Batman: Arkham City review - Edge Magazine

The reviews for Batman: Arkham City are trickling in, and the critical consensus is positively glowing. This is from Eurogamer:

It’s a role-playing game, when you get down to it. Not just because you gain XP, engage in a little light levelling and are free to sharpen your combat skills one upgrade at a time. It’s a role-playing game in the most literal sense of the phrase, a game in which you’re encouraged to give in to the fantasy, and to see what life is like when it’s composed of rooftop brawls and zip-line getaways. Animations, traversal mechanics, takedowns: they’re all building towards the same thing. In Arkham City, you become Batman.

When all is said and done, I find the characterisation of this particular Batman to be laughable - a steroid-addled psychotic, wrapped up in leather and expensive toys. But I can excuse the window dressing if the game design lives up to the buzz. 

Also, I’m most intrigued by the recreation of Gotham City (albeit only a small part of it). In the comics and films the city is practically a character in its own right. Here, we’re given a unique opportunity to explore it for ourselves. This is from Edge magazine:

But after its introduction, Arkham City places you on the highest floor of a skyscraper, with a city at your feet. The effect is very nearly disorienting, if only for the sumptuous level of detail on offer. The wintry Arkham City is a carved-up and cut-off hunk of Gotham, a glorious mix of neon and sodium, rusted metal, soot and black stone. And the structure you’re standing on, by the way, is the Ace Chemicals building: the place where a no-name hoodlum fell into a vat of chemicals and the Joker emerged. Your first objective, meanwhile, is the district courthouse where Harvey Dent was cruelly disfigured and became Two-Face. And a little distance away, as the bat flies, is the alleyway where a young Bruce Wayne watched as his mother and father were murdered.

Just as Asylum’s madhouse setting allowed Rocksteady to bring a host of Batman’s villains together in a relatively confined space (a trick repeated here), Arkham City has allowed the studio to pick and choose landmarks from Gotham’s history in the creation of its environment. This is a city in which every street corner feels lovingly authored, visually unique and dripping with DC lore, trumping Asylum for detail and character despite the increased scale.

As the seasons turn and the days grow shorter, this should be just the ticket for those chilly winter nights. Cannot wait.