Oh Christ...

A bloody shitting fucking cunting shark! Just outta the icy blue! God, there's little else that can scare me more than a damned shark. And of all the games, Arkham City is pretty low on the list for me to predict there's going to be one leaping at me through a pool of ice. It makes sense and all, given that I'm currently matching wits or whatever with The Penguin, but still...

Arkham City is now possibly one of the scariest games that I can recall playing in recent memory >_>'

In other news, this game's great. Currently playing through the GOTY edition, and while I have already played through Arkham Aslyum, there's just something about City that I prefer. It's probably the actual Arkham City itself and how I always love to spend the first few hours of such games just going around exploring, and in this case trying to scavenge as many of those Riddler trophies as possible.

I really enjoy listening to all of the dialogue you hear between the different gang of thugs too; it's especially interesting to hear how much they hate all of this. They're a bunch of lowlife scumbags, but listening to them moan and sometimes cower in fear from the other gangs, if not from the cold or a lack of food makes them appear that little bit more human than I would have expected.

Also, I gotta admit, I'm not really feeling Nolan North as The Penguin. His accent is mostly fine, but there's just something about the coarseness of his voice that just sounds off for some reason. Troy Baker done a surprisingly effective job as Two-Face, though. Does he actually show up again BTW? I imagine he's being saved for more of Catwoman's segments. Oh, and I hafta agree with Jeff, Catwoman isn't an exceptionally interesting character to play as and she's mostly just Batman but with fewer options. Her dialogue is awful at that, so not a fan.

Anywhoo, sharks still freak me out. Fin.

The dinosaur that pops up earlier on in the museum was a bigger scare for me. It came outta nowhere.

Two Face becomes an antagonist for Catwoman in her stuff, but it's not that great, I agree that her parts are the weakest, and their attempts to make the character sexy just made her really annoying.

The dialogue in general is pretty good, I enjoyed more on the second time through, and the flying once you get the hang of it is amazing, I still don't get why Brad just couldn't seem to understand it.

That gave me a slight startle too, but sharks are a weakness of mine.

Yeah, the writing's fine for the most part, it's just like you said, their attempts at really sexing Catwoman up feel forced and even sorta campy, with all of her god awful puns and wordplay. Kevin Conroy does at least do a much better turn as Batman this time around. His performance in Asylum comparatively sounded a little lazy, like he was completely phoning it in. In City, however, he can actually come across as pretty intimidating, especially when he's interrogating the Riddler informants. And I agree, the gliding is really fun to play around when paired with Batman's improved grapple hook.

I played it through on 360 when it came out, didn't enjoy it that much. Bought the GOTY version on pc to give it a another try but still don't really like it. I loved the shit out of Arkham Asylum and I can't really put my finger on why I just can't get into the sequel. I think the new Tomb Raider is scratching that itch for an Arkham Asylum sequel more for me.

You've just made me wanna replay Arkham City after reading your post, and starting a new long game is the last damn thing I need. Thank you for making me whiff a tasty snadwich then taking it away a-hole!

Seriously though, have fun game's fantastic, and I remember the shark startling the hell out of me too. But is the shark sequence as a whole nearly as intense and nerve-wrecking as Funtime with Killer Croc? Hell no.

Oh dude, tell me about it. Sharks are a gillion times scarier than anything else in the sea.

If you spend long enough hunting the Riddler trophies you'll be sick of the gang dialogue.

I played City for the first time a just before Christmas and it blew me away. The voicing for the Penguin is pure Dick van Dyke nonsense in terms of accent, but I accepted that as part of the silliness and campiness that stops the game from completely po-faced - same goes for Catwoman's sleazy overplayed seduction act.

Having had a retrospective look at some of the response the game got, I really don't understand why the city traversal is considered so troublesome by people like Jeff and Brad. IMO it's one of several big advantages that City has over Asylum. I worked through the Augmented Reality training stuff within the first couple of hours and after that I was gliding and hooking around the place like a champ, all of it feeling super satisfying. The environments in City are some of the best I've seen in gaming for years. It's almost unique in that it boasts a sewer/underground section which I look forward to, rather than dread, because the design and conception are all so inspired. GREAT GAME.

