Batman Arkham City: Almost Perfect

hey guys before we start this video i just want to give a big shout out to our gold tier patrons beck bossian 22 christopher moreno cyprus husky and pyrite thanks so much for your support guys and if you guys want to see these videos up to three days early then feel free to check out my patreon in the description also in the description will be my twitter and my second youtube channel where i will be live streaming from now on don't forget to leave a like and subscribe for more and enjoy the video batman arkham asylum was a really great game and a lot of people including myself were patiently anticipating at sequel it had great characters a fun map and gameplay that is still addictive to this day topping such a great product is non-easy task however somehow rock said he took what made arkham asylum so good and improved on and expanded upon it in every single way the combat had more depth the map was greatly expanded the story was longer and more complex and the boss fight saw a significant upgrade that however does not mean that there are not some problems batman arkham city is one of the most requested videos on my channel and that's for a few reasons the first is likely because it's the most popular arkham game and is widely considered to be one of the best superhero video games ever made the other reason is because it's not my favorite now i know this is probably one of my more unpopular opinions but i want to clarify that it's not like i don't like arkham city nor do i think it's terrible by any means i just don't think it's the masterpiece a lot of people make it out to be i believe that while on paper everything here is excellent but when it all comes together within the context of the game it appears to be lesser than the sum of its parts it's not like everything here is excellent but most things here are fantastic and i overall rank this game highly amongst the games i've played even if i don't rank it the highest within the arkham series i have mentioned in previous videos where i rank some of the arkham games a lot of you know that generally speaking arkham knight is my favorite and origins is up there too i will try and give a definitive ranking of these games at the end of this series as the order of my list has changed quite a bit while the main campaign was a lot of fun it was unfortunately bogged down by some really repetitive gameplay and a plot that felt more like a wild goose chase rather than accomplishing a grander goal the world while being fleshed out lore wise and while it looks very aesthetically pleasing traversing the world is made to be quite boring by the end of the game due to its strange horseshoe design all of this left me feeling really torn on whether or not i really liked arkham city because it felt like the highs were so high but the lows were so low regardless i'll give my thoughts on the game and try to explain my praises and grievances to the best of my ability of course a reminder that anything i say here is my opinion and i don't think you're wrong for disagreeing and in fact i'd love to have a discussion with you guys and see what you think so with that being said let's get into my thoughts on arkham city and of course spoilers ahead first off let's talk about the presentation this game even to this day on pc is gorgeous sure it's not the most technically impressive but it has an excellent art style and it fits in with its updated ui characters faces look great and there's an incredible amount of detail on the character models batman's suit like in previous games gets more and more torn apart as the game goes on and i appreciated that a lot the sound design here was great as well as i could hear the leather squeaking with every movement while playing as catwoman and batman's boots hitting the ground were just as satisfying as about everything else from the gadgets to the sound of getting batman's fist lodged in someone's fupa it's not just the sound of batman non-lethally slamming a ride shield into a thug's throat that pleases but the actual animation of it too batman and catwoman's many flips and flying kicks look amazing and most of them have a good punch to them and they look like they have some impact there are a few animations however that look like batman is just giving them a love tap such as when countering with a weapon you can't pick up weapons here like you could in arkham knight but when you counter or take down an enemy that's using a weapon you perform a little animation where you briefly use their weapon against them and these look great but unfortunately some of them look like they have no impact whatsoever take this one from catwoman where she spins around an enemy and barely taps him with her elbow thankfully everything else here looks good and the cutscenes are animated expertly i think i would argue that the original version of this game on pc at least looks better than the remaster on ps4 the remastered version has a lot of strange looking faces so if you can play this on pc another thing to mention is that this game runs really well on newer parts and i unfortunately only encountered this one bug during my main campaign playthrough well it's not an unfortunate thing but i was hoping to have at least a couple of funny bugs to show you guys one funny thing i can mention though is for some reason batman has taken a bit of a brutal approach to crime fighting he's now sterilizing the criminals of arkham city one cringeworthy crotch punch at a time the character models here look fantastic too such as the dark knight himself the joker who looks like hell and catwoman who's the real reason i played this game on pc because on pc we get jiggle physics baby i also gotta make an announcement here boys i know a lot of you want to know what i think of our friend harley and i gotta be honest i'm not feeling it here i mean asylum yes sir okay night damn here but seriously all the characters here look fantastic and they all have unique designs ranging from the intimidating mr freeze to the different thugs that litter the streets i appreciate that there are some various thugs based on what quote-unquote faction they're part of it helps spice up the combat as you aren't looking at the same enemies the whole time even if these enemies fight the same as far as arkham city itself wow i really like most of it the literal city with a menacing wonder tower looming over all of it was a joy to glide around in as it really seemed like the world was tailored for the new gliding mechanics and the grapple boost you can't zip around here like you could in arkham knight but i never felt the need to as the map wasn't big enough to warrant such speed the buildings here look like they're falling apart it really looks like a city that's been housing criminals damaged cars and destroyed streets do a lot for the atmosphere here and i appreciate that the joker's district that resembles an amusement park out of a horror movie didn't really feel out of place if you watched both my assassin's creed revelations video on my batman arkham origins video then you know a big thing that makes an open world fun and memorable for me is the world's landmarks and familiarity origins felt unfamiliar because there were no clear landmarks and you can never get a good angle of the town here however there's the near opposite as there are plenty of landmarks and the map as a whole is near ingrained into my head and i could recreate it from memory pretty accurately if you put me up to it i think the reason for