Batman Arkham City By Rocksteady Studios - Game Review

After the success of rocksteady games studios, that had no history in the gaming community to speak of, achieved with Batman Arkham Asylum, they released a sequel to the addictive world of Arkham to satisfy fans called Batman Arkham City.

Whereas comic book games tend to be a forgettable, fun-passing experience, these Batman games made sure to leave a mark in the minds of players, ranking them as one of the best comic book games, if not the best game series of all time. While Arkham Asylum was centered around the asylum itself, Arkham City takes the world to a whole new level, creating a city-wide experience for players while not deviating from the material source that is the first installment.

Source Material

When you start playing Arkham City, you will notice an array of similarities to Arkham Asylum, but this won’t deduct from your gameplay in any way. In fact, because these elements appealed to the players in the original game, they will also enjoy it in this one. You’ll enjoy the combat, stealth, and detective mode and you will meet The Joker, Harley, and many other characters that appeared in Arkham Asylum and they even added multiple villains and anti-heroes that participate one way or another to the main plot.

In addition to this, the world of Arkham that we all know and love is incorporated perfectly if not better than the Arkham of the previous game. The bleakness, darkness, dirt, grime, and the wrecked structures surrounding Batman are more fleshed out along with the neon colors that villains like to display around the city to enforce their territory.

Along with all of this, the excellent voice actors of the original series are still present. If anything, their performance has become even better and this is not only limited to Mark Hamill’s voice acting and Kevin Conroy’s performance, but other new characters like Ra’s al Ghul, his daughter Talia, two-face, and Mr freeze.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Arkham City was different than that of which you experience in Arkham Asylum. Sure, there are many similarities, but because this is an open world, Batman’s gliding skills are upgraded. While in Arkham Asylum, the bat claw was only used to go from one close ledge to another, in Arkham City, you can jump from one building to another and even boost your jumps, giving batman a higher altitude in case you want to climb higher buildings.

Your gadgets, of course, are more varied and even better, with controllable batrangs and smoke pellets. As for the combat and stealth mode, they don’t offer many variations from the combat system in the Arkham Asylum, but when you combine both of these elements, the simplicity can trick, as you should use all of the skills and weapons in your arsenal, along with analyzing the environment to reach your goals. This yields complexity in your gameplay, which everyone enjoyed and even claimed that it made them feel more immersed as if they actually were The Batman.

An Assortment of Villains

While Arkham Asylum offered a great group of villains that Batman interacted with and fought at some point in the game, Arkham City recognizes how appealing these features are to players and uses an even bigger range of villains that roam the city, and have their own territories. For example, you will see Two-Face in the main storyline, but you will also see his gang in various areas around the city wearing a special kind of suit.

The same thing goes for The Joker’s gang. Moreover, you will find these villains fighting off each other if they ever interact, which then leads Batman to form some kind of alliance with one villain to defeat the other. Arkham City is literally crawling with gangs and villains that you will find each time you fly above the city. You might find them torturing political prisoners, who’ll be screaming for you to save them.