Batman: Arkham City

Have you heard of Batman? He's mighty popular at current, what with Mr Christian 'Gravel-Voice' Bale giving it all that on the big screen. Thankfully, Rocksteady Games have made two titles to date with a much better sounding protagonist. I've played Arkham Asylum, and loved it, and now I've played Arkham City. Look, here:

In the Batmaniverse, Arkham Asylum is akin to an Alcatraz for the criminally insane, and is the setting for the first game in this series. A stonker of a title, go play it. The name Arkham is taken from the H.P. Lovecraft mythos, a town in Massachusetts which features in 12 of his tales. I figure this information will cause a certain friend of mine to explode with cross-over desires. Onwards with the review.

Plot

How am I supposed to brood without the Bat-Umbrella?

This game, Arkham City, is basically Asylum but bigger. The premise of an asylum for dangerous criminals has been expanded to 'city' size (more on that later), and the number of villains doubled. The plot sees Bruce Wayne imprisoned by Dr Hugo Strange, the overseer of Arkham City, for basically no clear reason other than so he can swoop around a dark, Gothic landscape for a bit and be gruff. Once inside The Caped Crusader immediately sets off trying to...no, wait, he has no motivation at this point. Yes, he's been imprisoned by Strange and would probably like to get out, but the first thing he does is rescue Catwoman from Two-Face, I assume so the game can introduce the second playable character. After this, the three major villains (Two-Face, The Penguin and The Joker) present themselves and territories are carved up across the city. In addition to these three Big Villains and their appropriately garbed henchmen armies, there are also several Small Villains running about being a nuisance. This is present in the form of a few side missions that have multiple parts which become available as you progress through the main plot. These missions provide enjoyable sections of the game where you get a chance to play The Detective and not The Cage Fighter. There are also a few recognisable names from about the mythos, like Commissioner Gordon, Oracle and a few TV celebs that crop up to be liabilities during the game as well. All in all, a ton of names well and truly dropped. Now Batman can get on with the task of....nonono, wait!

When will this happen?!

The Riddler. He's back and all, only this time instead of being a series of disembodied recorded taunts with a graffiti problem he's an actual villain in the city. There are riddles to solve by taking thousands of photos of everything you can with your cowl-cam and over 400 trophies to find which range in difficulty from 'look up, use batclaw' to piloting a batarang through a sewer version of the Boota Eve course. In addition to this, the oddly House-resembling Riddler has captured a few medics who were also trapped in Arkham City. When you have found a enough trophies The Riddler challenges you to solve his puzzle houses and save the hostages, the final puzzle house being where you meet and defeat Edward Nigma himself.

Characters

I think I can safely assume that, even if you've not seen The Dark Knight, you're at least aware of the truly wonderful performance that the late Heath Ledger gave in THE LEADING ROLE as The Joker. He was great because he captured the essence of unpredictability and madness of The Joker that is diametric to Batman's logical and calculating methods of detective work, moral code etc. But that was the Nolan franchise, and is thankfully very different and removed from this game. In the Arkham series, The Joker is voiced by Mark "I used to bulls-eye wamp rats back home in my T-16" Hamill and he does a stunning job. His laugh is spot on, and that's one of the most important parts to the character. In general, each Big Villain is very well done, each playing perfectly to the single trait that was the original inspiration for each character. There is a tier system for importance of villain in this game: The Joker and Hugo Strange are at the top, followed by The Penguin, Ra's al Ghul and Two-Face as major obstacles for Batman, below them Mr Freeze, Poison Ivy, Bane, Deadshot, Azreal, The Riddler and Hush occupying either passing roles as 'hey look, it's that one!' during missions related to other, bigger villains or as side missions in their own right. Next comes the one-appearance only tier, with Clayface, The Mad Hatter and Solomon Grundy. Finally, at the base of the Pyramid of Screen-time, are all the passing references in riddles etc. In total, I counted over 40 named heroes, villains or general characters. In Asylum, most of these characters were mentioned in passing, their names usually being linked to a riddle or mentioned in dialogue, but in City at least 25 are actually in the game. This is ridiculous. Most barely get any screen-time and those that do are developed to the bare minimum. I would've much rather had The Joker, Two-Face and The Penguin, with the potential for each of them to have a secondary villain or two (Ivy, Bane, Deadshot etc) in their employ.

I CAN develop more than
2 characters in a game!

This would've allowed more than a passing show for each villain other  than The Joker, who's the only one I could really tell you anything about  his motives or plans. It would also enable people who are completely  unfamiliar with any of these villains to enjoy their appearances more.  Granted, each character does have a biography in the pause menu but  this is just a flimsy solution to cover the design choice, in my opinion. 

