Batman: Arkham City Review

Arkham City starts not in the tights of the Caped Crusader of Gotham City, but in the pristine suit of Bruce Wayne as he holds a press conference to announce his opposition of the Arkham City prison.  Immediately following Wayne’s announcement, TYGER mercenaries arrest Mr. Wayne.  Wayne wakes up chained up.  Bruce tips over the chair and tries to escape, but the guard hears him.  The guard goes to kick Wayne, but he counters thus breaking the guard’s leg.  Another guard hits Bruce with the butt of his gun and pushes him out into the processing center as other inmates ridicule him and Hugo Strange’s voice booms over the intercom.  As Bruce Wayne enters Arkham City, Penguin and his thugs jump the millionaire and knock him out.  You wake up kneeling in front of the Penguin.  The diminutive crook starts wailing on Wayne with brass knuckles.  A well-timed counter and Wayne breaks the Penguin’s hand.  With the Penguin hurt, his goons jump into take Wayne out, but to no avail as the millionaire playboy of Gotham City takes them down with ease.  This series of events just described is the opening minutes of Arkham City.  In this opening, Rocksteady introduces the player to the story, the main villain, the core mechanics and the atmosphere of this new Arkham prison in one neat package.  It makes for one of the best openings for any video game as Rocksteady puts you in the shoes of the vulnerable Bruce Wayne before letting the player loose as Mr. Wayne’s alter-ego, Batman.

Once you get a hold of Batman’s suit and gadgets, you are dropped right in the thick of Arkham City.  Given the reins to do what you want when you want in this expansive setting with lots to do.  This amount of freedom is extremely refreshing considering how linear Arkham Asylum was even with the openness of Arkham Island.  You are free to go complete story missions, find side quests, collect Riddler Trophies (which you need to collect all of them to complete one of the side quests) or just beat up some inmates.  You can easily lose hours upon hours just exploring this incredibly rich setting without even touching the main story.  Speaking of Arkham City’s story, it is better paced and put together than Arkham Asylum’s plot.  Rocksteady has seamlessly woven a large gallery of iconic Batman villains like the Joker, Mr. Freeze Two-Face and many more into a one epic plot worthy of the Caped Crusader.

Along with fixing the flaws with Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady also made some improvements with the combat and upgrade system and one big addition in a playable Catwomen. Rocksteady did an incredible job making the combat in Arkham City more satisfying than its predecessor.  It is much easier to chain together strikes, counters, special takedowns and gadgets into one crazy combo, which makes even fighting lowly inmates that much more rewarding.  The upgrade system has been totally revamped.  Instead of just being long line of upgrades, you can choose from upgrading Batman’s batsuit, combat or gadgets.  The upgrade system gives players a little more freedom to build the Batman they want.  The biggest addition in Arkham City is Catwomen.  At certain points in the main story, you will get to play as Selina Kyle.  These segments are pretty short, but act as refreshing breathers from the World’s Greatest Detective.  Catwomen is much more agile than her burly counterpart allowing her to traverse corners of Arkham City that Batman just cannot reach.  After beating the main story, players are able to switch between Batman and Catwomen at certain locations around Arkham City.

With an epic story, excellent gameplay and a fully faceted open world setting, Arkham City is the ultimate superhero and ultimate Batman game.  Any gamer no matter if they are hardcore fans of the Dark Knight or know nothing about the Caped Crusader will enjoy the amazing experience Arkham City offers.  It puts you in the shoes of a superhero like no other game has ever done before and few could possibly do after.  In Arkham City, you are Batman.  You are the Dark Knight.  You are the World’s Greatest Detective.  You are a superhero.

Batman: Arkham Asylum Review

When you play a superhero game, be it Spider-Man to even Superman, you want to feel like you are the superhero.  You want to be in control of all his/her super powers, abilities or gadgets.  You want to fight all his dastardly enemies.  Ultimately you want to be the superhero; something that few superhero games have actually achieved.  Finally after a long time of being placed in some of the worst games of the last few console generations, the Dark Knight has reclaimed his glory.  With Arkham Asylum, you can finally say, “I’m Batman” with pride as it stands tall as one of the best superhero games of all-time.

Arkham Asylum starts off with the Dark Knight transporting the Joker to the iconic Gotham prison, Arkham Asylum.  After a brief cutscene, you are introduced to the inner halls of the asylum as you accompany of restrained Joker to cell.  Right before you can lock Joker away for good, Batman’s eternal nemesis with the help of his girlfriend, Harley Quinn escapes and takes over Arkham Asylum.  As the World’s Greatest Detective, Batman must explore Arkham Island, figure out what the Joker is up to and stop him from using it to take over Gotham City.

Joker is not the only super villain that the Dark Knight will fight during his adventures on Arkham Island.  Batman will fight the likes of the Scarecrow, Bane, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, Harley Quinn and Mr. Zsacz on his way to the Joker.  Also the Riddler plays a role in Arkham Asylum as well.  You will not fight the Riddler, but the man obsessed with riddles has left a bunch of collectables for you to find during your time on Arkham Island.  Like mentioned above, Arkham Asylum makes you feel like the Batman and that comes from the gadgets you receive throughout game and the hand-to-hand and stealth combat.  Batman receives a good number of gadgets that you can use to traverse the dangers across all of Arkham Island from your trusty Batarang to a Line Launcher to cross large chasms.  The combat is very awarding.  Depending on the situation, you will have to take one of two approaches.  The first being the hand-to-hand combat against a group of thugs.  Bouncing from thug to thug combining attacks, counters and Batarangs to the face into one flowing combo is one satisfying experience.  The second approach is stealth, which you can use against groups of unsuspecting or gun-wielding enemies.  You can perform a stealth takedown from many different places such as hanging from a ledge or sitting on a gargoyle.  It is very fun picking off enemies one-by-one and seeing enemies start panicking as they might be the next to face Batman’s harsh  justice.

With all the great stuff Arkham Asylum offers, there are a few flaws.  First and foremost is the fact that the game is far too linear when Rocksteady gives you all of Arkham Island to explore.  It would have been nice to see a few side missions interspersed here and there.  That leads into my other flaw as the game just felt too short for my liking.  The story is great, but when it just got going that was the point Rocksteady decided to end it.  They could have easily kept the game going a little longer with a faceoff with the Riddler or another villain from Batman’s rich comic book lore.  Also the final boss battle against Joker was less of a boss battle more of a fight against three groups of 20 thugs.  Other little flaws include the lack of variety in the enemies; the mutant enemies get a little too tedious after the third of fourth time facing them and the over reliance of the Detective Mode, a great feature that helps you throughout Arkham Asylum, but it takes away from seeing the gorgeous art and variety in the hallows of the environment in Arkham Asylum.

Even though my big complaints about the game’s length and linearity, Rocksteady achieved something many other studios have failed at, creating a great superhero game.  Batman: Arkham Asylum does the Dark Knight and his long storied history justice.  It is a game that truly puts you in Batman’s suit and should be in any superhero, Batman or action fans library.