Batman: Arkham City

[Winnow]

Some positive initial reviews on the game:

The latest Batman: Arkham City review score to hit the net is from the issue 244 of Games Master and it's an absolute celebration of the Rocksteady sequel.

The mag's given Arkham City 97% but it's the words that really give an indication of just how special this game is.

Reviewer Rob Taylor urges readers to "revel in one of the greatest games ever conceived." He describes the combat as "near perfection" and "elevated to an entirely new level" while Arkham City as a location is "brooding and bloody massive.

Most excitingly though, the mag teases a "knockout ending" which of course (thankfully) is kept tightly under wraps.

Taylor concludes by proclaiming Batman: Arkham City to be, "brave, brutal, brilliant - the gold standard by which all future videogames should be judged."

Games Master isn't alone in its gushing though. The Batman: Arkham City review in German mag Play 3 ended with a score of 92 percent and praise calling the sequel "The best superhero game ever made."

Similarly OPM in Australia ended its Batman: Arkham City review with the full 10 and agreed with Games Master calling it "one of the best games ever made".

Not much longer to wait!

[Winnow]

Arkham City going to be on sale anywhere on launch day?

[Fairweather Pure]

Kmart has buy this for 60$ and get a 30$ gift card. Pretty good deal.

[Aslanna]

I preordered from Newegg for $48. Not a crazy deal but better than nothing. I wont get it release day but whatever I can deal with that.

Not even sure why I did since I'm not a Batman fan at all (I think the new Nolan Batman movies are boring!) but something with the last game just fell into place. I enjoyed the combat since it wasn't just random button mashing.

Nice to see the positive initial reviews though.

[Winnow]

This has a 95 rating on Metacritic for 360 and a 98 rating for PS3

I can't imagine this game being a bad buy.

Playstation Official Magazine Australia 100

Just so there's no confusion, let's state it plain: Batman: Arkham City is not only the best superhero game ever made, it's one of the best games ever made full-stop. Batman: Arkham City takes the already superlative original and gloriously expands on it. It's a deeper game, more complex, more inventive, more mature. In our view it brings the caped crusader's world to life better than any comic, movie, or television show before it ... To say it one last time: this is what it means to be Batman. And when it comes down to it, who the hell doesn't want to be Batman?

Games Radar (in-house) 100

Batman: Arkham Asylum was the greatest superhero game of all time. The sequel, Batman: Arkham City, is five times bigger and about a billion times better. You do the math.

BigPond GameArena 100

It's the best treatment of a comic book character outside of graphic novels ever. It's the best Action Adventure/Open World game ever. It's the best game I've played this year. And finally, it's the best superhero game you've ever played.

Digital Spy 100

The richness of the world is helped by the fact that Arkham City is a stunning looking game. This is one of the most detailed, rich and vibrant open worlds ever created, whether you are gliding over its skyline or striding down the broken-down streets. Considering the size of the world, the rich detail of the interiors is incredible, putting many more linear games to shame.

Strategy Informer 100

Arkham City is stuffed to the edge of the disc with content and replay value (in addition to the gigantic campaign there's an expanded Challenge Mode and New Game Plus), is incredible amounts of fun, is polished to perfection, has had real love poured into every aspect, and most importantly, it makes you feel like Batman.

[Funkmasterr]

Yeah it sounds pretty much awesome if it's your cup of tea. Super hero stuff, and sandbox games are two things I'm really not interested in, so as tempting as it is, I'm skipping it. Too many games coming out in the next two months anyhow.

[Winnow]

Bought the 360 version at Fry's and got the free T-Shirt:



I think only the 360 version had the T-Shirt for free.

[Aslanna]

NewEgg preorder had that as well for PS3/360 versions. I don't see myself wearing it of course! Would have preferred having the couple bucks the shirt cost just removed from my total cost.

It shipped from CA so wont be here until Thursday. But I have other things to do in the meantime.

[Winnow]

I'm enjoying this so far although Harley Quinn's voice is annoying. (a minor complaint)

The opening is the same as the Catwoman scene you may have seen floating around awhile back.

I'm still in the tutorial part so I'm getting hints every time Batman needs to use his utility belt gizmos or perform a special move. I imagine I'll be spending a lot of time in detective mode after the tutorial.