this is because in every district of the map there's some sort of large building or landmark that has some sort of significance to the world and the player these landmarks for me were the museum the courthouse ace chemicals the gcpd building the steel mill and of course wonder tower we spend a lot of time in the museum while chasing down the penguin and have to return to that location on multiple occasions ace chemicals is unforgettable as that's where we first suited up in arkham city and we had to scale the building on our own without any gadgets the courthouse is where we take out two face and rescue catwoman gcpd is where one of the best moments of the entire game is and the steel mill is another location we return to on multiple occasions wonder tower is a building that has a lot of plot significance and gameplay significance but it's also easily the biggest building in the entire game and can be seen from just about any point on the map it also helps that generally speaking there are no copy and paste of buildings here and it helps these landmarks stand out i also felt like the map was such a perfect size as there were no buildings or portions of the map that didn't have something to be done be that a side quest main quest or god forbid one of the near 300 riddler trophies i appreciate that these larger buildings like the church serve as a good starting point when gliding are a good spot to hit a nice grapple boost to keep your glide going when you're so high up you can often see a lot of the buildings from a bat's eye view and i think this also helped with the map feeling more familiar i appreciate that by the time i had finished the game and begun my side quest cleanup i knew the map well enough to the point where if i knew there was a side quest at say the toy factory i wouldn't have to mark it on my map while it's one thing to have a city with a lot of buildings and landmarks i also think it's essential to have a city with depth and arkham city achieves this 100 percent what i mean by depth is that most of these landmark buildings have full-fledged interiors and even the city itself has a very in-depth sewer system that expands over a large portion of it all the landmarks i mentioned earlier have a ton of content within them that take place even outside the primary campaign such as in the side quests riddler trophies and much like every other arkham game there's a ton of easter eggs to be found here too and these easter eggs were really good for making the world feel like it had some depth to it take this bridge right before the steel mill for example just laying on the ground there is scarecrow's mask or at the beginning of the game as you walk through the processing center for arkham city you can see a familiar face there not everything in this game is entirely grounded in realism as some sections like the razal ghoul level look like a new take on the scarecrow nightmare sequences seen in arkham asylum and visually they're equally fantastical and enjoyable i would say my only issue with the map is wonder tower it's smack dab in the center of the map and it has a wall surrounding it that you cannot glide over meaning if you're at the steel mill and you have to go to the museum you either have to trek through the sewers or glide all the way around i wish you could glide over the wonder tower walls as going from one end to the other is pretty boring and you're gonna do it on multiple occasions i also felt like the map looked a little too dark and dirty but those are really my only issues with the map and other than that i just subjectively didn't enjoy the aesthetic of it i've never been a massive fan of dark cities with garbage cluttering the streets but i don't really want to criticize a game for that because arkham city was meant to be this location that was barely holding on and the game achieves that with flying colors flying colors of black brown and gray that is i'd also like to draw attention to an excellent design choice when it came to the waypoint markers when following a marker from say the steel mill to the museum the marker will be set to the corner of where you turn rather than on your destination and once you pass that corner the game will move the marker to the next corner you have to pass until you enter the quadrant of the map that contains your destination for a veteran of both the series and the game i can say that i didn't find this super useful but for a beginner i'm sure it'd be great i also appreciated that this game seems pretty accessible for beginners but that does not mean the gameplay here is at all boring or easy i played this game on hard mode and once on new game plus and i found the game was relatively challenging especially in the stealth department now when it comes to the stealth and the combat i'm not going to describe it in the same depth as i did in both my arkham origins and arkham knight video this is primarily because arkham origin's gameplay-wise is very very similar to the gameplay of arkham city with just minor tweaks that's a general theme you'll see here with the gameplay the gameplay here is as you would imagine very similar to the other game so i apologize if i skim over some stuff but it's because i've probably talked about it in more than one video by now so firstly i want to start by acknowledging that the traversal here is great as a grapnel boost and the diving mechanics are incredible and while it is a staple in the series now we can't forget that this was a game to introduce such a fantastic and well executed albeit simple mechanic as i mentioned before while the speed isn't as fast as arkham knight it wasn't slow enough to feel sluggish and batman's top speed is perfectly acceptable here anywho the combat here is as good as ever it lacks speed in some cases however as sometimes for seemingly no reason batman will do a massive wind-up for some of his attacks i would often time my attacks to where i could hit someone then quickly counter for efficiency's sake but this would fail if i got one of the slower animations fortunately this is one of the few criticisms i have with the combat with the others being the mini boss enemies these guys can attack you no matter what animations you're locked in so if for example you're putting the beat down on them and you have to counter an enemy the counter animation could be longer than usual and this would cause you to get hit by the mini boss i had multiple scenarios in which i was in this exact predicament and it always resulted in massive damage and it made these mini bosses more of a pain than anything i feel like it would have been better if while countering these enemies you have some sort of frames of invulnerability this mirror is an issue i had with the catwoman dlc from arkham knight the animations for some of your takedowns encounters led to you being stuck on the electrified floor and i was very disappointed seeing something similar here the combat here though was pretty challenging which i appreciate it however there is an issue which is present in nearly every other arkham game and that is with one of the combat upgrades as you upgrade yourself you'll unlock different special combo moves when you get a combo of 8 or more you can perform a special move one of these is a special takedown another is a swarm of bats that stuns all the enemies within a vicinity and the third is a batarang takedown which can knock out any enemies that are on the ground when timed correctly you can wipe an entire room with this upgrade and it near broke the