Preview: Warner's recent Batman: Arkham City preview reveals a bigger, darker more action filled sequel to Arkham Asylum. Ka-POW!
We unashamedly loved Batman: Arkham Asylum, and we even thought it was one of those rare games that was in fact superior when played on console. It's atmosphere and cinematic overtones really made it a more impressive experience when you could sit back on a lounge in front of a good AV setup and soak up the superhero cool.
At a recent Warner Interactive Entertainment showcase, we got to see the sequel, Batman: Arkham City, in action. And we mean action. We got to see the first couple of 'missions' courtesy of Rocksteady's Dax Ginn, as he played us through the punching, detecting and caped crusading.
The first and most obvious change to the game is its scale. This isn't a closed, corridor-based setting - this is the city, from crowded alleys to soaring heights. It's an open world of crime-fighting, and while the game's plot will lead you on a more or less linear path to the game's conclusion, there's still a whole city to explore
As a case in point, as Dax explained to us the opening mission – to get into Arkham City’s courthouse and rescue Catwoman from Harvey Dent and his gang of thugs – he also showed us a group of gangsters beating up a local journalist, just a few streets away. At this stage, you can choose to go straight into action against Dent, or investigate the beating, which in turn reveals that one of the baddies is an informant for The Riddler, who no doubt has vital info the arch-criminal.
To extract that information, however, you’ve got to be careful. Rather than just going in fists flailing, you need to make sure that the informant is the last man standing, so you can have close personal chat. It adds a new dynamic to the fight, wherein you obviously need to avoid and counter his attacks, but also need to stop short of taking him down before you’ve dealt with all the other thugs.
Success nets you the location of clues – glowing question marks left around town by The Riddler. In Asylum, you came upon these clues pretty naturally, given the linear nature of the game, but in City, they’re much harder to find. They’re on rooftops and hidden down sidestreets you may otherwise never see; thus, the importance of questioning The Riddler’s button men.
It’s a nice suggestion of how the game’s going to play out, with a lot more choice to pursue sideline plots and generally fly about town.
Literally.
On a cape and prayer In Arkham Asylum, most of your travel is on foot. In Arkham City, with its open streets and high vantage points, there’s a whole new way to get around. The Batglide has been expanded into a very organic flight system, one that doesn’t feel at all like powered flight, but rather a natural extension of Batman’s normal athleticism.
Every glide is a steady downward movement, but you can choose to go into a straight-down power dive to build up momentum and shoot higher again. You can even use your grapple to real onto a ledge and then kick off, again increasing glide time. And it looks like a helluva lot of fun, and even showed off the game’s improved graphics – your cape folds around objects rather than clipping through them.
We didn’t get a hint of it in the demo, but another thing occurred to us afterward. Ginn kept referring to the game as very much open world, so it made us wonder – does this mean, as well as being able to effectively fly, will Bats also get access to some other iconic modes of Bat-transport. Could we see a Batmobile in Arkham City?
That would be awesome.
Get the baddy, save the girl Jumping about the city is all well and good, but it was time to go and save Catwoman. Once Batman had infiltrated the courthouse – and the hovering Bat-symbol above the building makes it easy to find – we get a short cutscene between Two-face and our favourite catsuit-clad hero. If you’re a Catwoman fan... you’re gonna like Arkham City’s take on the character. She’s as slinky and dangerous as you could possibly want.
With the cutscene over, we get to enjoy a giant brawl. One of the thing’s Rocksteady’s really been working to beef up is the fighting. Not only have they doubled the moves available to Batman, but some of the fights will now feature up to 40 villains to beat to a pulp. It’s a terrifyingly frenetic spectacle, and more brutal than ever before. Batman will now even disarm people and use their clubs and weapons against them.
But fighting’s not the sum of the game. Ginn pointed out that if you’re going to make Batman a tougher fighter, you also need to ramp up his abilities as the world’s greatest detective. When the Joker attempts to target Catwoman with a sniper rifle, you have to figure out the bullet’s trajectory and track it back to sniper’s roost. Matching up the impact of the bullet in a window, and its impact on the floor of the courthouse, does the job.
Batman: Arkham City is looking like the impossible made real – a truly stellar follow up to what many people considered to be Game of the Year material. It’s bigger, badder and darker than what’s come before, and many times more epic in scope.
If the game can deliver in actuality what we’ve been promised... time for a comfier couch!
Issue: 137 | June, 2012