The city, inside and outside of buildings, looks great and detailed. There's a lot of shit going on out of view that you hear while crawling around, etc. I need to spend an extended amount of time in one sitting to get a full appreciation of it.

[Aslanna]

I'm not sure I'm going to try for Platinum Trophy in this game. Lots to do and some of the achievements seem time consuming. I don't have that much free time!

[Winnow]

I was able to spend some time on this game.

First, while side missions aren't normally important, you might want to do the augmented reality ones in order to get the grappling boost which launches you in the air past the point you're grappling to...lets you cruise through the city pretty fast.

I was getting frustrated with the 3rd stage of the AR tests until I figured out gliding a and that you need to pull back on the stick after you dive bomb to make it to the next marker.

Catwoman rocks. I have more fun playing her than Batman. I like the way she moves around. She has an amazingly long whip for her to be cruising around the tops of buildings but I'll suspend reality for that...the same way I suspend reality for Batman's super loud grappling sound when he first it, as if no one below hears that loud noise.

They could have made a game just for Catwoman. Maybe they will. She's unlocked with the original purchase of the game (can't get her if buy the game used unless you pay online). I think I've been playing her main campaign missions which I guess they just skip if you don't have her unlocked.

There's a learning curve to the game for sure with all the moves and gizmos you can unlock. In combat, as long as you don't forget to counter between attacks you can do pretty well in melee.

Haven't figured out what to upgrade so I've been putting points into ballistic armor defense. I think Batman's Batclaw weapon disarm skill is worth getting.

Moving around the city as Batman or Catwoman is fun. There's more focus on fun than having you fall to your death or miss jumps, etc.

On Batman's early mission to find the Joker, I felt like I had a lot of different ways I could solve things. You have flexibility in how you take down bad guys. In once scene there are multiple bad guys you can sneak up on. It says to use batbelt gizmos to take them out but not which one. You have a stun gun type thing but I took out my exploding gel spray can...snuck up on them, sprayed down some bat gel. Moved back and got their attention and blew them to hell when they ran toward me...well it stuns them for a long time so I beat them to a pulp while they were laying on the ground. Could have stunned them with gun, used combat skills, used hit and run tactics where if you grapple around enough, they lose sight of you, then you come back and kill one or two more. There's lots of crawlspaces,etc that you may or may not use.

Love the character graphics in the game....well all graphics in the game. Females are hot looking as they should be in all games.

The flow of the game, the UI, the quests, etc are all first rate. Mark Hamill's voice on the Joker is outstanding. You can take your time on the main quest as you run into plenty of distractions while traveling. Some Riddler trophies seem hard. Those will take you awhile to get. As far as I can tell, your health does not regenerate until you make it through a section so you need to be careful and can't use "hit and go heal" tactics. There's a lot of opportunity to use stealthy take downs. Thugs also have status. As you start killing their buddies they get more and more terrified. By the time I had killed/taken out 4/5 thugs, the last one was visibly shaking in his shoes as I stalked him. Attention to detail is very high. If you as super slow, you'll hear the thugs talk about random stuff. I took a break while around the corner from some thugs and they had three separate conversations over that time period. Normally I may not even had heard one or half of the first one if you are moving fast.

Things aren't all completely planned. For example, Harley Quinn was yelling down at Batman from an opening. I took a shot at her with my stun gun. She boarded up the opening and shouted I missed her and was too slow. I ended up dying during the sequence and while going though the same area, I ignored her and she never boarded up the opening and I didn't have to bash though it later when I needed to get in. Little extra details like that are all over the place in the game.

Unless you must have multiplayer, this is a game to buy for sure. The game rewards you for learning the more advanced things.

[Zygar_ Cthulhukin]

Finally available for pre-order for the PC on Steam. Available Nov. 15th and 20% off if you own Arkham Asylum or Lego:Batman on Steam.

[Aslanna]

Batman: Arkham Asylum was the greatest superhero game of all time. The sequel, Batman: Arkham City, is five times bigger and about a billion times better. You do the math.

I think that their math is faulty. Yes it's bigger but it's also a whole lot of the same other than the addition of the grapnel gliding thing. I'm not saying that's a bad thing but lets not get too carried away on the hype.

On to my complaints!

