Batman Arkham City is Rocksteady’s fantastic sequel to Arkham “best superhero game ever made” Asylum. Taking the framework that made that game so good and expanding it into an open-world playground filled with the most vile scumbags imaginable, not to mention the trademark villains and sidekicks that makes the Batman world so appealing, Arkham City is easily one of the best games of 2011.
Matt:
Its really hard to find fault with Arkham City. Almost everything it tries to do, it does perfectly. Everything is refined and polished, the combat feels smoother than before, and all of Batman’s new abilities and gadgets are practical and necessary in an environment that’s been specifically designed to be utilized by the ultimate detective. Its not so much an action adventure game as it is a Batman Simulator. Arkham City is chock full of recognisable faces and is a wet-dream for any fan of the comics, as there’s so much detail to sink your teeth into. The story moves along at the pace you want, and you are free to take on all the side quests as and whenever you choose, but they never felt like side quests to me, more like expansions to the overall plot. I was only too happy to detour away from the story and hunt down the mad killer Victor Zsasz, or search for some more Riddler puzzles so I could take on his next Saw-like hostage puzzle.
I can’t believe Rocksteady managed to make the sequel even better than Arkham Asylum, which was close to perfect in my eyes. The city is a brilliant playground which dynamically changes in subtle ways as you progress. Each of the game’s villains owns a section of the city and populates it with his or her own goons, and its little touches in the attention to detail – such as seeing the smug face of whichever villain was responsible for your death on the ‘retry’ screen – that make it stand out from its third-person action peers. On the surface, Arkham City is a great sequel that does everything its predecessor did, only better, and at its heart is a brilliantly paced, brilliantly written, brilliant action adventure. No other title in 2011 made me feel like more of a badass superhero than this game.
Paul:
Nananananananananananananananana- BAT-MAN!
Whilst Batman: Arkham City certainly doesn’t bring up any memories of the classic, ultra-camp TV series, it definitely brings up that little feeling inside when you play a game, the one that makes you think you’re totally and utterly badass. Sure, it’s all virtual and you probably couldn’t really go outside and kick the living shit out of hundreds of blokes in one night, all the while gliding around with a cape and a cowl, exacting sweet, sweet justice on those who prey on the innocent – but holy bat logic, batman! – it couldn’t possibly be more more fun than it is in Rocksteady’s latest creation, and at least this way you can cut down on the cuts, bruises, and lethal toxic poisons.
I completed Arkham City in one weekend, yes, the weekend that it came out, and yes, I did nothing else other than eat for the entire duration. Some might call it sad, but I call it being committed to saving Gotham City from the evil clutches of— that villain you’ll have to stop in some fashion toward the end of the game… as you might expect. But on the path to doing so, you’ll run, jump, climb, fly, punch, kick, throw, zip, swing, explode things, break legs, interrogate informants, defeat bosses, smash penguins and joker teeth, solve riddles, find trophies, do side quests, collect gadgets, upgrade gadgets, and bloody hell, so many things to do that you’ll probably spend weeks- nay, months trying to complete everything.
It’s a beautifully crafted game with such outstanding attention to detail, and with so much polish and care put into the work, its not hard to see why Batman made it into our top 10 of 2011.
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
I don’t know many people who played Quantum Break, and nobody ever talks about it anymore, so it must have been rather forgettable for those who did. Even as I write this, two days after blasting my way to the end-credits of the 2016 bombastic time-travelling action romp, I am struggling to remember some of […]
Is bingeing bad for us? It seems an obvious question, but I have been thinking about it lately, while revisiting Lost, the tv show that started 22 years ago (cripes, I feel old). Back when it was airing, my friends and I watched it religiously every week, talked about it in great detail, eagerly awaiting the next episode. It was the definitive show of its time, sparking debates and endless theories. It felt great to be a part of that, the sense of all experiencing the same thing together over a long period of time – most seasons had over 20 episodes, which is way more than most shows get these days – and they aired one by one, every week for several months. In today’s age of bingeing a show from beginning to end, I wonder what we are missing by not taking our time.
One of my all-time favourite gaming memories is playing Haunting Ground with my mates at the flat in Baldock for 16 hours straight. It was me holding the controller for almost all of those 16 hours. It’s a bit obscure, so if you haven’t heard of it, it’s a survival horror game by Capcom, in which you play as a pretty little fragile girl called Fiona, who must escape from a huge labyrinthine castle. Oh, and you can’t fight. Your only option is to run away and hide from the nasty people that are out to get you. You do have a companion throughout though, the best dog in gaming, a white German Shepherd called Hewie.
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