Combat

So there's a lot of stuff going on. In between the things happening plot-wise Batman is usually punching someone. The combat is lifted directly from Asylum, as one would expect, and works just as well. A slight modification including some end of combo finishers just adds to the fun of taking on 50 henchmen at once. All the gadgets (batarang, batclaw, bat-tazer, bat-splosive, bat-birthday cake) and signature moves can be worked into any combo allowing for illegal levels of fun to be had providing you nail the timing. If you've played Arkham Asylum you'll know that early on B-man can't do jack against guns, and the same is true in City. So, not only do you now have a gadget for silently jamming enemy weapons, causing them to panic when you appear and they can't fire, but at the end of a combo you can leap over to the smug bastard with the assault rifle, shotgun or even stun-stick and rip it out of his hands. That not enough? Don't worry, it isn't, you dismantle it in seconds right before his eyes. The henchman genuinely looks upset. And then you throat-punch him.

The best kind of four-way

Fighting anything larger than henchmen is rare. There are The Abramovici Twins (surgically separated conjoined twins with one arm each, one wields a sickle and the other a hammer (Soviet reference shoryuken) and then maybe two Titan henchmen, previously seen in Asylum. Both are dealt with in similar ways, and are not handled badly, it would just have been nice to see more of them as most boss fights are either 'fight hoard, single punch takes out Big Villian' or 'get swamped by Ra's al Ghul and his multiple guises

For the most part making your way around the city involves avoiding henchmen without guns (very simple due to the sexy flight mechanics) or stealthily taking out those with guns. Still very satisfying to clear an entire room of henchman without any of them noticing.

Visuals

Booting this game brought back a wonderful sight to my eyes, a sight that hasn't been seen since the first Dawn of War. A PC Stress Test. I ran it, and it looked fine. I started the game on Ultra High, everything lagged. It rendered fine, but the game was running at half speed. Tweaking a few key settings down to High solved everything. This game is not beautiful, because that wouldn't fit with the Gothic theme. It is as good looking as it needs to be, and then some, but by no means blew my mind. In fact, it was very similar to Asylum. I feel City was just a case of expanding instead of innovating anything new, so this is to be expected and not criticised. 

I'm Batman

Along that theme comes my first criticism. There are a few internal areas, the GCDP morgue and a few rooms in the subway and steelmill, which are pretty much lifted from Asylum and given a quick re-skin. Whilst I don't begrudge the devs doing this, I feel it's a tad sloppy for a triple A game. My second criticism is an expansion on my first, or lack there of. The game is too small. When you climb certain buildings and look out to the East you can clearly see Arkham Asylum in the distance, and due to perspective it does indeed look small in comparison to City. But when you consider the actual playable size of Asylum, I'll wager it was probably about 60-70% the size of City. This is flat out not big enough for this game. If we can have full sandbox worlds in games like InFamous, GTA, Prototype then why didn't Batman get one? An example to further highlight my irritation: at one point there were Two-Face thugs patrolling the steps of a building chatting about The Penguin and how he sucks...whilst not 25m away across the road there were Penguin thugs saying the same things about Two-Face. The game really needed double the space.

On a lesser note, the score is spot on. A brilliant mix of Nolan-esque soundtrack and original themes.

Longevity

Picture funny, but
not relevant

The game took me 32 hours to finish; that's the main quest, all the side missions and all The Riddler trophies/challenges. Then there's the ton of challenge maps available to be played as Batman or Catwomen, (Nightwing and Robin if you shell out for the DLC) but all they consist of is internal maps used in the main game filled with either a hoard to fight or some guards to takedown. These challenge maps were also present in Asylum, and I ignored them then as well. There is also New Game Plus, which restarts the story but you keep all your upgrades and gadgets, plus change Batman's suit to one of 7 available as DLC. The villains are also leveled to match, to keep the challenge up. This mode is best for trophy hunting as, with all the gadgets unlocked, any Riddler trophy you come across can be claimed then and there (idiocy dependent). There is also a single achievement for finishing the game twice. I HATE this, for two reasons; 1) because it's the cheapest way to extend a game, 'just do it again for a shiny thing,' and 2) because I'm probably going to do it.

Conclusion

A very good game, well worth what I paid for it and certainly an enjoyable way to spend 30+ hours. It is by no means perfect, nothing ever is, but what flaws it has are mostly down to my personal experience and expectations. Recommended to anyone who enjoyed Asylum, fans of comic book characters and stealth games.

Those of you wanting batnips can take a hike.

Surrender to them