E3 Impressions | Batman: Arkham City
Gotham City. Vast, imposing, and decaying. It is the one of the strongest fixtures in the DC world. Within it’s limits houses schemes, corruption, and villains that has occupied the World’s Greatest Detective for decades without stop. While only hinted at in the first game, Batman: Arkham City will bring Gotham to your living room this October.
We begin with an opening shot of the city. The city itself shows a rich history with new and old architecture. As we begin moving closer into the city, more details appear. Rust, mildew, and garbage liter the streets. Everything has been touched by erosion but without that feel of complete ruin. Gotham has been around for a long time. And will continue to stand for a long time. We move closer and something begins to take form. As we get closer Batman’s form becomes more pronounced as he surveys the streets of Gotham. Buildings as far as the eye can see just waiting to be explored.
As Batman takes center stage, we’re given a taste of the familiar. Batman lands on the street and just an incredible amount of detail is to be had. Absolutely fantastic eye for detail in the streets that easily continue the bar set by the previous game. In addition to walking, running, and grapple hooking across – Batman can now also perform a more extended glide. Allowing him to travel larger horizontal distances quickly.
While dispatching various thugs on the rooftop we reach a particular roof that has a few cats loitering. Here, the player can switch to Catwoman. Catwoman heads down towards the street for a particular sewer entrance where in exchange to helping her break in, she would help steal an orchid for Poison Ivy. While the interactions for the most part remain the same, the developers have done a great job of making Catwoman feel significantly different. Once she reaches the sewer entrance she has to take down a few thugs to gain entrance. The take downs remain brutal but Catwoman brings an playful elegance to her hand-to-hand and whip attacks. As befitting her name and in the movements, she is playing with her assailants as they don’t pose any real threat to her. Once in the sewer it’s revealed that Catwoman has an equivalent to “Detective Vision” in Batman: Arkham City. In this view, she can view valuable objects on a particular character. In this case, it was a set of key cards to access the value she was after. Catwoman is able to jump to, and traverse, the ceiling of the room easily and without detection snatch the key cards from her victims. That changes however when Catwoman attempts to open the vault in the control room but even with the guards alerted, they prove no match for our feline protagonist and she easily makes her way into the vault. While there were moments of running around in a smaller location with Batman: Arkham Asylum, it felt direct and more about scaring the hapless NPCs in the game. With Catwoman, they brought her agility and her whimsy to the game. There is tension but it feels less aggressive and more about precisions. Taking a mechanic that is very familiar and changing it slightly gives it a whole different feel.
Finally, surrounded by Penguin’s henchmen Batman has to take on 30 plus thugs on the screen at once. Initially the odds look overwhelming but in true Batman form, he quickly begins kicking and pummeling the enemies into submission. How the group fights seemed to carry over from the first game but has been updated to deal with the larger group fights.
Batman: Arkham City does what any good sequel should set out to do. Not only make sure the experience is bigger but also better. And what I’ve seen so far, the team at Rocksteady Studios aims to do just that.