game when i got it especially when mixed with critical hits and the upgrade that lowers the special combo requirement to 5 rather than 8 i felt like it was absolutely broken for those unfamiliar when attacking with a rhythm and pressing square directly after your last attack you'll perform what's called a critical attack it'll do more damage and it'll count as two hits for your combo when in combat you perform light attacks and counters until you reach a combo of three or higher in which case you'll start doing heavy attacks that knock the enemy over this can be bypassed by starting a fight with a running attack as this attack will count as a heavy attack and if you perform two critical hits directly after this it means you can get this takedown in only three hits and it can lead to combat scenarios being far too easy i think my issue that i have while making this criticism is that i'm not sure if these upgrades really do make combat that easy or if i'm just good enough at the combat i'm not trying to sit here and act like i'm a pro gamer but i've played every arkham game at least three times and in the case of arkham knight eight times and for city i just finished my sixth playthrough so what i'm trying to say is maybe i'm correct i don't know i did however appreciate that there are a few scenarios where you are heavily outnumbered and it serves as a pretty decent challenge for someone as familiar with the game as myself there's some new enemies here such as the brutes that need to be taken down through a stun and a beatdown and these enemies were a fantastic mix-up and they ended up being a staple in the series this doesn't mean that there aren't the titan-fueled enemies from asylum here too however but they only make brief appearances which i personally appreciated as it came across as more of a nod or callback to asylum rather than a wholly reused concept another significant change that was made here is with the knife-wielding enemies in asylum you had to stun these guys with your cape but now you can just flat out attack them you won't be able to counter them though and will instead have to just dodge out of the way that is until you unlock a fantastic upgrade that allows you to take them down if you dodge each individual swipe the way you do this is by pressing down on triangle as they swing their knife or sword and releasing in between swings it takes some time to get it right but it's in my eyes one of the most rewarding aspects of the combat because it requires good rhythm and timing to pull it off while keeping a high combo going it was immensely satisfying to do this with the ninjas too as they swing their swords fast as hell and since we're on the topic of enemies i'll talk about the mini bosses these are the ambrovichi twins and they were conjoined at their sides but got split at the beginning of arkham city by hush funny thing about them one wields a hammer and one wields a sickle and they're from the ussr get it i thought it was pretty smart but regardless gameplay wise these guys are a pretty cool addition they move slowly but these guys hit really hard and they also hit their friends so evading over an enemy raid as the big boy is about to swing his weapon will leave a couple of the enemies on the floor taking out these guys is as simple as just mashing square however so the challenge typically comes from the larger number of enemies surrounding them i found that the combat was really good here and as mentioned in other videos mechanics like the critical hits and the free flow focus allow you to play differently and they discourage button mashing another thing i didn't mention was that you can now quickfire gadgets when in combat meaning that you can fire a grappling hook at an enemy and pull them towards you while also ripping whatever weapon they have out of their hands you can quickfire a myriad of gadgets like your batarangs and they help spice up the combat i also appreciate that there was a reason to use these different moves as just sticking with attacks and counters while getting the job done for sure might not finish the fight as efficiently and definitely not with enough style for me personally i really enjoyed the feeling of running into a room and taking everyone down in a matter of seconds and it rewarded my precise button presses and more in-depth understanding of the combat i know that these techniques have been discussed in other videos but i want to at least credit the game for introducing a new layer of depth to the series i should mention that a new layer of depth was also added to the stealth not necessarily in the different tactics you have but in the variety of environments and enemies here one thing i have to admit that i noticed here right off the bat was it felt like enemies could really do some damage with the guns which is something i didn't feel in arkham asylum the usual mix-ups from previous games such as the enemies with heartbeat monitors are here but there are plenty of other mix-ups that kept the south enjoyable and exciting for me within arkham city you'll see enemies with jammers that prevent you from using detective vision and there's also enemies that will plant landmines on the ground i found the layouts of the south segments here to be top notch as they broke out of the commonplace box with gargoyle style and there are specific highlights such as the final stealth scenario at the peak of wonder city and it was equally as challenging as it was fun to play there are no vantage points when inside and the enemies don't often patrol outside so using the gargoyles out there won't be a huge help you'll have to have full understanding of the stealth system and the enemy ai in order to get out alive and on top of the handful of enemies in the room you also have hugo strange watching over the entire map and he'll let his thugs know your exact location for me this was the peak stealth-wise but it's not the only high point in the stealth's level design as i found the scenario that takes place upon returning to the steel mill later in the game to be a good challenge too my only issue with the stealth is the smoke pellets when you aim a smoke pellet there's a graphic that shows where it's going to land but it's a little inaccurate as shown here i was going to make a smoke screen down below and take the two thugs out that were grouped up but despite being aimed right at them the smoke pellet decided to land directly at my feet causing me to drop in front of the enemies basically begging for a bullet in the chest other than that i had no issues with the stealth and they're easily my favorite parts of the game there is one example of how incredible the stealth is and this example i think a lot of you are going to agree with of course i'm talking about mr freeze so with that being said let's talk about some of the boss fights one of the things i really appreciate about this boss fight actually takes place before the battle itself early in the story you have to try and find mr freeze and when looking in his lab at gcpd you find that penguin's thugs have been keeping it on lockdown this serves as a great opportunity for you to learn the environment and get to know the ins and outs of the place for when the real fight here comes around by the time you find mr freeze you'll already have a decent idea of the room's layout and can use that to your advantage and holy hell will you need to i know you've heard about a million people talk about how good this fight is but it really is fantastic as it puts every tool in your