Batman: Arkham City

Bruce Wayne's empire isn't just his tech company, Wayne Industries - it's Hollywood. Batman is the biggest character in the entertainment biz, with TV shows and movies (both live action and animated), games, comics, and more merchandise than you could dream of fitting in the batcave. Problem is, Batman has worn many faces over the past sixty years or so, from the campy Adam West TV adaptation to Christopher Nolan's gritty Dark Knight, and not all of them have been well-received by fans.

The company that made Batman: Arkham City, Rocksteady, doesn't have anything to worry about in that regard. The game is a pretty close to an interactive, adult version of the Emmy-winning Batman: The Animated Series, where Batman glides around a noir city and uses grapples, batarangs and other gadgets to fight his fights. Many of the voices are the same - including fan favourite Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hammill as Joker - and while playing it I felt as though I was living out all my childhood fantasies of vigilantism.

Arkham City begins a few months after the end of Arkham Asylum. The asylum has closed, and instead an entire section of Gotham City has been walled off to hold the city's criminals captive. Many of the bad guys are simply left to their own devices, so the whole of the newly-constructed Arkham City has turned into a cesspool of immorality of the worst kind. I can't say much more about the plot without getting into serious spoiler territory, but it's safe to say that it's darker, and better, than the plot in the previous game.

If you haven't played Arkham Asylum before, it's best that you do before picking up Arkham City. Many threads in the storyline pick up where the previous game left off, and you'll be much better at the game if you do. On the plus side, for those who have played before, Batman starts off much more powerful than he was in Asylum - he already has most of the gadgets unlocked in the last game, and the beginning of the game is a lot more fun because of it. There are plenty more weapons to unlock, and most will also assist you in getting around the open world of Arkham City.

The combat is where this game really shines - if you can call anything set in Gotham 'shining'. It's completely possible to just button-mash your way through if you want, but the game rewards you for learning a few tricks, particularly good timing. The number of different attacks Batman can do is really quite astounding, and they change significantly depending on your surroundings and how many people are attacking you. If Batman is fighting next to a wall, for example, he might grab his opponent by the head and bash it against the bricks to knock him out.

But it's not just Batman you'll be fighting with. If you buy the game new, you'll get a code that allows you to download content that allows you to play through sections of the game as Catwoman. If you don't have the code, those sections of the game are just omitted entirely. Fortunately, if you do buy the game used you can purchase the DLC separately, so you won't miss out entirely, but it'll cost you a few bucks.

Whether this is ethical or not is a discussion for another day, but Catwoman's segments are certainly worthwhile, especially with an alternate ending at stake. When you're playing as Catwoman, you play differently, and your character moves differently. You can reach areas of the city that you can't reach as Batman, and collect more of the many, many collectibles in the game. That's important, because the number of collectibles you find determines whether or not you have access to certain side missions.

When you're done with the campaign, there are a host of challenge maps to run through. The Combat challenge maps require you to fight hoards of enemies, and you're rewarded with bonus points for completing combos and using gadgets. Personally, I prefer the Predator maps, which require you to stealthily take thugs out. You earn medals for using particular strategies - like throwing down a smoke pellet - to do so.

Frankly, I can't come up with anything bad to say about Arkham City. It's a beautiful game, with fun gameplay, a great story, fantastic voice acting, and a foreboding orchestral soundtrack to match its film noir feel. Whether you're a fan of Batman or not, there's going to be something for you in this game.

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