Also Two Face does come back but only in a Catwoman segment.

Ugh. This discussion was going swimmingly until this.

Yeah. It was totally a "I wonder what'll happen if I stay on the i-OH GOD"

Nolan North as the Penguin may merely be serviceable (actually he's fine) but Nolan North as 80% of the random thugs in the game is fucking awesome; there can never be enough Nolan North talking to Nolan North in games. Arkham Asylum is scarier/creepier for the most part but City is still intense and thought provoking from start to finish. The challenge rooms are interesting and difficult but I wouldn't call it precisely "fun" to 100% them; though getting to see hundreds and hundreds of different animations per character is pretty sweet. Of course doing Asylum's combat rooms after doing City is such a ridiculously easy breeze it is moderately enjoyable.

You're gonna love the Mr. Freeze fight. Everybody does.

@video_game_king: It's good on NG+, I'd say it is simply too easy on lower difficulty levels so it'll only last 45 seconds to a minute for most people.

if you hate sharks play the REmake on gamecube to see a character get ripped apart in a pretty awesome way :D

I knew the shark was coming once they showed it underwater or eat that prisoner or whatever.

"Beat down" on a shark is still the coolest video game prompt I've seen.

Look closely at OP's avatar ;)

Now on topic of the shark, it got me pretty good too the first time despite Ryan spoiling it on twitter with something along the lines of "OH JESUS CHRIST SHARK!!".

Yes, it was maybe one of the few things I liked about Arkham City

The killer croc rafts segment was definitely intense, but it also went on for a little too long and got to be somewhat formulaic. Plus watching him topple over like that just with the throw of a batarang over and over got to be a little silly.

Oh I'm sure, plus so much of the dialogue is contextual depending on what's happening in the story, so being left with the generic ad-libs after so long will no doubt get really tiresome. Fortunately I highly doubt that I'm going to bother to collect every single one of those trophies. I'll just collect as many as I feel like, which is pretty much how I always tackle games with an absurd amount of collectibles. There's always the enthusiasm, but it eventually gets worn out after so long and I give up and move on. Except for the inFAMOUS games, but they're different, because I bloody love the inFAMOUS games.

Oh snap.

It is kinda funny how there's an entire city full of thugs, and yet they're all voiced by either Nolan North, Rick Wasserman, or Steven Blum.

After finishing the museum segment, I've changed my mind, Nolan's North cockney accent is actually really bad. But the funny bad, like your Dick Van Dyke comparison; there were parts where he's screaming at you during the Solomon Grundy boss battle where he completely loses the voice and then it's like I'm being thrown death-threats by Nathan Drake. Plus he constantly keeps shifting from generic well spoken American to cockney, like when he pronounced laugh as 'laff' instead of 'larf' like how a Londoner would. Still, once I got over that it's a pretty fun performance.

?

I musta missed that somehow, as when it lunges outta the water at you that the first I saw of it. Oh, and yes, the ''beat down'' prompt was hilarious. And to think after all of praise Far Cry 3 got for video game shark punching, when Arkham City was well ahead of the curb!

Indeedly. I already know plenty to do with the remake, and Neptune encounter was perhaps some of the most frightening few seconds I've ever experienced when playing a video game.

Man just wait until you get to the sharks on motorcycles part.

I wish Arkham City had biker sharks because that would be fucking rad.

@video_game_king said:

I felt like I was in a boss fight in MGS. I dunno, It felt weird to me.

...OK, now I'm excited.

It's a pretty great fight. It plays on all the strength of what makes Batman a great character. One of the most interesting boss fight this generation. Not hard but creative.

Don't......DON'T watch Jaws in that case....

Ha, what the Hell? It's started to occur a lot more often recently, but ever since, I think, my Operation Raccoon City rants, I've been 'targeted' by whoever the trolls are who keep creating these dumb alt accounts. My RE6 review in particular had me swarmed in them, and every so often there's still someone who keeps trying to goad me (usually by saying that they really like RE6 while have also been a fan of the series since the beginning blah blah blah) whenever a new RE anything crops up.

Also, this is going to look like a complete non sequitur once that comment's been deleted...