While I like the open world design it's still a bit annoying to travel from one side of the city to the other because of the big restricted area right in the middle that you can only get by on the north side. So to get from the SE corner to the SW corner you can't take a direct path west you have to go north, west, then south. There is a waypoint thing (and compass) to help you make your way but it disappears in detective mode. However with all the armed enemies around I like to travel with detective mode on because it's easier to avoid them. So I find myself constantly switching between the two.

In addition to that there is no minimap. I can see their point for wanting to make the HUD minimal but at least make it an option especially with all the riddler trophies strewn about. Let me decide how cluttered I want to make my display!

A couple things they don't tell you the proper procedure so you're like "WTF am I supposed to do?". The Augmented Reality training missions come to mind as Winnow mentioned. I don't think they ever tell you how to 'pull up' so it took me forever to figure out the process. Similarly I haven't completed the second set yet because they don't tell you how to turn around and I haven't wanted to bother figuring it out at this point although it's probably something simple. I can't think of other examples of that specifically but I know there has been a few more where I just wasn't sure what to do.

With the combat there is at least one change over AA that I don't really care for and that is the enemies seem more aggressive (and faster) so you have to counter much more and they crowd you rather quickly so it's common to have to counter 2-3 enemies at once. With AA it seemed easier to get the enemies spread out and have more room to work. I watched a few videos of people doing the challenges in AC and basically they are using the evade move over and over and not even bothering to counter. That just seems a bit lame since it's combat not ballet.

Batman still walks too fucking slow. A better pace would be the speed between his current walking speed and his running speed.

Some of the boss battles seemed a little lackluster other than the exception of the Mr Freeze one since it was more of a departure from the standard spam attack and jump of most of the others.

Speaking of detective mode... I thought I read somewhere that they weren't happy about how people pretty much played the whole game with it on and they were looking at ways to minimize that.. I honestly don't see any difference and pretty much always have it on because it's too easy to miss stuff otherwise. Unless by looking for ways to minimize it they meant making it annoying to keep using because just about everything you do turns it off. If you enter a new room it turns off because the door opening seems to be a scripted event. In battle it's great to have because you can easily identify armed enemies but get hit and it turns off. If you want to use waypoitns or your compass, as mentioned previously, you have to turn it off.

Note: These are minor criticisms so calm down I'm not bashing the game or anything! I still liked the game and am still playing it although I think with the number of Riddler trophies to collect I might get burned out so I'll probably set the game aside for awhile before going back to it. And of course there is still New Game+ and I'll probably give the challenges a try. They can't be as bad as Shock and Awe from AA.


Having said that I think I'm going to rate this the same as what I gave for AC which is 8/10. A good game but the hype was making me expect more revolution than evolution although I can't really fault the game for that. If I had to describe it using the least amount of words possible I'd say it's Arkham Asylum meets Assassin's Creed 2.

(I might give it an extra point when all is said and done just because it has more variety and with all the stuff to collect, if one is into that, it's good value for money as it will take a long time to get them all. I've finished the game and most of the side missions and am only showing 42% (or 52% can't remember) completion.)

[Winnow]

What about Catwoman? Didn't you have fun playing her? I thought she was more fun than Batman as well as her stories. I've only completed 2 of her 4 episodes so far.

[Aslanna]

Her missions were pretty short but they were alright. I really wasn't comfortable with her combat as I didn't really know the moves. I'll spend more time with it when I go locating her Riddler trophies.

Also not sure why you don't unlock the trophy/achievement while doing the Catwoman missions 'in-game' the first time. You don't get it until you select it from the main menu area and redo it. Or at least that's what it seemed to be. Will have to verify that though.

I thought I spotted a plot error as well involving the Deadshot missions. So don't check spoiler if you haven't done those!

[Show]

When you uncover and decrypt Deadshot's PDA there's a list of people that he's going to bonk with a bullet. Bruce Wayne is on there and finally Batman is last on the list. Wasn't Deadshot hired by Hugo Strange? If so he already knew Wayne WAS Batman so why would he have both on there?

