Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition

[LukeLee]

Of course it's a launch game. It has to be.

 

It may be yet, but not confirmed so far.

[dazzybee]

I half way through this on the PS3 now, the game is amazing so anyone who hasn't played it should definitely get it. And you don't need to have played the (also awesome) Arkham Asylum.

 

But playing it since this has been announced, I can't express how much better the game will be with the pad. It annoys me so much pausing for the map (which you need quite a lot, especially for the side missions and such)... Then made me think of othee games; even though it'll get slammed for unoriginality and bare bones, I actually think taking pause sub menus onto the gamepad will make gaming so much more slick and less irritating.

[Cube]

Have you reached the part where changing gadgets are really annoying? There's at least two for each of the 8 directions of a D-pad (which is pretty annoying on the 360's D-pad). Having those on the screen will be very helpful.

[magicmilner]

Do we know if this will feature all the DLC on disc?

[Cube]

Do we know if this will feature all the DLC on disc?

 

Yes. All of it.

[Retro_Link]

I think just holding the GamePad [especially a Black one] with the screen decked out like it's one of his gadgets will be pretty cool!

[Captain Falcon]

Have you reached the part where changing gadgets are really annoying? There's at least two for each of the 8 directions of a D-pad (which is pretty annoying on the 360's D-pad). Having those on the screen will be very helpful.

 

Whilst I'll conceed it is a bit awkward on the Xbox D-pad, in the heat of battle, those five shortcuts for items are brilliant for helping you dispatch the baddies regardless of where they are. The rest of the gadgets are a bit more context specific and so you normally have the time to access them ok without having to worry about it. The prompt for the smoke pellet is also a brilliant touch too. That's another thing that makes AA harder to play after this.

[Cube]

Smoke pellet?

[Captain Falcon]

Smoke pellet?

 

Yeah, when you get spotted by people with guns and you can hit Y to drop one and mask your escape. Just makes it a lot easier than having to hit left to select it and then aim it at the ground.

[Wii]

BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY -- ARMORED EDITION REVIEW

 

Sometimes reviewers can't see the forest for the trees. When I finished Batman: Arkham City, I immediately cataloged what I thought it did wrong. It tossed in too many villains and didn't flesh them out, it clearly tried to replicate the Scarecrow stuff from the first game and didn't do it as well, and Batman still moves a bit stiffly when simply walking around. When I formed the list, I found myself disappointed with the game. But the days rolled on and I couldn't stop playing -- in fact, I only wanted to play more. The hundreds of things Batman: Arkham City nails outweighed my nitpicky problems. I realized Batman: Arkham City is a brilliant game.

 

If you've missed the roughly 1.4 million stories on IGN, Batman: Arkham City picks up months after the events of Asylum. Former Arkham warden Quincy Sharp now reigns as the mayor of Gotham City, and he's moved the bad guys from Blackgate Prison and the inmates from Arkham Asylum to a cordoned off area in the heart of Gotham. This is Arkham City, Dr. Hugo Strange runs it, and Batman's job is to see what the hell is going on inside. It's an interesting story that starts with one of the best openings in modern games. After two years of dreaming about where this sequel would go, Batman: Arkham City delivered and hooked me. That can be said for most of the game.

 

Fans of the Batman: Arkham Asylum will immediately be at home in Arkham City as developer Rocksteady took the core gameplay, refined it, and polished it. You brawl with one button, counter with another and leap when you feel like it. Batman's got a slew of new counter attacks -- including the ability to take out several attacking enemies at once -- and the ability to use nearly every gadget in battle with a hot key system. Even though the system can seem simple (that's if you ignore the combos and multipliers) the diversity in the attacks and battles keeps it interesting. I wanted to engage bad guys instead of sneaking past them. Maybe it was the promise of more experience points and the upgrades they unlocked, but it probably had more to do with wanting to see Batman dislocate another elbow.

 

Rocksteady kept me on my toes by peppering in special enemies. Guys with stun rods, armored outfits and broken bottles all have to be dealt with in very specific ways. I needed to assess threats and engage situations like Batman would. I don't know if I can express how awesome that makes a comic nerd like me feel; after years of hypothesizing how Batman would beat Character X, I now have to do it to survive.

Feeling like Batman made Arkham Asylum a must-play, and Arkham City continues that tradition. I felt like I had the upper hand when I walked into a room where the enemies outnumbered me 20 to 1 because I could drop a smoke pellet, use freeze grenades to take enemies out of the game and basically kick ass. Five gunmen with hostages didn't scare me because I knew I could disappear into the shadows to string them up from gargoyles, punch through walls to take them down and glide kick them over railings.

This feeling of empowerment carries over to bosses, which is weird at first but makes sense. No boss in Arkham City really gave me a challenge. In fact, they're all a bit easy. Mr. Freeze had me stumped for a while as once you use an attack on him you can't use it again, but then the Bat-computer just sent me a cheat sheet. (Although, disabling hints would've eliminated this moment.) That specific instance was no fun, but overall, the joy of Batman bosses is the journey to them and not the fight themselves. The Penguin will never challenge the World's Greatest Detective.

