Unreal Game Review: Arkham City
“Rawwwr!”
Notable additions to gameplay are the grappling launcher, which allows you to hook onto a rooftop then send yourself flying over it to travel great distances quickly. In combat you have a number of special finishing moves you can unlock, and quickly using gadgets is more useful than ever with moves like the Batclaw disarm, which rips weapons out of your opponents’ hands. I didn’t even unlock everything, but there were interesting upgrades to find all the way to the end.
The game is still fundamentally divided into two types of encounters, however. There are all out brawls, where Batman will take on a number of combatants ranging from 5 to 20 in a fist fight, and then there are the sneak sections where Batman has to take out a number of well-armed opponents while slinking around the room unnoticed.
In this sense, the game is as challenging as you want it to be. You can very well win every brawl by pressing X and sometimes Y to counter, or you can spend time using all your different gadgets and takedowns and trying to build up the ultimate combo. It’s very useful to be creative, as you’ll net a lot of XP for variety. The same goes for stealth, as you can glide kick and ground take down almost every room, but if you vary your attacks and use new gadgets like the gun jammer or cryo grenade, you’ll have more of a reward.
That said, the game can feel a BIT repetitive at times. It almost entirely revolves around these two types of encounters, and though you can vary combat, it’s hard to remember particularly memorable sections that required you to engage in a truly different and unusual way, despite bad guys showing up with body armor or shields or nightvision or the like. The same goes for boss battles, which have you facing off against classic villains, but in a relatively mundane fashion. Almost every boss encounter will have you rolling around non-stop to avoid attacks, while quick launching a weapon, be it explosive gel, electrical pulses or freeze bombs, and it’s not too terribly creative in a game that gives you so many powers and abilities.
I will say that Batman still fights better in these games than he does in any movie.
My favorite encounters of the game are ones that did go outside the box, like when the Joker kidnapped a friend, and I had to figure out a way into his theater which was being guarded by about a dozen rooftop snipers who could spot me a mile away. It took several tries, but I managed to get down a pattern where I could take them down one at a time without alerting all the rest to my presence.
The best boss battle of the bunch was a brief bout with Mr. Freeze. It wasn’t mere rolling and shooting, rather I had to use every tool at my disposal to take him down, as once I would take him out with one style of attack, he would learn from the assault, and I couldn’t use that same tactic again. Drop on him from on high? He froze every elevated surface so I couldn’t stand on them. Sneak up on him from below? He clogged every grate with ice. It really was a cool encounter (no pun intended), and the game needs more like it.
Besides the main questline, there’s plenty to do as you might expect in a city this large. Several other supervillains are up to no good, and you have to hunt them down in your free time. Zsasz is killing people unless you race across town to pick up ringing phones. Deadshot is assassinating key prisoners unless you stop him. And the Riddler? Oh god, the Riddler. He has more hidden trophies than ever, and most will require extremely creative means of solving them. By the end, I scooped up about half, but the others were ones that were too challenging to bother with, and if I did want to hunt them all down, it would definitely add about five or six more hours to the game.
That said, the main game did feel a bit shorter than I was anticipating. Nearly the entire thing revolves around hunting down this antidote, with only brief attention given to Hugo Strange near the end. All in all it feels like it lasts about as long as Arkham Asylum, and the Catwoman missions and side villain quests (other than the Riddler) don’t add much more than an hour or so. It’s not like the game is particularly unsatisfying, but it does end up being a bit more limited in scope than you would think.
“Nope nope nope nope nope.”
Part of me believes this is to make room for future DLC, and this is Arkham City’s greatest sin. I’ve never seen a game more ridiculously plagued by promotional DLC, and between the bonus costumes, challenge maps, playable characters and levels offered as rewards for pre-ordering or buying new, it’s a bit much, and you’ll miss the days when everything about a game was contained in the disc.
Arkham City is a solid game with a gorgeously gothic new setting and an upgraded arsenal at your disposal, that includes at least one fun new character, even if she is underused. But new gadgets and gear and a skintight catsuit aren’t what’s needed to truly make the game unique. It needs more distinctive encounters and boss battles, and a plot that’s less meandering and actually makes sense when all is revealed. I still couldn’t tell you exactly why Arkham City exists in the game, even after everything was explained.
