Vicki Vale is on the scene with live coverage of Bruce Wayne’s campaign against Arkham City, a new super correctional facility utilizing the slums of Gotham into an urban prison under penal supervision. The press conference is abruptly interrupted by a covert seize and evade operation orchestrated by the new director of Arkham, Hugo Strange…but what could Strange possibly gain from imprisoning Bruce Wayne? Interference with his second life of course, and to Wayne’s chagrin, a fully cognizant action to put down the Batman.
Enter Rocksteady’s newest effort to continue the legacy of Batman in the realm of video games and to surpass all of the accolades that Arkham Asylum has earned and to advance the standard set for Superhero games. Just how far does the Bat grapple reach this lofty goal? Read on and find out.
Batman has always been a tricky beast of fiction to properly translate into an effective experience to satisfy the demands of immersive escapism video games provide. Arkham Asylum changed this by providing an engrossing adaption that paid faithful to its source material, while integrating quality conventions of combat and puzzles creating a winning formula. To ascend the formula, Rocksteady strove to deliver this formula within a much larger setting through an open world.
The first noticeable improvement with Arkham City is Batman’s movement; there's a seamless rhythm to the maneuvers at your disposal when traveling through Arkham City. Glide maneuvers are enhanced to where you can descend and collect momentum through dive-bombing, and then pull back to collect the velocity push of an air pocket closely resembling the mechanic of hang-gliding (and oddly enough feels reminiscent of Super Mario World when acquiring the Super Cape through the Magic Feather). This fusion of glide maneuvering through Batman’s Cowl – along with vantage points and edges providing quick-shot grapple points – allows for seamless transition in and out of gliding that doesn’t just add satisfaction, but rather a true appreciation for the journey and architecture involved in trips around the city and towards your objective. This fluidity alone adds a depth that was always missing from Arkham Asylum when assuming the role of the caped crusader, and adds a subtle but substantially effective shine to Arkham City, which truly fleshed out the role of being the dark knight.
The open world of Arkham City is truly the star of the game, with designs accentuating the sensation of travel and exploration, and retaining an aesthetic flair that represents every articulate detail of Batman lore effectively. Integrated locales like Ace Chemical plant, Sionis Industries, Iceberg Lounge, and even Crime Alley all play roles throughout the plot and setting, without ever feeling artificial. Arkham City as an open world achieves a rare blend of recognition through the smallest of details, but still retains this grandeur towards its scale, and finds a perfect balance of play and travel that ascend beyond other examples (like Assassin’s creed or Infamous).
While retaining a unique charm, one of the most compelling conventions found with an open-world design is the series of extra side quests and collectables. Arkham City, however, considerably lacks in this component, with the term “unpolished” being an understatement. For starters, side-quests are contextual by the point of your physical location, but the “suggestible” radius you would need to be positioned in is too cryptic. That magic spot has to be precise, and may even call into account the exact camera angle you find yourself using, or compass direction that can add unnecessary frustration when attempting these objectives. Furthermore, while Arkham City still possess an aesthetic charm that makes navigation easier by visual recognitions of locales or landmarks, the waypoint system suffers from a flawed interface and application that gets downright annoying at times. The mutual inconsistency between the two is the lack of differentiating the height and depth of the architecture or stage.
Because of the different floors and platforms above ground-level, the Waypoint flails wildly to the right or left in the compass-designed system used when being above your objective. The map marker provides no clear sense of recognizing where your destination was at. Though this doesn’t happen often, time required to navigate in these situations feels counter-productive. You're also equipped with your detective vision, which makes a return from the previous game. Larger environments, however, still overwhelm precise objectives or points of interest, and especially when faced with dozens of highlighted points of interest that Batman can react to with detective vision on.
One of the most revered aspects from Arkham Asylum was the fluid and frenetic combat system allowing for multiple opponents to engage you, and testing your skill of exchanging offense and defense. Arkham City goes a step further to refine the mechanic, with new tactics improving your use of available utilities and gadgets. In situations involving armed enemies with guns, for example, you can now quick-fire, bat grapple their weapon right from their grimy little paws, and deliver a stunning clothes-line hammer drop, which will put down most inmates while stunning others. In fact, all of the gadgets – other than your batarang – now have a quick-fire option, like quick-firing explosive bat-spray as you roll and detonate within one succession will help thin out your opposing numbers when being overwhelmed. Your stun is also more versatile, with its own combo output giving you more versatility while taking out special enemies like the returning titan inmates, or new towering one armed enemies who swing melee weapons at deadly speeds.