Arkham City isn't an open world like Liberty City; it's more like a hub world with a bunch of dungeons like The Legend of Zelda or a bigger version of Batman: Arkham Asylum. You can't go into every building, but as you explore, you're going to find you're kept from discovering some of the 400-some Riddler Challenges until you double back with new gadgets. As you unlock the game's dozen side missions, you have to search nooks and crannies for murder victims and political prisoners in distress.

 

If being Batman sounds good to you, expect to play this game twice and have the second time feel light years better than the first. New Game Plus unlocks after your first runthrough of Arkham City, and it carries over all your gadgets and shares your Riddler Challenge data. It also doesn't erase your original game's progress – it lives in its own section of your save. Historically, I despise playing games more than once. I know what's around the next corner, so where's the fun in it? Well, I adored Batman: Arkham City's New Game Plus. The difficulty is amped up, the enemies are more diverse from the get go, and the reversal indicators are turned off.

New Game Plus takes the training wheels off and forces you to be Batman. When Batman enters a fight, he knows how to win; he just needs to execute his plan. That's you in this mode. You already know what's coming, you just need to execute your 45-hit combo, dodge explosives and save the day. This left me feeling more like Batman than ever before.

“

I had the upper hand when I walked into a room where the enemies outnumbered me 20 to 1.

Challenges rooms return and have been given an update since the days of Arkham Asylum. There are a dozen combat challenge maps (take out the four waves of bad guys) and a dozen Invisible Predator challenges (sneak around and silently eliminate all the bad guys) and each comes with three medals to earn. All that is standard, but Arkham City offers up Riddler Campaigns. These link three challenges together and apply gameplay modifiers like low health, time limits and so on. There's even an option to make your own Bat-exams. These challenges mainly serve to point out how slow my version of Batman is, but I'm glad they're here. They help hone my skills and provide leaderboards to chase and keep me playing.

 

The four Catwoman story missions inserted throughout Batman: Arkham City are a fun (albeit simple) change of pace. This former downloadable content is now a natural, integrated part of Batman's story, and it expands the mythos of the game as you're playing it by changing perspectives to Selena Kyle to explain events that are happening off camera.

 

Outside of the four missions, there are also has challenge maps for the feline and the ability to get the special Catwoman Riddler Trophies in Arkham City.

 

For those who played through Batman: Arkham City in 2011, the Armored Edition doesn't offer much in the way of incentives -- by and large, this is the same top-notch action/adventure game Rocksteady released last year. The new BAT mode gives you an additional combat option, but it's both unoriginal and ineffective. You'll charge a meter, activate BAT mode, and become mildly stronger in a fight. The inclusion of the Harley Quinn's Revenge expansion, Robin and Nightwing's challenge rooms, and character skins goes a long way to lengthen the experience, but the Wii U Game Pad functionality is clearly a consequence of launch-title experimentation. Arkham City looks and plays just as excellent as always on the Game Pad screen, but when it's used for touch-screen weapon selection, or as an in-game gadget, the Game Pad is just awkward. Moving the real-world object to look for in-game objects is a chore, and better left to the analog sticks. Glancing at the Game Pad to see your sonar radar is the best usage, really, but even then it's unexciting and not as helpful as simply absorbing yourself in the game proper.

 

THE VERDICT

 

Batman: Arkham City isn't perfect, but listing the little things I didn't like gets in the way of all the stuff I adored. The voice acting, the challenges, the amazing opening, the unbelievable ending and the feeling of being the Dark Knight -- these are the things that standout looking back. I've beaten this thing twice and still want to call in sick and chase Riddler Trophies.

 

Batman: Arkham City isn't just better than Batman: Arkham Asylum, it's better than most games on the market.

 

9.5

 

AMAZING

Batman: Arkham City on Wii U is the quintessential version of one of the generation's definitive games.

 

+ Excellent combat and exploration

+ Outstanding character performances

+ Absorbing world and an engaging story

+ Inclusion of Harley Quinn's Revenge and Robin/Nightwing challenges

 

– Irregular, awkward Wii U Game Pad usage

 

 

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2012/11/18/batman-arkham-city-armored-edition-review

 

I think we're looking at probably the highest ratest game of the Wii U launch. From Dark Knight to Dark Horse.

Edited November 18, 2012 by Wii

[Zechs Merquise]

I called this! I said to people this game was going to be good. It looked hot at Play Expo and seems to have been pulled off well. This seriously eases my concerns after the ME3 debacle.

[-Dem0-]

Hmmmm, the only negative is the "Irregular, awkward Wii U Game Pad usage". That's one of the main differences between the WiiU version and the PS360 version.

For me personally, I'm definitely getting the WiiU version, simply because I don't want to play it on my 360. I want to try out the Gamepad controls and having all the DLC on disk is great. I'll probably get this next year.