I haven't seen it in its entirety, though it's one of those movies that's so ingrained in popular culture that I've still inevitably come across a lot of its most famous scenes. I don't have a legitimate phobia of sharks or anything serious like that, though... And besides, for as scary as I find them, that's precisely the reason why I also enjoy shark encounters in games.

@yummylee:

A bloody shitting fucking cunting shark!

I think this is the best string of words I've laid my eyes on in at least a week.

This better not stop or it'll die. I'm so, so sorry.

Like most folks with Deus Ex, I feel the strong desire to replay Arkham City whenever a thread like this comes up. Fuck, I love that game.

I don't blame you, because this game was bloody incredible. I find it weird how completely not blown away I was with Asylum--while I still enjoyed it a lot--and yet City is the one that I've grown an attachment to. It's probably because the story was so much more engaging, and there was a better and even more varied pantheon of Batman characters this time around. Plus exploring the city is so much fun; Arkham City in general feels like a noticeably bigger game overall, yet it still sticks to the same high level of quality throughout.

Much better Batman this time around too. I mean this is undoubtedly one of Kevin Conroy's best Batman performances across his career I'd say. Oh, and the Mr Freeze boss battle really was pretty cool... Oh God did I really just...?! Though unfortunately like Asylum before it, it's perhaps the only good boss battle in the game. Ra's Al Ghul was at least stunning from an aesthetic point of view, but he wasn't exceptionally fun to fight; Batman's rather clunky dodge maneuver just didn't seem to mesh very well with the amount of precise movement it required. Fantastic ending, though, even if, again, the boss battle itself wasn't the greatest moment. But the actual reveal and the way it was handled was really well done, as was the final dialogue between Batman and Joker.

One of the main problems that really stand out to me, though, is that the Catwoman segments suck. They're super short and really inconsequential overall, and exploring the city as Catwoman just isn't as fun as Batman. She can't solve any of the riddles, and her severely limited array of gadgets means there's very little overall progress she can make. What was also annoying is while hunting for the Catwoman exclusive trophies, some of them would actually require Batman to like, blow open this wall first or something, which only made Catwoman feel all the more redundant in the grand scheme. Throwing you that decision to make between taking the money or saving Batman was also sort of out-of-place and meaningless. I'm to understand that if you take the money and run then the game just ends? If that's the case then why even put it in there anyway? It sorta reminds me of those faux-decisions you're given in JRPGs, where you're asked so and so, and you can reply with yes/no, but saying no doesn't actually do anything and you're actually meant to say yes. Her finale against Two-Face was especially piecemeal and underwhelming as well, and as I mentioned earlier, she's just a really annoying character at that

I also think that the Mad Hatter didn't get his due; his side-mission was super trippy, especially when you're fighting while wearing that incredibly creepy rabbit mask of his. I was hoping that this Mad Hatter storyline was going to give you a lot of mindbends ala the Scarecrow from Asylum, and for it to end just after that one one fight was really disappointing. Plus bringing in Peter MacNicol and to have him do so little was downright criminal.

They're the only two major complaints that crop to mind, though. Otherwise this game was so consistently engaging; it's been a fair while since I've spent my time playing a game up till like 5am because I just wanted to keep going and explore more. I was always eager to play the next story beat, find a few dozen more riddler trophies, make some more progress with the side-missions, fail time and time again at that blasted Advanced AR1 mission...

From a story perspective I think that Hugo Strange's appearances were a bit few and far between. Plus the whole ''he knows Batman's identity'' plot device never really went anywhere or served much purpose. Though it didn't hamper my enjoyment too much; the character interactions between Batman and the villains is what people should really be here for anywhoo. As of now I'm still messing about the city, picking up as many more of these Riddlers Trophies that I can be bothered with, and I'll more than likely give NG+ a go. Plus there's also Harley Quinn's revenge I need to play alongside some more messing about in the combat rooms.

Just one Hell of a damn fine game.

I love the premise of Asylum where Batman is stuck with the lunatics while I prefer the open-worldness of Arkham City. There's just so much shit to do! Love it.

Did anyone find the final secret that the devs said no-one had found? Even this guy apparently didn't find it.

EDIT: I should probably point out, that video be spoilery.

So you know, don't watch it if you haven't completed the game.