New dynamics to countering – beyond the reversal or stun counters from the original – include dodge counters, which are mainly used as a defense against a blade-wielding enemy, which has you push the counter buttons along with timed bull backs on the analog. However, with the frenetic nature of combat in Arkham City, and the dependence of the analog’s pullback being recognized by the center of your camera, you’ll find yourself cut to ribbons at times where successive pushes on the counter button would have been a better alternative.
Enemies are also much more aggressive this time around, so you'll find yourself constantly on guard for attacking enemies who take every opportunity they can to attack. Your ground takedowns will be slightly less helpful, as a foe can assault you during the animation of the attack, and completely interrupt it while leaving the chance for your once downed opponent to catch his second breath and join the fray all over again. This can be a bit taxing, but as you advance through the game, the adaption presents a new appreciation for the intensity of successful combat, which fuses nicely to the frenetic combat while making the overall process much more refined.
The writing and direction of Arkham City brilliantly retains the helplessness you felt with the isolation of Arkham Island, but still provides an endearing sense of drive. Paul Dini delivers this drive through a captivating storyline – even rivaling the work of Alan Moore and Grant Morrison – to a point where you’re hesitant to put the controller down beacuse of fearing you would miss what happens next. The direction of Rocksteady’s involvement vitalizes several other aspects of Batman’s world that add to the allure of the presentation, while completely avoiding any sense of the arbitrariness from point A to point B. Returning villains are paced and play out seamlessly, while new villains are introduced without overpowering either one or the other’s place in the game. Rocksteady's treatment of the Penguin, Two-Face, and other new villains is accurately depicted, appealing to Batman fans while presenting subtle changes to their appearance or character that keep the entire experience refreshing.
Batman’s Rogues gallery is easily tripled this time around, and your confrontation with each one as far as boss encounters are concerned have been given a significant attention to detail that was sorely lacking from the last entry and warmly received within Arkham City. Boss fights no longer follow this cookie cutter formula of simple predictable attacks that are exchanged in between waves of henchmen, but have their own elements unique to the villain involved without feeling contrived. To be fair, however, aforementioned formula is still present in Arkham City, as well just not so much this time around. The Catwoman content was a bit enjoyable as it again, beautifully paced itself within both the narrative of the game and the over flow of gameplay. The context of Catwoman plots support the over-arching plot going on in Arkham City, but still stand up on their own which added different dimension to make the entire experience feel more complete. The different abilities and attention to movement, however, were also quite enjoyable. As you explore the depths of Arkham City with Ms. Kyle, you’ll come across some areas that do feel a bit unnatural in your progression through them that obviously weren’t designed for both Catwoman and Batman in mind, but it hardly breaks the experience.
The detective solving returns again and does add another flair of accurately roleplaying Batman, but as I mentioned earlier with navigational issues, it can feel unnatural at times when out in the outside open world and works much better within an interior environment. The Riddler challenges and trophies return with a force, with several different visual riddles and trophy challenges scattered through the map that are marked through a unique method of covert henchman that the Riddler has employed amongst the ranks of other inmates employed by the other super criminals of Arkham city. Riddler goons glow a bright green and can only be interrogated when they’re left the last man standing, which then follows a very satisfying scene of Batman being his darkest to add these challenges to your map, a nice touch that works both practically and aesthetically to the overall game and makes the daunting challenge of completing these challenges much more exciting.
Challenge maps also make a return and will also be supported by future downloadable content packs, including new stages and several new skins for Batman and Catwoman along with Robin and Nightwing who will also be playable but only for challenge maps. Along with several challenge maps that can be unlocked within Arkham City’s story, this mode has seen much more content but very little change to the same formula used when Arkham Asylum focused on Joker exclusive maps which were shallow pick up and play moments but nothing more and oddly enough Joker hasn’t even returned as a playable character for Arkham City either.
Despite some shaky transitions into an open world environment, Arkham City is still the finest Superhero game of all time. With the right direction and potential, we may be lucky enough to see other Superhero games come close to being half as good. I definitely recommended this as an addition to your library.