As I mentioned in a previous post, with all of the rather poor superhero games that had been churned out before (with the exception of Spiderman 2 perhaps) Batman Arkham Asylum was a bit of a surprise when it first landed.  This did, however, mean that the bar had been set rather high for Rocksteady when they released the sequel, Arkam City.

Fortunately, they appear to have taken the winning formula from Arkham Asylum, given it more space to play and a damn good polish.  The combat is still fast flowing and gives you the impression that you're really bad ass, despite the fact that (for the most part) you're only using two buttons to either hit or counter with a few subtle changes like having to use the counter button multiple times when more than one enemy attacks you at the same time.  The number of gadgets has, as you'd expect, also increased including some rather cool (literally) freeze grenades and an electricity gun.  Each of the gadgets have useful abilities both in and out of combat and all are required if you plan to collect the 400 trophies the Riddler has dotted aroun the map.

The list of characters who make an appearance is quite vast. Some of them only appear briefly, seemingly just to say 'Hi', others have entire side missions attached to them while a select few, such as the Joker, get to play quite a signifcant role in the main story.  In fact (bordering on minor spoiler), Hugo Strange, who seems to be the 'main' bad guy doesn't actually get a lot of face time with Batman... just sitting in the background talking... a lot.

The side missions do get a little overwhelming at certain points, distracting you with so many different objectives you'll start to wonder if you'll ever be able to complete them all.  That said, it took me around 27 hours to complete the main story (including Catwoman's missions) and almost all of the side missions and most of the Riddlers trophies.  However, as quite a clear testament to the game, I'm still playing and trying to finish them all... and even when they are done I'll still have the 'New Game+' to do which involves starting the game again with increased difficulty (including the removal of the counter signals) but with all your gadgets and abilities from the normal game.

Having bought the game new, it arrived with a handy code for the Catwoman DLC which I'm not entirely convinced by.  The missions are fairly boring (compared to Batman's) and pretty short so I can't imagine paying 560 MS points for it.... or the Robin or Nightwing DLC packs. If they were playable in the main game instead of Batman, they would certainly add some significant replay value, but I can understand that it would require quite a significant amount of development to make that possible.

All in all, Rocksteady have done themselves proud and, yet again, raised the bar for other developers looking to make some quick cash off a movie or comic tie-in.  I look forward to where they take the Dark Night next...

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