Batman: Arkham City

After some time with this game now I have found myself wholly impressed. I was a huge fan of the first of Rocksteady's Batman games (Arkham Asylum) having played it from beginning to end on numerous occasions.
Batman Arkham City takes everything that was so great about Asylum and expands upon it immeasurably, then adds a load of new stuff for you enjoyment! Firstly, after a stunning opening sequence the game drops you straight into the action in the heart of a city overrun with criminal masterminds, mindless thugs and a good smattering of doctors, security and police personel who are trying to help bring pockets of order to what is essentially a city in a state of riot.
The beauty of being dropped straight into the action is that you immediately get the impact of the scale of this game - the environment is huge and explorable in a variety of ways. Straight off the bat (sorry) you can run, jump, glide, grappel, slide throughout the city. More and more of Batman's gadgets become available throughout the game allowing for access to the tiniest corners or furthest reaches of Arkham but you are free to explore a vast amount of the city and a good deal of gadgets from minute 1.

For me, the most notable improvements have to be the fact that the larger environment has allowed for side quests to be included. In the first you pretty much went from A to B occasionally stopping to collect riddler trophies. Yes it was fun, but also gave you a fairly linear story within Arkham Asylum. In Arkham city, you have the run of the city, you ARE Batman and whilst there is a strong narrative throughout - you can feel free to help this person, destroy that danger or discover those secrets without ever feeling like you're deviating from what the game wants you to do.

Riddler challenges have been massively improved too! No longer are they all hidden behind destroyable walls and in hard to reach places that you need a specific gadget for. Now they actually challenge you to think logically, or laterally or test your memoery, dexterity etc. They all actually feel like challenges for Batman from the Riddler! Also, the ability to record riddler challenges onto your own map if you can't reach them yet, or don't have time to collect just now etc. is an excellent and welcome addition.

One of the only criticisms I have read about this game is the inclusion of SO many villains that some are reduced to cameo performances rather than fleshed out stories - again, for me this plays into the story world beautifully. Imagine the world of Batman, played to such a scale as a whole city to explore yet only brushing shoulders with one or two villains!??! I feel that the scale demands the number of villains - and again, the games variety means thast some will be playing the role of main antagonist, some will be unlikely ally, some will be chance encounter. Stands to reason really!

Final thought is simply this. This is an outstanding game with many jaw dropping moments! Just remember to download the free Catwoman as a playable character element BEFORE you start playing the main game! It actually slightly changes the game right from the outset, but all in good ways!

Buy, play, enjoy!

I played, loved and 100% completed Arkham Asylum on both 360 and PS3 (yes, it's that good - though not perfect) so you can imagine how much I was looking forward to Arkham City. Unfortunately, it hasn't lived up to my expectations. It seems like Rocksteady have sat down and gone over Arkham Asylum, picked out the bits that were praised and decided if they just do the same again - only in much greater quantities - then the sequel will be equally as good. That's simply not the case.

Instead of five or six types of enemies to fight, we now have nine or ten. Which is fine, but Rocksteady have made the new enemies only vulnerable to one of Batman's combat moves, so fights become an exercise in picking individuals out of a crowd and trying to remember what move works on what enemy. Instead of the Arkham Asylum's perfect number of Riddler trophies to find and map system that would reveal their approximate locations, we now have four hundred to find and a hint system that requires interrogation of certain enemies (which further complicates combat).

Add in infuriating boss fights, unnecessary Catwoman segments (if I want to play as Catwoman, I'll buy a Catwoman game), distinctly dodgy sexist dialogue, no fixing of the fuzzy targeting and pinwheeling camera in combat, far too many villains and an utterly ridiculous set of PS3 trophies and the whole game just seems to crumble under its own weight.

Don't get me wrong, there are times when Arkham City is absolutely excellent - gliding through the night sky as Batman is a high water mark - yet equally there are moments where it seems to actively hate you - is there really a need for the "gloat-cam" moments after you've died cheaply because you've failed to play the game exactly as Rocksteady intended?

If you haven't played it, I recommend getting Arkham Asylum instead. If you have and want more of the same, be prepared for Arkham City to be disappointing.

