Quick Look: Batman: Arkham City

NOTE! This video has been edited to remove any spoilers. Enjoy!

Damn, should've waited to watch it...

first user

The closest I have come to a first post. It'll have to do ...

@drewbert: Thanks, I have a long wait for the game next month.

Tried downloading the video, gave an error trying to grab the HD version. Will try again.

EDIT: Issue seems to be that I was on the /videos page and not the actual video's page, not reproducible.

I am watching the spoilery version right now. I WILL NEVER RELOAD THAT PAGE.

Maybe I'll watch it now.

Even without spoilers I'll wait until Ive played and finished the game. Think this will be on my top 3 list this year ^^

I watched the spoilery one

I dont remember anything very spoilery in it.

@Azteck said:

@drewbert: What was changed in this one?

Blurred some text, cut some audio, blacked out a loading screen.

Glad I wasn't paying too close attention when I watched it earlier

@lclay: There really wasn't. Nothing was mentioned about what happened in the game and I didn't notice anything that I thought was spoilery. I haven't played it yet since I'm still waiting on my copy from Amazon so hopefully it will be here sometime soon.

@drewbert .Thankyou! Doing that for us is remarkable, and very much appreciatte. And also like some others I've got a nice long wait..pc version better be worth it.

Thanks Drew, though I already had it spoiled. I REALLY hope it isn't the game's main twist.

@HT101: @lclay: There was some ambient dialogue from thugs early on which I assume isn't in this version. It seemed pretty significant but I hope it isn't. I really do.

I watched the whole thing a while ago, never noticed a thing. Oh well.

Only watched first 2 min - I gladly repeat myself: no Virtua_Davis - no Batlook for me. (I'm rather glad, he's not in it, making funny comments, so I can stay away from the rest of this video and enjoy the game spoiler-free, when it comes out.)

Wheee!!

Going out to buy this today.

Hey. Hey guys. You know what I do when I don't want to be spoiled by a game?

I don't watch the Quick Look before I play the game. Novel concept, huh? I don't watch something that shows off a random part of a game then whine about being spoiled. I go into QLs for games I'm excited for with the knowledge that there will probably be spoilers about something or another. Usually I'm fine with this. But in the rare cases I'm not (see: Dark Souls) I don't watch the damn thing until after I've played.

I dunno, maybe I'm the crazy one.

Played 2 hours of this so far....

Definitely GOTY material

Holding out for the PC version. It'll be a long wait, but at least this and Skyrim get released close together.

Is it just me or is the compression for this video a little wonky, HD looks really muddy and there's a lot of flickering even on the High version. :(

@HT101 said:

@lclay: There really wasn't. Nothing was mentioned about what happened in the game and I didn't notice anything that I thought was spoilery. I haven't played it yet since I'm still waiting on my copy from Amazon so hopefully it will be here sometime soon.

@ChibiSoma said:

Hey. Hey guys. You know what I do when I don't want to be spoiled by a game?

I don't watch the Quick Look before I play the game. Novel concept, huh? I don't watch something that shows off a random part of a game then whine about being spoiled. I go into QLs for games I'm excited for with the knowledge that there will probably be spoilers about something or another. Usually I'm fine with this. But in the rare cases I'm not (see: Dark Souls) I don't watch the damn thing until after I've played.

I dunno, maybe I'm the crazy one.

There was a piece of random thug dialogue that spoiled a big plot twist even though the QL was avoiding major story sections.

It appears that the UK release on PC is on the11th November....same day as Skrim, very annoying.

Get the xbox version

@DJJoeJoe said:

Is it just me or is the compression for this video a little wonky, HD looks really muddy and there's a lot of flickering even on the High version. :(

Yea the quality of HD videos has been quite bad. This one is one of the worse. I notified Vinny of it before but it's sad to see it's getting worse and not better. H264 can do a lot better then this.

@ChibiSoma said:

Hey. Hey guys. You know what I do when I don't want to be spoiled by a game?

I don't watch the Quick Look before I play the game. Novel concept, huh? I don't watch something that shows off a random part of a game then whine about being spoiled. I go into QLs for games I'm excited for with the knowledge that there will probably be spoilers about something or another. Usually I'm fine with this. But in the rare cases I'm not (see: Dark Souls) I don't watch the damn thing until after I've played.

I dunno, maybe I'm the crazy one.

