Game Review: Batman: Arkham City: Game of the Year Edition

Hello and welcome to another BATMAN REVIEW!!!!!!!!! This is Batman: Arkham City: Game of the Year Edition!

2 years after the release of Batman: Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady and the Batman: The Animated Series writers were back with a brand new game! This new game was, Batman: Arkham City! Taking place directly after the first game, Hugo Strange has organized a new facility for the inmates of Arkham Asylum and Blackgate Prison, Arkham City. This new district of Gotham gives the inmates freedom while they're locked up. It's essentially a big sandbox for the criminals to play in, with giant walls. Bruce Wayne is completely opposed to Strange's new prison, but anyone who disagrees with Hugo Strange gets locked up in Arkham City with all the criminals! Meanwhile, The Joker is dying. He has a deadly disease in his blood from the after-effects of the TITAN syrum he injected himself with. (Oh, yeah. Spoiler Alert from the last game.) He injects some of his blood into Batman. Batman must find the cure, or die with The Joker! Meanwhile, Hugo Strange has given all the inmates guns and other weapons just so he can commence Protocol 10. What is Protocol 10? Will Protocol 10 commence? Will Batman find the cure in time? Will Catwoman collect all her jewels? Will Ben Affleck be a good Batman??? Will Jarod Leto be a good Joker??? (Spoiler Alert: The answer to both is no.) Play Batman: Arkham City to find out!

This game...... This game...... This game is.... It's...... It's really........ It's FREAKING INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!! This game is fantastic! It's one of my favorite games of all time! In my top 10, easily! This game fixed many problems from the first game. It is clear where you need to go next, it's a lot less repetitive, since a lot of thug battles and vent passages aren't mandatory, there are much less TITAN thug battles, the soundtrack is much cooler and a lot more memorable, and the bosses are MUCH better! ESPECIALLY the final boss, it's awesome! The voice acting is great in this game, just like the last game! Mark Hamill is fantastic as always as The Joker, Tara Strong is great as the new voice actor for Harley Quinn, and Nolan North is fantastic as The Penguin! You can't even tell its him! If you don't know who Nolan North is, he is a very talented voice actor that has been in countless video games! He plays Nathan Drake in Uncharted, and he did lots of voices in Portal 2, just to name a couple! What makes Nolan North so great is that, most of the time, you can't tell it's him in a role unless if you read his name in the credits! He's that good! This game has 4 playable characters. In the main story, you play as Batman and Catwoman. Catwoman's story would be DLC, but the Game of the Year Edition comes with all the DLC pre-loaded for free. There is a DLC epilogue to the main story where you play as Robin, and there are challenge maps where you can play as Nightwing! Nightwing is also DLC. All the characters play differently and they all have their own abilities. This game takes a bit more of an open-world sandbox approach to the hub world, Arkham City. There are lots of secrets, Easter eggs, and sidequests to take on in Arkham City. I like this a lot! It makes the world seem a lot bigger and grander! It's easy to get distracted from the main story! The game is quite long, with the main story plus the DLC and secrets and sidequests. The graphics are, once again, beautiful! Detective Mode also works a lot better in this game! All the RPG elements from the last game are still there, but much better! There are much more things to upgrade and many new abilities. If there is something bad about this game, it would be that the gadgets don't have as much use as in the first game. I didn't use most of them, I forgot I even had them! This is disappointing. However, you don't even care about that. This game distracts you from that one flaw with, of course, everything else that is good, but what REALLY makes you forget about the lack of gadget uses is a truly engaging and epic story! The story is much more epic than in the first game, and the ending is incredibly somber and tragic. I'm not going to give it away, but let's just say I was close to tears. Again, there are lots of Riddler Trophies to collect, but they got rid of the interview tapes. However, the Riddler Trophies now have a purpose outside of unlocking stuff. They are all part of a big sidequest trying to stop The Riddler's evil plans! This gives you even more incentive to collect them all than in the first game! Overall, this is a FANTASTIC game! Go and play it NOW!!!!!!!! I would give this game a 4.9 out of 5 stars! I would recommend this game to ages 12 and up. The game is violent, there are revealing costumes, the game can be grotesque and disturbing, and there is a sign advertising a strip club in Arkham City. Don't worry, you can't go in and there is no nudity, only neon outlines. It wouldn't be open, anyway. So, yeah. Go play it! Now!!!!!!!

Have you played Batman: Arkham City? What did you think of it? Tell me in the comments!

Now I'm going to go cry in a corner because Batman: Arkham Knight is going to be next-gen exclusive AND it's going to be rated M! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!