Batman is just awesome. After 6 movies and a 70+ year publication history, the masses still can't get enough of him. But it wasn't until 2009 that he got his first great video game treatment in Batman: Arkham Asylum. So its sequel, last year's Batman: Arkham City had a lot to live up to. After somewhat of an extended wait (being poor is no fun) I've finally gotten to spend my due time with this game. Unfortunately, I'm less than impressed.
It appears I am alone in this.
Arkham City is rated 94 on Metacritic. IGN's Greg Miller initially had his reservations, then came up with a whole list of reasons to gush over it, and gave it a 9.5 (out of 10). The whole review kind of reminds me of a little boy trying to convince himself that he likes something because he wants to like it. Kind of like me one summer when I went to see this certain movie.
Most of my complaints with Arkham City have the theme of "too much." No doubt developer Rocksteady felt the pressure to make this Batman game bigger and better than the last one. Kind of like how they tried to do "too much" with the ending of this certain movie. Arkham City is clearly a big game with a lot going on, just not that much worth doing. Too many villains that aren't fleshed out, too many unmotivated side-quests, and far too many on-screen prompts.
I think I first noticed this pattern while playing the combat portions of the game. In its predecessor, combat is simple, fluid, and awesome. In this game, however, I feel they tried to add too many options. Every gadget the Dark Knight wields has a hotkey (or rather, hotkey combo) for use in combat. That's no fewer than half a dozen combos to memorize, and it only gets worse as you upgrade your abilities. What was once simple and fluid is now clunky and complicated. One could argue that you can just stick to the basics, and indeed you can...until the game drops a mini-boss or lieutenant into the fray. They have to be taken out in specific ways, so I hope you remember which combo is the Remote Electrical Charger.
Maybe I'm remembering the original game through rose colored glass, but I just don't recall these problems existing in the first game. I was free to handle all confrontations short of a boss fight any way I wanted. As long as I didn't get shot in the face, I had a good chance of succeeding. Because I was Batman. Now, Batman has to do what the game wants.
A good example of this is the Mr. Freeze fight. This battle is so convoluted that the game actually stops so that the "bat-computer" can give you a strategy guide specific to this fight alone. In the last game, you only needed to know three things: X was punch, Y was counter, and A was everything else. Those three face-buttons allowed you to engage everyone and everything, from 20+ thugs to Gotham's most dangers super-villains. And it was always cool and unique. Because you were Batman. And Batman kicks ass.
Another aspect I didn't care for was the open-world gaming. Now, I've never liked open-world games, and I realize that a lot of gamers do, so I won't harp on this too much. It's just that the game is so big, with so much to do, but I finished the story in less than two days, and everything after that seems kind of pointless. Side-quests are often unrelated to the story or the characters, so I feel no motivation to go back and finish them. That, and I'm disappointed the developers went this rout after the great hub-world of Arkham Asylum.
There are also a few thematic choices, things relating the the continuity of Batman, that I don't quite get. First and foremost, how Batman clearly murders Solomon Grundy (oh, um...spoiler alert). Granted, Grundy is immortal (damn it! again, spoiler alert) and I'm sure he'll be fine, eventually, but it's the principal. Batman does not kill. It's part of who he is, and that includes ripping out the heart of a pseudo zombie...spoiler alert!
Also, Batman's seeming ability to "fly" through Gotham. Okay, he's not really flying; he's gliding and grappling seamlessly, which might as well be flying. I realize the game needed a way for Batman to travel quickly across the huge map, this just doesn't work for me. Batman doesn't fly. He runs along rooftops. I guess that wouldn't allow him to travel quickly enough, but flying is not the answer. Batmobile, anyone?
Then there's this little beauty, the utter uselessness of a "silent takedown," where Batman sneaks up on someone and knocks them out without making a sound. The first rule of being Batman is that you are the night; don't alert your presence to anyone. In Arkham City, many thugs are wearing special heart-moniters that their masterminds are watching. So if you take someone down, no matter how, they know about it. So...what's the point of a silent takedown if everyone knows you're there, anyway? I mean, I'm supposed to be the night, here. Yes, only "certain" thugs have this heart-moniter, but that's virtually every thug you have to get through in the story mode! This would have been cool to make certain encounters more difficult, but it's overuse made one of the games original features, a feature that highlights one of Batman's greatest strengths, completely null and void.
Okay, there are some things I did like about the game. The fight with Ra's al Ghul was pretty badass. In fact, the whole League of Assassins story arc was my favorite part of the game. It was where everything kind of condensed to a point and reminded the player that Batman was awesome, like its predecessor did so many times before. I also liked how the final confrontation with Hugo Strange is not some drown-out boss fight, but a super-tough scenario where you have to use all your bat-tricks to get passed his guards without getting shot in the face. Like most of his rogue gallery, Strange can't really compete with Batman physically; once the Dark Knight gets to him, it's over. But getting to him is always a challenge.
So, after all that, I guess I want to say that I don't think Batman: Arkham City, is a terrible game, just not as good as everyone says it is. Greg Miller might believe that I can't see the forrest for the trees, but it was the details that made the original game so good. Not the super-complex fight mechanics, or the thousands of things Batman could do outside of the main story, but the little things. The things that made you stop and say, "Yeah, Batman is awesome." These moments happened so infrequently in Arkham City that it just doesn't live up to its predecessor. 9.5? I think not.
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