I am the Bat

Late to the party again. Last year, shortly after the hotly anticipated release of Rocksteady's sequel, I got the idea to see what all the fuss was about and fired up Arkham Asylum. Truth be told, I'd picked the game up months before on a Steam sale, but my first attempt to play the game had been stymied by mouse and keyboard control frustrations. So I reinstalled, fussed about for a while reassigning controls (nothing should ever be mapped to the middle mouse button), and donned the cape and cowl. Arkham Asylum surpassed my expectations and lived up to the hype. I was amazed by the depth of the experience, the thoughtful touches (like a codex that gives you a complete background on every character), and the simple yet addictive combat. Context sensitive controls were an occasional frustration, although when compared to the Assassin's Creed series I think Rocksteady put much more consideration into their interface. I enjoyed the story and stuck around to complete all the optional content. Pretty high praise from a gamer who often doesn't finish games at all. Coming straight off my marathon Batman session last November, I was excited to get my hands on the sequel, Arkham City. Christmas was around the corner, and sure enough, the game appeared under the tree. Batman lost an important battle right away, though: the battle for my time. With a rapidly growing list of new games to play, Batman took his place at the back of the line, and was subsequently forgotten. Until now. Batman is back in a big way. One thing you hear in almost every review is that these games give you an incredible feeling of being Batman. I find myself muttering, "I am the night," quietly to the monitor as I sneak up behind clown themed thugs. I thought Arkham Asylum had gone out of the way to include just about every villain. It turns out I don't know the first thing about Batman's hit list. Arkham City is big, but not in the same way that Grand Theft Auto IV or Skyrim are big. AC's main map encompasses a few square blocks of city with about a dozen enterable structures, but they tend to be rather densely packed with secret objectives, side missions, and (of course) plenty of enemies to beat to a pulp. While Batman may have come off as more static than stoic in Rocksteady's last tour of duty, be prepared to marvel at the license they've taken with the iconic comic characters this time around. Batman may talk about being ready to break his "one rule" in his big screen adventures, but by the midway point, you'll really start to wonder how far the caped crusader is willing to go to set things right in Arkham City. Rocksteady pushes Batman to the brink, and they weave a tale that lives up to the potential.