[Jamba]

I called this! I said to people this game was going to be good. It looked hot at Play Expo and seems to have been pulled off well. This seriously eases my concerns after the ME3 debacle.

 

I don't know. To be honest, this is a difficult game to review as the caveat of "should you bother picking this up if you've played it already" still seems to answer NO. Whether that should effect the review score is an interesting debate.

 

I'm interested to see if Gametrailers will give it a worse score as they seem pretty pissed about Reggie's attitude that tons of people are yet to play this.

[Zechs Merquise]

I don't know. To be honest, this is a difficult game to review as the caveat of "should you bother picking this up if you've played it already" still seems to answer NO. Whether that should effect the review score is an interesting debate.

 

I'm interested to see if Gametrailers will give it a worse score as they seem pretty pissed about Reggie's attitude that tons of people are yet to play this.

 

You have to review the game as the game it is. But it doesn't hurt to point out that this game is out on other systems. But I don't believe it's fair to say 'oh, this game is just as good as the other versions, but with DLC and extra Wii U content, but we're only giving it 7 out of 10 because it's out elsewhere". If it's a 9 out of 10 game it should get 9 out of 10. People who are most likely to buy the game are going to be people who didn't get this at all because they're Nintendo only gamers.

[Phube]

I for one have never played either Asylum or City... but I might check this out (when its price drops)!

[Zechs Merquise]

I for one have never played either Asylum or City... but I might check this out (when its price drops)!

 

I hae Asylum on he PC, amazing game and one of the best games this gen. It's like Metroid Prime with Batman! It's excellent and thus I highly recommend City to anyone, especially Batman fans.

[Mokong]

I find it odd that they say this is the quinticential version of the game....yet they put the GamePad use as a negitive about the game?

That's just fuel for Nontendo-Fanboys....as can already be seen in the review comments

[Londragon]

I don't know. To be honest, this is a difficult game to review as the caveat of "should you bother picking this up if you've played it already" still seems to answer NO. Whether that should effect the review score is an interesting debate.

 

I'm interested to see if Gametrailers will give it a worse score as they seem pretty pissed about Reggie's attitude that tons of people are yet to play this.

 

I am one of those people who haven't played it yet, and don't won't a reviewer to mark it down just because it's been available on other consoles for the past year. Just give it it's score of how it plays on this platform (Wii U). The IGN reviewer (Greg Miller) mentions that;

 

when it's [GamePad] used for touch-screen weapon selection, or as an in-game gadget, the Game Pad is just awkward.

 

Is it more awkward than pausing the game, selecting through menus by pressing start, followed by down, down, left, A?

 

BTW I can't wait for this game. So excited.

[-Dem0-]

I for one have never played either Asylum or City... but I might check this out (when its price drops)!

 

Do you have a PS3 or a 360? do you play video games on your PC? because if you do you should definitely give Arkham Asylum a go. Awesome game, I got it brand new for £9.99 back in 2010, it was one of my favourite 360 games. played through it a couple of times and never got bored of it. I would play

it now if I still had it.

[Jamba]

I for one have never played either Asylum or City... but I might check this out (when its price drops)!

 

Get Asylum, however your can. Even if it's through OnLive because it's a fantastic game. For me personally I preferred it to City but City is still an outstanding game with a ridiculous amount of substance.

 

There's a Gametrailers graphics comparison out. It's not a very worthy comparison really and they have actually changes some of the art in it too which makes the comparison a bit weird. No a fan of catwoman's new outfit... less boob.

 

 

EDIT: FFS... can someone help me stop being a spazz at linking GT vids?

Edited November 18, 2012 by Retro_Link

[Phube]

Do you have a PS3 or a 360? do you play video games on your PC? because if you do you should definitely give Arkham Asylum a go. Awesome game, I got it brand new for £9.99 back in 2010, it was one of my favourite 360 games. played through it a couple of times and never got bored of it. I would play

it now if I still had it.

 

Don't have a PS360, but have a semi-decent PC, played demo on STEAM. but it was too short to really tell!

[Jamba]

Don't have a PS360, but have a semi-decent PC, played demo on STEAM. but it was too short to really tell!

 

Dude buy it!

[Phube]

Dude buy it!

 

Yeah, but now I can get it for Wii U... and I do prefer to play games from a TV if poss. My PC is/was for games I couldn't get on Nintendo (GTA's, Half-Life's etc.).

 

Decisions.

[Jamba]

Yeah, but now I can get it for Wii U... and I do prefer to play games from a TV if poss. My PC is/was for games I couldn't get on Nintendo (GTA's, Half-Life's etc.).

 

Decisions.

 

I was talking about Asylum really. You could play through it in the two weeks whilst waiting for Armoured Edition!

[Retro_Link]

IGN's Video Review

 

 

EDIT: FFS... can someone help me stop being a spazz at linking GT vids?

GT videos don't seem to work now since their site redesign. I'll ask the question in the questions board.