Finishing a game in 4 days is a new personal best for me, and to be honest with you if I had not had a life to distract me I am pretty sure I would have finished it on the very first day.. damn you sleeping, eating, and working. I may be finished with the story but there is still a LOT more to do and plenty more to get out of this game.
Best game in a long time
Arkham City is without doubt one of the best games I have ever played. I don’t say that lightly, I sincerely mean it. It has everything you could possibly want in a game, for starters you are Batman. But not some hobbled “I have had all my toys taken away from me and I won’t be cool till the end of the game” Batman but a “I am so freaking cool I can kill guys just by looking at them” Batman… which is nice!
You have great toys to play with and the actual mechanics of playing the game are exactly right. Fighting is at the forefront in this game and you will be doing plenty of it. But its fun, there are so many things you can do as you pound people it is just an endless joy. Then you get to throw in all your cool gadgets and you are set. But its not straight forward, do something stupid and you die almost instantly (that is a good thing as you still have to think rather than button bash).
The artwork and production value in the game is utterly stunning, the art-deco style of Gotham is extended into some weird and wonderful ideas but all of them feel at home here. While some of it is absurd none of it felt out of place. You are playing a man with no special powers but dresses up like a bat.. absurd was left at the door. On top of that the voice acting is superb, I have already mentioned my gripe so we will leave it at that. You have to praise the developers for not sticking with the established designs for the characters, they have taken some already great concepts and just improved on them with this game. It is worth playing the game just to get the the unlocks that let you examine the models in more detail (Kudos to them for including the design of Cat Woman from the animated series as a model as well).
But the standout thing here is the story. I’m not going to tell you a single thing about it that would only spoil it for you, but lets just say it was not what I expected at all and was just fantastic. There are plenty of older characters that make an appearance not just the Joker, Penguin or Riddler, and there are twists and turns all through the story. But at its heart it stays true to who Batman is and what he is about.
Final thought
This is just the perfect superhero game that I don’t you could ever really do with any other superhero. You know you are playing a great game when you finish it before you wanted and you want to start it again straight away.
I will give you one little spoiler
I got to beat up a shark!