Batman: Arkham City

For those that are getting tired of the cheap first-person shooter, zombie thriller, or hour-upon-hour mission hunting role playing game, look no further than Batman: Arkham City. Developer, Rocksteady delivers a brilliant sequel that can easily be a contestant for “Game of the Year”. With its polished-off gameplay, return of veteran voice actors, and original, shocking plotline, this video game will be soaring to the top of gamers’ Christmas list.

The Joker is back, archrival and nemesis to Batman. This time, he is trying to poison Gotham from Arkham City by replacing all blood stored for blood transplants with his own tainted blood. His blood is poisoned from a chemical known as TITAN that he had injected in himself during Batman: Arkham Asylum to become as powerful as Bane. As he tries to become cured of this poison, he is simultaneously transporting his blood from Arkham City to hospitals around Gotham. Arkham City is a sectioned off part of Gotham that the inmates of Arkham Asylum now reside. Thugs and villains are able to roam about freely and do whatever they want, such as waging war against each other and killing Batman.

For the past decade, video game developers have been ripping off each other. When Halo: Combat Evolved came out, gamers immediately fell in love with first-person shooters. Then more games came out that were just complete replicas of the game system such as Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Rainbow Six, Darkwatch, Battliefield, the list goes on! What separated these games? Nothing, but the weapons used and quickly drafted plotlines to keep up with the best-selling game type. However, every once in a while, a video game is introduced that is thought of as “outside of the box”. Very few game developers will explore uncharted territory so that it can stand out from the rest. For Rocksteady, the difficulty had to be the greatest, for how can they make a video game with a character that doesn’t like to use weapons, and definitely does not kill enemies. Using “Unreal Technology” from the last big hit, Batman: Arkham Asylum, they are able to give Batman lovers just what they envision; free flow combat with quick use of Batman’s gadgets such as the batclaw, batarang, smoke pellet, and even the cryogenic capsules. Why limit Batman’s arsenal to just the traditional gadgets when Rocksteady can implement gadgets from any version of Batman and even make their own utilities? Rocksteady does a superb job at giving the player the right amount of gadgets so as not to feel crowded by the plethora of utilities while fighting crime. Now here is where Rocksteady really pushes the limits for video games. During combat, the player is only pressing one button to perform all these different attacks from a range of Jiu-Jitsu to Kung Fu, creating a free-flow of combat, surging from one enemy to the next, while at any time the player can tap another close-by button to leap to a far off enemy, or jump over a thug to keep the steady stream of combo hits rolling, and then immediately hit a button directly above the other to counter any thrown object or punch. Five enemies in a row are taken out within five seconds without Batman taking a breather. This newly developed gameplay is best known as free-flow combat. Not only is that, but the sonar vision implemented from the blockbuster movie The Dark Knight is used to see enemies behind walls! This video game has introduced so much to the video game community that there is truly nothing else like it.

A die hard Batman fanatic would fill with glee at the thought of Mark Hamill returning to voice his psychopathic maniac role, the Joker. Since 1992, during the cartoon series, Batman: The Animated Series, Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy voiced the Joker and Batman respectively. Since the cartoon series was geared towards a younger audience roughly twenty years ago, the generation growing up now would be around their twenties. This generation was slammed with comic book cartoons, comic book movies, video games, and internet websites devoted to their favorite comic book super hero. The generation playing this video game will be expecting the perfectly, insanely done voice of Mark Hamill and the dark, mysterious voice of Kevin Conroy. It is not only the fact that this generation expects it, but because Mark Hamill is the most favored voice actor of the Joker. Poor Mark Hamill can only be viewed as Luke Skywalker from the brilliant trilogy Star Wars if he played any other live role, and has thus been reduced to just voice acting. Mark Hamill puts a tremendous amount of energy into the role and gives the most diabolical, psychopathic performance. The laugh is completely maniacal that it brings the Joker to life, making the audience fearful and sends chills down spines.

Finally, for those that are looking for an interactive comic book, go home and read Detective Comics issues Twenty-Seven to 827 and fall asleep. The nice thing about Batman is that his story is not finished and ever-changing. “If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!” (The Joker; The Killing Joke). Rocksteady has a team of writers working diligently to create this epic masterpiece for a Batman trilogy that goes deeper and darker than any other Batman story out there. How is this achieved? At the beginning of the game, you track down Joker in Arkham City. When you finally find the joker, he is sitting in a wheel chair hooked up to an intravenous therapy line with Harley Quinn crying over his body. Batman’s heart rate indicator shows that the Joker is deceased. Batman then orders Harley Quinn to move out of the way as he stares in awe of the dead body. Suddenly a clown figure jumps him from behind and sedates him with some sort of gas mask. As he regains consciousness, he finds himself being pumped full of blood; the Joker’s blood. Yes, the moment the Joker has been waiting for, the moment where Batman and Joker are now one! The Joker is Batman’s greatest arch rival, since he is a FOIL to Batman, and now he has become a part of him. Now Batman is forced into a spiral of events that brings him closer to death and closer to him breaking his one rule to save his own life. As both characters approach death, they take desperate measures to destroy each other as Batman teams up with Mr. Freeze and Ra’s Al Ghul’s daughter, Talia and Joker persuades Clay Face to impersonate himself in a healthy form. Through all the sporadic heart beats, crazy hallucinations, and poundings from various thugs, Batman barely maneuvers his way to stop Joker from poisoning all of Gotham and obtaining a cure. Joker, however, is begging for the cure after all that he has done, and stabs Batman for it, causing the cure to be tossed on the ground and shattered, with a desperate, savage Joker trying to lick off the remains. Even after all the things that Joker had done, Batman finally tells a joke. “Do you want to know something funny? Even after everything you’ve done, I would’ve saved you.” After all the countless number of times Joker has tried to make Batman laugh and failed miserably, the roles are reversed as Joker laughs in the face of death, now seeing that he doomed himself. It is totally outrageous to kill off the most famous and comical of all the villains. Rocksteady took a giant leap of faith to kill off one of the biggest villains ever, and the results couldn’t have been better. Leaving the audience with a giant cliff hanger the Batman fans will surely beg for more; to know how Gotham City changes without Joker.

However, for all the great masterpieces out in the world, there is always the same share of skeptics. Batman freaks might get upset at the idea of too many villains flooding the game. What they don’t realize is that Rocksteady left out more villains then they included, and the ones excluded were some from Batman: Arkham Asylum and ones that might be used for a later installment. Another complaint is that Robin should have either been completely in the game or out and not just of had a cameo. There have actually been no attacks on the game itself. Every game reviewer has given a full score to Batman: Arkham City.

After all is said and done, the player is left speechless to nothing but a calm stream of credits. No music or noise, just quietness and the player left to his/her own thoughts. This game is nothing but original from top to bottom, from gameplay to plot line. With a unique style of gameplay and a shocking, in depth level of storytelling, this game gets a whomping five stars out of five in my book.