There are spoilers, though if you haven't heard them then congratulations! That is an accomplishment.
Before I really get into talking about City, however, there is something I'd like to briefly go over as a topic that not only applies to this game, but many other games that I've been playing recently that could have benefited from this.
Save points.
What happened to save points? Why have games stopped using them?, I found myself screaming at my screen after I discovered that the game had not saved after I had mauled myself through three waves of angry enemy AI that could spot my brain through my skull from sixty-seven light years away and put four bullets through it in inexplicable and infuriating succession. As I said, this isn't just Arkham City's problem, it's almost every recently made game's problem. The amount of times I had to re-pick up Riddler trophies because the game didn't save was... probably in single digits but memorable every time it happened because of all the devotion my emotions immediately put into my anger for those blinding few seconds. I will admit that they're not as useful or convenient as what are basically save states, spoiling the computer gamer with infinite quick saves, but there was no ambiguity with save points. After you had bravely trekked back through whatever carnage you had laid in your wake, unaware of the fact that there was a save point right on the other side of the door, you could at least turn off the console in the safe and comforting knowledge that everything was done and didn't have to be done again. If only auto saving could give me that comfort instead of starting me at the beginning of a fight, making me go through it all again only this time by using all of my health kits and wasting more ammo. See, save points could be frustrating, when they were all the way back at god knows where, but at least you made that trek. At least you knew that that was where you left off. Opening the game wasn't the gamble of opening any doors leading to any rooms that might be big enough to hold a party of people on your birthday. The game didn't thrust you somewhere to look cluelessly about for five minutes and then finish you off with the same group of enemies that you had taken out moments before you decided to turn the console off. With games starting to take a more open-ended and sand-box role, like Arkham City, putting save points into the game would have cut my grievances by at least a quarter. Or even straight forward games, Bioshock: Infinite cough COUGH.
So Arkham City is built almost entirely on Arkham Asylum, basically with a lot of more villains thrown in to make it more interesting. Unfortunately, some of that becomes one of the major problems of the game. Arkham Asylum had a very linear plot, fair enough (though when that started being a bad thing is baffling to me), focusing mainly on the Joker and his interactions with the various inmates, which sometimes stretched into other well known supervillains. I was glad to see Harvey in City, though the fact that he had turned into a ghost of the Nolanverse's film version was something of a disappointment considering his role in Batman: The Animated Series, where he was a black dude literally torn apart by his torment to act out justice and murder at the same time and was Bruce's former BFF. Sadly, Harvey was basically a throw-away, which I guess is all there is to say for all the other villains in the game as well. The variety of villains shown didn't really hold any meaning. They came, did their piece and left, or rather, was subject to several armored boot/knees to the neck after whatever little obstacle course was put in place beforehand. There wasn't an overarching plot where Hugo Strange was manipulating them the whole time, it was just sort of "Strange cordoned off a section of the city and told everyone that they can go cah-rayzay" and Batman does the rounds of "who wants to be punched so hard that their spleen comes out of their ear" as he flips through the catalogue of supervillainy and picks all of them. I didn't need all of them. I don't think the story needed all of them. Stuffing your fingers into to many pies at once doesn't give you a complete pie, it just gives you a handful of some pie and though that's nice and varied, ultimately you just want one whole pie because it's much more filling. I just wanted a whole pie. I think games that are whole pies are the best games. What is wrong with this concept of wanting a game to be focused? Couldn't it have involved more interactions with Batman and Hugo Strange? The latter was an automated voice for so long I almost forgot he was an integral part of the story. He shows up for two minutes, disappears for the entire game, and then turns up to die, so I mean, was he an integral part of the plot because objectively he didn't participate in it all that often and never gave the impression that he was otherwise occupied doing other nefarious things for Batman to shake a spikey fist at.
Perhaps it was merely the fact that the cast in general was large, not just on the villain side, but also on Batman's side. I think Arkham Asylum had cultivated an absurd sense of independence and misanthropy within me, back during the days where it was just me, Batman, and Oracle, and everyone else was just someone that I had to beat up. If so, Arkham Asylum did a good job, because the mere sight of Robin in Arkham City trying to give me advice had me jamming buttons hoping that maybe Bruce would give him a boot over the side of the building we were on. This game is called Batman: Arkham City, not Batman and Friends: Arkham City, I wanted to say, as Alfred rung me up for the seventh time to give me a piece of his mind. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone and let me do everything on my own, instead of constantly pestering me with advice and chastising me like I was sixteen and not BATMAN. There was rarely the feeling of background as well - none of these characters hung around long enough for there to be a sense of history. I'm not even sure which Robin that was. Was it Damian? Do I care? I wish I would - that is the whole point of writing and character placement in the first place. We don't even ever see him again. What was the point? Why is that last question a question I was asking so often in this game? Like when we defeated Mister Freeze and the accomplishment of that boss fight was merely for the two of us to kiss and make up and for me to fetch his wife? It was a great boss fight, and yet had the sense that it was extremely unnecessary.
