Batman: Arkham City Review

I finally had the chance to get into one of the highly anticipated games of the year and I’m glad I did, because Batman: Arkham City has become one of my favorite games of all-time.

I know I’m already gushing over this game, but I need to. For months I tried not to read too much news regarding the game, because I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I didn’t want to go into with impossible expectations, but after playing it I realized my expectations could have been soaring and I would of still not have been let down.

The plot of the game brings in appearances from many of our favorite villains and also appearances from other characters that I won’t spoil. Yet, the whole story really centers on Hugo Strange’s Protocol 10. I won’t tell you what the protocol is but in order to stop it you’ll be facing off against Joker, Two-Face, Penguin and many more.

There is several things going on in the story, but I can’t tell you because then it will ruin it. I’ll just say it’s a very engaging Batman story.

Now, if you played the first game in the series, Batman: Arkham Asylum, you’ll be very familiar with the game mechanics. The game controls very similar to Arkham Asylum, but has made it more fluent. The combat is still very fun, detective mode is always helpful and gliding across rooftops is amazing.

All right I feel like I gushed enough, but the truth is there aren’t any major problems with the game. Yeah, sometimes when you’re gliding and try to grapple you don’t always get where you wanted to be, but that problem is small and doesn’t affect anything else.

Another thing I will nitpick is the Pay Your Respects achievement/trophy. I don’t know if this happened to anyone else but when I tried to get this achievement it took it a good 10 minutes for it to unlock. I know you might say that I did it wrong, but I didn’t. I did everything I was supposed to and it just took 10 minutes to unlock, that was a pain.

That’s really the only problems I have with the game. Some people might be turned off to the fact that the game doesn’t hold your hand. It expects you to be intelligent, figure stuff out on your own and I love that. Too many games nowadays hold your hand and when I was a kid no game held your hand, it would drop you off in a world and that was it, it was up to get to the end and Arkham City is very similar.

Besides from the main quest you have a bunch of side-quests to complete. Each side-quest has its own story and they’re all pretty good. One side quest that will keep you busy for a long time is the ‘Enigma Conundrum’. This side quest is the Riddler’s challenges. He has scattered riddles and trophies all over Arkham City (I think it’s about 400 trophies) and you have to collect them all. Yeah, it’s going to take awhile.

Another playable character for the main game is Catwoman. She is downloadable, I don’t know if you have to buy her or she comes with the game. She came with my game along with Robin. Yet, if you want to play as Catwoman than make sure you download her pack before you start the story, because then her parts will be intertwined with the main story.

The multiplayer for this game comes in the form of challenge maps, very much like Arkham Asylum’s. You try to take out guys quietly or with brute force and gain points and Riddler medals. In this mode you’ll be able to play as Batman, Catwoman or if you pre-ordered, Robin. All these characters are great, because they all fight differently and they don’t feel like carbon copies of one another.

If you’re disappointed that you missed out on getting Robin, don’t worry you’ll be able to buy his pack next month.

Arkham City is by far one of the best games this year. I really don’t think that any other game can come close to the enjoyment that I got out of this one.

10 out of 10