The boyscout does good!
Arkham City is such a well polished game it makes the persistently nagging “good guy” batman attitude become a non issue even for me and I’m quite the supporter of eye for an eye justice.
I’m no expert or even a fan of Batman fiction so a few characters in this title were a bit confusing but the core of the story was easy to follow and entertaining for even the most lacking Batman fans. The leading characters voice acting was superb and yet again the Joker is a shining achievement in character quality in a video game. This is another video game title with story and character production values near that of the big screen.
The combat is nearly the same as what I remember from Arkham Asylum, which is for the most part a very good thing. There is a wide array of gadgets to use but I didn’t find any fun enough or efficient enough to make me stop punching faces. I have nothing poor to say about the combat and Batman’s tools but just that it could have been better if you had more stealth tools. Nothing in the arsenal really helped you master stealth killing rather than simply sneaking behind the villains and doing it the old fashioned way. For the most part it’s a lot of grapple traveling to pick off enemies one by one especially on harder difficulty.
Arkham City looks similar to Asylum in its dark, sharp, well lit, beautiful in the darkest way concrete jungles and the bowels there in. You don’t spend too much time in any one area and the variety of scenery in enough to keep it fresh. The gliding and grappling around the city to get to your various missions is quite satisfying. All the while the streets are alive with trouble which adds to the depth of the atrocities happening around you. Traveling from mission to mission is really just travelling from one instance to another as most activities will happen in buildings but there are seemingly no loads so it’s managed terrifically.
The amount of polish in Arkham City is virtually as much as you could ask for. I ran into not a single bug for my entire play experience. I feel as though talking of bugs is a disservice to the quality of this game though. They have done such a good job they are beyond bugs being an issue. I didn’t even find any mechanical things wrong or annoying in this game. From every grapple, glide to punch it was fluid and smooth.
The only issue I had with this game was the pure lack of brutal justice on behalf of Batman. I realize it is simply Batman’s way but it bothered me quite a bit. Nearly everyone you encounter is the epitome of evil, murderers, thieves, torturers and all repeat offenders yet Batman wants to simply give them all a slap on the wrist and leave them all to do it again in one of the most dark and depressing worlds in games. I found myself itching to off some of those awful characters but I never got close to it, over and over again I kept thinking why are you letting them live!
Arkham City offers more side missions and “crap” to find than any other game I can think of off the top of my head so if you’re a huge batman fan or an achievement whore this game will keep you busy for dozens of hours. The sheer amount of comic character cameos is amazing in itself. At nearly every turn there is something else to do that doesn’t have anything to do with the main story.
Batman Arkham city is fantastic game, so fantastic it’s one of those games that you can literally just keep playing, no breaks needed to cool off like so many titles require. The way this game flows from characters, combat, movement to beautiful sinister scenery is so smooth this game deserves to be played hands down as it lives up to its AAA title.