stealth arsenal to the test for those unaware mr freeze can't be fought head on and as such needs to be taken down with some good old sneaking however freeze is smarter than the average bear and he'll learn from your attacks attack him from behind he'll activate these subzero thrusters preventing any direct attacks from behind attack from a railing he'll freeze the railings causing you to immediately slip off i could literally spend a page talking about all the ways you can take this guy down but the point is is that you need extensive knowledge of all your stealth abilities and the environment around you to finish this fight assuming you are playing on the more formidable difficulties see on easy mode freeze requires only three takedowns normal requires five and hard requires eight new game plus however requires nine and that's where the real challenge is i genuinely believe that this fight is best experienced on new game plus as you've at that point had an entire playthrough to hone your skills and this fight is less about timing and skill but more about knowledge which really accentuates batman's detective side the boss fights being really good is a common theme here and while they might not be as good as some of the fights in arkham origins it doesn't mean that they aren't well worth your time take the roswell ghoul fight for example which sees you in a psychedelic state fighting at first a giant roz which will try and shoot blades and shurikens at you after getting through that phase you have to take down a bunch of his henchmen to finally get a good hidden and the whole fight was a perfect time the way the game switches between reality and the dream state made it much more climactic and it was a good challenge combat-wise is there's just so many enemies on you the first boss fight of swords you'll come against is solomon grundy and while it's a bit of a ridiculous battle it was a lot of fun but mechanically speaking i didn't get much from it i didn't feel like it really tested any of my skills other than my ability to quick fire my gadgets and evade i don't want to hold that against the game too much however as it is the first official boss fight so i wouldn't really expect it to kick a new player's ass regardless of visuals alone were enough to make this at least entertaining on multiple playthroughs the final boss fight is against clayface and it was a lot of fun even if it mechanically didn't stray too far from the status quo i like that when clayface does his roll attack you invade him into running into some of the explosives at the corners of the theater causing colossal damage i also think that this fight is pretty impressive because we get to see batman wield a sword and my god it's a badass high point for the game and the series as a whole i felt like it really showed the amount of effort that went into this game as they designed a completely new move set for the caped crusader when wielding the sword of his fallen loved one which was not necessary in the slightest but here we are overall though i like the boss fights a lot and i felt that they were satisfying gameplay-wise but i do wish that there was some more depth in some of them in the solomon grundy fight for example it would have been cool if instead of using explosive gel on the rotators for the third time maybe have them lose power and in order to restore the power you have to head over to a generator and flip a big lever but doing so will take a few seconds and that wouldn't be a problem if solomon grundy wasn't still chasing you around but because there isn't any power solomon grundy would be in a weakened state and as such can be stunned by performing an ultrasound and then a beatdown allowing you the time necessary to flip the power back on of course take what i say with a grain of salt because i'm not a game designer or anything but i just don't want to criticize the fights for being basic without giving an example of what would make it better for myself i want to mention another aspect of this game before we move on and that would be the catwoman dlc i want to talk about the other pieces of dlc at the end of this video too however i figure i should mention it here because this dlc directly relates to the game's story and is arguably integral to the game so without further ado catwoman controls the same as batman and plays essentially the same as well when it comes to her combat her animations are totally different though and her gadget selection is unfortunately limited catwoman generally speaking is a faster character however a lot of her takedown animations are more sluggish which made some encounters a little frustrating overall combat wise she was a lot of fun to use and it served as a pretty good counter to batman south is where catwoman sees the most considerable difference as she obviously doesn't have a cape and she can't get up to the gargoyles as fast as batman since she doesn't have a grappling hook she also doesn't have the myriad of gadgets that the cape crusader does she does have the equivalent of detective mode through her nifty goggles but other than that there are a few differences i did however enjoy her limited moveset as it felt like it was more challenging plus again the new animations made it a lot of fun and a good mix up for me i think an elegant difference with catwoman compared to batman is the way she moves and not this way what i'm talking about is the way she traverses arkham city she uses her claws to jump up walls and the speed at which she moves is dictated by the rhythm of your taps every time she latches onto a wall you can tap a button for her to jump to the next one however if you do it too early or too late then you'll be slowed down i appreciated this because it made traversal a little more complicated than batman's and in the case of stealth if you need to quickly jump away having the right timing will be very beneficial especially when it only takes a few bullets to get killed the length catwoman can go with that whip is also fantastic as in some cases you cover ground faster than the caped crusader himself catwoman's boss fight against two-face was a pretty good one if a bit tricky i've never enjoyed the fights where you just have to take down an enemy multiple times but it was okay here i guess you essentially have to take down too faced like any other thug with the only difference being his large health bar which will require multiple takedowns i'm not really sure how they could do a two-faced boss fight that is stealth based super well but regardless i felt like it was pretty so overall i really enjoyed catwoman's inclusion and despite her portions of the story being very brief and not very innovative i still enjoyed playing as her and felt her audition was a fantastic choice on rock city's end i think the main campaign does a great job of offering some fun levels and set pieces but the side quests are really where this game nails it for me but also where it really kills it for me i have a similar issue here that i did in the side missions in arkham knight being that there were just a few that were really cool and a lot more that felt firstly let's start with the acts of violence when gliding around the city you may hear the sobbing of a man nearby and if you follow the sound you'll come across a political prisoner being harassed by an inmate they all look the same sound the same and function the same i wish they had added some variety to these encounters or at least some more enemies it's always just one guy beating up the