Batman: Arkham City - Review
The Game:
I'm pretty sure that right now, there's some big Marvel executive sitting in a conference room with a bunch of scared looking employees, shouting "WHY DON'T WE HAVE A DECENT VIDEO GAME?!?" It hasn’t been all bad for Marvel, there have been a couple of good Spider-man games and the Ultimate Alliance games were good fun for a bit but it’s mostly been film-tie-in crap. For some reason, Marvel haven't been able to produce a video game like DC has.
Back in August 2009, Rocksteady released Batman: Arkham Asylum and no-one expected it to be the hit that it was. It was a huge financial and critical success and more than that; it was a proper Batman game. It was faithful to the comic books and had the bat-geeks (like myself) foaming at the mouth. So a sequel was inevitable.
Enter Batman: Arkham City. Batman managed to return order to Arkham Asylum after the Joker took over it. However, warden Quincy Sharpe took credit for Batman's work and soon became Mayor. He then went ahead with his plan to expand Arkham Asylum into Gotham and create a super prison, Arkham City. The show is being run by the shady looking Professor Hugo Strange. What's worse is that he knows Batman's true identity is Bruce Wayne. The caped crusader will stop at nothing to shut this prison down but before he can do that, he has to deal with all the inmates like the Joker, the Penguin, Two-Face and Mr. Freeze to name but a few. It's going to be another busy night...
The Campaign:
I'm going to warn your right now. There be spoilers ahead. Lots of spoilers. I can't review this game without talking about the plot. So if you haven't finished it yet, run off and complete it and then come back and read this. OK?
Through a series of events, Batman manages to get himself into Arkham City to try and shut it down from the inside. You soon learn that every villain wants to carve a little of Arkham City for themselves. The Joker, the Penguin and Two-Face control different areas but for these psychos that’s never going to enough... Besides, the Joker has more to lose than anyone else.
The Joker is sick. The Titan formula he injected himself with in the first game is having some very nasty side effects and he's dying. But this is the Joker we’re talking about, he’s not going to go out easy! He manages to get some of his blood in Batman and in the Gotham hospitals, forcing Batman to find a cure. As evil plans go, this is pretty clever but as a way of driving a game forward? Not so much.
It feels cheap. An easy way to force Batman to deal with every criminal who might have a scrap of information. I really felt like it affected the gameplay too. Arkham City is supposed to have an element of freedom to it. There are loads of side missions in which you can help Bane recover Titan containers, track down Deadshot, discover a face-stealing serial killer to name but a few. But in the back of my mind I kept thinking, if Batman is on death's door along with most of Gotham, is he really going to really be helping Bane right now? I'm not stupid. I know that Batman isn't going to die just because I do a side mission but the fact that he doesn't have a lot of time left is so integral to the story and something that you're told by Alfred, Oracle and the Joker time and time again that I feel like I shouldn't be doing anything but focusing on the story. Which made no sense since I was being reminded all the time that there's loads more to do. Maybe it's because that's how Batman truly is; torn between helping so many people and ultimately having to prioritise.
There was one other element of the story that I had a problem with and that was with the exchange between Mr Freeze about two thirds of the way through the game. The Joker lets Batman know that only Freeze can create the cure they both so desperately need. So, through a series of events Mr Freeze makes the cure for Batman, only to lock it away in a safe and then start attacking Batman, demanding that the Dark Knight gets his wife Nora back from the Joker. That I can almost understand. Mr Freeze is a bad guy and Batman’s health is not his priority. What follows is a brilliant and tense fight between Batman and Freeze. Batman beats Freeze (unless you suck at this game) and he opens the safe only to find the cure has been stolen from the other side by Harley Quinn. Straightaway, Mr Freeze is all like “What are you waiting for? Go after her and get your cure and stop the clown.” Hello? You just screwed me over! If you’d given me the cure, I could have beaten Joker, saved your wife and then I could've taken you both out for tea and cake. Instead, you messed everything up. But Batman doesn’t say that. He says “I promise I’ll get Nora back for you.” WHAT?!? This guy just fucked up everything for the both of you and now you’re all hugs and promises?!? SHEESH! It makes no sense at all. It makes me think that Freeze was a loose end that the writers had no idea to deal with. They desperately wanted to give the player a chance to fight him but also wanted him to be a good guy.
Before I stop talking about the story, I have to talk about the ending. The ending that I didn’t see coming. Batman manages to recover the cure takes some for himself before the Joker shouts for the cure. Batman almost debates giving it to him just before the Joker jumps on him and stabs Batman in the arm, causing him to drop the cure and the vial smashes to pieces. The Joker tries to lick up the cure but to no avail. He asks if Batman is happy now and Batman says, “Do you want to know something funny? Even after everything you’ve done. I would have saved you.” The Joker dies laughing and then, in an incredibly moving scene, Batman carries him out of Arkham City with everyone watching, mirroring the painting seen right at the start of the game. It's so well handled. I don’t know of any other villain whose death could invoke that kind of emotional response. He’s a complete psychotic bastard but there’s something about his character that you just love. There’s a scene where Batman believes the joker has been shot and killed and Batman actually seems distraught that he’s dead. Really, a huge weight should have been lifted from Batman’s shoulders but for Batman it would never feel that way with the Joker gone, as much as he would like it to.
