Let me be Batman: How Arkham City reflects the video-game industry

EDITOR'S NOTEfrom Rob Savillo

Ned argues that Batman: Arkham City has unfortunately portrayed symptoms of sequelitis, where subsequent releases of new games in a series are nothing more but repacked and reskinned versions of the last.

Does Arkham City have the wrong mix of significant innovation and subtle refinement?

I remember Batman: Arkham Asylum vividly. It could have been the revisits (three) or my love for all things Batman. It could have been the game’s technical precision. It could have been the cold crack of henchman bones under my ten-pound Bat-boot.

In all honesty, though, it was probably due to the crushing sobriety and legal speed addiction that defined my senior year of college. Whatever the case, Arkham Asylum holds court in my fickle, game-addled mind -- never to suffer the fate of forgettable first-person shooters and Kinect titles.

While the entirety of Arkham Asylum has burned itself onto my retinas, a particular moment commands my attention. I stood on the edge of Arkham Mansion, staring at Gotham City. The purpose of this exercise was to solve one of The Riddler’s interminable and unbelievably glitchy puzzles.

As I stared at the skyline, I became infected with an unshakeable notion: "I must go now."

My mind flooded with images of driving the Batmobile at high speed through the heart of Gotham, only to hit the brakes hard, open the hatch, grapple to a nearby rooftop, and rain down bone-breaking Bat-Justice on an unsuspecting henchman. Two hours and several hundred soaked Batmen later, I reconciled that it was not to be and stopped trying to reach a clearly unrendered portion of a video game map.

Adderall’s a hell of a drug.

So along came Arkham City and my chance to Batman (yes, it’s a verb) my way around a portion of Gotham City. Excited as I was during the opening hours of gameplay, I found myself limited. Gotham City still stood as a distant facade. I couldn’t glide off of Wayne Tower; the very building I longed to touch from the shores of Arkham Island. I couldn’t drive the Batmobile at high speed. All the bone-breaking Bat-justice in the world couldn’t console me.

Before I go any further, I feel it's important to note that I absolutely love Batman: Arkham City. It’s an unbelievably refined experience that brings me as close as I’ll ever come to actually being the Batman. I’ve been playing it all week while a copy of Battlefield 3 sits unopened and unloved on my coffee table. I’ll play Arkham City until my eyes bleed, my feet fall off, or the sequel comes out. Which brings me to an unfortunate point.

As excellent a game as Arkham City is, it’s just an upgrade: new map, new moves, new bad guys, new toys. No major gameplay changes. Yes, it was an extremely difficult title to create, and, yes, a team of extremely talented people made it. What, though, did they accomplish aside from the creation of a bigger, badder, better version of a game that I’ve already played?

It’s not fair to turn Arkham City into a proxy for a systemic problem with the game industry, but I tend to abuse that which I love. I can sit by as iterative sports titles come out each year without raising a complaint. I can watch a pack of fanboys, one-hundred wide, flock to the neighborhood GameStop for the sake of a repackaged version of last year's best FPS.

What I cannot do -- will not do -- is watch brilliant titles wallow on life support while they're drip-fed original concepts so that they can pump out sequels until they're completely robbed of those atributes that constituted their souls. I’d rather they burn out than fade away. I'd rather they live fast, die young, and leave an unbelievably sexy corpse. Otherwise, what’s the point? It's not fine art; it's a poster. It's not sirloin; it's a Big Mac.

Arkham City deserved a Batmobile.

Tags: Batman: Arkham Asylum, Battlefield 3, Batman: Arkham City

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Daniel Velazquez

October 28, 2011

On a mechanical point of view, yes, there aren't many things different from AA to AC, aside from the way you move about the enviroment. I do believe that the combat feels much more expansive and while that does have to do with the additional combos, from a tactical perspective, I just love how I feel like any option I do in battle is worthy and no move feels wasted.

Thematically, AA is a more linear affair with a more tight story, while AC has so many things going on it loses some of that urgency found in the first game. Nod a terrible thing but certainly a different feel to it.

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Daav 'Puke' Valentaten

October 31, 2011

I approve of the point of this message (or what I believe is the point of embalishment, rather than innovatie improvement). It must be tough to do that to a franchise you hold dear, because we all tend to justify it with lines of 'don't fix what isn't broken' etc. Haven't played it yet, but at least, in its defense, Arkham City looks like a sizeable improvement though. There are many more games that just phone it in, so at least this one didn't. Good article.

Adam Bloom

To be honest, for Arkham City I just wanted more Arkham Asylum. The open-worldish stuff fits in smoothly with the easy traversal and collectaholism that Asylum had. If Arkham Continent (is that as bad a fakename as XBox 720?) is the same incremental increase in gameplay combined with a substantial increase in size I think you'll see people grow tired of it, but for now Rocksteady is in the clear.

Jeff Grubb

Y'know, I have a theory about this. Arkham City and Uncharted 3 are both releasing at the point in this console cycle when, normally, we'd just be getting new hardware. If the upgrade path would've continued along the typical trajectory, both those titles probably would've been launch games for PlayStation 4 and whatever the next Xbox will be called. In that case, they'd be able to smooth over any lackluster gameplay innovation with siginificant graphical improvements.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm worried about Mass Effect 3...and that I think I'm ready for the next round of consoles. Not because a coat of paint will solve the problem, but because I won't really notice or care as much. Shiny, new hardware ignorance is bliss.

Ned Lesesne

November 04, 2011

Completely agree, though there's certainly something to be said for the gameplay advancements that come with a hardware upgrade. A more realistic environment demands better physics to accompany it, which impacts gameplay, etc. Though, yeah, Uncharted 3 is still a platformer/shooter while Gears of War, Modern Warefare, and Battlefield are still FPSs. Skyrim and Mass Effect 3 will still be RPGs. Maybe we're just getting old and jaded...

Daniel Castro

November 05, 2011

I think you are getting Arkham City wrong. When I see these huge improvements over the engige (like the fact that you are fighting even more enemies at the same time) I have to agree with other reviewers that this is more like the game Rocksteady had in mind, while Arkham Asylum was merely a test of what they could do.

And now that the engine was done, and they had two years of development, they managed to pour over everything they wanted for the huge world of Arkham City.

And we can assume that this is not the end of the series, since some easter eggs from the side-quests points out some "big event" coming towards Gotham City... So, Batman: The City of Gotham for 2013?

I really think that Rocksteady is playing it safe by not overdoing what they can accomplish... Remember how awful was the open world Gotham in EA's Batman: Dark Knight? Yeah, you don't... the game crashed and never released. So, wait for the Batmobile in the next installment, I'm willing to bet that it will not dissapoint us.