Escape from Arkham City

Batman: Arkham City is still a super-fun implementation of Batman's rogues gallery in an atmospheric open-world sandbox. But... revisiting the game does shine more light on its shortcomings than I saw in 2011.

In retrospect, a key aspect of Arkham City's story is that despite being "in" an open world, all the important parts are linear. It's really not that different from Arkham Asylum's style of storytelling -- but with city blocks, instead of narrow corridors, punctuating mission objectives.

To put it another way: Arkham City's sandbox is built to support its story, more than the other way around. Side missions aren't just wholly detached from the main storyline, they also tend to be insubstantial on their own. Creative effort was clearly far more focused on the story missions than on other activities in the open world.

(Compared to the side missions in Arkham Origins, which I recently called "uncompelling", I still think Arkham City's are more interesting... but not by very much.)

That being said, despite the highlight of Arkham City being its narrative, that story falls short of the bar set by Arkham Asylum. And I can pin the blame for that on two men in paricular: Mr. Freeze and Ra's al Ghul.

I'm not complaining that they're bad villains: actually, these are two of my favorites from the Bat-verse. Nor am I complaining that their parts in the story were forced, or a slog: neither were as "forced" as the Solomon Grundy boss fight, nor as much of a slog as the Penguin's museum dungeon, both of which fit perfectly into the game. (Hell, as far as Grundy goes -- randomly throwing oddball characters into an event is part of what made Arkham Asylum so thrilling.)

My problem with Freeze and Ra's is that they feel so much like a deus ex machina to the game's plot. The dire needs for Freeze's pharmacology expertise, and for Ra's's magic blood, don't seem like they fit in a world where Batman and Alfred can solve similar problems on their own; and these characters' immediate availability in Arkham City is just too convenient to believe.

When Ra's appears later in the game's story as a big plot reveal, that moment is a lot more thrilling and satisfying. And totally unrelated to Batman needing his fucking blood.

I don't want to oversell my complaint here, which is really just that a couple of character introductions are distractingly awkward. The overall story is nevertheless an entertaining rollercoaster ride from start to finish. And while I'll whine - endlessly - about how much bullshit the Riddler collectibles are, their additional lore rewards (audio recordings and Arkham City Stories) fill in some satisfying context about the origins of Arkham City.

The audio recordings particularly highlight how great Hugo Strange's voice actor was at conveying unsettling sinisterness. It's a shame that so much of his character is hidden away in these optional unlockables.

Replaying Arkham City was fun, but did remove some of the rosy tint from my glasses, so to speak. In fact, revisiting it and Arkham Origins so close together has increased my apprecation for the latter; it may have been an uninspired sequel, but it put a lot of effort into measuring up to its forebear.

Better than: Batman: Arkham Origins (PC, PS3, WiiU, X360), Marvel's Spider-Man
Not as good as: Batman: Arkham Asylum
That Riddler bullshit: still way too much work for an underwhelming payoff. But I did it again, for the achievements.

Progress: Finished the story and most side missions.