VIDEO Batman: Arkham City (Arkham Asylum 2)

Pffft. I never used the disruptor and I beat them. L2P!

 

Origins, unfortunately, is without Dini so... yeah. Could suck.

 

The2ndQuest - you save a bunch of folks, yes, but those choppers just massacre a ton of dudes.

And City with Dini was kind of lukewarm, so we'll see with Origins.

 

I have faith WB Montreal will play it safe with the story....hopefully.

 

Except all those people still die when Tyger launches Protocol 10 and blasts the city apart. I remember playing that game after saving all those people and just hearing all the casualties figures from Tyger over the comm and going 'Well that was a waste of time' . At that point I was just zooming through the city to the next objective trying to stop it to see if I could end the game with ONE person i saved still alive.[/quote]

 

Batman is not Superman, he can't fly around a whole city super-fast and save everyone from helicopters with guns. He also would have trouble taking out the helicopters without killing the people on board, and while he's dealing with one the others will be killing people anyway (and wasn't it criminals being targeted as opposed to ordinary innocent civilians?)

Some people are always going to die, and game highlights the fact that Bruce has conflicts regarding whether to kill and why he regrets he couldn't save people (in the DLC Robin says how different he has been since Talia died, plus he has Barbara talking to him all the time who is crippled because of Joker & you get the part where he mourns his parents). He could have killed Joker long ago and stopped all the chaos, but he doesn't do that and he has to live with the deaths that follow as a result.

 

It's not that - it's that Batman actively chooses to save one life over many. Alfred has to convince him otherwise, and to me that's not true to the character.

Batman is a character that fundamentally knows his crusade will never be over, and he knows he can't save everyone, but damn it, he'll still do everything in his power to save as many lives and as many souls as possible. Batman in Arkham City makes the decision to save Talia - one person who rarely needs saving and who has been shown to use the Lazarus Pits just as much as Ra's - in lieu of the criminals he catches with the goal of ultimately working at their redemption.

He publicly opposes Arkham City because it's inhumane and barbaric, and, we can assume, because it ignores the concept that even bad guys can be redeemed. The main conceit of the ending is that Batman would have saved the Joker because he believes so strongly in his convictions. He tortures Freeze, he may or may not have killed Grundy (open to debate), he may have severely messed up Clayface, Two-Face is left hanging over acid, Ra's might be perma-dead, and so might Talia. To top it off, he's cold and distant with Oracle, Robin, and even Alfred. This fundamental belief in the good of humanity that defines the character is missing from Arkham City. The idea that he'd save everyone is more an informed attribute that we need to be reminded of rather than a core character trait in this iteration.

So yeah, Batman can't save everyone, but that's not the point - the point is he will always do everything in his power to save everyone. The reason Batman exists is so that no other child need have their world fall apart around them. It's a futile struggle, though, as he's only human - but it's the idea that matters.

 

Given Grundy supposedly can't die, it seems unlikely Batman killed him. Two-Face was left hanging by Catwoman wasn't he? Nothing to suggest Batman didn't go and get him down later or he wasn't rescued by his goons. And if Batman doesn't know anything about it happening, he shouldn't be expected to have to do anything about it.

I agree the prioritising was odd, after all if Talia is like Ra's and can simply come back to life why was Batman bothered by her being shot by Joker?
But certainly with the helicopter massacre the only thing he could really do to help people is to go to the tower to stop Strange and/or draw the fire from the helicopters to him while he was doing that.

As for the cold and distant thing, I've not read much of Batman stuff but I've always been of the impression that he's rather a cold grouchy guy in general.
Look at how he is when Robin turns up, not even a thank you. But I've always thought that is just how Batman is, a bit of a jerk.

 

Except for the whole part where you basically play as Batman the whole time. When you play as Catwoman, Batman's been indisposed elsewhere. Also, Batman is the guy who dangles Two-Face there in the first place. I don't think "out of sight, out of mind" is something that should apply, either.

Except Ra's had used the Lazarus Pit - they're a limited thing, one use only. And yes, he had limited options, but he chose to save her and not save the day, or at least do something akin to saving the day.

The thing is he's not a jerk - again, his goals are as noble as can be - it's just that writers think he works best as a loner with stunted emotional growth. Paul Dini, writer of this game, showed that's not the case in Batman: The Animated Series, so it's very odd he should just make him a grouchy loner here.

