Rocksteady shocked play­ers back in 2009 with Batman: Arkham Asylum. For years, the super­hero genre had been a dump­ing ground for hor­rible licensed games. That’s what made Arkham Asylum so spe­cial. It was a licensed super­hero game that was abso­lutely fant­astic. Now, Rocksteady has returned with another Batman game. Does it do the Caped Crusader justice or is it just a joke?

For reas­ons we won’t spoil, Batman finds him­self in Arkham City, a large sec­tion of Gotham City that now houses Gotham’s most crim­in­ally insane. It is here that Batman must unravel the mys­tery of the mys­ter­i­ous Protocol 10 and what exactly Dr. Hugo Strange has planned for the facil­ity.

Gone is the sometimes-silly plot of mys­ter­i­ous for­mu­las that man­age to make men grow into hideously deformed mon­sters. Instead, a darker and more mature story unfolds on Arkham City. There are a few occa­sions where the pacing stumbles, but it isn’t enough to detract from the over­all story.

Rocksteady man­ages to inject more char­ac­ter by going fur­ther into the psyche of Batman him­self. He feels more real and vul­ner­able thanks to Strange know­ing who he really is. This makes Batman feel more human and con­nect­able than in Arkham Asylum.

Villains such as the Joker and Zsasz return in grand fash­ion. Joker, like Batman, is in a phys­ical state that cre­ates a sense of vul­ner­ab­il­ity that we have not seen before. We see him genu­inely scared for the first time and it is quite a spec­tacle to behold.

The massive roster of vil­lains that Rocksteady had been teas­ing seemed too good to be true, and it really was. Despite heavy mar­ket­ing with plenty of vil­lains, barely any make it into the actual cam­paign. Some that do actu­ally make it in, such as Harley Quinn and Mr. Freeze are under­used and under­developed. It is a shame how few of the vil­lains are actu­ally util­ized.

Though, this doesn’t stop the game from deliv­er­ing a solid story with enough twist and turns to keep play­ers guess­ing till the very end.

Arkham City may seem dif­fer­ent at a glance, but play­ing through will bring a sense of Déjà vu. The city appears big and has plenty of build­ings, but it feels like the size of all of Arkham Asylum put ont a single map. Not to say this is a bad thing as the change from an island to a city dis­trict is a nice change.

What play­ers will find most shock­ing is that the cam­paign isn’t very long. Those who ignore the side quests and go strictly through the cam­paign will find that it can be com­pleted between 6-7 hours. Completing those side quests will tack on plenty of extra hours, and see­ing as there are some really good ones they most cer­tainly aren’t to be missed.

While the city feels pretty dead com­pared to other open-world titles such as Grand Theft Auto or Assassin’s Creed, there is still plenty to see and do. Random acts of viol­ence, Riddler trophies and mis­sions, Zsasz phone calls, and so much more will devour up time. Plus, once you beat the game, you unlock the New Game + option, allow­ing the main cam­paign to be played again with all gad­gets unlocked and heightened dif­fi­culty.

There is no mul­ti­player to speak of in the game. Separate chal­lenge mis­sions with lead­er­boards are unlocked by col­lect­ing Riddler trophies in through­out the single-player exper­i­ence. Here you can take Batman, Catwoman, and Robin (If pre-ordered at select stores) into these dif­fer­ent chal­lenges and com­pete for high scores. This does feel like a lost oppor­tun­ity for co-operative play, espe­cially since other games, such as Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, had the same type of modes with the added bonus of co-op.

Rocksteady does fal­ter when it comes to design­ing the mis­sions. While the levels them­selves are well built, a lot of the object­ives driv­ing the mis­sions are unclear and some­times won’t even become obvi­ous until after you die. This also leads into the odd-omission of a mini-map on the HUD. It is easy to get lost in cer­tain areas, such as the sub­way and sewer sys­tems, and hav­ing that map would ease some con­fu­sion in try­ing to find the right dir­ec­tion.

Those who played Arkham Asylum will feel right at home with Arkham City. The fun­da­mental game­play remains mostly unchanged with the developer simply adding a few more bells and whistles. There are new enemy types, gad­gets, and fly­ing as well as some sweet new ways to fin­ish enemies like the double take­down.

Probably the biggest change is the new cape sys­tem that allows you more abil­ity to fly around rather than just glide. The use of pitch­ing Batman up and down to gain momentum cre­ates a fly­ing sys­tem that makes trav­el­ing around the city a breeze.

