Batman: Arkham City

When Batman Arkham Asylum was released back in 2009 it proved to be a surprise hit, finally providing gamers with a game that made you feel as if you were Batman complete with a good story.  Batman Arkham City has a huge weight upon its shoulders in not only living up to the expectations set by Arkham Asylum, but exceeding them.  It would have been all to easy for Rocksteady to rest on the laurels of Arkham Asylum and set Arkham City in a new location, thrown in a few new characters, a new story and released it.  Instead they have taken the already concrete system used within Arkham Asylum and improved upon it.

Arkham City takes place a year after the end of Arkham Asylum.  Quincy Sharp has become the Mayor of Gotham and deemed Arkham & Blackwater Penitentary obsolete and unsuitable for the criminal and insane of Gotham and set up Arkham City (several boroughs of Gotham converted into a maximum security prison island) to house them.  The new super prison is run by enigmatic Doctor Hugo Strange who is merciless in his treatment of any criminals who try to escape the island but seems unconcerned with the goings on within the City.  This lack of concern in the goings on of the prison has allowed the so called Super-Criminals of Gotham to enlist criminals into their gangs and run certain areas of Arkham City leaving the city in the midst of gang turf wars.  Suspecting that Strange might be up to something a little shifty Batman heads into Gotham City with the intention to find out just what is going on.

Rocksteady have put a lot of effort into creating Arkham City and it shows.  The city is dark, dingy and looks run-down with a genuine Gothic feel that you would expect from the world of Batman.  As you travel through the streets or glide over the rooftops, with the shadow of Gotham City lurking in the background, you get the feeling that you are in a war zone and a location that is rife with crime at every turn.  Whether it's cries of assaults as you swoop over alleyways or the instant cries of "Batman's Here" followed a gang of criminals setting upon you, the instant realisation of a crime infested jungle that you're in becomes all to real.

Players of Arkham Asylum will all too familiar with the free-flowing combat system in the game, which Rocksteady have further improved on with new fighting moves and gadgets to use.  Fighting and defeating criminals, as well as completing quest, finding Riddler Trophies or completing Riddler Challenges will earn you XP which you can use to upgrade your Batsuit or purchase new moves/gadgets to further help you defeat the criminal scum within the City.  That said there are a considerably large amount of Batman's gadgets unlocked and usable from the offset allowing you to instantly feel like you are Batman, ridding you of the long winded process of spending half the game unlocking everything.  The way the Dark Knight moves around the skies has been tweaked too, allowing you to dive bomb and pull yourself back up to let you glide for longer which is very useful considering the distances you now have to cover.  You are also granted the ability to use your grapple gun to boost yourself into flight from the top of a building once the ability is unlocked.

The bread and butter of any Super-Hero game is its villains and once again Arkham City excels here.  There are the main stay villains of the Batman Universe with The Joker and Harley Quinn making a return, with the Penguin, Two-Face and Riddler making appearances among many others who turn up through the course of the game.  Filling a game with lots of main enemies can often be a bad point and drag a game down, making it seem overfilled but this doesn't become a problem.  The pure size of Arkham City helps to enable plenty of space with which to place these villains.

Along with a fairly lengthy main storyline there are a considerable amount of side missions, alongside the seemingly hundreds of the Riddler related trophies and quests.  I will say now that if you're not a fan of collectibles then this will be a major hinderence to you.  The Riddler quests are made a little more complex now, with many requiring puzzles to solve in order to obtain them and some that can only be obtained from the use of gadgets unlocked later in the game.  It is these quests coupled with the 'New Game +' mode (which allows you to start a new game with all your unlocked gadgets and on a higher difficulty), and the combat/predator challenges that give the game a large amount of re-playability even after you have finished the main storyline.

All in all Rocksteady Games have far exceeded the expectations that were set by Arkham Asylum.  Instead of sitting on a tested game formula, they have taken that formula and upgraded it, improved it and came out of it with a game that is now the new king of Batman games and a serious contender for game of the year.