Review: A truly epic sequel that is bigger in every way than its predecessor. Batman: Arkham City comes close to gaming perfection.
So that’s what this iteration of Bruce Wayne looks like – huh.
That was pretty much my first thought playing Arkham City. The game’s introduction fills in an only now obvious hole in Arkham Asylum by kicking off with an entire sequence where Bruce Wayne is kidnapped and forced to escape – without his gadgets or suit. We even get to see him putting his weight behind a campaign to shut down the titular Arkham City prison, a section of the city simply walled off and left to run riot with criminals. In fact, pretty much the entire introduction-cum-training level is played with Bruce out in the open.
It’s a wonderful sign of the greater depth of this sequel, that it shows Batman without his mask – in fact, we get to even beat the crap out of some folks as Bruce, and it’s in these scenes that we really see the man’s ferocity, that single-minded purpose – the ultimate expression of which is the Batman himself.
In other words, Rocksteady really, really GET this character on a very deep level, and have crafted a game around him that truly lives up to the hype.
Bats and the City Soon enough, we say farewell to Bruce Wayne and put on the cloak and mask, the tool-belt and body armour, and launch into a sprawling investigation of Dr Strange’s nefarious Protocol Ten, which leads you from villain to villain across the roofs and through the buildings of Arkham City. It’s... almost overwhelming, how quickly you find yourself in the thick of it. Probably our only reservation about the game is that, early on at least, it’s very easy to feel lost and constantly torn between stuff to do.
Part of that’s due to the fact that Rocksteady’s cleverly left you in possession of every tool that Batman had at the end of Asylum. Game hints point out when these can be used one by one, but nonetheless, they’re all there – there’s a lot of options in how to tackle problems almost from the get go.
At the same time you’re coming to grips with the vast new setting, and much greater degree of verticality in the environment. Batman can glide much greater distances, and even powerdive to boost flight time or rappel onto ledges from glide mode. And that verticality exists within the crime-fighting equivalent of a GTA game; combined with Batman’s ability to listen on nearby conversations, the constant urge to run off and just explore is near overwhelming. The early phase of the game is a real bombardment of villains, ways to travel around the city, and things to do.
But then something kicks in. Something really rather magical happens, and you realise something very important – you are the motherfucking Batman, and the wide open expanse of Arkham City should quake in fear.
Mechanical perfection Rocksteady really has created a masterwork with Arkham City, and every step of the way the game maintains not only a note-perfect tone, but introduces and builds upon some of the best movement and fighting mechanics you’ll find in gaming today. The fact that they’ve all been thought out and tweaked so that they also fit the Batman is simply game development perfection.
Once again, the default movement speed is walking, with Batman steadily stalking along streets and rooftops with a deliberate tread. The game’s excellent physics come into play when you start running, and your cape streams behind you, or you start rappelling around the heights of the city. The wonderful thing about all this is that Batman’s animations are all so perfectly weighted, from the gliding to the way he crouches after jumping down from a ledge.
Of course, fast movement’s only part of the game. A lot of the time your peregrinations around Arkham City are going to be punctuated by intense bouts of violence. The flow of the first game’s fighting was already near flawless, and in Arkham City the larger amount of thugs you’ll encounter in any one fight make for truly epic fighting. The chained combos that build from successfully striking foe after foe reward tactical thinking; do you keep striking, and rely on constant movement to avoid a chain-breaking injury, or do you carefully time counters to take down individuals. Even how you open a fight is going to influence how it progresses. Do you glide in and kick someone in the head? Walk in like a crimefighting god and let them come to you? Or try to stealth it up and quietly take your enemies down? There’s always an option, so you can either stick with your preferred methods of justice dispensing, or mix it up to keep things interesting.
And all this isn’t even considering how things like explosive gels or the game’s new Remote Electron Charge interact in combat situations. It can stun enemies or even magnetise their weapons, pulling them right out of their hands.
However, it’s mostly used to charge up generators and engines, opening and closing doors or attracting and repelling bits of the environment. It’s all part of the many ingenious puzzles you’ll have to solve, often helped by entering Detective Mode to work out where exactly you need to go and what exactly you need to investigate.
Comic crack The game’s mechanics are undeniably stellar, possibly best of breed, but Arkham City is rounded out not only by a semi-RPG-like XP-based progression system (seriously – boost your melee combat armour and you’ll feel like a God), but also just about the best voice cast in gaming. The game frequently drops into cutscenes or heavily voiced sequences, and rather than blocking you from the action, these are like little prizes for getting through the game. Any scene between Kevin Conroy’s Batman and Mark Hamill’s Joker is astoundingly good, but there’s not a bad egg in the entire incredibly large cast.
What really astounds us though is the sheer amount of game on offer. Over 20 hours of main campaign; 15 hours of sidemissions; hundreds of Riddler Challenges; suit challenges... the list goes on, and Arkham City just keeps giving and giving. And it’s one of the best looking Xbox games we’ve played to boot, proving that the Unreal 3 engine has some incredible life left in it yet.
It’s a very close contender for Game of the Year, and an absolutely essential buy.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012