Game Review: Batman Arkham City

Batman: Arkham Asylum may just have been the quintessential superhero video game ever made. Yet  somehow Rocksteady Studios had to find a way to outdo themselves. Their answer? Make the same exact game but put Batman in an urban setting with a few new bells and whistles.

Title : Batman:Arkham City

Genre : Action-Adventure, Beat ‘Em Up

Developers : Rocksteady Studios

Consoles : PS3, Xbox 360, Windows PC, Wii U

Rating : T for Teen

This review is spoiler FREE

This time around you get to feel a little more like the Caped Crusader as you glide across roof tops in the night sky. It’s a dream come true for Batman fans and if you enjoyed Arkham Asylum (AA) then you’ll love Arkham City (AC).

The city of Arkham has been turned into a badguy playground and each bully is fighting for his own territory. Well, they’re supposedly competing for territory. You never actually see any of the villains fighting each other and all the henchmen seem to know which boundaries not to cross. However, it would have been nice to actually see some real conflict among the antagonists.

Taking place six months after AA, AC doesn’t really try to fill in the gaps and I highly recommend you read the comic book that is supposed to bridge the two games. Basically all you need to know right now is that prisoners have been relocated from Blackgate Prison and Arkham Asylum to the bulk of Arkham City.

The black and white color scheme of the entire game enforces the lack of a grey area with the Dark Knight. Every aspect of the game, from the cover to the main menu, is garbed in black and laced with white. Often, Batman is even encouraged to kill, especially when his life is at stake. You’ll witness other characters constantly dealing with the dark theme of death. In fact, this black and white, life and death aspect practically writes the entire Joker story line. But it isn’t until you are about 4 minutes into the ending credits that it really hits home. AC is something of a conundrum as the story of the game is somewhat shallow and uninspired and yet underneath it are some very dark and intriguing themes. After a moment of reflection, I realized the kind of subtle metaphor that AC conveys. Black and white.

There are two main story lines going on simultaneously – three if you count Catwoman (which I don’t). Dr. Hugo Strange becomes a focal point with his mysterious activity involving Arkham City and the mayor of Gotham. It was a disappointing story to say the least. The more exciting subplot is in regards to the Joker trying to get his revenge after what happened in AA. Rocksteady really captured the Joker this time around. His role provides enough entertainment to counteract the mundane storyline. Without whom, the game would feel shallow and lacking. My biggest complaint with AC is the story element. With the exception of the Joker, it isn’t all that creative and feels like a cheap excuse to throw in as many familiar faces as possible. There’s little – if any – purpose for all these characters despite some of them being in the first game. In fact, many of them simply disappear from the story just when you think Rocksteady is about to do something justifiable. The game starts out with a great pace but soon slows down and has some trouble catching up.

For those that purchase the game brand new, you’ll get an exclusive code for Catwoman DLC. This gives you a few episodes to play that are dispersed out over various plot points in the game. For those who don’t have the Catwoman code, don’t feel disappointed. It’s true that you are missing out on in game content but nothing that enhances the story in any way. Rocksteady says she accounts for about 10 percent of the game. I can tell you that’s simply not true. It’s more like 5 percent and it’s pretty pointless stuff. The only perk is that she has her own fighting style that’s fun to watch. Her DLC episodes are really designed to be standalone content that amounts to nothing more than an unexplained feud with Two Face. Of all things, my biggest gripe with the Cat is that she uses a whip to traverse the city. After being spoiled with Batman’s hook-shot gliding style, it becomes quite annoying.

The great minds at Rocksteady came up with the brilliant idea to allow the player to get a decision-based, alternate ending when playing as Catwoman. It’s so insignificant that it should actually be called an instant ending as opposed to an alternate. Simply put, if you decide to go right instead of left then the end game credits will start and you’re done. It’s so ridiculous it makes you wonder if Rocksteady even cares.

Obviously, they had to go bigger with AC. But, again, it’s pretty much the same exact game as AA with a few additions. The game is much less claustrophobic with an entire city to explore. Unfortunately, the city itself is kind of small. It certainly trumps AA in size but you soon realize that you’re visiting the same buildings over and over and this time they’re just spread farther apart. Arkham City isn’t really a sandbox style game despite appearances. There isn’t a lot to see and do in Arkham besides answer pay phones and rescue political prisoners. The amount of side objectives is decent but it gets repetitive after a while. The environment of the city is very static and unchanging, and it really starts to feel limiting after a while.

