Batman: Arkham City

Is Catwoman only playable during her missions, or can you switch whenever and free-roam with her?

After you beat the main story you can switch to Catwoman whenever.

Great.

Been doing some side-quest stuff. Also I ran into a mysterious watcher which was interesting, I'll need to keep a look out for 'im. I also popped in the spot where Bruce's parents died. You get to pay your respects(which gets you a trophy) and listen to a tape. Neat.

The end of that Azrael business sounds like hype for another game. I wouldn't doubt there are other clues to possible ideas for a sequel throughout the city(similar to AA with the secret room showing the Arkham City map and such).

Anyway, they received my CE stuff today and I went to pick it up a while ago. Thankfully, they did include my pre-order stuff like Robin n' such instead of screwing up(JB-Hi-Fi >>>>>>>>>>> EB).

Haha, I've got a lot of skins now for Bats. There's TAS, Batman Beyond, Earth One, and The Dark Knight Returns. Bitchin'.

Oh, and I also got a beta code for this:

This game has too many gadgets. I forget I've got half of them. I got a freeze grenade thing, and it can make ice platforms in water. So there's this bit where you need to navigate around on ice platforms. But then I reached a part where I couldn't get to the next platform using ice.

I was trying to work it out for about 10 minutes before I remembered I could just zip line across the gap with the line launcher.

Now that was cool. The solution to that little puzzle has never once been explained as something that you can do. There has been nothing in the game so far that required me to do that, and it wasn't introduced with a tutorial or anything. Well, the gadget description explains that the gadget can do it, but who reads those?

I wish I'd done that first set of AR missions sooner. The grapple boost is great.

Anyone got DLC on this?

Whats the consensus?

Also i'd appreciate someone reviewing this spoiler tagging obviously.

I've got some DLC. A few of costumes(Batman TAS, Beyond, TDK Returns, Earth One) and the Robin stuff. they're all bitchin'.

SOK wrote:

bitchin'.

That's good enough for me.

Superbuu3 wrote:

Also i'd appreciate someone reviewing this spoiler tagging obviously.

Well as far as gameplay goes it trumps Arkham Asylum in every way. The combat seemed harder to me, but maybe I just sucked at AA as well and don't remember. Maybe I just tried to be better this time around and failed, because I found myself trying to use gadgets a lot of the time, which I never did in AA. But gadgets are more fun to use in combat this time around, for some reason. Maybe it's just the bat claw clothes line move. The freeze bomb is useful too. Plus you have armoured guys and guys with shields to contend with. If they were in AA I don't remember them, but if not then they're new. You can counter thrown objects, and counter two people at once now. Or if they pick up something explosive you can throw a batarang at it to blow it up in their hands.

Getting around has been vastly improved, simply by way of having to get around a lot more and actually having room to glide all over the place. You can dive to build speed tp push yourself forward when you pull up, and I recommend doing the first 4 AR missions as soon as you can because the grapple boost is awesome and I didn't get until I'd finished the game. The climbing sucks but you only ever have to do it at the start. Once you get the batclaw you just zip up to rooftops with ease.

Stealth is pretty much the same, with the addition of snipers and guys with heat vision goggles. Sometimes one of the guys takes a hostage, which means if you get seen it's game over because the hostage gets killed. They also introduce mines later on, which can really fuck you over if you don't pay attention to them.

As for story... the main plot is a mess. Strange is absolutely wasted and the whole situation of Protocol 10 and Strange knowing Batman's identity takes a backseat to the Joker plot very early on, and only pops again briefly towards the end. The final boss is way out of left field. Characters come and go and some things are just odd. The Freeze battle was cool but felt utterly pointless.

Side missions are decent and varied. There's like 400 riddles and trophies and wotnot to find, and something like 70 challenge rooms and campaign challenges which I haven't touched so I can't comment on them. But they're probably good if you like that sort of thing.

Moose did you get this from tesco and get the joker stuff?
When you say challenge rooms is it basically like those challenges on AA because i absolutely loved those?

Did anyone get the nightwing DLC, I heard he had a unique moveset.

Oh yeah moose and if this is anything like AA its probably worth playing the challenge rooms to learn all the advanced takedowns.

I don't have any of the DLC other than the Earth One costume. I got it from Amazon for the steel case.

And the challenge rooms are the same from what I've seen, with combat and predator challenges. There are also campaign challenges, which have perks to equip with certain rules or something. Again, haven't touched them so I can't comment. You need to collect the Riddle stuff to unlock the challenges, I know that much.

Every character has a unique moveset. Or rather slightly different gadgets. I hear Nightwing is a bit more unique because his rhythm is slightly different due to the sticks, but I haven't bought him so I can't say for sure.

Can you play as the Joker in Arkham City? Apparently Wal-Mart is selling Arkham City for $28 on Black Friday (Nov 25). So I might get it.

No. Playable characters, including DLC, are Batman, Catwoman (who's actually playable in the story mode), Robin, and Nightwing.

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

No. Playable characters, including DLC, are Batman, Catwoman (who's actually playable in the story mode), Robin, and Nightwing.

No playable joker even in the Tesco version? I am disappoint.

DAmn maybe i should get my hands on AA GOTY.

The joker was epic to play as in AA. His gun was the best.

Well that was a disturbing conversation I just overheard.

Thug A: So she said "There's no way I'm putting all that in my mouth".
Thug B: Good one. What happened next?
Thug A: She choked to death.
Thug B: You made her swallow the whole thing?
Thug A: Yeah.
Thug B: You poisoned your own mother with a birthday cake? Wow.

Finally bothering to do the Catwoman missions. The Long Halloween costume is great.

Okay, there's 24 challenge maps. 12 combat and 12 predator (6 normal and 6 extreme each). Then there's 12 campaign challenges, which are 3 mix and matched combat/predator challenges, and you're given modifiers to use. You can choose when to use them, but you have to have used them all by the end. They do stuff like make enemies stronger, activate weapon stations, add a time limit, etc. There's also some positive ones, like health regen.

Can you use all characters in all modes? I.e. catwoman

You can use any character in the challenge modes. They have their own medal count too, because I have 3 for Catwoman (just did one combat challenge, barely beat the top score), but 0 for Batman. So I guess if you're a completionist that means playing every challenge as every character.

I think the Robin and Nightwing packs add new challenge maps, but I'm not sure. Either way there's extra DLC maps.

Also, the last Catwoman mission is pretty great. I wish there was a way to use her Long Halloween outfit in main game, bu you only costum options for her when using the special thing on the menu for playing her missions. Otherwise you have to play as Batman and then switch while playing.

I've heard her costume changes with Batman's, like if you pick the animated outfit for Batman, Catwoman will be in her animated outfit too. But no one knows to get the Long Halloweed one apparently. Not that it would matter at the moment, since the only outfit I have for Batman is Earth One, and that's not it.