InsaneBear

Review: Batman: Arkham City

Score: Good
Difficulty played on: Normal
Time to beat: Around 15 hours with most side quests, though the Riddler quest line can add a substantial amount of time to this estimate
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
Loved the most: Insanely detailed setting that you can glide through with speed and ease.
Hated the most: Doesn’t dare to do anything new.

In late 2009, developer Rocksteady burst onto the gaming scene with a licensed superhero game that, far from sucking, actually raised the bar for licensed games of any genre. Batman: Arkham Asylum defied conventional wisdom so thoroughly that many critics considered it worthy of Game of the Year honors. So here we are in 2011, and Rocksteady has finally delivered the most feverishly anticipated Batman experience since Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. This time around, the World’s Greatest Detective is in an open-world prison five times the size of Arkham Asylum–more of a slum really. But does bigger necessarily mean better? While Arkham City does offer some thrilling flights over the intricately detailed streets of Gotham’s disciplinary district, it really doesn’t bring much innovation to the table utility belt. In fact, it inexplicably suffers from almost every problem that blemished its predecessor. Batman: Arkham City is certainly an authentic Batman experience that any fan will enjoy, but the unfortunate reality is that it’s more of a sidestep than the leap forward we’d all been hoping for.

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Tags: batman: arkham city, review, rocksteady, warner bros. interactive