Batman: Arkham City Review

I’m not a huge fan of movie tie-in games or games based off an existing character since they’re usually terrible, or in Superman 64’s case it’s so terrible you’d rather participate in a village stoning of a child than play it. The Batman games have always had a ‘meh’ feel to them, which is better than terrible, but there was never that game that truly made you feel like the Batman until Rocksteady came with Arkham Asylum. You can understand most people’s doubts when we heard Rocksteady was making a Batman game, it went something like “Who? The guys who made that mediocre game Urban Chaos: Riot Response? What the hell is Urban Chaos: Roll Call?”.

Batman: Arkham City
Developer: Rocksteady Studios
Platform: PlayStation 3 (reviewed), Xbox 360

You can probably understand our surprise when Arkham Asylum turned out to be the best Batman game ever made and it went something like “HELL YEA I LOVE ROCKSTEADY, BUT I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT URBAN CHAOS: ZERO TOLERANCE IS!”. Now they’ve pumped out Arkham City after 2 years and it’s fantastic.

I’m not going to spoil the game, but Quincy Sharp from Arkham Asylum has become mayor of Gotham and has decided to close off a section of the city and turn it into a big fun-house for all the criminals in Arkham. Batman deduces that something is awry (it always is) and finds a way to get into the prison which is where you start out the game. It’s at this point that you have free reigns to travel around the small city full of goons to beat up. I’d compare the size of the map to the Bohan district of Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto (it’s that small island north). Now Arkham City isn’t exactly as ‘open world’ as I was expecting it to be, but I suppose that’s more to blame on myself for hyping myself up. I imagined Batman in a San Andreas style city, but instead of fighting bustas with my homies I got an open world that’s more metroidvania, kinda like Zelda or Darksiders. You have the whole of Arkham City to explore, but there isn’t much to it besides the side missions and Riddler trophies to scavenge, while you’ll enter buildings that is where most of the main story missions will take place. If anything I’d go as far to say that if you ignore the outside stuff it feels like Arkham Asylum, just with a much bigger outside area with more stuff to do. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, AA is one of my favorite games (with AC replacing it), but don’t go in expecting a sandbox experience.

Players of Arkham Asylum will feel right at home with the controls not only being untouched, but refined to give more satisfaction to the combat. Everything moves even smoother than before with Batman performing brutal counters and fluidly evading enemies. All the gadgets have also been fine tuned to work better in combat with new techniques such as laying down quick bombs or using the batclaw to quickly disarm a gun-wielding goon. With the inclusion of double takedowns you do have to be a bit more tactical as you decide whether to continue hitting on a guy, go ahead with the counter, wait instead for a double counter, or evade the fight entirely. Rocksteady gave us double the options to use in combat from AA, and they somehow got it all to fit perfectly without feeling overcomplicated or cumbersome. Now you have two ways of moving around the city. You could be boring and use the grapple hook and jump between buildings, or your could be the goddamn Batman and fucking glide everywhere. Firing your grappling hook on any location and letting go will prompt Batman to open up his cape and perform a glide. You can basically keep going as far as you want since your speed is determined by diving then arcing right back up. The controls did feel a bit awkward at first, but after a bit of playing around you’ll be on the ground, grappling to buildings, and launching yourself into the air with a finesse even Batman would be mildly impressed at (but he’d never say it). You can also do an amazing dive attack on unsuspecting enemies while you’re in the air which is great for slamming yourself right in the middle of a group and disorienting them all.

Once you finish the game you have the option of continuing to play around Arkham City to finish up any side missions or Riddler trophies, but you can also start up New Game+. One of the developers said it best in an interview when he said NG+ forces you to become the Batman because the difficulty is ramped up this time. Enemies will behave more intelligently, the groups you encounter will be different than your first run in the game with more variety in the encounters, and most importantly your precious counter indicators are gone which means you’ll have to read enemy movements the old fashioned way. Sure, you could argue that I could just play hard mode if I wanted that stuff, but fuck you I don’t want to die in a couple hits like a bitch. I like enjoying my games on normal before I go to Broken Controller difficulty. NG+ also brings over all of your gadgets/upgrades, Riddler progress, and is kept on it’s own save file in case you wanted to keep a pre-NG+ save which is nice since I actually did want that.

There are around a dozen or so gadgets with a few extra upgrades to existing and new ones. Thankfully you start with your gadgets from Arkham Asylum so there’s a nice balance of variety when you get the new toys and some freshness when your old ones get some nice upgrades. The new gadgets might not be great for offensive combat, but they’re a godsend for playing tactically. The disruptor can basically deactivate guns causing thugs to humorously express shock when their guns aren’t working, the smoke bomb is great for sneaking away or pulling off some quick silent takedowns, and the freeze bomb is great for freezing some thugs allowing you to focus on bigger threats. An upgrade your trusty batarang gets later in the story is absolutely phenomenal though; it’s the reverse batarang and when you toss it at an enemy it will tap them behind their head instead of on the face. This helped so much (especially during some challenge rooms) since because it hit them on the back of their head they think it came from that direction and will walk off inspecting in that area. It really helps with moving a guy away from a place he’s guarding or just to get him to turn around to perform a silent takedown.

Challenge Rooms return as Riddler’s Revenge with 24 stages. 6 for combat rooms, another 6 for stealth rooms, and then both rooms get another 6 of the same maps in a higher difficulty (extreme). These are basically the same as the ones in Arkham Asylum with you trying to reach a certain score (combat rooms) or fulfill the three objectives (stealth rooms) to gain bronze, silver, or gold trophies. The neat thing is that you can play as Catwoman, Nightwing, and soon Robin with their own move-sets and unique gadgets. You can also equip the different skins such as The Dark Knight skin on Batman or some skins Catwoman, Nightwing, and Robin have.

The graphics didn’t seem to get much of a bump from Arkham Asylum, but that’s not to say they’re terrible to look at. Arkham City might be on the Unreal Engine, but it’s one of the few games on that engine that actually has a fantastic art style to differentiate itself from others on the engine. From the gloomy streets of Arkham City to the diversity of each villain’s hideout, there’s tons of eye-candy to view in this game with a haunting soundtrack to accompany you.

The Final Word
Batman: Arkham City pulled an Assassin’s Creed 2 in that it took the formula of the previous game and pumped it full of steroids. If you enjoyed Arkham Asylum you’re going to love AC and if you still haven’t played AA then this would be a suitable place to jump in since the back-story is explained. With a sizable campaign, NG+, side-missions, Riddler trophies, Catwoman specific trophies, and challenge rooms AC is looking to get quite a bit of playtime out of you. I should note that I didn’t get to play the Catwoman content due to my PS3 being broken and having to play the game at a friend’s house.

– MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great