That said, there’s nothing missing that’s essential to the game. It is egregious that a game’s single player mode and trophies or achievements are affected by downloadable content, if only for those first purchasers who don’t connect their consoles to the internet. Nothing that you couldn’t live without, although they are entertaining enough and provide a nice gameplay variation once the story is finished and you’re allowed back into the world to mop up side missions and explore. They provide a bit of variation, some extra cinematic credentials and a superfluous, though welcome, sub plot. Much has been made of the downloadable Catwoman content and, although it could certainly have been handled with greater tact, those sections are very much dropped into the game. One particular highlight is Nolan North doing the voice of a goon who was impersonating Mark Hamill’s Joker. With vocals from talent like Mark Hamill (Star Wars, Batman: The Animated Series), Stana Katic (Castle) and the ubiquitous Nolan North (Uncharted, Assassin’s Creed, everything else) we have a wonderfully talented cast who show that voice over work is a special talent in and of itself. Overheard goons can be found talking about current in-game events rather than just spouting canned lines. The detail in the incidental voice work is a nice touch too. The writing is as fantastic as we should expect with famed Batman veteran, Paul Dini, at the helm and the voice work never fails to do it justice.
BATMAN ARKHAM CITY REVIEW METACRITIC FREE
This is all the more accomplished given the fact that you are free to explore the city-within-a-city at your leisure, taking on side missions and incidental combat. Plot lines are developed naturally, without feeling too rushed, and the action comes at a pace that will ensure you’re never left wanting more to do. Prior knowledge of the first Rocksteady Batman game is not entirely necessary to the enjoyment of this one, at least once the control nuances have settled, but it would give you something of an advantage in the first thirty minutes or so.įrom here on in, the game sets a fantastic pace. Controls are explained but usually alongside their requirement rather than before it. The feeling that you’re expected to have played through Arkham Asylum is overwhelming in the early stages. It all starts a little suddenly, almost dropping you in at the deep end. It makes for a much more interesting and expansive game area but seems unlikely outside of this fictional environment. Within Arkham City’s walls we have a museum, a courthouse, a funfair, a steel mill, the Gotham City Police Department headquarters and a major bank, among various other buildings. That Arkham City, a walled-off area of Gotham given over to any and all criminal elements, was allowed at all and that the area assigned was the part of town that contained so many desirable amenities. There are two main areas in which we’re asked to suspend our disbelief. This game also requires a similar degree of willing acceptance for its premise to work. So we have Batman: Arkham City, similarly dichotomous in its approach. He has limitless resources with which to avenge – or commemorate – his parents and the situations that led to their demise. But look at it from another angle and you have a young, intelligent boy who suffers a psychotic break when he witnesses his beloved parents murdered at the hand of a criminal made desperate by the social problems and deep-rooted corruption in Gotham. The surface trappings of the situation are ridiculous if viewed from a certain angle. Batman is about duality: intimidation and compassion violence and justice intelligence and physicality stealth and combat.
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