Batman should be a member of the postal service... because he knows how to deliver.
Well, he did. I was playing Diablo III when I realized that my life had become nothing more than a repetitive grind for loot when suddenly Batman threw down some smoke bombs, jumped down, and yanked me away from the depths of Blizzard's calculator crud with his batclaw. Nice of him, right?
I started playing Batman: Arkham Asylum only a few weeks ago for the first time, desperately crawling away from the dead-end Blizzard game that I have already colorfully described. All I can say is that I was so pleased with it, I went on to its sequel with an overjoyed sense of enthusiasm.
Arkham City is a great game. It takes all of the challenges of Asylum and amps it up another level without losing quality or focus. Batman is still Batman, his villains are still consistently diabolical, and there are so many characters from the Batman universe to draw upon that the possibilities for hiccups in the plot and twists seem endless.
Arkham City is a pretty big place, and there's plenty to do there. It's a bit intimidating at first, there's no doubt, when you get your first look at all of the Riddler's question mark puzzles littered all over the city, most of which you can do very little to solve with the starter gear. Thugs are now re-spawning creatures that evolve as the plot progresses. They go from simple bruisers, to boys with broken bottles, to jerks with automatic weapons. To keep up, Batman gets a slew of new moves, gadgets, and upgrades.
It's great! The scale of Batman's powers goes well with the scale of of the city and the threats, but you never stop feeling like Batman. You still need to examine clues, track down secret entrances, stick to the shadows, and be clever about the big fights.
I seem to remember, however, that there was a bit of a stir about the ending of the game. Well, I'm not going to spoil anything i this review, it's probably been spoiled before by someone else, but I will say that the ending was rather twisty, enjoyable, and left me in disbelief... but in a good way!
Personally, my biggest complaint is the difficulty of playing the game on a PC keyboard with mouse. If you have the option, pick up the console version.
Again, this isn't a review that you really need a lot of the mechanic details included. The game has been out for a while by now. I'm just here to throw in my recommendation... because this is the internet.... and I can.