VIDEO Batman: Arkham City (Arkham Asylum 2)

Picked up the Armored Edition yesterday and played it for a bit last night- I'm almost to the initial Joker confrontation, going through the factory or whatever it is.

Never played Asylum, but my initial impressions are mixed. Batman handles well for the open world style the game has and, though the combat borders on tedious, there's enough variety to keep it from being entirely a single attack button (with timed counter taps) mashing affair. Though it is implied you can use your gadgets during combat for further variety, but it's not entirely clear if that's the case right now.

And I think that's the main problem I'm encountering with it- much of the game, at least in this stretch, is about the game telling you what you can hit in a situation since the control scheme is a fair bit unwieldy. Just when you think you're starting to understand what you can do in certain contexts, the game denies you and tells you have to do something else.

I mean, I get that it's effectively an extended tutorial at this point, but I feel like it's not just holding my hands but actively preventing me from learning how to play the game due to some poor level design (which results in needing to use Detective Mode far too frequently (almost feels like there's little reason in turning it off at times)- which in itself seems to negate the need for the sonar) that lacks intuition towards what you can and cannot interact with.

And though the weapon/gadget/etc submenus are additionally somewhat cumbersome, I can only imagine how much more annoying they'd be without the GamePad.

Speaking of which, one of the features that I'm really enjoying is the BAT armor you can enable through the GamePad- it helps break up the occasional monotonousness of the fights and provides you a strategic facet that is otherwise generally lacking, since you need to both work towards it's use and be sure not to waste it when you don't need it. It adds a kind of fighting game mechanic to the brawling that I really like.

Also enjoying the voice cast as well- Conroy as Batman is always awesome. And I'm amused by Harley Quinn taunting me after my many deaths so far (I need to work on the stealth aspect of things- generally not my thing outside of Zelda games, heh).

Story has been interesting so far (though why would they wall-off part of a city and fill it with criminals to roam free in?) and I like the detective interludes (even if figuring out the bullet trajectory was a little too obvious to even NEED an investigation when you saw the laser sight and have the broken window...).

So, I'm hoping the game controls start to feel a bit more natural the more I play, but it's certainly cumbersome- like they're trying to do too much but not doing them all that well. I'm not sure if I'll be playing this one to the end (right now, it's potentially the first game I'll trade back in 10-15 years- not counting the awful first Transformers movie game which I immediately resold used at my store- not that B:AC is ANYWHERE near THAT bad), but we'll see where the story, mechanics and bonus DLC modes go.

It hasn't lost my interest as quickly as the Batman game that came out early in the GCN's lifecycle (I think it was also on PS2), though that one had both the Animated Series voice cast AND it's general visual design.

So, in other words- seems decent, but I was really hoping to be blown away. I still have hope that I might be, its just a rocky start right now, at the very least.

 

Yeah, it's fun taking on the villains. Moving about the world is fun and feels like Batman. Cat woman adds some nice variety. The combat options are starting to expand/click a bit.

Besides the armor there's also a motion controlled Batarang cam and being able to choose what explosives to detonate instead of just all.

Everything else is accessing and upgrading gadgets via the pad and having the sonar and map displayed real time, as well as all the DLC content included.

 

Trilogy? You don't really think they're not going to try and annualize or biennialize the series, do you?

I completely agree about the Detective Mode- the way things are designed, you need to have it on 90% of the time you're inside a building, even if you don't want to have it on so much. It's too hard to tell what doors or objects you're able to interact with otherwise- and the level design of the interiors doesn't do a good job of conveying that on it's own.

I mean, I'm a massive fan of non-linear, GoldenEye-style environments with deadend rooms and such, but at least in GE, you knew what doors you could use in navigating them.

Add into that the need to track enemies during the stealth bat-takedowns segments (if only to know when you're in range of a target), and it becomes too much of a need.

I think it would have been much better to only have the enemies and objects/doors get highlighted instead of reskinning the entire environment (or make the latter a separate vision mode used just for scanning info while the former is for targeting info).

 

I'm not arguing that it makes it easier- but you shouldn't want to, or have to, keep it on all the time.

 

I'm starting to get into the game now. For some reason, punching the screens of the Penguin's communication disruptors is oddly satisfying.

I think that is because that particular mission is an exterior one- where the game handles itself extremely well as an open world format. Most of my issues remain with the interior levels, detctive mode reliance notwithstanding.

Well, that and the camera controls- I REALLY wish you could reverse camera control settings because the left and right camera controls feel backwards constantly.

 

Well, there's the obvious "jump the shark" joke for the Penguin level...

 

That'd be a good angle. I'm loving how they managed to turn Nu-Freeze into TAS Freeze.

Oh, and what's up with The "Raish" pronoun citation of Ras?

 

72% through the main story- I'm curious, we're the Catwoman levels part of the original game? Or we're they a DLC add-on? They're just so spaced out.

 

That's what I suspected- there's only been three if them so far. 2 pretty early on and then nothing until now, right after the Joker/Talia thing.

Their sparseness was what raised an eyebrow.

 

Well, the stats screen breaks things down by cat-egory. So you can apparently 100% the story but not the side missions, and the Catwoman, Riddlers Revenge and Harley's Revenge modes have their own star totals.

I have no idea how that's calculated towards the overall file percentage stat, though- but I think that figure counts everything.

Also , I just figured out that the bat signal is a waypoint. Ha! Might have been useful to know earlier...