Batman: Arkham City

So I know a few of the guys working over at Rocksteady - and I know that these guys are dedicated to their craft and very talented. After the stella work of Arkham Asylum I was very excited to get my hands on Arkham City, probably the first game in a while I have actually been excited to play.

It's very good, there's no doubting that. Combat is addictive as ever - great fluid combos, easy to transition between enemies, great integration of the tools into the combat flow and wince inducing attacks combine to create a fantastic playground of opportunity. Really loving the additions they've made here - it comes together really well. Last night I played through the Mr Fries battle and loved it - a well thought out and signposted boss battle - one of the most memorable I've played in a while. And whoever said - let's use the Bat Sign as a waypoint marker should have their own bonus just for that.

It's been getting rave reviews and deservedly so. But looking at it with a critical eye, as us designers are wont to do it does have a couple of issues:

1. Pacing

The open world presents a lot more opportunity for exploration, side content and distractions. All of this makes following the main quest a little more difficult - as such I think the pacing of the main quest isn't as tight as it was in the predecessor, and I'm wondering if the many side quests are making it harder to get a smooth sense of pacing, as the feeding of information seems oddly structured. This is most evident in Predator scenarios. It seems there is a large assumption on having played the previous game - very quickly new concepts are introduced for guys with thermal goggles, taking out the perches, etc. I'm barely able to remember the possibilities of the first game before these are thrown at me, so I'm wondering how someone completely new to the series would cope.

2. Art / Detective Mode

The major bug-bear of the first game still seems to be intact. There's some great art in there, but detective mode is so useful, I end up with it being on a lot of the time, rending all that time spent creating beautiful art a little moot. Then there's the greater problem of a Batman game - it has to be set at night. This seemed less of a problem in AA - there was a good sense of color progression throughout the game, but here it seems a little more haphazard. It feels overwhelmingly black and grey. I think that is a symptom of it being more about the grimy city that needs to have a unified feel, than having distinct interiors which became their own space in AA. All this grey makes navigation a little harder - I find it hard to distinguish one part of the city from another.

3. Dialog

The level of "on-the-nose" dialog is slightly frustrating. Having Batman spell out his thoughts so precisely feels quite wooden. It fits with the comic book style, I get it, but it's just jarring to me.

Then there's the level of dialog repetition, which during the Fries fight in particular became extreme annoying. It's not too hard to have a variety of dialog, and when using a pool of dialog, it's pretty easy to set it to not repeat the same phrase again. This is again very jarring for me, and pulls me out of the fiction.


Conclusion

This problems don't stop the game from being a superb piece of work, but I do wonder why reviewers and players are overlooking these issues that have been solved by other games. It's interesting to see what gamers are willing to overlook - some of these are things that I spend hours agonizing over getting right - sometimes it makes you wonder if it's worth the effort to do these small things.

All in all though - I'm enjoying my time in Arkham City, and I couldn't be happier for the guys over there in their achievement. I suspect a few Game of the Year awards are heading their way ;)