It’s not as perfect as some may have you believe, but it’s damn good in many ways. I’d tell you that you’d be best off giving it a rent, as you can finish it in a few days, but then you wouldn’t be able to play as Catwoman. Sigh, I’m not sure I like this gaming generation.
4 out of 5 stars
I think you’re missing the point a little bit, you’ve identified the game’s shortcomings but haven’t really highlighted the good aspects of the game. The advent of Arkham City is the “leap of faith” of the storyline – of course there would never be in real life a section of a city quarantined off for prisoners to run a muck, you just have to let that go and focus on the MAIN storyline, that is the poisoning and chasing down a cure and who’s really behind everything. You’d be hard pressed to find a game that didn’t have a “leap of faith” portion in the storyline (or any movie or book for that matter). The game is a huge improvement over Arkham Asylum and although you gave it 4 stars which is a great score, I disagree with the structure of your review in discussing all the wrong points and not many of the right points.
In the end, it’s amazing to play as batman, whether in the game or in the challenge maps, and that’s the #1 advantage. I plan on playing the campaign again with new game plus because of how fun it was in the first place and perhaps others will feel the same.
@Chris
If you’re going to do something as drastic as quarantine an area of a city as a prison, you at least have to give me a coherent reason WHY, even in a comic book plotline.
(spoilers ahoy)
From what I could tell, it was just a master plan by Ugo Strange and R’as so they could round up all criminals and “wipe the slate clean” by raining missiles down from the central tower, killing everyone in the city. If that’s the case, why the hell didn’t they just siege Blackburn and Arkham where the prisoners were actually locked up, and in a confined building they couldn’t escape from?
Yes, being Batman is awesome, and that’s why these games are great, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out some of its flaws.
As a huge Batman fan I loved the game. And I thought the story was amazing. I agree that these DLC promotions are a little ridiculous with this one but unfortunatly it looks like the way gaming is heading. As for why Arkham City exsits…
SPOILERS
Arkham City exists so that they can group all of the major criminals together and then enact “Protocol 10” and eliminate them. It was Ras plan to cleanse the city of evil and he was able to get it going by infultrating all the levels of goverment sort of like Batman Begins. Warden Sharp explains this when you interogate him but he doesnt mention Ras by name.
I completely agree with your take on the first game. I probably would agree with your review on this one, but you’ve convinced me to hold off for now.
While I don’t have a lot to add, I’m pleased to see the game kept Kevin Conroy as the voice of Batman. He also voices Hush in Arkham City. Mark Hamill returns as Joker as well.
No disrespect to Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney, and Bale, Nicholson & Ledger, but when I hear Conroy and Hamill, it feels right–like that’s what these characters are supposed to sound like.
The blockbuster I rented this game from was kind enough to leave the Catwoman DLC in the boxes which rewarded the first people to rent it. So I got to have my cake and eat it too.
I am really enjoying this game. I’ll pick up my own copy used at a later date so I can 100% it…and I’ll still have Catwoman!
Why has a whole section of Gotham been screened off and made into a city of criminals?
Because the game programmers wanted a sandbox game because they are popular and they sell.
Making a plot based on a game design decision is a bit of a stupid way to plan a story.
Batman is cool, and this game looks cool, but from what I have read it seems to fall down on the why of it.
Quarantining an entire prison island was the setup for Escape from New York and Escape from L.A., just replace Snake Plissken with Batman and whammo!
That was just because of fascist Presidents, though, and it was just expected sending prisoners there was a death sentence.
