It’s awesome. Go play it.
Well, okay. I, of all people, should probably substantiate this claim somewhat, if only to watch Mat squirm. So here’s what I’ve learned from my three-ish hours of Arkham City.
Basically, it’s just about everything fans of Arkham Asylum could hope for. Maybe even more.
So let’s make this brief: everything that Arkham Asylum did right appears to have survived into Arkham City. The freeflowing, cinematic combat remains relatively unchanged in principle, though Batman’s got a few new moves added to his arsenal, and if you’ve got access to Catwoman she feels a little different without being a whole new game.
Arkham City dives straight in with the same production and narrative values as its predecessor, and as before it wastes no time giving you a glimpse of some of Batman’s rogues, particularly the Penguin and Two-Face, who were absent from the first game for all intents and purposes. The intro segments are really cool and well-staged, and more engaging than the original’s walk-around of the asylum.
The most immediately noticeable difference here is the open world nature of the game. The eponymous super-prison is a quarantined part of Gotham, with the sort of crazy urban sprawl you’d expect. If you’re familiar with the traversal mechanics from Arkham Asylum, you can pretty much guess how you’ll get around: gliding and grapnel-ing about. Batman doesn’t scale walls the hard way like many of his open-world counterparts. I haven’t dug deep into the side missions yet, but so far the whole thing seems well-planned and executed to avoid the open-world grind.
And what survey of Arkham City‘s strong points would be complete without mentioning the voice cast? Most notably, in my view, Mark Hamill returns as the Clown Prince of Crime himself, after saying, at one point, that Arkham Asylum would be his last outing as Batman’s nemesis. Most people may associate Hamill forever with Luke Skywalker, whiny intergalactic farm boy turned ace pilot turned Jedi Knight, but he’ll always be the Joker to me.
Contact the author at dix@tap-repeatedly.com! Though until Gotham is safe once again, you should probably expect delayed responses.
Bring on payday!
Journalistic corruption! They paid you off! You’re in their pocket! Admit it! Fouuuullllllllllll!!!1!
*Ahem*
Well, Brandon, please do regale us with more impressions as they come to you. I’m on the fence with Arkham City (as I am with most games that cost $59) for a near future purchase because as much as I enjoyed what I played of Arkham Asylum, I’ve just not been compelled strongly enough to finish the whole thing. I wish it were more linear, in a proper way. Is that a fair, or at least understandable, complaint to level against Arkham Asylum? Love the comic book feel of it, but the whole thing felt too loose. And the boss battles I made it to were terrible (Bane, Scarecrow, and yes, I watched the final battle with Super [spoiler] … ugh).
Gee, I wish someone would pay me to say good things about good games…
Anyway, if you felt that AA was too loose, AC isn’t going to make you happy. It is open-world, properly, and while it isn’t as open as, say, a GTA game, it’s still more open than AA was.
The side quests (so far as I’ve encountered them, anyway) are built cleverly as essentially side cases against other Bat-villains – like a series of hostage situations set up by the Riddler, or the ongoing effort to catch Mr. Zsasz – rather than just totally random “go here and help random NPC with random task” kind of stuff.
I don’t necessarily agree that AA’s boss battles were “terrible”, though I wouldn’t call them exceptional in any way. (The final boss was, indeed, atrocious for resigns beyond the design ones.) I haven’t encountered a true boss battle in AC yet, though the combat itself hasn’t really changed, so…
On the bright side, depending, Batman’s gadget arsenal is brought to the forefront more in AC, so if that stuff floats your boat…
Brandon, you are a brilliantly talented writer and an all round stand up dude..
But just know that I hate you right now.. 🙁
Arkham Asylum is one of my games of the generation. Maybe one of my favourite games of all time. Nothing I’ve read about Arkham City (as much as I’m trying to keep to my black out, and failing miserably at this point) suggests I’m going to be disappointed.
If it makes you feel any better, Mat, this comes during what is probably the busiest week of my semester for school, so I’m kind of climbing the walls right now until I can go home and play more. I’m not sure which is worse.
Man, I really want to get this, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to fit in any play time. Next week!
It’s… overwhelming. In a good way. I am shocked how GOOD these people are at making games.