Like a lot of people I would imagine, I was pleasantly surprised by what a brilliant game Batman Arkham Asylum turned out to be. I was consequently vey excited when I heard about this sequel!

I won't ruin the storyline but in essence, the asylum has been replaced with a large area of Gotham City cordoned off and used as a massive prison where the inmates have free rein to kill eachother as long as they don't try to escape. Bruce Wayne is chucked in there for publically opposing it and so starts the game.

As with my other reviews, I tend to split my views into pros and cons so here goes:

Pros:

1. The overall scale of the game is very impressive, the city is apparently 5 times larger than the asylum and it shows! There are distinct areas of the city controlled by different criminals and you can tell this by graffiti etc on the buildings and other visual clues.

2. Mobility has been greatly enhanced, allowing you to use the grapple gun and glide to cover large distances without touching the ground. This is great fun and really shows off the graphics of the city.

3. The combat has been enhanced as well, allowing for greater use of gadgets during fights and also various techniques and bonuses after racking up a suitably long combo streak. This not only adds variety but also adds a larger element of strategy e.g. you can't just wade in to a fist fight without checking what enemy types are present or you'll get thrashed (guns, shields, knives etc).

4. Gadgets are now used much more in solving puzzles for the riddler, rather than just for mobility as in the previous game.

5. The story is great, the developers have found a way of introducing basically every Batman villian you can think of either by reference or by direct contact and it doesn't feel like a stretch either!

6. The voice acting is superb, especially for the Penguin, the Joker (to be expected) and Mr Freeze

7. You get to play as Catwoman for a portion of the story, while she's similar to Batman in controls, she is different enough to enjoy playing as.

8. The fact that the game is now open world makes a lot of difference. You could go anywhere in the previous game but you were still on a very linear path. This game leaves it completely up to you as to what you want to do and when and there is a hell of a lot to do! Whether you want to complete side missions, perform Augmented Reality training, collect riddler trophies, complete main missions or just wander around beating up the minions, it's all there to do! The best part is, none of the non-main missions/activities feel tacked on to make the game longer, they all feel part of the experience as there is so much happening within the city.

9. You can no longer go through the entire game using detective mode. In the first game I spent a lot of time in detective mode to spot secrets etc but this ruined it slightly because I was never playing the game in normal mode and seeing the great graphics. Detective mode is still necessary in Arkham City to spot secrets and to analyse enemies for weapons etc but you need to come out of it to navigate so the game forces you to use it only when necessary.

10. The game is now much more of a challenge, especially in combat. In the previous game there would be maybe one or two enemies in a pack with guns or stun rods, all you had to do was take them out then the rest were relatively easy. Now, there is a good mix of enemies at once: common thugs, gun toting baddies, guys with shields, guys with knives etc. When they are all coming at you at once it's no longer just a case of hitting punch repeatedly with the odd counter thrown in. Now you need to use specific counters/attacks against knife or shield weilding thugs, normal counters against unarmed guys, all the while using ranged gadgets to keep the gun toting guys off balance combined with normal attacks to survive fights with large groups.

11. You now need to unlock riddler secrets on the map by interrogating his minions. These are identified using detective mode in a group and you need to leave them till last to interrogate. This adds even more strategy, especially when the group contains different enemy types.

12. The game is very long, I've been playing if for hours at a time since I got it at Christmas and I'm not even 30% of the way through yet (including all of the side missions, trophies etc)!

Cons:

1. There is so much to do at first, it can be a little overwhelming to decide where to go.

2. When you unlock the riddler secrets by interrogating thugs, you can locate them on your map but there is no clue as to what they are. You end up trying to scan everything in the area in case it's the solution to a riddle, without knowing what the riddle is in the first place.

3. Some of the riddler trophies are very complicated to find but I suppose that adds to the challenge!

That's about it! In a game this huge, 12 pros and only 3 cons (one of which is barely a con) is pretty good! I only didn't give this game 5 stars because no game is perfect.

Overall, if you liked the first game you will absolutely love Batman Arkham City. A very strong contender for game of the year (I bought Uncharted 3 today so we'll see if it can topple Batman).