Combat is pretty much unchanged. Square/X is the beat down but­ton and mov­ing the ana­log stick in the dir­ec­tion of an enemy will have Batman aim his attack at them. Triangle/Y is used for coun­ter­ing enemies when an attack sym­bol appears above their head. Circle/B uses the cape to stun, mean­while X/A is used to run and jump. Like in Arkham Asylum, fight­ing is just as fun and intense.

Predator maps arm enemies with guns and leave Batman with only one choice; a sneaky approach. These are still fun, but can be frus­trat­ing if you die and there are only a couple of guards left.

Though, the most frus­trat­ing part of the game­play is eas­ily the cam­era, which has not been improved upon since the ori­ginal. In fact, due to the new addi­tions of game­play the cam­era is actu­ally worse in tight places. During fights the cam­era will zoom out to give play­ers a lar­ger view, but it doesn’t always work. The nature of the free-flow com­bat has the cam­era mov­ing wildly and it is easy to lose track of enemies that leave the view. They can then throw objects or col­lect guns lead­ing to some frus­trat­ing sur­prises.

The cam­era pulling out also leads to a prob­lem with coun­ter­ing. There are some new enemy weapons that require new dodging tech­niques, but the col­ours chosen for the counter sym­bols were poorly picked. When zoomed out and you’re in the heat of the action, some of the sym­bol col­ours tend to blend together. Rocksteady really should have picked col­ours that wouldn’t have blen­ded as well as this is a fre­quent issue, lead­ing to some annoy­ance.

Gadgets, which played a big part in Arkham Asylum, make a return with plenty of new addi­tions. Most of the gad­gets from Arkham Asylum, aside from a few select ones, are avail­able right from the start. Starting early in the game, tons of new gad­gets are heaped on Batman that either help in com­bat or make tra­versal around the envir­on­ment easier.

Detective Mode also returns in Batman: Arkham City as a pretty use­ful, yet dis­tract­ing tool. A tap of the but­ton will turn Batman’s cowl into a thermal-sensing and object­ive seek­ing device, which comes in handy to help point Batman in the right dir­ec­tion or to scope out enemy pos­i­tions. The big prob­lem is that you’ll never want to turn it off. It is so use­ful and the game is so vague about where you need to go that the Detective mode becomes such a neces­sity.

With the detect­ive mode on you won’t be able to take a look at the beau­ti­ful city. Arkham City, while not a huge visual upgrade from Arkham Asylum, is still a pretty good-looking game with the City tak­ing the visual crown. Even in the midst of chaos and destruc­tion, the city man­ages to catch the eye thanks to some really nice archi­tec­ture that incor­por­ates some nice nods towards spe­cific vil­lains.

Rocksteady has also thank­fully spruced up hit detec­tion and anim­a­tion. In Arkham Asylum, there would be occa­sional hit detec­tion prob­lems in the slow-motion fin­ish attacks where Batman’s fist/foot wouldn’t cor­rectly hit his vic­tim, but this has been fixed with Batman now deliv­er­ing every fin­ish­ing attack to the right place. Animation in this game is abso­lutely top-notch espe­cially with Batman and Catwoman as they effort­lessly weave and bob between enemies. It is quite a sight to behold.

Models and tex­tures don’t hold up as well espe­cially when view­ing char­ac­ters dur­ing inter­ac­tions. Characters end up look­ing more like plastic action fig­ures rather than actual people. The wooden and stiff block­ing dur­ing inter­ac­tions between Batman and another char­ac­ter still looks as awk­ward as ever.

At least the game has an amaz­ing cast of act­ors at its dis­posal, to help pick up some of the slack. Veterans Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill return to their iconic roles as Batman and the Joker, respect­ively. They are also joined by stars such as Nolan North, Tara Strong, and Corey Burton among oth­ers to help cre­ate one of the best voice casts for a video game in recent memory.

Batman: Arkham City is a game that builds upon the suc­cess of Arkham Asylum. Though it never reaches the height set by its pre­de­cessor due to Rocksteady fail­ing to fix some of the ori­gin­als short­com­ings, Arkham City is still a fant­astic game to play. There aren’t that many excel­lent super­hero games mak­ing this one a true dia­mond in the rough that every­body, regard­less of being a Batman, should pick up without hes­it­a­tion.