same politician and it got super boring really fast i wish i had more to say but that's seriously all there is to the sidequest so i figure i'll leave it at that next up is the ar training the first couple of these should be done as soon as possible as it not only gets you familiar with the new gliding mechanics but it unlocks a grapnel boost further challenges really test your skills and i felt like a champ because i did them all first try except this one damn i liked how challenging these were and i hope we see more challenges like this in future batman games be that gotham knights or any other batman ip the enigma conundrum is a pretty challenging sidequest as it not only tests your whip but it also tests your patience i like finding the riddler trophies and all but man if there isn't way too many of them here half of these things aren't even puzzles either they're just popping balloons fortunately the gauntlets that you have to come across to rescue the hostages are a lot of fun and a few really had me racking my brain however it's worth skipping this and that's precisely what i did i'm not sure if you guys know this but for most of the games i review i try to 100 them and i want to clarify that while i didn't do it on this particular save file i have 100 arkham city as proven here with the trophy list with that being said i'm not spending another 10 hours finishing this quest and getting the footage of the riddler being taken down overall though while it wasn't the most fun there were some really good challenges here i think the side quest is best approached by just picking up whatever trophies you come across and doing the hostage rooms as that's where all the content is seeing the riddler finally get taken down as it is a little satisfying isn't really worth the time our next side mission takes place at the old toy factory located just outside of the seal mill when we get in there we run into bane and a pretty passive bane too he tells us that he's quite angry with all the chaos that's been caused by titan and wants to destroy all the remnants of it batman agrees to destroy six of them while bane destroys the other six upon destroying them you return to bane and we get ambushed by some goons and in a really awesome turn we end up fighting alongside bane this is really one of the best moments sidequest wise in this game and i'm delighted they let us team up with a villain that we have fought in previous games after defeating the goons we find out that bain just wanted us to destroy the titan because he wanted to make sure only he could have it and then we take him down in a cutscene after that it's case closed and generally speaking i really enjoyed the brief moment where we teamed up with the hulked out luchador next up is the side quest with victor zazz it sees you tracking down phones and listening to a story he tells in order to triangulate his location within arkham city my only issue with this quest is that it took upwards of 10 ish minutes for one of these phones to ring even on multiple laps of arkham city this side quest ended up taking me an hour or so while yes i could have done it in between other side quests i unfortunately left it for last regardless the story jazz tells here is pretty compelling and i actually looked forward to seeing what he had to say next taking him down however it took all of 30 seconds and it just sees you walking up to him and pressing triangle it was super underwhelming and while i understand that having a boss fight with zazz wouldn't be very practical it still ultimately felt pretty lame just to press a button another sidequest sees you doing mr freeze a favor and finding his wife yeah no yeah that's it you just walk into a room lodge a boot in someone's rib cage and leave fortunately you can come back and find frieza and he'll thank you for your service which was pretty nice however the side mission was ultimately pretty basic just go here fight x win the next iquest sees batman coming across some bodies that seem to have had their faces removed we have to do some medical scans to find out what happened to the victims and upon doing this for a handful of victims we find out the location of the killer once inside we see hush and he unwraps his face to show that he looks near identical to bruce wayne he essentially leaves and it just sets up his return in arkham knight and we all know how that went i like the quests a lot as the detective side of batman has always appealed to me i also appreciated that barbara actually questions batman at one point i've been thinking about the identity theft case don't get angry but how can you actually be sure that it wasn't you who killed those people i mean they were your fingerprints at the scene what did you say not intentionally but clearly you're not well that place is full of maniacs who could take advantage of a situation like that think about it what if crane got to you again you know strange's reputation maybe he planted the idea back when you met him i don't like it but it wasn't me i'm sure it wasn't yeah of course i'm sorry i just well you know you may remember seeing a familiar face in the beginning of the game as you went through the processing block you're on my list [Music] well that's deadshot and he has a knack for using aimbot his quest sees you tracking his shots and eventually having a boss fight against him which again was also pretty lame you just walk up and again press triangle i didn't enjoy this boss fight if you even want to call it that because it was just so short they could have had this fight take place indoors and see you try to sneak around deadshot while trying to disable his gun or something of the sorts at different points around the map you'll see a mysterious figure watching you and every time you run into him he makes a glyph on the floor and disappears after finding him three times he can confront him at the church where he'll talk about the end of batman and how he'll need to essentially pass a torch pretty soon this side quest was pretty boring as it just saw you looking around for the guy and not doing much else after saving vicki vale we're told that alfred has manufactured a cure and is waiting at a drop point however upon getting there we get knocked out when we wake up we're in a strange miniature world on top of a massive clock reminiscent of the scarecrow segments from asylum after a pretty interesting combat section we take down the mad hatter and break out of hypnosis i like this mission a lot and felt that while gameplay-wise it was pretty basic the aesthetic twist made it quite enjoyable for me i'm gonna leave the next two for last and first up is the freeze upgrade which you can find in the steel mill all you do is walk into the room and take out a large number of thugs yeah yeah that's it and the next one is way better because it's the same thing except there's like three enemies this time after you beat them you literally just walk in and get the upgrade from the surviving undercover cops so as you can imagine these side quests really just didn't do it for me sure the mad hatter bane and ar training missions were a ton of fun but all the other ones felt pretty boring because they didn't do anything interesting gameplay-wise aside from the riddler challenges but for god's sakes i'm not scrounging around for all 300 of those bastards everything else just didn't interest me or didn't do anything new gameplay wise hell a lot of them had near to no gameplay at all a lot of the side missions suffer from the issue of padding