For the past few days I have been submerged in fighting inmates, solving riddles, gliding around and saving the world from Protocol 10 implicated by a crazy psychologist.
Batman Arkham City is probably one of the best game I have ever played just because I can do all of that and more.
When it comes to playing as a character that has a stash of gadgets that can do a vast amount of things, he's going to need an entire city to use all of that with no limitations but instead you get part of a city with no limitations, which is just as great. The openness of the game was incredible, you can do what you want there, I can't even state how much fun I had. Throughout half of the game I didn't know that dive bombing then pulling up would give me more speed and altitude, but once I found that out I had so much more fun than I initially did. I would try different tactics on unsuspecting inmates in Arkham City, whether it be sneaking behind them or glide kicking their faces into the cement, either way it's fun.
The gadgets definitely made the game, they all change the style of the game and how you want to go about taking the bad guys out. The gadgets allows you to either create an advantage point above a group of inmates and drop kick them from above, freeze one or multiple enemies, pull a weapon out of the hands of inmates, stun them with batarangs or electrical charges and then there's disrupting their guns without them knowing which then makes them confused on why their guns aren't working. The inmates aren't the only things you use the gadgets on, there are parts where you need them in order to go further into the game. For example, there is one part in the game where you need to cross sewage water, but for some reason Batman is like Spider-Man in his games and can't swim, so what you need to do is throw down an ice grenade and it will create a little ice raft for you in which you use your bat claw to pull yourself to safety.
With all of the gadgets and open worldliness, I forget that there is a story line. The story was just as great, especially the ending. I'm not going to give anything away, but the ending was amazing, it was something you would not suspect at all; it left me with my jaw dropped. The whole story had you jumping from place to place, meeting villain after villain. The whole spectrum of villains introduced were great, I noticed some and the others I didn't even know who they were.
Even if you beat the game, which is supposedly ten hours of gameplay, there is still so much for you to do. There is a handful of side missions you can still do in order to get 100%, and one of those handful contains a vast amount of trophy finding and riddle solving. The Riddler was the fun part in
Arkham Asylum and it still is in
Arkham City. I spent most of the time trying to solve the riddles and find the trophies, event if it meant to get sidetracked from the main storyline. I have yet to complete all the Riddler's riddles and I haven't done the challenge maps yet, so I still have a long way to go in order to fully complete the game.
The Catwoman parts of the game were definitely different than Batman's. The overall feel of playing as her took me a few minutes to get use to. Her arsenal is very limited and different than the Dark Knight's infinite amount of gadgets. She was different to play as but still fun nonetheless, I really enjoyed how she pretty much moved like a cat.
The only real complaint I have with the game is sometimes the animations weren't coinciding with the controls that I would input. I would tell Batman to counter, and he would either just stand there are continue to punch or when I would tell him to zip line to a gargoyle or edge of the building, he wouldn't do it. Other than that, Arkham City was one superb game; the difficulty of the game was just perfect, it wasn't too easy and it wasn't too hard also. Rocksteady did an incredible job with everything - the story, the characters and the overall fun the game brought. Mark Hamil will also be missed as the Joker, this was another fine role he played as the deranged clown.
Batman: Arkham City - 10/10
