AT FREAKING LAST!!!

After one promising trailer and one lackluster one, Beenox has given us what we wanted:

Batman Arkham City review

At its core, this is a truly amazing game that should not be missed by anyone, whether a fan of Batman or not. A masterful stealth/action game, mixed with amazing combat, perfect atmosphere and some great design choices, this has reached the very pinnacle of my favourite games list as my second favourite game of all time.

For starters, take a look at the graphics. They're pretty dang good, but what I'm most impressed about is the way the look captures everything about Batman. It's dark, gritty and decrepit. It suits Batman's universe so well. The characters also look great. They are all very cool and suited to the art style. Enough about the graphics though, what truly defines these characters are their actions, motivations and personality. You can see these in most of the villains like Mr. Freeze and the Joker, but there are some characters which aren't fully brought out to meet their true potential. Joker is present the whole game, less so then Arkham Asylum, but still there. You understand his motives and style through encounters and the messages he leaves you. Mr. Freeze is also a fairly present villain, and because of that he is intersting. But there are a few villains who don't quite get it...say, Poison Ivy and Two-Face. These are some of the baddies that feel as though they were added in because the developers had some cool ideas, but their characters are seen for a total of...maybe 10 minutes for Two-Face and a minute and a half for Miss Isley. If they included these guys, then why not give them bigger parts? Anyway, onto the only other slightly disappointing aspect of the game. The story. It's actually a pretty solid narrative, but the way it's told sometime hurts it. You have to go to the next objective, but because of the open world nature of the game you do lose track of the story a little. When you go off and beat up goons, or do side missions or whatever, you may forget why you're going after Penguin in the museum when you were just at the Steel Mill fighting with Joker. You lose the feel of the story if you take too big a gaps between missions, which you will probably do because the game is so much fun otherwise. Nevertheless, it's still well told with a lot of fan service inside.
The Gameplay...wow. Words can't describe it...oh hold on

The gameplay is fast paced, yet very deep. Arkham City follows the same system as Asylum, losing nothing except the throw ability and adding in so much more. Every time you hit someone your combo increases. If you miss a hit or get hit yourself and your combo breaks and you have to start all over again. You have to build up a combo to be able to pull off special moves like a one hit takedown or a weapon break or mega stun. Or if you don't want to use them and just keep going, you need to build an even higher combo to get freeflow focus which makes everything move slower except you. Basically, you want to keep dat combo. However, not every thug goes down easy. Some enemies have knives that have to be countered differently, some have tasers that you need to jump behind. Some have riot shields that you need to perform ariel attacks to get around. Some have armour that you have to perform beat downs on and well, yeah...a lot of variation. It's a lot to think about in such a small space of time and if you break your combo, you really kick yourself. Very rarely will you get frustrated when you break it though, because the combat makes it very hard for anyone but you to make the mistake. Hardly ever the game's fault, almost all the time yours. Once or twice I thought it was questionable on how my combo broke even though I moved the control stick in the right direction, but hey. New stuff has been added to make combat more interesting and varied. There's freeflow focus as mentioned before, beat downs which see you unleashing quick blows to take down a single enemy while he remains standing, ariel attacks which are needed for riot shields, mega stuns which knock an enemy to the ground if performed and four special moves which are awesome. Gadgets have also been better incorporated into fighting. You can quickfire the batarang as always and the quickfire batclaw comes with a special move which is pretty handy. You can now quickfire explosive gel, but I find this clunky and hard to use. The remote electrical charge is useful every now and then but one of the best standouts is the freeze bomb. You throw it and an enemy will be frozen for a long period of time. Mad fun. The other aspect to beating up goons is stealth. You can grapple up to the gargoyles and plot your next attack, or be really aggressive and try to take down everyone as fast as possible, your call. Stealthiness is less suicidal though. You can use Batman's gadgets to find inventive ways of taking down enemies along with silent and not so silent takedowns. It's thrilling to take down a guy and make an escape just before somebody sees you. Stealth is freaking awesome in short and there are both Combat and Predator Challenge maps to get medals in. Additionally to the crime fighting you'll be doing in Arkham City, the Riddler has also made a return. He leaves riddles which are harder to find because City is much larger than Asylum making it more difficult to see the answer, and trophies. Most trophies have a tough puzzle solving them which make them more rewarding to find. You also unlock rewards like Challenge rooms and character trophies and concept art with more frequency than in Asylum. Riddler stuff overwhelming you? Can't find the answers? You don't have to do them, but if you want to, there is a new system which helps you locate the trophies easily. At time, you'll se a thug lit in green. This indicates he can be interrogated for Riddler secrets. The catch, you must beat everyone but he. It's interesting trying to keep your combo going while still trying to keep him conscious. The reason for solving Riddles is much better now. Riddler has taken hostages and he will only reveal the location of said hostage when you've found enough secrets. When you find a hostage, you have to rescue them from a Saw like Death Trap. They're fun too. There are a fair few side quests that are also very cool. More so, this game makes you feel like you're Batman. Everything you do feels like something the caped crusader himself would do. Catwoman is in the game too, but she's DLC...sort of. I'll give a review of her later, but this game can be considered a masterpiece by any standards. I have heard people say that they prefer Asylum, and I can see why, but City is a much more fulfilling experience WITH POTENTIAL FOR A SEQUEL!!! I love this game. If only Skyward Sword wasn't standing in the way then it would be my personal favourite game. A masterpiece. A godsend. It's not the game we deserve, but the one we need right now. Amazing. Have you bought it yet?