the main campaign is guilty of this too in the case of penguin's museum where you have to disable three jammers they all have a few thugs guarding them and when you clear out the room you have to do the same animation on three different sides of the jammer meaning that you have to walk up to a jammer and press x nine times in total i found this particular part to be boring as hell and it made multiple playthroughs a bit of a slog the upside is you have a myriad of different skins to use for both after the main story new game plus and in the challenge mode the challenge mode here is the same as it is in nearly all the other games where you can drop into a combat or stealth scenario to try and achieve a high score they were pretty fun and adding different modifiers made it extra challenging so now that we've covered just about everything in the main game let's talk about the story first let's do a summary after the events of arkham asylum hugo strange and quincy sharp pitched the idea of arkham city a cut-off portion of gotham that holds criminals and isolates them unfortunately many innocent people are thrown into arkham city and this includes bruce wayne who is not having a great time because hugo strange knows his identity on top of that hugo strange is always teasing a big surprise under the name of protocol 10. meanwhile catwoman is trying to steal something from harvey dent but gets caught and kidnapped bruce after being greeted into arkham city by the penguin suits up and rescues catwoman after investigating the nearby church we run into harley quinn and eventually track down the joker at the steel mill he isn't looking too good and upon further inspection we get knocked out by the real joker upon waking up we see that the joker is indeed sick and he has transferred some of his blood into batman meaning that they'll both die very soon we then switch to catwoman who wants to break into hugo strange's vault and needs poison ivy's help to make it happen we track her down and have some negotiations and during such negotiations we switch back to batman batman seeks out mr freeze's help but finds out that he's trapped in the museum with the penguin after stopping the penguin solomon grundy and saving mr freeze he finds out that he needs a restorative substance for the cure he decides to track down a member of the league of shadows and meets his old love talia al ghul daughter of razal ghul after completing the trial set before him he confronts raz al ghul and takes a sample of his blood to use for the cure after returning to freeze we see that his wife and cryostasis has been kidnapped and he won't help batman until he gets his wife back this obviously doesn't bode well with batman and it results in a fight and upon beating him batman sees that the cure was stolen during the scuffle batman goes back to the steel mill and upon confronting the now healthy joker gets pinned under some rubble as he passes out he sees italia as offering the lazarus pit a pit that essentially gives the user eternal life to the joker in exchange for sparing batman switching for the final time to catwoman we're inside the vault and we see the big security cameras telling us that batman is in a lot of trouble but we can't just leave the guy so we'll have to get rich some other day after being rescued we find out that protocol 10 is a plan to kill every inmate in arkham city batman wants to go after italia first but is convinced otherwise by oracle and alfred after finding out that hugo strange is on top of wonder tower bruce confronts him and finds out that razal ghul is behind the whole operation after dealing with both of them and stopping protocol 10 we see that the joker has talia hostage at the movie theater upon getting there we find out the joker has not yet reached the cure and the healthy joker has actually been clayface in disguise talia gets shot and after defeating clayface batman holds zakira in his hands joker decides to stab him which makes him drop the cure sealing the joker's fate batman carries the joker's body out of arkham city and that's where the story pretty much ends i'm not gonna lie to you guys i'm not a huge fan of the story here my main issue is that it feels like a massive wild goose chase and it felt like i accomplished very little by the end of the story i mean all we did was stop protocol 10 and get a cure the thing is we get that cure by getting over one roadblock after another we need freeze to make the cure but he's at the museum we have to get to freeze but we have to defeat the penguin in order to get to his suit we have freeze but he says we need razzle ghoul's blood we go get his blood but now freeze got angry and the cure is stolen we confront the joker to get the cure but rebel falls on us and we have to give chase again we need to catch joker antalya but protocol 10 is happening and we need to fix that first okay now we have the cure but first we have to defeat clayface and then we finally get the cure it just felt like we spent the whole campaign chasing a twinkie on a stick with the cure being barely within reach the entire time not only that but it felt like some of these moments and plot points were wholly brushed off hugo strange knows batman's secret identity and does absolutely nothing with it hell he barely even holds it over his head sure he uses that knowledge to get batman thrown into arkham city but for what purpose if strange wanted to take him out he could have just had him executed i doubt strange threw him into arkham city hoping he would be trapped there for a bit and wouldn't try and stop anything if he wants bruce in arkham city then his only intention would be to kill him protocol 10 is a fail-safe that involves executing everyone in arkham city including bruce so why would he not kill batman immediately and why would he not use his identity to his advantage obviously there is a point where i have to realize that this is a game and they have to leave room for the hero to succeed and the game wouldn't be too fun if batman got domed in the head in the first five minutes but then why make strange so threatening they could have easily just had strange throw bruce wayne into arkham city purely because he was getting into politics or maybe because he had too much influence and just say that strange didn't know that bruce is batman instead strange gets one-on-one with bruce just to taunt him with his secrets and nothing comes of it it makes it seem like rocksteady was trying to add artificial stakes to the story because let's be honest having a hero's identity revealed is a pretty cop-out way to add stakes i think this further because there's no real reason as to how or why strange found out this information outside of being quote unquote really smart i was just left feeling like hugo didn't really pose much of a threat and on top of that he didn't do much story-wise other than taunt protocol 10 and execute it even the execution of protocol 10 didn't feel very impactful because we didn't really see the effects of it outside of a few buildings getting rockets shot at them and a few thugs dead on the floor if we had at least a cutscene that showed in detail the damage caused then it could have had more impact hell even batman didn't care about us he would rather chase talia al ghul than bother saving the city tally is a whole nother story she just sort of shows up out of nowhere and we're told that her and bruce are still in love it feels like she only shows up to feel a damsel in distress role as that's the only thing