[Aslanna]

Compared to AA the combat challenge maps are pretty easy. No time limits and the enemies never go for guns. I've just 3 medaled all of those with not much effort. You don't even need that many different controller combinations. Just the X (or square for PS3) to hit them. Do a double jump with A (X on PS3) over an enemy. Hit the guy in the back then by then your combo should be high enough to use the bat swarm with X+A (ps3 - square + X).Double tap the left shoulder to throw some batarangs and it should only take another hit or two to get bat swarm back again. Rinse and repeat. I found it very helpful to always have detective mode on since you can easily identify which enemies are which as I have trouble with the armored and shielded guys. It sucks when you get hit since it turns detective mode off but you can always turn it back on. Just think of it as incentive to not get hit. You can pretty much make it though any fight without even bothering to counter.

For the big one armed guys just keep using the freeze thing to keep them immobilized while you wear down the rest of the enemies.

I'm sure the predator and campaign challenges will be harder though. Not really looking forward to those!

[Animalor]

So a friend just lent this to me and was mentionning the whole Catwoman code and the fact that the stories are intertwined.

You guys think it's worth it for me to drop the 800 MS Points to get that bundle to complete the game experience?

[Aslanna]

Depends on how much you like Batwoman/Catman.

I personally don't think her missions (4 of them) were that great. And I really hated the one that involves Two-Face (not the beginning scene) and was actually thinking about uninstalling the DLC just to not have to do that one again on New Game+ but I didn't want to mess anything up. I got through it eventually it's just more tedious than difficult.

I'd say if you're a completionist and will be going through trying to 100% the game, and if $10 isn't a big deal, it's probably worth it. If you're just going to play through it once and give it back I'd say probably not. The actual game isn't that long and I think there's like only 3 actual bosses. Even the side missions don't add a whole lot. But stuff like collecting all the Riddler trophies or doing the challenges is what takes the most time.

[Winnow]

Catwoman is hot. I like making her walk around on all fours.

[Sylvus]

But do you find her as hot as Harley Quinn?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... GL1pIQVJVo

[Winnow]

Harley's hotter but her voice ruins it...along with that video!

[Aslanna]

Platinum trophy finally completed. Some of those predator challenges are frustrating!

[Aslanna]

Completed all the Catwoman challenges as well so it's ime to retire this game and move on to something else.

Overall I think I might prefer her in combat although she is more limited especially when it comes to Titans. She just feels faster. I went back to mess around as Batman for a bit and it almost felt wrong. I kept getting punched in the head. There's a definite disadvantage against armed enemies since she only has half the armor for melee and balistic and nothing like smoke bombs to get away.

However her interaction with the environment is more frustrating like trying to grapple up to a gargoyle the range seems a lot smaller than what Batman allows half the time you need to be practically right under it. Unless you're already up on one then its about the same. Also she isn't that great for moving large distances around the city. I couldn't really see playing a large open world game with her since missions usually include a lot of going back and forth. Unless they made her like a flying squirrel or something with a glide ability.

Oh and her "cat vision" (or maybe "thief vision" not sure what they called it) is pretty terrible. I'm guessing it's supposed to be infrared or someting but other than letting you see how many enemies are around it's worthless for gleaning info. At least with Batman you can easily see which ones are armed or armored (or both).

I'll go ahead and bump my score to a 9 since I personally never really felt like I was doing the same stuff over and over even though you basically. If you're just buying it for the main story and don't care about collectibles or challenges I'd probably just tell you to rent it and spend the extra $10 if you want the Catwoman stuff because the main game doesn't really take all that long. In which case it's still a decent game but I'd stick with my original score of 8.

[Winnow]

Completed all the Catwoman challenges as well so it's ime to retire this game and move on to something else.

Overall I think I might prefer her in combat

Ah ha!

[Aslanna]

Only in combat! Most of the other times I was swearing.

[Kwonryu DragonFist]

Can you play Killer Croc in this game?

That's my favorite

[Aslanna]

No.

[Winnow]

Quotes for GOTY Edition

http://kotaku.com/5904632/this-batman-b ... real-thing

[Aslanna]

This is why I'm not going to bother with Day One purchases anymore. Or DLC. Pretty much everything everyone had to pay for extra now comes included in 'Game of the Year' editions. So what's the incentive to play a game right when it's been released? There is none! Not only do you save money on the main game by waiting but you get more shit as well.

And yeah the cover art is ridiculous for this.