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Batman: Arkham City flat-out does not make sense, occasionally, and it is made even more obvious when the game is generally so good otherwise. It’s hard to know who to blame at times: the actors? The writer? The developers? A certain quantity of camp is expected, but it’s not just that. This is especially true during the seemingly undercooked final act, which, while not completely terrible, is still head-scratching on multiple levels.
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Certain key moments lack the impact they should have, like when Batman tells a character they shouldn’t have murdered someone with all of the sincerity and conviction as Anakin Skywalker standing over a headless Count Dooku in Revenge of the Sith. Other games have certainly done it far worse, but it’s also not the 10/10 material that game review aggregator Metacritic (where the average score is 96 out of 100) would imply it is, either. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill, reprising their roles at Batman and Joker, respectively, do mostly excellent voice-acting jobs, but other characters are hit and miss, and the shoddy story does nothing to help. Still, it leaves a bitter first impression that is hard to shrug off for the remainder of the game. In it, they exchange cheesy one-liners, but the climax comes when Catwoman teases, “Aw, no gun, Harv?” to which Two-Face replies, “Two guns, bitch!” It’s almost laughable, and I have to believe that this became a sort of “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!”-esque inside joke at Rocksteady that they simply forgot to change before releasing to the public. The first major dialogue sequence of the game involves Two-Face and Catwoman. He is no stranger to presenting the Dark Knight’s story in the darkest and most believable way this side of Christopher Nolan, but there’s something not quite right with Batman: Arkham City. That is how Batman ends up in Arkham City, and so the drama and mystery begins to unfold.īatman: Arkham City was penned by Paul Dini, best known for his work on Batman: The Animated Series, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and perhaps most importantly of all, the creation of Harley Quinn. Hugo Strange, a prestigious psychiatrist, is put in charge of Arkham City, and arrests Bruce Wayne during a public appearance at a rally against the existence of the open-air prison. If that seems like a ludicrous concept, it quite bluntly is, and part of Batman: Arkham City’s writing addresses that without ever truly justifying it. He selects a large section of the Gotham slums and converts them into the titular detention city, now housing prisoners from both Arkham Asylum and Blackgate Penitentiary. Sharpe uses that as a springboard to become mayor of Gotham City. Picking up a year after the events of the predecessor game Batman: Arkham Asylum, former warden Quincy Sharpe has taken the credit for stopping The Joker. Interactive Entertainment, which is trying to build the same reputation in games as it has for movies. So while it is a great game, and it outright shames what every other studio is doing with their superhero licenses, it is not quite perfect either.īatman: Arkham City is one of the candidates for blockbuster status in a very crowded fall selling season for the video game industry, and that’s very important for its publisher, Warner Bros. With as far as the medium has come, Batman: Arkham City should be par for the course, not the exception to the rule. Game developer Rocksteady Studios has unequivocally delivered the greatest Batman game of all-time, and arguably the greatest comic book-inspired game as well, a notch they’ve had on their belt once before.But honestly that’s not nearly as prestigious an achievement as it should be. For a game that was officially announced shortly after the release of its award-winning predecessor, Batman: Arkham City has turned out to be a phenomenal accomplishment for all involved.