After a very long hiatius from this blog and GiantBomb.com I am here again to tell you what game I played through and my experience with it. This time I will be covering the best Batman game I have ever played: Batman: Arkham City.

Batman: Arkham City is a game that comes directly after Batman: Arkham Asylum. The story this go around is that part of Gotham is blocked off to become a super prison of sorts, and Bruce Wayne does not like it. He goes to a press conference to speak his mind, and is dutifully kidnapped by Hugo Strange who runs the prison. This starts the tutorial section of the game, and really I do not want to tell you more of the story from there. I think that the story of this game, while not exceptional by any means, is much better experienced than told in any way. The one thing I will say is that Arkham City is full of many fan favorite villains, and you will see many familiar faces. Other than that you should experience who all is in Arkham City for yourself.

Arkham City plays almost the exact same as Arkham Asylum, for those of you who have never experienced either I will try and explain the style of play. Where Arkham Asylum was a confined area, Arkham City is precisely what it says it is, a city. When you are not inside of a building or underground you can “glide” around the city to your hearts content. The game is an open world experience, except that Arkham City is not as massive as some other open world games. Though what it does like in pure size it makes up for in the urge of exploration. Nearly every nook and cranny of Arkham has some sort of collectible to be found. I think it would be safe to say that when you start the game there is a collectable within a 30 foot radius at all time. Most of these collectibles unlock art, or “Riddler Challenges” which are essentially challenge rooms to try and do your best in, in other words they are optional objectives. The game as a whole is very much a Metroid-Vania game, with a dash of Zelda for good measure. You go from “dungeon” to “dungeon” collecting different gadgets so you can go to a different place that was unavailable before obtaining a certain item. I got the Zelda vibe from different objectives that I would call side quests. There are villains, Bane being one of them, that you may never even meet if you do not do a little exploring and side questing. These people usually do not give you much in the way of gadgets (I can’t recall if any of them even give anything other than experience points) but the experience is worth it.

The combat and bosses in the game are where I had the most fun. The combat is brutal hand to hand most of the time, and is some of the most satisfying combat I have played in a game. I played the game on the normal difficulty and some of the battles on the streets can be a real challenge, especially against gunned foes who can take Batman out with even greater speed. This is where the depth of the game comes in, you don’t need to take these guys head on, you can do as you please. Most of the battles in the open environment I chose to be stealthy. I would dive bomb from the skies and take out three guys on a roof and then jump to the next group feeling like Batman the entire time. Some battles I would barely make it out of and with those I felt more accomplished. The bosses are a high point of the game as well. This is where the real creativity shines through. From the visual design, level design, to how they are defeated these are without a doubt the most interesting parts of the game. While some of them were a bit too easy it was nice to get your Bat-Ass handed to you sometime and watch them come out from a black screen to mock you. This feature alone made me really start to dislike the villains, every time you reach a game over screen the villain who is your primary objective mocks you, for something so simple it does a lot.

I played this on the WiiU and the game does look really good. Everything and everyone looks like they should. I could feel the snow in Gotham as well, everywhere looked cold and uncomfortable and created a great sense of atmosphere. I never experienced slow-down of any type even when there was some absolutely giant brawls going on screen. The game did have some muddy textures and slight pop-in but it was never anything that really detracted from the experience. Especially when you could look at the breathtaking sight of the city, and how crumbled and destroyed it is. The game while being dark is never afraid of color. Signs are lit up all different colors, none of the enemies just wear gray, black or brown, and the inside of every building has a full palette of color, good to see in a “dark” game. There is but one “major” problem with the game that is really just a personal problem.

Catwoman. There is nothing wrong with how she looks, or is as a character, just I did not like the segments where she was required, aside from one that if I told you would be spoilers. I am not sure why she is really even in the game, aside from a few alright segments she does not add anything new. Not to mention I forgot about her so much mid-game that I did not level her up at all giving all the level ups to Batman leaving her with a late game boss to beat and zero upgrades to boot. She is just a strikingly different character to play as, and this random change leaded to a jarring change in pace. While post-game I think she is significantly better outside of her missions, it does not change the fact that during the actual game she feels more tacked on and less of an actual part of the Arkham City experience.

Batman: Arkham City is a game that every Batman fan should play. Not only is it a fantastic Batman game, but it stands on its own two feet as a fantastic game in it’s own right. A mix of the challenge, and being able to tackle most objectives however you please as well as the insane amount of fanservice take this game above what I thought it would be. Not to mention the amount of playability and replayability is high with a new game plus and tons of extras to collect, this is a game that is one of my new favorites and highly worth your time.

Rating: Buy It

BLOG NOTE: I will have another write up coming pretty soon that will be a quick little summary of games that I have played and either don’t think they deserve a full write up, or do not want to write a full post just for them. After that I will have another full post as the one seen above. Hope you like it! And feel free to comment (good or bad).

Great writeup, loved the riddler trophies in AC. Makes me feel sorry for whoever is developing Arkham Origins. To follow up AC with how great it was in such a short time frame at the end of a console cycle is a bad move. Origins is gonna bomba hard.

Batman, Batman, Batman.

So what did you think of the Wii U experience? Was the lack of visual fidelity redeemed at all by the second screen stuff?

Better than Asylum? Uh.

In every conceivable way, yes it is. It does everything Asylum did, design wise, and improved upon it. Even the story and music are better across the board. I can't think of a single element that was better in Arkham Asylum.

This reminds me, I really gotta get on that Harley DLC.

I'll be completely open about the fact that I've only played about half of Arkham City, but I think I liked Asylum a bit more. Yes, City has more going on with the larger environments and whatnot, but I really liked the confined nature of the Asylum. It really felt like you were trapped in this little hotbed of criminal activity. The idea of an entire city seemed genius, but has become more of a chore for me to navigate thus far.

Besides, did Batman build an effin' Batcave underneath Arkham City like he did under the Asylum, just in case? Wait, potential spoilers. Don't answer that. God, I hope he did.

Arkham Asylum is a way superior game to AC and anybody who says differently is simply batshit crazy.

You are an actual crazy person.

You're welcome to disagree. I wouldn't deny your right to be wrong.

@jjweatherman: I found the second screen extremely helpful actually. I noticed that I would look at it quite a bit because the map being displayed. It made traversing the City the best (In my opinion) of all of them. There was some dumb things like looking down at it for Batarang stuff, and other gimmicks but mostly not bad. And the drop in graphics was not as noticeable as some would like to believe but it definitely is there.

@castiel: I simply found Arkham City to be more enjoyable honestly. Though both games are amazing. But to each their own opinion!

@maskedarcstrike: Thanks for the positive response! And yes WB Montreal is going to have a hard time making the next installment full of staying power. I would not want that on my shoulders, hopefully the series continues to implement new ideas and stay fresh.