she does plot-wise aside from saving batman which she doesn't really do it's more catwoman that saves batman but why not have some more mention of her and maybe give us a backstory briefing rather than just alluding to it it just makes italian brews side plot feel so disconnected furthering this is the way the joker just kind of shows up after you finish taking down strange he literally starts a broadcast and says okay time to come get me and it just felt really tacked on to the end okay apologies for ranting a bit there but those were the things that really bugged me when it came to the story and again i mean no disrespect if you enjoyed the story by any means fortunately there are a lot of things here that i liked for example the characters now i know i just ranted about some of the characters but there's a lot of detail here when it comes to how these characters are portrayed and on top of that there's a ton of detail for even minor characters characters like two-face for example despite playing such a small role is portrayed so well listen to some of his lines and you can see that his two sides are fighting for the spotlight he'll typically say something in a very politician-like manner in a harvey dent sounding voice but then he'll switch to a more sinister tone to reflect the villain to face inside of him to join with us to create a new force in arkham and take this place for ourselves i also appreciated that there are a bunch of side characters that show up here like when you leave wonder city after defeating razal ghul if you go back through the sewers and hit this switch and you'll see a little cameo from killer croc this is the only point in the game where you can see this when fighting mr freeze upon punching his face a few times his head will switch to the head of the joker for those who've played arkham knight then you know that the joker plays a significant role within batman's mind and often appears as a hallucination in fact he appears in the exact same way when fighting the arkham knight i think the scene is so cool because it really shows that they had the trilogy planned essentially from the get-go this could also be why batman took joker's death so hard as he probably kept seeing the guy around and i would have liked it if the game touched on this topic batman after still seeing hallucinations of the joker could be paranoid that the joker is still actually alive and the dead body he brought out was maybe another fake regardless i felt like this is one of my favorite moments by far i could seriously go on and on about the different small awesome moments in the game but unfortunately it all falls apart in my eyes once these short scenes are looked at in the grand scheme of things i felt like each objective was its own episode of a tv show in the context of that particular episode or the segment of the game it made sense and it was pretty fun but when all the stories are connected it not only feels disconnected but drawn out which is strange as the main story only took me 4 hours and that's including dying a few times finally i want to say that the joker's death was quite impactful and in my eyes well done however i feel like arkham origins and night ruin the impact of that death as in those games the joker is still center stage and it ends up just undermining his death so in strictly the context of this game the death was great but in the context of the whole series i couldn't care less about the joker dying because all he's really doing is shedding his physical form i did like the twist with the joker however as it seems so out of nowhere and a good twist but when playing through the game a second time you realize that they tease the living hell out of it it really makes that new game plus play through so much better as you're looking at all the details with a different perspective now i overall felt like the story was pretty dull even if it does have some memorable moments i don't think the story is that bad i just found myself not caring and feeling annoyed when i did care i think the moment to moment gameplay and storyline is a ton of fun but as a whole story there's too many issues i just can't look past please let me know if i'm missing something here because it seems like a lot of you think arkham city is the best story out of the franchise but i found myself not enjoying the stories as much as the other games so if i'm missing something and maybe that's why my perception of this is all messed up please feel free to let me know so i usually talk about the dlc for these games in a different video however i feel like i should talk about harley quinn's revenge here as it's a shorter dlc and my thoughts are not as extensive so for starters i like the length of this dlc it took me about 45 minutes however that is including when my game crashed and i did die a few times so take that with a grain of salt i really enjoyed the voice acting for starters batman sounds upset not his typical anger or firmness but just in pain it's one thing to have some characters say hey batman you're sounding funny but it really goes the extra mile when you as the player can just sense it from the line's delivery i really like the new ish enemy designs here too especially the ones for the titan and the wonder city bots the portion of arkham city we're allowed in has a fair amount of changes to it to make it feel fresh enough but the secret hideout where this dlc takes place makes up for the little changes as it's not only a whole new environment but an interesting one too the room that has an open face leading to the ocean as the moon illuminated the entire place was one of my favorite set pieces and all the hallways made me feel like i was getting lost in arkham asylum again the music here also felt a little spookier than usual but i could just be imagining that one of the really cool things about this dlc is that you get to play as robin and i really enjoyed it as while he controls the same as batman stealth with him is a little more fun thanks to the snap flash and using his staff in combat was fresh enough to keep me entertained i also enjoyed switching between batman and robin as it recounted the events leading to batman's capture and the events afterwards fighting the wonder city bots is about as different as gameplay gets here but there isn't much to it they're just beefed up regular enemies their attacks are also not telegraphed by the lightning over your head so while the idea is cool i'm glad it was reserved for this one segment as it probably would have gotten old fast the story takes place a few weeks after the events of the main game and sees batman going into the steel mill to rescue some cops that have been held hostage by harley quinn batman shows up and gets caught and so robin has to come save the day that's pretty much all there is story-wise when it comes to the overarching plot but it's the little interactions here that make it worth your time seeing the way guards will chit-chat over if batman really killed the joker and the cops wondering what's wrong with him is really where this dlc shines the only part i didn't enjoy was near the beginning where as batman you need to go around the steel mill and tarry gang enemies in order to access harley quinn's hideout it reminded me of the padding with the museum and it frustrated me further that two of the guards i was supposed to take out were glitched within buildings and boxes forcing me to reset i also think the final cutscene bugged out a little bit i haven't read much about the dlc