 

I think it was more to show the strain Batman was under at that point in time than to establish it as his general behavior. Both Robin and Oracle comment on how grouchy he seems to be, imply that it's not his normal state of being. He's under stress, facing his own mortality, trying to rescue everybody at once while caught up in about five different plots, and he just doesn't have time for anybody's ****. He's already worried that he's dying and trying to ignore it; he doesn't want Tim hanging around pitying him, because that kind of emotion is just a distraction now and he can't deal with it. He wants them to do their jobs and let him do his job, rather than bombard him with, "Oh, Bruce, oh my god, you're dying! Are you okay?"

As for Talia, the way it was presented wasn't Batman shrugging off the deaths of everybody else and making a calculated decision -- it was presented as an obsession with saving Talia that kept him from thinking entirely straight about Protocol Ten. It seemed to be designed to suggest that the prospect of another loved one dying was throwing off Batman's judgment temporarily, that he was panicking over having the Joker kill another person he loves, and as soon as Barbara talked him down out of that instant of panic, he realized that, yes, the bigger picture was more important. It shows Batman as fallible, yes, but not without reason. Even he can be human and emotional, but he ultimately does the right thing. Had he ignored Barbara and went after Talia instead of stopping Protocol Ten, I'd agree that it would undermine his character, but having that emotional response and being talked out of it just establishes his humanity and serves for a moment of character drama without really undermining him.

The first playthrough, I was trying to rush it and I had a hard time, too, but you can actually take as long as you want, and all you have to do is study the situation and figure out their sightlines. You can take them all out successfully, unseen, so long as you do it in the right order and use silent takedowns rather than attention-attracting ones (so don't glide-kick them -- glide down behind them, sneak up, and do a silent takedown instead).

 

I guess it's really just a big nitpick on my part - I disliked a lot of the writing in terms of decisions they made, but I still love this game.

 

If you showed up in another sniper's sightline, yeah, that would happen. Basically, you need to go in a fairly specific pattern.

 

Nitpicks and character flaws aside, this is one hella awesome game - one of the best of this generation - and I'm replaying it again because, well, it's awesome to be the goddam Batman.

 

The Arkham series so far certainly is excellent, Batman definitely has the best superhero video games by some distance. Perhaps he just translates better to story and gameplay than others, there are heroes I like more such as Spider-Man who just haven't managed to have games as good as the Arkham stuff.

 

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and Spider-Man: Edge of Time are apparently quite good, too.

 

Maybe so, but not Game of the Year good like the Arkham games.

 

So I just played Arkham City for the first time. Holy crap.

One of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. The story was excellent, with all the villains being extremely well-written (I love Batman's rogues gallery, I really do). The combat was an expansion on Asylum, and was just as fun as the first time. Racking up x50 combo scores will never get old. The addition of new enemy types was welcome.

I was worried going in that the more open world feel would hurt the game, but it turned out to be the best decision. Flying around the north of Gotham City is a blast. I applaud the amount of dialogue the random mooks were given too. Such chatterboxes!

The game had a sense of scale that I felt Asylum only reached when Ivy came into the picture. The entirety of City felt like the climax to a story. The ending takes it up a notch, ending in an extremely sad note.

Spoiler

I see above that there's a discussion over Batman wanting to go after Talia rather than save Arkham City. That's one of my favourite moments in the game. We basically see Batman break down, in a subtle way, and he's ready to forego his morals to save the woman he loves in this storyline. Alfred denying him was pretty powerful, I felt.

My biggest complaint? Not enough Catwoman.

Overall, I'm not sure why I waited this long to pick this up. Odd that the next game is a prequel when there are so many obvious sequel hooks. Wonder if Rocksteady are actually working on a Next-Gen sequel while WB works on Origins?

 

I truly hope there's more Catwoman for the sequel (if there's one cooking). Playing with her was fun even though her style takes some getting used to. More Robin too. Given that we'll now have a new GTA game with three protagonists, I don't see why we can't have certain members of the Bat Squad as PCs for certain specific missions if, as Azrael foreshadowed, the stakes in the third part will be much higher.

Just finished my most recent playthrough. That ending still annoys the hell outta me. Who did you truly love Bruce? Talia who you simply left strewn in that theater, or the Joker who you so lovingly carried out of there? Goddam sick bastard...

 

I want to play as Mr. Freeze, my favorite parts of Arkham City was Freeze as he is my favorite Bat-villain. He was done so well, I loved every interaction with the character. Definitely one of the best boss fights in the game.

 

Yeah, loved his role. His voice too. Was pretty cool how he doesn't fall for the same thing twice. Lots of boss battles have you repeating the same attack three times to defeat them, and the Freeze boss was a cool (ha!) answer to that.

Spoiler

The tenuous alliance between him and Batman was interesting, and you even get to reunite him with Nora!

Yeah, I know I don't need to use spoiler tags. But I'd rather use them than not and accidentally spoil anything.