Also, I was psyched as hell for this game, but because of the DLC bullcrap I’m not going to buy it until a GOTY edition is released for $30 or less. I just refuse to put up with this new paradigm game companies are following at a $60 price tag.
i thought the game was near perfect. i beat arkham asylum in abut 5 hours (the second time through, after knowing where to go and skipping all riddler shit). my fist play through was 11 hours.
with this one, i bought the game and had the day off. i play 15 hours and only finished 53% of the story. it took me a good 25 hours or so to finally finish the story (i did do a lot of side missions and riddler quests)
i finally finished last night (all story, all side, and all riddler) and i probably put in a good 40 hours.
my only complaints are the main story is a bit short (i seemed to have jumped from 60% to 100% in 3 missions/2 hours) and the whole blocked off middle section. if it will be unlocked in DLC then thats fine with me. as long as the price isnt ridiculous (like with MW2s 5 shitty maps for $15)
other than that the puzzles in the game were great, the graphics were beautiful, the story was intriguing (bonus – there is sooooooo many clues to the ending that you can catch on second play through), and it really caught the feeling of being batman. yeah, the combat was repetitive, but what game isnt really?
best part…. jokers little rant about LOST.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIJhlqXkGIk
you can also hear random thugs say “did they ever explain what the island was?’ as your soar through arkham…
actually surprised you reviewed this Paul since I never heard you talk about Arkham Asylum before and you barely mentioned the release of Arkham City either but I’m glad enjoyed both games.
Both of the new Batman games have thoroughly impressed me to the point where they are 2 of my favorite games ever and that they are the only 2 games i’ve ever completed 100% of the achievements. These games really do make you feel like the Batman. Complaints are some of the usual about the shortness of the main story and repetitive combat (although there are so many different moves and ways of approaching a fight that it the combat can be as deep as you want it to be). I also think the A.C. definitely left the door open for a third installment which I would love to play. Also I can’t really understand complaining about the story with the ending that the game gave you.
Overall I hope that the developers also release a boat load of DLC that includes more missions, challenge rooms and hopefully a lot more catwoman missions.
Guys! HUGO Strange! HUGO! C’mon!
P.S. Batwing*
A bit more of a bashing than it probably deserved. The plot isn’t the most important part of it that belongs to feeling like the god dam Batman. Will be interesting to see what they do for the third instalment as hinted at with the boat and what was on the floor next to an old costume.
It’s funny, whenever I read a review of Arkham City that makes the points you have, I nod along… but then as soon as I get back into the game I forget about it all.
It gets 11 really important things so knocked-out-of-the-park right that the 3 things it’s lacking aren’t only forgiven, they’re completely forgotten.
Like The Last Crusade. It’s actually quite a by-the-numbers adventure story with a cliche MacGuffin when you stop and think about it. But because the writing and the characters and set pieces are so compelling, you forget about all that when you’re watching it.
You and Tom Chick both failed to note the blatant sexism as a bad part of the game. This bothers me.
I love that you guys put SPOILERS warning before u put spoilers in your comments. THX!!
I can’t wait to play this!!
Spoiler
The reason Arkham City exists is because Strange had his chemical induced control over men like Quincy Sharp and was then able to do what they did. The idea was not simply to wipe out the inmates of Arkham…the idea was to create an army and be able to arm them and train them in their own private city, with the intent to kill all the inmates and THEN move onto the bigger picture. That’s why Strange talks about protocol ten part 1, 2 etc
At first I was like “they explain all of it in the game… Quincy Sharp wins the mayoral elections on the “I’m the hero of the Arkham breakout” platform, recommends taking a large part of the city where Crime Alley (hell hole where Batman’s parents were killed) and a bunch of organized crime front businesses are located (Penguin’s Iceberg Lounge, Mad Hatter’s Haberdashery, for instance), declare imminent domain and set up shop where a controversial shrink was going to “fix it all”… But that’s why Arkham City exists, physically, in the game world.
(SPOILERS)
As to why it exists in the plot, or why Ra’s and Strange manipulated everyone into its creation… it really is a wonky freakin’ plot. When the “project” is coming to its conclusion toward the end, and HUGO Strange is on the intercom talking about how new facilities have been approved for Metropolis and Coast City, I was like “how is going all scorched Earth on this one beneficial to that plot? Why not finish those, then whack everybody?”
My wife put it best, though: “With these guys escaping Arkham and Blackgate on the regular, and having ridiculously high body counts… why was building this huge facility an easier sell than ‘all those in favor of this state (is Gotham in New York state, or is the state called Gotham, too?) having the Death Penalty? Joker may get away with a Manson defense, but Penguin is pretty much just a gangster, and Zasz has too big a body count not to fry him…”