Batman Arkham City PC Review!

I was a huge fan of Arkham Asylum. The style of play really resonates with me, and who can really hate a Batman game? Well Arkham City expands on the play style in all the right ways. There was a lot of things I was excited to see, but a few things I was worried about when I was first reading about what the game would be like. But in the end this review will be a much more straight forward review than the previous, because the result is more straight forward, and the game is more of a simple beast as a whole. It's a sequel to a wildly popular game, that really deserved a follow up.

After the events of the first game the escaped prisoners of Arkham Asylum have been confined to a section of Gotham City, which has been walled up and renamed Arkham City. In charge of the make shift open area prison is the known villain Dr. Hugo Strange. This might sound a little … strange...ehem... but it actually does work into the storyline well. Dr. Strange is obsessed with exposing the true identity of Batman as Bruce Wayne. So the good doctor decides to kidnap Bruce Wayne. He then throws him into the Arkham City prison. Bruce Wayne quickly escapes from his confinement inside a holding area within the prison, and manages to get into costume. He then begins his crusade to restore the dignity of Gotham City by shutting down the city wide prison. His hope is to get the prisoners back into a proper prison where they belong. However, in a strange series of events Batman contracts a debilitating sickness from the Joker. The Joker contracted this disease as a side effect of his overdose of the chemical called Venom in the first game. So that is the set stage of the game. You spend your time trying to cure yourself while battling the various villains we are all familiar with.

I was actually looking forward to a Batman game that doesn't depend entirely on the Joker as the main enemy. It was implied in the advertising for this game that Dr. Strange would be the main enemy you fought throughout the game, but in the end the main bad guy is once again the Joker. While this has become a bit of a cliché, it's hard to argue against the interaction between these two characters. I don't want to spoil anything, but the conclusion of the back and forth is filled with interesting undertones, and implications about what may be transpire in the inevitable follow up to this game.

Selena Kyle makes an appearance as Catwoman, who is also a playable character. While not for very long and not near as interesting, it does serve to break up the gameplay a little bit. A little side story line involving a vault robbery and Poison Ivy takes place. Detective vision makes it's return for Batman, and Catwoman has an alternative called Thief Vision. There are more Catwoman specific abilities, but the most interesting gameplay mechanic is the difference in the movement and level navigation. Catwoman doesn't have the ability that Batman does for gliding. Instead Catwoman has a few different abilities. She uses pounce, climb and a ceiling crawl. Ceiling attacks are great for ambushing from above.

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