Game Review: Batman: Arkham City (PC/MAC OS/XBOX 360/WiiU)

Batman: Arkham City is the second installment in the Batman: Arkham series, released in 2011.  Released to critical acclaim, Batman:  Arkham City is well worthy of the praises lauded upon it.

Premise:

Battle, glide, and grapple your way through Arkham City and defeat classic Batman villains, including the Joker, Penguin, Harley-Quinn, and more!

Use a large array of unique bat-gadgets to defeat enemies and uncover new paths!

Visuals:

A view of Arkham City

Batman: Arkham City is a visual masterpiece.  Every scene is full of life and a substantial amount of care was put into every little corner of this game.  There is not an inch of this game that feels empty or lifeless.

The physics effects are gorgeous as well.  Breaking glass responds appropriately, and I just couldn't help admiring how much work had gone into the physics of Batman's cape.  There are very few times that I have seen Batman's cape do something unrealistic.

Character mouth movements and expressions are spot on and very lifelike.

Cape physics woo!

Sound:

The voice acting in this game is simply superb!  All the characters are brought to life by their voice actors.

Ambient sound also lends itself nicely to the already moody environments in Arkham City.

Menus/Interface:

Menus are quite well designed and run very smoothly.

With the in-game interface though, there was one thing that seemed a little out of place.  This would be the item selection bar.  Notice how in the photo below, the selection bar has items numbered all the way up to 12.  The issue is that the 0, minus key, and plus key correspond to items 10, 11, and 12 respectively.  I suppose this is quite a trivial complaint, as I quickly found the correct keys to access the items, but people should take the little things into account when designing a user interface.

"WHERE IS THE 12 KEY?!"
"Oh, now I see..."
*Feels dumb*

Gameplay/Controls:

The game controls wonderfully.  Character animations flow flawlessly into each other and provides one of the smoothest combat experiences I have ever used.  Combat is very intuitive at the beginning of the game, and very simple to get used to.  Left-click to attack, right-click to counter, and double-tap space to dodge quickly out of danger.  If you mash buttons it WILL break your combo, and you will not gain as much XP, so it encourages calculated strikes and dodges over mashing random buttons.

Now, as I said, combat is simple at the beginning of the game, but it slowly escalates in difficulty, which is certainly not a bad thing.  This being said, while core combat remains fun and entertaining, certain new abilities will leave you scratching your head as to how you would execute them, due to the lack of a proper tutorial feature.  In fact, the game throws so many abilities at you that you often forget that you even had a certain ability.

Boss battles generally decent, but a couple I found to be a little bit poor in design.

One thing of note.  In most video games, travel is somewhat of a bore.  Moving from one place to another is generally a tedious and unwelcome chore, and the monotony rarely ever broken by something interesting.  In Arkham City though, travel is actually fun!  The grapple and gliding combo makes travel a flawless and exciting experience.

Story:

Batman needs to save the day from several classic villains.  Need I say more?

Overall a strong storyline with interesting plot twists, and unexpected alliances between certain characters.

Summary:

A very strong game.  It could have been a perfect game with a better implemented tutorial system to explain confusing abilities and with better boss battles.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a game I would strongly suggest to any die-hard gamers and Batman fans alike.

SCORE:  9.5/10

Obligatory Joker