Is it too much to ask for to expect a quick look of a game that is this anticipated to be spoiler free? The guys have always done a good job of keeping spoilers out of quick looks or at least throwing up a warning if there are any. So don't blame the people who expected the same this time. I too hope that the spoiler is not the game's big twist and is instead an early story beat.

@ChibiSoma said:

Hey. Hey guys. You know what I do when I don't want to be spoiled by a game?

I don't watch the Quick Look before I play the game. Novel concept, huh? I don't watch something that shows off a random part of a game then whine about being spoiled. I go into QLs for games I'm excited for with the knowledge that there will probably be spoilers about something or another. Usually I'm fine with this. But in the rare cases I'm not (see: Dark Souls) I don't watch the damn thing until after I've played.

I dunno, maybe I'm the crazy one.

I think you're the crazy one here. I feel like the whole point of a Quick Look is to show off how a game is before you buy it.

i was gonna get this for pc but i refuse to use games for windows live until it... is less terrible. PS3 VERSION FOR ME!

@Shimakaze Yea the videos I've made myself, captured via fraps and encoded with sony vegas and handbrake are a lot nicer than the stuff I'm seeing here lately, and I don't know anything about video production. With the default mp4/h.264 settings though a 15min 90gb fraps file goes down to around 900mb-1.2gbs and looks identical to the source and is very stable, fiddling with settings I can get significantly better results though I rarely have the hours it takes to deliver that.. plus youtube murders the quality anyways. Even through youtube's compression though my videos don't really look worse than what you can see in this particular video, better in a lot of cases.

I'm convinced this is an issue with Giantbomb switching to 60fps premium videos and working on the way they wanna encode/compress the videos, I know it's tough when they are hosting each video themselves 'just' for premium members in HD, I just feel weird looking at something and having it labeled as HD, which it's not. I'm pretty sure the team agrees at this point though, Vinny/Drew everyone else.

Is there any incentive to not stay in the scan mode unlike the last game where you stayed in it the whole time?

Thank you so much for blurring out the subtitles.

is there batmobile in this?

Nolan North.

Do the other character models all have shoulders 5X the width of their hips too? :P

Same bat time, same bat channel.

@drewbert: Hey Drew, are you able to see any distortion during the video? I'm seeing repeated weird glitching and macroblocking throughout.

Edit: Big example starts around 12:50 and goes to 12:54

Fuck you Dead Island. Fuck you fuck you fuck you

I thought due to a copyright by Bat Inc. that Batman's was the only form of Bat-justice.

They spent the whole time showing side-stuff and didn't show the campaign :(

Do you just counter dudes when they go to punch you for this whole game or what?

I'm just gonna buy it anyway, I didn't buy the first one.

yea had a lot of video distortion/glitches while watching

People need to calm the fuck down about this whole spoiler issue that's been permeating the Interwebs in the later years, and the why's of this are explained in the following article way better than I could: http://www.badassdigest.com/2010/11/14/the-devins-advocate-stop-worrying-about-spoilers

(Edited to add: yes I know the author is talking about spoilers in relation to film, but his basic argument applies to all media and entertainment in my opinion)

HOLY MOLY 20% off if you pre-purchase now on Steam? That's $39.99 !

Seems very strange (and wonderful) to me. Benefits of increased competition?

@Smokey_Earhole: Yea, spoilers aren't the end of the world. The game/thing should hold its own regardless of ANY prior knowledge about anything from the game.. that and giantbomb would never actualy spoil anything like tell you the twists at the end of a game or anything like that... they aren't jerks... any 'spoilers' are things that are from the start of the game (such as what's at the start of batman) and nothing more...

Also waiting on PC version (free code), but I need to watch this just to sate my appetite and prevent me from buying it early.

Batman: San Andreas

I'd love to see a Resident Evil take this semi-open world style with combat system. RE2 remake would be ideal!

@Eujin said:

@drewbert: Hey Drew, are you able to see any distortion during the video? I'm seeing repeated weird glitching and macroblocking throughout.

Edit: Big example starts around 12:50 and goes to 12:54

I see it. Around 9:08 too. It seems to be related to fast motion, so it's mostly when Batman is zipping around or gliding. Watching in high (not HD).

Is it just me or have there been more compression problems in these videos for the last very long while? Dunno if it was after they added HD for subscribers.

I want this game so. fucking. hard.

Does this video look like shit to anyone else? Lots of compression and artifacts on HD even.