"Batman: Arkham City" Just Another Heaping of the Same Game

 

    When I think of Batman: Arkham City, I think of people calling it the greatest superhero video game of all time, or at the very least it's up there. When I play it though, I tend to ask myself the same questions I had when I was playing Arkham Asylum: that's it? That's not to say it was bad, this game was far from that, but in my mind, it's basically a bigger Arkham Asylum, with more riddler trophies to get, and that's basically it. I mean playing as Catwoman was a fun change of pace, but the truth is the game just felt kind of underwhelming for the cult status it had attained.

    I think part of the reason is that it's an open-world game, but in practice it's far from that. The story is very linear, and frankly quite short. Don't even get me started on how it finishes. Once again the final fight just leaves you wanting more, and feeling as if the other boss fights were actually better. For those who don't know, the final fight is Clayface, you basically just fight off a bunch of nameless clay grunts, and then Joker dies. It's almost as bad as the Hugo Strange fight, where it's just some stealth thing against nameless grunts, and then both Strange and Ra A' Ghul die.

    Maybe I'm just too used to games like the Witcher 3, maybe I should be giving this game more credit for being short, concise, and far better than any other superhero video game before it. But to be honest, I basically took a month hiatus from this game, and it's like I didn't miss a beat. I didn't particularly feel any urge to play it, and even then I could feel a slow resentment for the game growing as I began the arduous task of collecting all 440 Riddler trophies. Don't even get me started on the DLC, which was two hours of a really boring story that ultimately contributed nothing in any way whatsoever.

    I mean I still enjoyed this game though. You can spend three paragraphs complaining about how disappointing this game was while still acknowledging that hey it's a fine video game. I don't know where I'd rank it in terms of enjoyment, but I'd be lying if I thought anything was wrong with it. I just expected it to be better considering all of the mystique surrounding this series. It make me wonder if the same thing is going to happen with Arkham Knight, just that it looks better.

Final Score: 77/100

    I have no more words about this video game. I'm not sure if it was spoiled by the fact that I had to collect all of those Riddler trophies, or the fact that I jumped back into this game after a month and had no strong feelings, but I'd be lying if this series didn't disappoint me. Maybe I'm just spoiled by much more fun open-world games, I can say confidently that I prefer Sleeping Dogs over both Arkham Asylum and City. Is that wrong to say? Maybe superhero fatigue has really hit me hard, who knows? All I know is that this is a fine video game, and I hope you find more enjoyment out of it than I did.

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