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Arts & Life
The Clarion \ Oct. 28, 2011
a lot.
Batman: Arkham City
Though there is something really disturbing about The hype is real.
This is the kind of game you own, the kind
you come back to years from now with a grin
on your face. I don’t know if it’s the greatest
action/puzzle/stealth game ever made, but I
honestly couldn’t tell you how to make it any
better than this.
★★★★★
watching Batman die
^fex, ZQJc^rac^en
When future generations look back on the
last couple of years, they may disagree about
politics, court rulings and economic policies,
but there will be at least one indisputable fact
that no man, woman, or child will contest.
This was one incredible decade to be a fan
of the bat. While I am in no way shape or
form, a Batman “fan” I know a great game
when I play it.
Arkham City is the sequel to 2009’s
Arkham asylum. A game famous for being
based on a licensed property (movie, comic
book, or what have you) and was actually
fun. It was more than just fun. It was one of
the best games of the year, and in the annuls
of video game history (all thirty years of it)
that was wholly unique.
Unique, but not great. That may sound
like I was disappointed, I wasn’t, there were
a few kinks in the game’s armor, but they
were few and far between. Asylum captured
what made Batman such an iconic character
and let him exist believably in an interactive
world. Plenty of time and effort went into his
gadgets and free form martial arts fisticuffs,
but just as much dedication went into how
the writing set up all the best villains from
his immortal rogue gallery for the game’s
story in interesting ways. It was a fevered and
deliberate labor of love, the kind that never
gets the right funding to get off the ground.
. .almost never
Everything that Asylum got right was
flawlessly carried over into Arkham city and
then pushed just a little bit further This was
no small feat, because I couldn’t have
pictured them making a sequel that had
all the same exhilarating parts as the
first, but felt like a completely new
experience. The folks at Rocksteady
studios are modern masters of the
interactive arts and they know it.
They hit the ground running two years ago
and knew exactly what game they needed
to make. _
I don’t want to give too much of the
beginning away, but here goes. Through a
strange political agenda running through
Gotham’s prison system, the slums become
walled off and turned into a laissez faire
detention camp; Giving Mr. Wayne a hell of
a job shutting it down from the inside, and the
player the ultimate batman playground.
This game will melt days off your life.
Between a battle of wits with the prison’s
warden, a race to save the Joker’s life, and
hundreds upon hundreds of secret puzzles
and challenges (there are literally over four
hundred of them.) you’re gonna need to
glue your eyes to your watch if you want
to keep your GPA above water Good luck_j
with that.
This is not a game you rent.
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