Moving on from the story, Arkham City builds on everything Arkham Asylum offered. Although the city isn't as big as I hoped, it's much bigger then the Asylum. Nothing makes you feel more like Batman than running off a building, diving at the floor and then breaking into a glide before dive-bombing at some poor, unsuspecting in-mate. Like the gliding, the combat has been refined too. It feels more accurate this time round, offering more moves and animations then ever before. A favourite move of mine is the ability to break enemies weapons. You relieve an opponent of a gun and then snap it half. Brilliant and very Batman. All these fancypants moves have to be unlocked though. The experience you need to get your hands on these new moves and gadget upgrades is given to you by beating up goons and finding Riddles. That's right, the Riddler is back and he's really upped his game since last time. Some of his trophies are in cages and you have solve puzzles to try free them. But the Riddler has taken it one step further again. He's taken six hostages and placed each one in gauntlet style traps. You solve enough riddles, he'll give you a location of a hostage. Which is tricky, because there are hundreds of riddles this time around. I felt like giving up on it at one point. But then he mocked me and I saw his projected image laughing at me, calling me stupid. And that was enough to push me on. I kept going until I had solved enough riddles to save the hostages and reveal his location. Taking him out has to be one of the most satisfying parts of a video game of all the time.
The Catwoman content gives a change of pace but only for four short periods of time. Which I’m glad of. Fighting as Catwoman is fun but she’s so slow at getting around Arkham City compared to Batman. It’s almost painful. What’s worse is Catwoman’s character. I know she’s always acted a bit slutty but this version of her is something else. Everything she says is full of cheese and innuendo. It makes her so bloody annoying that you wish you could beat her up as Batman. I’d much rather have been playing as Robin or Nightwing in the campaign. Catwoman can bite me. I bet she would too.
Once you complete the game you the unlock New Game Plus. New Game Plus gives you the chance to play the game again with all the gadgets and moves you’ve unlocked but the game is more difficult from the get go and you don’t get any counter indicators when the enemy tries to attack you. You don’t realise how much you rely on those indicators until they’re taken away. It makes the game so much more of a challenge and gives it credible extra replay value.
The Multiplayer:
Although there’s no multiplayer, the challenge maps are back. I’ve always had a love/hate with the challenge maps in Batman. They’re great fun but ultimately frustrating. They’ve mixed things up this time, creating campaigns that consist of a mix of combat and predator maps. It’s basically just another way to play the maps but it gives you different multipliers to apply and this helps change the dynamic quite a bit. You get to choose whether you play as Batman or Catwoman and there is now DLC with Nightwing and Robin as playable characters. Each character feels unique and they all have different moves and weapons. However, since Nightwing and Robin are only useable in the challenge maps, they feel quite expensive for what are essentially just fancy skins. But if you’re a massive Batman fan like me, that won’t matter.
The Achievements:
The story achievements are great. A real mix of easy and difficult ones. There’s the usual plot ones, ones for the side missions, the Riddler related ones and more. What's great is that all the story ones are achievable. Some more so than others. One of my favourite achievements was ‘Catch’ in which you have to find someone to play Batarang catch with. One of my least favourites was ‘Story Teller’ in which you have to have 12 murderous dates with Calender Man. He has a calender next to his cell with twelve dates circled on it. You have to go see him on every one of these dates. I knew there was no way I was going to be playing this on Christmas Day or New Year’s Day or bloody Labour Day. So I had to change the date on my console, load up the game and speak to him and repeat the process another 11 times. I got the achievement but for only 10G it hardly feels worth it.
The challenge map achievements are ridiculous though. You have to get all the medals as all the characters to get all the achievements. With the Predator one’s this is fine because you can take your time but the Combat ones? No chance. I would have to play it day and night to get good enough to unlock all those achievements, so they're write offs more or less straight away.
The Verdict:
Batman: Arkham City is an amazing game. It caters to the Batman fans and to fans of action games alike. Even though the plot has it’s problems, I know I’ll play it through several times more. Even though I’ll never get those Challenge map achievements, I know I’ll keep coming back to try. You can't stay away from Arkham City for long.
What’s great about this game is that is that it doesn’t try and replicate Christopher Nolan’s films and it doesn’t try replicate everything in the comics for the sake of it. It respects the source material but it finds it’s own footing and takes this incredible franchise and it’s huge array of characters and makes it it’s own. I mean, they killed off the Joker!
I don’t know where they would go with a sequel but I really hope they make one. It’ll be odd without the Joker but I have faith in Rocksteady. They’ve made two superb games and I’d be very surprised if they didn’t have a few ideas for a third.
9/10
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