Batman: Arkham City - TTLG Forums

Malf on 9/12/2011 at 12:06

Quote Posted by cardia1

are you people enjoying more arkham city than arkham asylum?

Overall, I'd have to say yes. It gives you a lot of tools out of the box and there are less tedious spikes in difficulty, with boss fights overall being far more fair and enjoyable in Arkham City (although the Joker fight in the funhouse while the trains zip around the arena is annoying).

The misogyny, as reported by (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/28/important-dialogue-analysis-arkham-city/) other (http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/goddammit-video-games-the-first-few-hours-of-arkham-city-is-lots-of-fun-but-super-duper-sexist/) sources, is a little offputting, but the gameplay itself is hard to fault, and immediately hitting the open world of Assassin's Creed Revelations after playing Batman makes you realise just how polished and liberating Arkham City's controls and movement are.

Thirith on 9/12/2011 at 12:33

Just wanted to say that I'm not impressed with Green Man Gaming (I got the game from them at a pretty good rate). As if GfWL wasn't tricky enough, GMG handles installation and updates very shoddily. Bleh...

And don't even get me started on the stupid, stupid language settings that are based on where you live and that can't readily be changed... :nono:

Malf on 9/12/2011 at 12:41

Yeah, got mine through GMG too Thirith, and it completely borked the first download, so I had to do it all again.
To be confronted with the clusterfuck that is GFWL after that left a real sour taste in my mouth, and tainted my initial experience with the game almost irreparably.

Thirith on 9/12/2011 at 12:53

Yeah, it's amazing how shoddy GfWL is. I think that a lot of the criticism Microsoft gets is somewhat unfair - they're usually better (at least in terms of the quality of their software) than their reputation - but GfWL is a complete turd.

Malf on 9/12/2011 at 13:31

Yeah, there's a lot of Microsoft products I love, particularly in the hardware line. Their mice and keyboards are unbeatable and last forever.
Windows 7 is an incredible OS and takes a lot of beating (I use Mac OS X Lion all day, every day at work and still prefer coming home to Windows).

Yet certain things they do just wind me right up, GFWL being the tip of the iceberg.
I save my biggest hatred for how they've hoodwinked the consumer into thinking it's okay to have to pay to play online games peer-to-peer with Xbox Live.
I loath their console strategy so much, I don't think I've turned on my 360 in almost a year now.
I'm also getting incredibly nervous looking at what they seem to have planned for Windows 8.

It still baffles me that GFWL is almost universally hated and that I've never seen a positive thing written by it anywhere remotely professional, yet developers still feel obliged to shoe-horn it into their games.

froghawk on 9/12/2011 at 13:58

Quote Posted by cardia1

Thanks Froghawk, 20 hours is perfect, i remember i took half the time to finish the arkham asylum including finding the riddles. this one is going to take some time to install, it requires 17 gb of free space disk :wot:

are you people enjoying more arkham city than arkham asylum?

Well it took me 20 hours to complete everything but the challenge maps in AA (with all riddler challenges (which there are way more of in AC), etc.), so you should probably take that into consideration.... the actual story is shorter than AA's, and the game world feels a little smaller to me.... it's just much more densely packed and there are more side quests to make up for it.

I would say I enjoyed the game equally as much as the first. It's certainly nowhere near as much of a focused, tight experience as the first. It throws a lot to do at you very quickly. Also, the story's final sequence feels very rushed and is a little disappointing because it feels like it should have gone on much longer and they just ran out of ideas. With that said, the boss fights are surprisingly good (and I hate boss fights) and they don't repeat any villains from the first game for them. The world is pretty compelling, and there's lots to do in it. Catwoman is incredibly fun to play, even if the characterization of her is absolutely dreadful, shallow, and filled with misogyny.

In short: The first one delivers a tighter experience and more fully realized story, but the sequel delivers more of a fun sandbox experience and more replayability, placing them about on par with each other.

Cardia on 9/12/2011 at 14:21

I´m really looking foward to play this one then, as soon as i finish Assassin´s creed revelation i´ll play right away Batman Arkham City. i just hope there is a map somewhere with the enigmas locations.

Malf on 9/12/2011 at 14:32

You don't need a map cardia1; there's a nice mechanic for revealing the location of "Riddler Trophies".
Early on in the story, Riddler goons start getting mixed in with regular goons. If you save them for last in a fight, you get the opportunity to "Interrogate" them, which reveals some trophies and riddle solutions on the map. It also serves to make some of the fights more interesting, with you purposely avoiding hitting the Riddler goons so you don't KO them before you can interrogate them.

Combat tip: The knife dodge is ridiculously hard to pull off correctly, so you're much better off just attacking knife goons directly. It's quicker and less fiddly, and MUCH less likely to break your combo.

Oh yeah, and I completed the game on hard and was quite surprised to see counter prompts when I first started.

I also had a lot more luck with Catwoman when it came to stringing combos together. She just seems to flow better. My best combo was with Catwoman at 94 hits, where I think the closest I got to that with Bats was around 58.

N'Al on 9/12/2011 at 14:34

Quote Posted by Thirith

And don't even get me started on the stupid, stupid language settings that are based on where you live and that can't readily be changed... :nono:

So your GfWL is in 4 different languages? No wonder you're fed up with that. ;)

Thirith on 9/12/2011 at 14:43

Heh. :D I wonder how they handle the different language areas, actually; I might be even more ticked off if I lived in the French speaking part of the country and wanted to play "Le Batman", but the game defaults to German and I can't change the language...