Side missions are cool on paper but once you complete them you realize how boring and pointless they were. Some hinted at a possible third game to explain the reason for them being in there rather than give anything purposeful to this game. On top of that, the amount of Riddler trophies is absolutely daunting. To top it all off, knowing their location isn’t enough. Often times you’ll need to solve a little puzzle to be able to pick them up. Still, I highly recommend you do as many side missions as you can and do them early as they give you experience and enhanced gadgets. I’m not complaining about it, I just wish they could have taken all that effort and put it towards some real story.

As I said before, the big “improvement” with Arkham City is all the new characters that the game has. I won’t spoil anything but the vast majority of them serve little to no purpose other than fanfare. If you liked AA’s style of constantly going head to head with the villains then you’ll be disappointed this time around. There wasn’t as much excitement for me as there was with AA. Never knowing who you’re going to run into next and how to defeat them was what the dark and paranoid style of AA was all about. With AC it’s really about taking on ANOTHER large group of thugs and then ANOTHER large group of thugs. In the entire game, there were only three boss fights that actually felt like boss fights. Although, the combat of AC is so good that I never got tired of fighting endless numbers of henchmen. I could play the Batman ballet for hours but I still wanted the villains to stand out as their own unique confrontation.

The combat is the same as it was in AA but with a few additions. Knives, critical strikes, and the biggest addition is that there are armed goons everywhere. Automatic weapons and Batman don’t get along well. You also have the ability to intercept multiple enemies at the same time. It’s basically instant badass gratification. Combat is magically intuitive and so damn fluid that I can’t help but stare in amazement every time. Staying alive and keeping that combat multiplier up is much harder when facing enemies with different weapons and shields that you need to integrate into your combo’s at the drop of a hat.

The instant take downs are frustrating as hell because it requires you to instantly mash two specific buttons simultaneously. Hit one of those buttons before the other (triangle and square, or Circle and X) and you will miss out. I hope you’re good at equal opportunity thumb pressing.

We are still dealing with a Batman who can’t turn his neck. When not in combat, he can feel a little stiff. I can’t tell you how many times I continuously barrel rolled into a wall when I was actually trying to climb it. He also takes up a lot of screen space when gliding, which makes it hard to enjoy the city sights. AC tries to implement the stealth elements that you’ll remember from AA, only it felt very repetitive and not as rewarding. Rocksteady did a phenomenal job updating the combat but it would have been nice to see that be applied to the stealth and detective side of AC as well.

The city itself looks gorgeous and the detail is above par. The score and sound effects couldn’t possibly be any better and really put you in the world of AC. There seems to be no end to interesting dialogue as you are constantly overhearing the conversations of goons as they walk the streets. Additionally, you’ll constantly hear Harley or Joker talking over various com systems and you’ll even find someone constantly filling up your voicemail with entertaining messages.  The voice work is great – even if it seems like half the goons are voiced by Nolan North. As if that wasn’t enough for him, Nolan also voices the Penguin, talk about a payday.  This is also supposedly the final voice work for Mark Hamill who will be retiring and pursuing a career as a film director. Let me tell you that he went out with a bang. Kevin Conroy is Batman again so of course that’s awesome. He practically owns the character at this point.

There are some more subtle changes that I really liked. The detective mode has been turned down a notch so as not to encourage you to play through the entire game with it on. The map of the city will has waypoints that are easy to find as a giant bat signal shines above them. The game has an impressive upgrade system that allows you to choose how to spend your experience points. You can upgrade your gadgets, increase your defense against combat or guns or simply learn new take downs. You can take whatever approach you prefer.

Yes, Rocksteady has outdone themselves.  While AC, for the most part, feels redundant, it’s that “more” that we’ve all been craving. The replayability is pretty good. There’s a New Game + mode that will allow you to keep all your equipment and start the story over from the beginning. Be careful as the enemies are now tougher to fight, they’re smarter and won’t allow you to use the same tricks twice. With over 400 Riddler challenges and insanely difficult arena maps, you have to be some kind of lunatic to get the platinum in this.

I wouldn’t recommend this for “game of the year” but it’s going to make for one amazing rented game experience. If you ask me, it’s going through some serious over hype right now . You already know all the great aspects of this game, so I chose to offer my two cents on the lesser discussed aspects.

For more information on DLC and alternate costumes, check out our Gameplay and News article HERE.