms this game is AWESOME!
If you ever dreamed about one day being the Dark Knight then this game is the closest you are ever going to get. Arkham City is set six months after the events of Asylum. Former warden Quincy Sharp has been elected mayor, emptied the criminals of Arkham Asylum into a portion of Gotham which is now called “Arkham City”. There are gang wars taking place in Arkham City with the Joker, Two-Face, and Penguin trying to take control of the city one piece of territory at a time. The facility is watched over by Hugo Strange who has his own agenda for something called Protocol Ten (Sorry no Spoiler here play the game to figure out what Protocol Ten is). While all this is going on you will run into or get a reference to just about every popular Batman villain ever in a well rounded and well written story.
Arkham City is massive. You can go pay your respects in Crime Alley, where Batman’s parents were killed, or go check out a version of Penguin’s Iceberg Lounge. This world is completely fleshed out and you really feel like you are taking part in a living a breathing part of Gotham City even though it’s not really Gotham City (you guys know what I mean!).
So let’s talk about game mechanics. What is cool about Batman himself? Well his fighting skills, his incredible stealth skills and his detective mind. You get to take advantage of all of these things within the game play. The FreeFlow melee combat system has been updated. One button is for punching, one for reversals, one for stunning enemies with your cape, and one for evading. Simple to learn? Yes, but it will definitely take some practice to master. Sure taking down two foes with no weapons in sight is easy enough but if you have to take down ten of them with half carrying an assortment of weapons anything from knives, riot shields or even guns this does not become a simple walk in the park. The number of enemies you can fight at once has been increased while introducing new enemies that require specific strategies to defeat. Now you can also reverse the attacks of multiple foes at a time which is a cool sight to see. The same stealth mechanics is back as well. Sitting high on rooftops or gargoyles while stalking your prey and waiting for the perfect moment to drop down unexpectedly still works without a hitch. And detective mode is back but with a slight adjustment He can still see the enemies through walls, but all other indicators, such as objective locations, are gone when Detective Mode is active. This small adjustment evens out the game so that you won’t be playing almost 60% of the game in detective mode such as some people did in Batman: Arkham Asylum.
This game has a lot of replay value. The main story took about 15 hours to complete on normal difficulty so I would imagine on hard it would probably take anywhere from 20-25 hours but keep in mind when I completed the story the game said it was about 30% complete. You have several side quests to conquer the most prominent involving the Riddler, who has left a number of challenges around the city. Some are trophies which require reflexes and basic logic to acquire. Others are the typical riddle that will require you to scan the object it refers to. If you are having trouble finding them just interrogate a green-tinged informant who will then give up the location of some of the riddles. If you want to find and rescue the hostages Riddler has placed throughout the prison you are going to need to complete a lot of the Riddler challenges.
Just like in the original, there are un-lockable challenge rooms that task you with either getting high scores in fistfights or testing your stealth skills with Predator missions. Completing the story campaign also opens up New Game Plus mode, which lets you carry over your upgrades but makes enemies much more difficult. If that wasn’t enough, if you buy a new copy of the game, you get a code to download Catwoman, who has her own small story missions and play style, her own Riddler trophies, and access to the same Challenges as Batman. If you happen to have brought your game from Best Buy you not only get Catwoman but you get a code to download Robin which makes him a playable character for challenges (sorry no Robin in story mode even though he makes a brief cameo appearance in the story). Just recently Dick Grayson’s Nightwing is available for download for additional challenges. Adding all of that together you can easily get 50-60 hours of game out of Arkham City.
This game looks amazing. The characters are more detailed. Batman’s character model is super impressive — his cape and suit gets all torn up as the game goes on. The Arkham City prison is amazing and gothic. The amazing attention to detail comes with an increased enemy count, and a good frame rate for smooth game play. The only real graphical hitches are that enemies will occasionally dip through objects in the environment but that can be considered nip picking.
The voice acting is beyond stellar. Kevin Conroy is so perfect for the voice of Batman it’s scary. You can second that for Mark Hamill’s Joker. I honestly shudder at the thought of Joker being voiced by anyone else. Nolan North was unexpectedly good as the voice of the Penguin as well. Let’s give a shot out to the ladies bothTara Strong as the voice of Harley Quinn, and Grey Delisle as Catwoman did great rounding out this superb cast. The game’s music and sound effects were up to the task providing dark undertones and sound effects such as punches and the snapping of arms come off well.
Up until now I have mentioned all Pros so let’s get to the Cons. As fantasitc as Arkham City is, it’s not perfect. There are little things here and there that stop this game from being a perfect ten. Well occasionally the camera can cause a problem, you will get a good view of the action but a bad camera angle here and there can mess up a combo because you will get a fist flying at you suddenly from nowhere it’s a small inconvenience but an inconvenience nonetheless. Also if I wanted to let a friend borrow the game they will be playing without Catwoman which will change the story and to me the experience. I know that you can download Catwoman but in my opinion if she is a part of the story you shouldn’t have to. The pacing can get slow every so often. It’s rare but when you have to look for something to just get a door open it tends to slow down the flow. Lastly and I am sure some people will disagree with me on this but the boss battles were a little easy. Granted I played the game on normal but I have started a whole new game on hard difficulty and I still find the boss battles to be a little easy to complete. It may seem like a huge thing but I didn’t find any of these flaws to take away from the complete gaming experience. Side-note: The best boss battle in this game is Mr. Freeze by far.
This game is definitely one of the best games of the year. The story, look and feel of this game is a crowd pleaser whether you are a Batman fan or not. The sheer replay value alone makes it a great purchase and I will go as far as saying at this very moment Batman: Arkham City gets my vote for Game of the Year. All in all I give this game a 9 out of 10. Now if only we could get a good Superman Game!
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