Batman Arkham City Review

Batman: Arkham City is one of the most anticipated releases of the pre-Christmas game surge due to hit the high streets around the world alongside the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, to name but a few, all vying for shelf space it will take something special to keep Arkham City’s disc spinning in your disc drive for longer than a week.

For the most part Arkham City is the same as Arkham Asylum in terms of visuals, audio and fighting mechanics. This is by no means a bad thing as Arkham Asylum was met to critical acclaim in these fields. The main change between Arkham City and its predecessor is the shift from linear game play with room for exploration to a more sandbox setting. The feeling of openness in Arkham Asylum is true testament to how well designed the game was as it was extremely linear with a few hidden baubles for you to go off the beaten track to find. Yes, as Batman you had to go from A to B with nothing much to do in-between but you had the choice of how to get there. This does not ring true for Arkham City.

Arkham City takes you, as Batman, and dumps you slap bang in the middle of the newly created segregated portion of Gotham known as Arkham City. At first this can be a little imposing as you get the sense of being Batman, lost behind enemy lines where pretty much everyone wants your head. Arkham City is very much a living, breathing city, albeit one based on the incarceration of its inhabitants, with enemies and NPC’s reacting in different ways to actions happening around them. I can recall once witnessing, whilst perched atop a gargoyle naturally, two inmates exercising together, one doing sit ups whilst the other held his feet down. Arkham City is as much of a character in Batman: Arkham City as Rapture is in Bioshock, you get glimpses of what the buildings were once used for (such as courthouses, theatres and steel mills) when they still belonged in Gotham and you now know that they are filled to the rafters with those for whom the prison was built.

Getting around Arkham City is one factor of the game where the game falls flat. Commuting around in Grand Theft Auto (except for Grand Theft Auto IV) was tolerable because it was interesting and ultimately fun as the game allowed you to pull handbrake turns in a mule. In Arkham City travelling around the city is far from fun, feeling more like a chore than anything else. This can most probably be attributed to the size of the city and the lack of motorised transport available to Batman resulting in any attempt to travel across the city taking much longer than would be considered necessary.

The addition of a playable Catwoman was a masterstroke by the folks at Rocksteady. She controls the same as Batman but plays in a much different way. Catwoman is inferior to Batman in terms of physical strength and technology, requiring the player to become more adept at hand-to-hand combat and rely heavily on stealth, but as she is more agile than Batman she seems to move much quicker than our hero. She also has the ability to cling to certain ceilings and crawl cat-like through much smaller gaps than Batman can, opening more potential routes and hidden areas available only to Catwoman. The fact that she also uses her trademark sex appeal during fights, kissing enemies to distract them, adds to the feeling that Rocksteady know and understand the character, her motivations and, more importantly, her mannerisms.

Many of Batman’s rogue gallery are also present within the city with my only criticism being that there are perhaps a few too many crammed in when fewer, with acknowledging nods to others ala Arkham Asylum, would have sufficed. Too often there was a feeling that the story was being disjointed and split into very noticeable chapters where Arkham Asylum’s story flowed believably between the chapters to the point where you didn’t notice that a new member of the rogue gallery was the current focus of the plot, this lesson seemingly forgotten between games.

Arkham City is a fantastic game packed to bursting point with side missions, collectables and challenges to keep gamers occupied for weeks, for those who are easily distracted (i.e. me!) hours will be spent doing everything they can find to do before continuing with the next chapter in the story. Even once completed there is a plethora of challenge modes, collectables and side quests to do giving you plenty of bang for your buck. Visually it is stunning, Arkham looks and feels like it could be a very real threat to those who don the cowl unprepared for what lies ahead and this is further enhanced by the accompanying audio and musical score to really hammer home Batman’s feelings of apprehension.

Overall Arkham City is Arkham Asylum only bigger, better, more polished and well deserving of the 9 out of 10 score I was going to give it ... until I reached the ending. Like a good anecdote which should gradually build into a joke deserving of the prolonged build up the game was building up nicely only for the punch line to be forgotten to the disappointment of those whom had been gripped only to be let down at the finale. The ending was such a disappointment for me that I verbally exclaimed “WTF? Bullcrap!” and immediately docked the game a review point for the ending. Petty? Maybe, but I bought this game, played and loved every minute of it only for it to let me down in the most epic of ways imaginable at the finish line.

Score: 8/10