Arkham City OST

Aa if this game wasn't perfect enough:

Direction

See, in many games you have your main mission to go about. Whether it's saving the world or killing the Aliens, we have a central objective. But often gamers just want to go about and explore their world. I've spent so long just flying about Arkham City that I forgot my objective and that's a good/bad thing. When the game distracts me so, I forget parts of the story and I lose emersion. Still, I didn't find Arkham City's plot too hard to catch up with (although the plot is the weakest part of the game...STILL ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR!!!!) But sometimes our freedom is stripped from us and we're forced down a narrow path to the next objective. That can get frustrating depending on the style of game you play. Something like Shattered Dimensions is an action game, so the game is always pointing you to the next objective without let up, but because it's an action game, that's what we want. But if we play a game with a bit more sophistication, then we get annoyed when the game holds our hand too much. if you're constantly being shown where to go and what to do, then it removes a huge chunk of challenge. YES NAVI, I KNOW I HAVE TO GO TO DEATH MOUNTAIN! However, despite the joke, Zelda does it really well. Not pressuring you too much but not falling to the other end of the spectrum. If a game has no direction, it can be both good and bad. It can inspire a desire to explore and find your own adventure but no direction means you don't know where to go. It's really hard to get that right in a game. Personally, I like games which let me do missions when I want, but always tells me where they are. You?

Batman Arkham Asylum/ Arkham City Comparison

Basically, Arkham City is a very different game to Asylum. At first, it might not seem like it, but under the surface, there is a lot more depth and complexity to City than Asylum.


First off: The graphics. In all honesty, I prefer those of Arkham Asylum. I know there isn't much difference, but Asylum has stronger graphics...ever so slightly. Most people with smaller TV's won't notice the difference, but I had the good fortune to get a really large one so I can see the slight difference in quality. The other thing that Asylum had was this sort of comic book style art to things like the character bios and even in the gameplay. I miss the comic style now that's it's been replaced with a more computerized style. But, hardly any difference overall. This is probably because Arkham City is open world, which brings me to my next point. ARKHAM CITY IS OPEN WORLD!!! This changes the style drastically from a slightly claustrophobic game to a free roam one. You can fly about the large map as you choose, picking fights with thugs as you see fit. However, there is always stuff to do. There are loads of side missions and riddler trophies and riddles to conquer. Arkham Asylum has a very narrow path to follow. That's not a bad thing, but I feel that Arkham City truly was Batman's playground. However, I did like the feel of being trapped on island with hundred of people gunning for me. Speaking of riddler stuff, there are some changes this time. Arkham City has over 400 whereas Asylum has over 200. Also, the trophies aren't just collectables, most of them have a tough puzzle about them. This is more engaging and generally more fun. You can also interrogate thugs lit in green to find riddler secrets on the map. This is really handy. Now to the biggest part of the game. The combat. There are a lot more moves that Batman can use in City like the beatdown and the special combo Bat-Swarm which add to the combat even more with strategy and flow. And I don't know how I beat up bad guys without freeflow focus. The stealth has also been improved on with new moves like the double takedown and new gadgets like the disruptor (upgrade it the first chance you get) The enemies have more variety than just knives and tasers and the stealth bad guys have things like thermal sensors and detective mode scramblers. Basically, City is better in almost every aspect except perhaps the story. It's good, but it feels a little jumbled because of how many side missions you do, and sometimes you wonder why somebody like Two-Face is in the game if he only appears twice. Two-Face could be the bad guy for the next Batman game, but instead, one of Batman's biggest enemies is thrust into a small role that doesn't suit him. Aside from that though: ARKHAM CITY IS A MUCH BETTER GAME

Raging

Games are meant to be fun. No question about it. Yet, in most games, we encounter periods of frustration which make us want to stop playing. But, most of the time, it's bearable. We get past it and simply move onto the fun stuff. I find that the true rage is brought out when you play against other people. Because you're playing against someone, you feel more compelled to beat them and you get more competitive, so when you lose or screw up, you feel more annoyed than you would a CPU. I find that this happens most in FPS games. No FPS is absolutely fair to begin with, different weapons are better at different ranges and at time you won't have the right weapon for the right time and get killed because of it. Say you have an assault rifle and you run into someone with a shotgun at close range. He's most likely going to win, not because of skill, but because he came in with the overall advantage. Hard games are what really get people going. The more you die and have to do things again, the less enjoyable it is for us, but if the game is too easy, then you aren't feeling challenged. A game like Dark Souls is very, very hard, but every time you kill something, you feel like you really accomplished something. Beating the enemy wasn't just an inevitability, it was the combination of skill and and tactics. The trouble is, most people get way too frustrated with dying so often to keep playing it. But the worst feeling in games is when you feel as though you've been cheated in some way. When playing Arkham City, I rarely ever get annoyed because every mistake I made was my own, not the game's fault. But in something like Vanquish or Marvel vs Capcom 3, boss battles all have one hit K.O. moves. This is really annoying because you have to start the whole fight again because you got hit by one attack. Not fun. But by now a lot of game devs have worked out what to do and what not to do to make their gamers stop raging. Mostly...








QUICK TIME EVENTS!!!!!!!!!

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