Wednesday 22 August 2012

Batman Arkham City - Full Review

Despite never playing Arkham Asylum I decided recently, due to the high praise for the game,  to play Arkham City. I watched a few people play Arkham Asylum back when it was new and my first impression was that it was kind of boring, so I was prepared to be slightly disappointed by this one. I was pleasantly surprised. My favourite thing about this game has to be the combat system, it is fast and fun. The combat starts with 3 hits then you enter freeflow mode whereby as long as you hit the attack button and point batman in the right direction then he can hit any enemy you like in the area, even if they're halfway across the map. I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea. Batman also has a load of gadgets which can be used in battle, my favourite of which has to be the freeze grenade, nothing is more fun than freezing an enemy and then smashing the ice before taking them out. 
A lot of the game is also based around stealth and areas where getting spotted means death. I've never been a fan of stealth and to be honest most of these areas bugged me at first. I'd just run in thinking "Yeah! I'm batman!" and I'd immediately get shot to pieces and have to start over. Luckily after a while I got used to the stealth concept and I have to admit, it's a lot of fun picking off enemies one by one without them noticing you.
That's most of the gameplay to be honest. The rest of the game involves flying round the city finding people and things, with some puzzles thrown in here and there, this is fun too but for the most part during these sections I was just waiting to get to the destination so I could kick some more butt...
I won't go into the main plot too far because it's the sort of thing you have to experience but I did enjoy it, there were a couple of good twists which do come seemingly out of no-where if you don't pay attention. The side quests, although not very compelling in the sense of story, are also fun. Sometimes it's good to have a distraction from the main story for a while and the side quests do just that, they also flesh out the game, meaning that it never feels overly linear or boring.
I'm not going to talk about the music of the game because, frankly, I never really noticed it. As I see it, the music of a game or other bit of media is important, but only really worth considering in a review if it stands out in some way. The music from Arkham City never really stood out for me so I'm not gonna bother with it.
The graphics are something that sort of bothered me in this game. I'm not trying to say that the graphics are bad but something never quite seemed right. In game I liked the graphics, they were smooth and fit the style and feel of the game, but during some cutscenes I just felt like everything was a bit stiff. Maybe it's just me being nitpicky but something just never seemed quite right to me. Also the game is very dark and a bit dull, other than a couple of the villains everything was a bit murky and boring.
Anyway, what about the scoring? I'm gonna give the game a score out of 10 for each section of my review and then an overall score based on these. I'm also going to give a score for fun, because not enough reviewers take into account how fun a game is whereas that's normally the first thing I think of.
Gameplay: 8.7
Plot: 8.4
Graphics: 7.7
Fun!: 8.7

Overall Score: 8.4

So there you have it, my thoughts on Batman Arkham City. It's a fun game to play and I especially enjoyed the combat system. What do you think of it? Or better yet, what do you think of my review? Any comments, suggestions or opinions are welcome in the comments section!
Write y'all later,
Madseverus

No comments:

Post a Comment