Batman: Arkham City – Review – Xbox 360

Adam West, George Clooney, Christian Bale, Michael Keaton, Christian Slater, Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Cillian Murphy, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Chris O’Donnell, and Eric Roberts, all familiar faces around Gotham City, who’s your favorite?

Story: After defeating the Joker in Arkham Asylum, Bruce Wayne gets abducted and thrown into a city within a city. A criminal named Hugo Strange is the leader. They capture Bruce and inject him with a virus that is affecting the Joker as well. You need to escape the madness that is Arkham City and find a cure for the virus before all of Gotham is wiped out!

Gameplay:  Arkham City is a third person hack and slash sandbox game. Rocksteady added a few new gadgets, such as a freeze grenade, a disruptor, AR Training, and a Remote Electrical Charge (REC).  The grenade allows you to stop steam to access areas blocked by it, making a platform to stand on in otherwise unswimmable water, and stunning enemies.  The disruptor destroys things such as guns, mines, and turrets.  The Augmented Reality training gives you a feel of what the batsuit can really do.  In the first game, it just allowed you to glide through the air, if you pass the 8 training  stunts that they set out, you are given a boost, allowing you to soar longer and farther.  An REC is a pulse gun that is used to stun enemies, and zap fuses to get doors open as well.

There are 440 challenges/collectables scattered throughout the map. Reaching them ranges from easy to almost IMPOSSIBLE.  Rocksteady added a little help in finding the collectables.  If you turn on batvision, there will be different colored people: orange being armed, blue being unarmed/friendly, and green being interrogateable.  You need to clear other hostiles before you can make the green guys squeal. After 80 items are retrieved, you are given a sidequest to save a hostage, and every 80 after that you can save 1 more, culminating at 400, where you face their captor.

The story is average in length, and you can play after the credits, as well as starting a new game with anything that you have accrued in the first playthrough.  Besides the campaign, they brought back the Predator  and Combat challenges, and added Campaign challenges. Predator Challenges give you 3 objectives to complete and 5-7 enemies per level. You can complete them by just killing them, but what fun is that? You can get achievements/trophies for doing the special takedowns.  You need to complete the level for them to count, and it doesn’t matter how many objectives you complete.  The combat challenges give you a certain point total and expect you to get there by making attack combos and not getting hit.  In each type of challenge, there are 3 levels of points, and there are 24 maps of each challenge.

Sound/Graphics:  The game is jam-packed with characters:  Deadshot, Zsasz, Mr. Freeze, Calendar Man, The Joker, The Riddler, The Penguin, Two Face, Clayface, Solomon Grundy, Bane, and much much more.  Right now, you can play as 1 of 3 characters and a few different skins.  The DLC includes Robin and Catwoman.  Mark Hamill reprises his role as The Joker, Nolan North plays the Penguin, and a few others from some of the TV shows also play characters.  The graphics of the game have had some problems like it showing an empty space within the city and couldn’t get out of that screen, also minor clipping issues. The sound cut out for me during the final cut-scene then came back for the credits.  SPOILER ALERT: during the credits Mark Hamill sings “Only You” by The Planters in his Joker voice END SPOILER

Overall:  Arkham City brings Rocksteady’s A Game. If you loved  Arkham Asylum, any of the movies or tv shows, want to show your nerddom, or just plain want a fun game to play, THIS IS IT!

Pros:

• Great story
• Tons of fun
• Easy bosses

Cons:

• Graphics
• Challenging challenges (Ed. Note: Imagine that!)

Score: 8 out of 10

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