Batman: Arkham City is a “U.S. Prison Systems” simulator and open-world “metroidvania” superhero game developed by Rocksteady, whose previous creations include the middle-ground Urban Chaos: Riot Response and the critically acclaimed influential Batman: Arkham Asylum. The road to creating the sequel was easy, having teased an easter egg in Asylum beforehand relating to the blueprint layout of Arkham City hidden behind walls in Warden Sharp’s office. The game would be inspired by numerous different comics in the Batman mythos, specifically No Man’s Land (where a major earthquake hits Gotham City and separates it from the rest of the country) but apparently also has influences from various other runs like Batman: Hush, Tales From the Demon and Prey according to numerous different fans. I know nothing about any of these except the No Man’s Land run which I heard was legendary, but I am aware that the game was also promoted with two different tie-in comics (“Arkham City” and “Arkham Unhinged”. Other apparent ideas thrown out were a considered multiplayer component, which while later reused for the prequel Arkham: Origins, was thrown out here in order to focus on a quality single player game, along with the idea of putting in different narratives for Batman, Catwoman AND Robin and while Batman and Catwoman were put into the game, it’s only for short set-pieces while Robin was left out except for in Harley Quinn’s Revenge. Regardless, the game debuted as one of the best games in 2011 next to The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim along with being one of the best video games of all time and released for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC.

I had loved Arkham City A LOT as a young lad, eagerly playing it and excited after having played and beaten Asylum, the imagination racing through my mind as I wished for a Batman open-world Gotham game where you investigate and stop villains and the ability to halt crimes in free roam. Like Arkham Asylum, I believe I may have played this twice back on the Xbox 360 days though I’m honestly not sure and I’m not going to claim that I legitimately did it twice. However, I’ve always remembered this game in the positive light, proving to be superior in every way to the previous title from plot to gameplay mechanics and everything else and held up in the highest corners of my mind. However, I have since focused on many different games which I became obsessed with and while I’ve always loved Batman, I never bothered to re-visit the games really as the last Batman game I had played was Arkham Knight on the Xbox One. However, I saw Arkham: Origins videos on the Youtube Shorts feed and wishlisted every game in the series and as such, the magical Steam game genie DinoRaptor gifted me Asylum, City and Origins during Christmas. Having felt the need to de-stress and beat up criminals to soothe anxiety while apartment searching, I had installed it again after beating Asylum and gave it a run, slowly beating the game over the next month or two. Why a month or two? How has the game held up since I last played it?

(For Spoilers, Plot, Gameplay and more: https://www.backloggd.com/u/gamemast15r/review/1605434/ )

Overall, I loved playing through this game a lot, WITH a bit of a caveat in a strange reversal from my frustrations of Arkham Asylum. If you play through it with patience or doing it for the story and to beat up dudes, then that’s totally valid. HOWEVER, buying the Game of the Year Edition on Steam will give you A LOT of content for the money which is amazing. The Riddler trophies took me a long time, mainly because of work and other obligations, but also because they gave you 440 different collectibles and a lot of them require constant backtracking, especially if you play as Catwoman as getting certain Riddler trophies means opening up certain areas as Batman. Capturing Riddler was a drag, and the last thing I would ever want to do is play against the Riddler again. You’ll also get the combat/arena challenges, which as always feel great but there’s so many medals to collect between the four different characters (Batman, Catwoman, Nightwing and Robin) that you’ll be spending a lot of time trying to master them all. Regardless though, the quality of the gameplay along with the improvements, the dirty and grimy Gotham style that makes it feel empty and finally being able to fight criminals in an open world leads this game not only to be a classic like Arkham Asylum, but an even better one due to the improvements. I loved this game a lot, and while I won’t be touching the rest of the series for the rest of the year I feel due to the Riddler trophies and other stressors, I enjoyed my time and I would love to play this game again in the future. As for the future, what happened to the future of Arkham from here?

Well, honestly the game sold a hell of a lot of money! But just like Arkham Asylum, Arkham City set up a lot of different plot threads for the next unannounced sequel in the Rocksteady Trilogy: Arkham Knight. The ominous prophecy from Azrael, the disappearance of the Identity Thief, the secret Scarecrow references along with the vague foreshadowing of Calendar Man would come to fruition in the sequel released nearly 4 years later. In the near immediate future however would reveal the release of Arkham City Lockdown, a sort of fighting game phone prequel to Arkham City along with a Wii-U port later on. In 2013 would come the release of the “black sheep” prequel game: Arkham Origins developed by WB Montreal, which while not a groundbreaking game, was a game that I felt was good enough and very much remember tackling over a Christmas break back in my high school days. However, that’s really a tale for another review in the future; regardless, Arkham City became the definitive Batman game for the Arkham Franchise along with one of the best superhero games ever along with the likes of Spider-Man 2, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

Links:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2011/02/14/batman-arkham-city-gotham-on-lockdown?page=2

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2011/sep/02/batman-arkham-city-interview

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Batman:_Arkham_City

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jejMZWfPanU&ab_channel=killsensei

https://arkhamcity.fandom.com/wiki/Easter_Eggs_in_Batman:_Arkham_City

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/BatmanArkhamCity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_Arkham_City

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4T9wrtXySVA

14 years old and still holds up well today, great game

rocksteady is the goat