After last week’s little…ahem…rage
diversion I thought it would be a good time to get back to talking about what
The Reel has always been about: entertainment. Today, in a futile attempt to
clean my room I ended up picking up a controller for the first time in a few
weeks and plowing through Batman: Arkham City. Arkham City is the highly
anticipated follow up to Arkham Asylum. Arkham City furthers your adventures as
the goddamn batman by putting you in a much more open world environment. This
happens when long time villain and full time psychopath Hugo Strange is put in
charge of Arkham City, a cordoned off section of Gotham where all the worst
criminals are left to fend for themselves. After speaking out against this
obvious bat shit crazy idea, Bruce Wayne is arrested. To find out what’s going
on within the city walls and to make his escape, Wayne once again puts on the cowl
and become The Dark Knight we all know.
The
game is a really good time actually. The main story is rather short but there
are enough side missions to keep most players occupied. In fact, there’s a
whole second storyline with Catwoman that you can also play (I never got to, as
I lost the code that comes with the game). Pretty much everyone important in
the series makes a brief appearance.
Fans of
the Assassin’s Creed franchise will enjoy the combat system as it will feel
familiar. While not overtly complex the combat system is satisfying and the
various enemies can offer a real challenge when put together.
The
stealth aspect of the game is less rewarding but certainly has its moments.
Towards the end of the game you have to get to a door covered by snipers from
nearly every direction and as this is an open world game you are simply given a
waypoint to the door and arrive to find the snipers, your goal is to take them
down one by one, but since they’re waiting for fucking batman to show up they
are also watching each other, slipping in behind each one, dropping them, and
vanishing was cool and challenging (took me 3 times to not get completely lit
up by making a move to soon). I was hoping to be able to move bodies (once you
use grates you’ll get why this is important) or leave taunts like a bat symbol
somewhere, but sadly these are not options.
Overall,
this is a game with solid gameplay mechanics, a decent playtime, a great story
that twists like crazy but isn’t impossible to follow, and as much asskicking
as you’d expect from a game about batman. I look forward to continuing this
story in the next installment.
Keep Flying,
Dom
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