Another playthrough of Arkham City has revealed more of what I love and more of what hasn't aged so well about this classic. Its still super fun, super atmospheric, great graphics that hold up to this day. The feeling of gliding around the dark, crumbling city is just unmatched. The story is pretty good, not outstanding but good enough to keep you playing through til its end. I liked Asylum's story more, but the bigger map and more open world design really works better than Asylum's more linear, smaller playground.
Where City fails is in its side missions. They start out so cool and interesting! Deadshot is sniping people, someone is going around skinning the faces off off inmates, some myserious ninja guy is appearing in random locations and leaving strange symbols, the Riddler is kidnapping paramedics and holding them hostage....i was pumped to do all the side content. But the problems are two fold. Firstly, its easy to start the missions, but then they become super hard to continue. Finding the clues to continue to the next parts of these missions becomes like finding a needle in a haystack. Like searching this huge open world map on the off chance youll run across this guy standing on a rooftop somewhere, and when you do actually find him all he does is spout some nonsense and leave a symbol for you to scan. Rinse and repeat 5 times and the missions over. And you're just sitting there like "wtf was the point of all that?" This applies to all the side missions. Some are especially half arsed, like rescuing the political prisoners, or the Mad Hatter mission, which you can barely even call a mission. They all feel so half baked and unfinished.
But then you've got the worst of the worst. Perhaps the most time consuming, ridiculously over bloated side mission in all of gaming. The Riddler. So in Asylum, tracking down all the Riddler clues and riddles was so fucking fun, its made a very good game a great one. And there was a lot, but not an overwhelming amount. But they went SO far overboard in City. Asylum had from memory 240 collectables, City has 400! And its much, MUCH harder to get all of them, some of them just being so fucking aggravatingly hair pulling and frustrating. I have never got them all. In this latest playthrough I was determined to get them all, but after about 300 I was just so fucking burned out and annoyed I gave up. Takes A LOT to get me to that stage, as I'm usually an OCD completionist. The pure amount of time consumption is mind boggling. Beating the actual game, and most side missions will run you about 20 hours. Beating the Riddler side mission will run you about an extra 20 or more just on its own. Hell, you might even spend an hour on just one of the more difficult ones by itself.
So Arkham vs City. There's stuff I love from both games. Asylum had a better story. City has a better open world. Asylum had just the right amount of content. City has way way too much content in some areas, like the Riddler mission, and not enough in every other side mission. So I love both and consider them classics for different reasons, but both games definitely aren't without their faults.
Where City fails is in its side missions. They start out so cool and interesting! Deadshot is sniping people, someone is going around skinning the faces off off inmates, some myserious ninja guy is appearing in random locations and leaving strange symbols, the Riddler is kidnapping paramedics and holding them hostage....i was pumped to do all the side content. But the problems are two fold. Firstly, its easy to start the missions, but then they become super hard to continue. Finding the clues to continue to the next parts of these missions becomes like finding a needle in a haystack. Like searching this huge open world map on the off chance youll run across this guy standing on a rooftop somewhere, and when you do actually find him all he does is spout some nonsense and leave a symbol for you to scan. Rinse and repeat 5 times and the missions over. And you're just sitting there like "wtf was the point of all that?" This applies to all the side missions. Some are especially half arsed, like rescuing the political prisoners, or the Mad Hatter mission, which you can barely even call a mission. They all feel so half baked and unfinished.
But then you've got the worst of the worst. Perhaps the most time consuming, ridiculously over bloated side mission in all of gaming. The Riddler. So in Asylum, tracking down all the Riddler clues and riddles was so fucking fun, its made a very good game a great one. And there was a lot, but not an overwhelming amount. But they went SO far overboard in City. Asylum had from memory 240 collectables, City has 400! And its much, MUCH harder to get all of them, some of them just being so fucking aggravatingly hair pulling and frustrating. I have never got them all. In this latest playthrough I was determined to get them all, but after about 300 I was just so fucking burned out and annoyed I gave up. Takes A LOT to get me to that stage, as I'm usually an OCD completionist. The pure amount of time consumption is mind boggling. Beating the actual game, and most side missions will run you about 20 hours. Beating the Riddler side mission will run you about an extra 20 or more just on its own. Hell, you might even spend an hour on just one of the more difficult ones by itself.
So Arkham vs City. There's stuff I love from both games. Asylum had a better story. City has a better open world. Asylum had just the right amount of content. City has way way too much content in some areas, like the Riddler mission, and not enough in every other side mission. So I love both and consider them classics for different reasons, but both games definitely aren't without their faults.
2 Comments
yeah its pretty obvious they spent so much damn time on creating 400 unique Riddler collectables and puzzles and riddles that they had no time to put into the other side missions or DLC. To think the Riddler, by himself, set up these hundreds of obstacles and puzzles for Batman (would have taken him about a decade honestly) just to prove he's smarter than Batman? Its pretty damn stupid when you think about it.
rundeer
1 month ago