being particularly buggy so i could have just gotten unlucky here overall this dlc was fun and while it may not have innovated or done much in the sense of story development i believe that's the best way for dlc to be done in order to keep the dlc from feeling necessary it has to supplement the plot and its gameplay and that's exactly what it does here i do still think it's worth the money but it's not like arkham city's game of the year edition is very expensive as it is so in the end i enjoyed arkham city a lot i might not have enjoyed it as much as say origins and definitely not as much as knight but i still liked it a lot it took literally every aspect of arkham asylum and did it again but better but mostly better the combat saw expansions that would become a staple in the series and the gliding is still as fun as ever the world design here is top notch even if that big tower in the middle of it is a huge pain to get around stealth here is just as good as the combat but what really made it stand out was its level design that saw you in some exciting locales with different quirks and aesthetics the boss fights while not being too bad in arkham asylum are in a whole other league here and while some of them aren't the best in the series some most definitely are the side quests that were added were hit or miss for me but ultimately they're still an excuse for more of the gameplay loop we've come to love so much the story isn't my favorite and i know i'll probably get a lot of flack for that but the different inconsistencies and plot points that either don't get resolved or go anywhere led me feeling disappointed and coupled with the story's wild goose chase design even annoyed at times i will admit though that joker twist was pretty good especially when considering that some characters involvements were established in previous games and considering how much they teased it within the story i think as far as arkham city goes it really makes you feel like the batman okay i can't say that with a straight face it really makes you feel like you're playing as batman and as far as gameplay goes it feels like there's nothing missing even if there are a few things that really should be missing arkham city also did a really good job of setting up the future plot points of arkham knight and with gotham knights and suicide squad in development it's clear we won't be getting another batman game like this for a while and i'm okay with that now that i have in some form or another covered all the batman games i'm ready for something new a lot of the comments on the gotham knights trailer show that people just want more arkham games and while i get where they're coming from because come on this series is great i'd rather see siri stop and quote on quote die than to be dragged out and milked dry the series has such a special place in my heart because it was one of my first introductions to the batman character and i now realize that i was very spoiled and even if the game isn't perfect it's damn near close hey guys thank you so much for making it to the end of this video i just want to give a big shout out to our gold tier patrons in fact all the patrons uh beck bossian 22 christopher moreno cypress husky pyrite dr nannard jacob douglas denzel ritesh and tristan white wolfe thank you so much for uh supporting the channel and um thank you for watching the video if you've made it to the end thanks i appreciate it a lot i hope you enjoyed it uh as far as my next video i want to get a video on infamous one out but i'm not sure how how well my disc is gonna work and so if my disc uh shits a bed i'm just probably gonna do a assassin's creed video um make sure to go subscribe to that boy aqua live it's kind of my second channel where i'll not only be live streaming but i'll just be kind of posting whatever i wanna post there i'm always so scared to post something different on this channel mainly because i'm really worried about killing my momentum or you know i don't really have that much momentum anymore but i mean i i don't want to kill the channel by starting a new series or something like that i'd rather just keep doing what works for now and i don't i don't really want to change what works i know you guys like these long-form reviews and i want to keep giving it to you um but when i want to kind of do something else like a stream highlight or something like that it'll go on the that boy aqua live channel just because um i don't know it'd be nice to have another channel where i can just sort of upload something without caring about views and i know that it's easy to say like oh just don't care about views just do it anyways but it's like well i i kind of do care you know what i mean because i'm proud of this channel and i don't really want to ruin it so having a second place to put my other projects would be really nice so go subscribe to that if you are interested i can't really tell you what kind of content is going to be on there i can say that as far as live streams go i'm probably going to be playing call of duty mostly and that'll be what most of the live stream highlight videos are about but i might be doing some other stuff like some unboxings because i should be getting a very special package from uh from square enix pretty soon so i'll be posting a video about that on the second channel i also want to say thank you for 45 000 subscribers holy [ __ ] that's super sick and i i appreciate your guys continued support you guys have been really kind i actually uh you know just the other day i got a really nice twitter dm and i won't reveal any of it because obviously it's meant to be private but for that person watching it i'll say your name peter peter if you're watching this that that message that dm made my [ __ ] day like 110 so thank you very much but yeah so i hope this video satisfies your batman cravings i'm gonna redo my batman arkham asylum video just because i felt that video was a little when i was making those videos they were more like summaries than actual like reviews and so i'd like to redo it and give more more of my take on the gameplay and the story rather than just summarizing the story and then being like yeah i thought it was good so yeah i hope you guys are um semi excited for that and then once i finish the arkham series i'm gonna do a big like retrospective and i'll probably upload all my video essays into one big compilation so that if you do want to watch it all um in in one shot you can do that and yeah i think that's it go subscribe to nm12399 i've hammered this point home like a million times now so i don't really have to explain it much you guys know who nam is if you don't check the links in the description you won't be disappointed other he makes really good video essay content so yeah um that is all thank you for your continued support and i hope to see you all soon i love you guys i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: That Boy Aqua

Views: 572,695

Keywords: Aqua, That Boy Aqua, Arkham City Critique, Arkham City Review, Batman Arkham City, Batman Arkham Retrospective, Batman Arkham Asylum Critique, Batman Arkham Knight Critique, Batman Arkham Origins Critique, Suicide Squad, Gotham Knights, Batman Arkham Explained, Arkham City Analysis, Batman Arkham City Walkthrough, Arkham City Almost Perfect, That Boy Aqua Batman, Suicicde Squad Game, That Boy Aqua Arkham City, Gotham Knights Trailer, Batman Arkham City years later

Id: lKtRsmIfYsQ

Length: 45min 56sec (2756 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020