Speaking of "implied backstory with no back," however, nowhere was this as strong as it was with Talia. Oh Talia. Beyond Hugo Strange, I think, the biggest anticlimax of the game. I discussed Talia rantingly in my previous rant, and you know how I said that perhaps the rest of the game might get better yeah well that didn't happen. I suppose Talia did take some initiative for a few seconds, but she's immediately shot and killed, so, great. Some agency for the female gender. Then we're treated to several minutes of Bruce being quite angsty about it, which completely goes over my head because though I am aware that Batman and Talia have a history, and know a good deal concerning their history in the comic books, within this universe, there's nothing telling me that they actually care about each other besides Talia continually calling Bruce "beloved" and Bruce being angsty at points where he hurts Talia's feelings and also when she dies. They don't banter, the backstory doesn't feel like it's three-dimensional, and therefore the whole relationship falls apart for the player. Oh, Talia got kidnapped, I thought. Big deal. Oh, Talia got shot. Oh well. I guess I should-... THAT'S A RIDDLER TROPHY HOW DO I GET THAT RIDDLER TROPHY????
Maybe it's because I don't feel like the sandbox was really integrated very well. Arkham City is very good at demonstrating why a bunch of side missions and sandbox gameplay don't really fit well with a plot that at the very least implies some urgency. Batman is quite literally dying for most of the game, Hugo Strange spends 10 hours threatening to enact Protocol Ten (and we know this because he doesn't shut up about it), and here's Batman, doing some Augmented Reality Training, flying through Bat-hoops that only he can see for upwards of an hour because he can. It was hard not to feel a little ridiculous as I traversed the city while trying to figure out Riddler trophies as I was actually dying and had heard that fact mentioned with some urgency in the cutscene a few minutes before, but could happily spend hours collecting useless collectables and hunting down side missions with an emphasis on side. The fact that I was dying didn't seem quite so pressing when "dying" meant "whenever you feel like continuing the story," which any writer should know, when something takes away from the emotions you want the reader/watcher/player to feel, you are not doing it right.
This isn't, ultimately, to say that the plot was bad. Well, some of it was bad. I found the reveal of Strange's benefactor to be a bit "bwuh?" only because Strange had already barely been a presence and then they threw the responsibility of the game to someone else and then killed both of them. The Joker plotline was interesting and well done, though I don't quite understand why Joker didn't take the antidote when he had it within his grasp. The game was full of its ups and downs, which is disappointing when it could have just been a straight up by having a story and sticking with it, as opposed to trying to dupe the player with plot twists that have no bearing whatsoever on anything. As a result the plot was just good. But the way that the characters were written, with their dialogue and personality, I kept thinking that it could have been great.
So? Recommend?
I suppose I do. It's still a very fun game. All the mechanics are fun and interesting, and all the new gadgets felt like they expanded the scope of the Bat arsenal quite well, though why we still have to buy it from WayneTech when I AM BRUCE WAYNE was still a conundrum for me. The Riddler trophies, if you've guessed, were very fun to do, and succeeding to the more difficult ones did give me a great sense of achievement. A lot of the side missions were fun as well, if you do manage to ignore the fact that you are dying for most of the game and should really be off getting the antidote. The punchy stalky mechanics are still intuitive and flow very well, and the new adaptability of the mooks to your strategies gave you a whole bunch of new hurdles to overcome in the game. In general the gameplay was everything a sequel should be, an improvement and expansion on the original. Sigh. If only the plot had suffered the same.
I won't bore you by going through the whole "women in this game, where the hell were they" rant because I did that before and almost nothing has changed. It also has not escaped me that after the death of the Joker the next game is going to immediately be a prequel and Joker will still be alive, so at least the Arkham series has seemed to really take the comic book inability to handle the repercussions of death and circumstances to heart.
Only you....
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