1. Plays the game
2. Watches Whitelight’s video on it
3. “Batman Arkham City is a masterpiece, thank you for watching.”
4. Fully agrees
5. Recommends this to every Batman fan

I think the relatively small Arkham Asylum location lent itself better to a more concise Die Hard-inspired narrative, but this story isn't Die Hard anymore, it's finally, truly, BATMAN now! The story and setting are fantastic, and the villain lineup in this game is impeccable, offering so many fun surprises and cameos that my fanboy heart nearly exploded! Catwoman is especially a wonderful addition, if a bit underused for the most part.

I have to say though, the Completionist work might be too damn much in this one. We need to get The Riddler on his meds again.

Literally one of my favorite games ever made, the story is fantastic, the voice acting is really memorable and amazing, and the combat system is nicely improved here, also it still has a lot of replay value, just very memorable and the ending is fantastic, and the Harley Quinn DLC is also very good, to me this is brilliance.

Also I decided to go though this game as quickly as possible, was not expecting to get the main story and the DLC done in 4.5 hours on record, can't you tell I love this game.

Batman Arkham City is a phenomenal game. Top to bottom. Combat is zippy and fun, story is absolutely engrossing, and the game just hucks comic book candy fan service content at you in an almost sickening abundance.

Everywhere you turn is a crafted set of side missions and comic book villains for you to deal with in a sprawling shitstorm of the criminal underworld that is Arkham City. The storyline has no business being as good as it is for a Batman video game and yet it's one of the more engaging video game storylines available.

With so much to do and such an inviting environment to play in, Arkham City makes it hard to put the controller down. And its completionist nature makes the collectathon a very fun experience for 100%ers

Call me crazy (like the Jonkler) but this game always felt mediocre to me.
The boss fights are amazing this time around, and the voice acting is top-notch, but... uh... that's about it, really.
The combat is more of the same, but I feel that the story kinda just falls flat, like it starts off with a really cool idea, but then it just fizzles out into lameness.
I really like Arkham Asylum better.

Yeah, I'm mid.

This game is an insane improvement over the first one. I'd say skip the first one entirely if there wasn't a lack of Scarecrow in this one, but pretty much every single villain comes back from the first one in this one. Jonkler, Harley, Bane, Killer Croc, Riddler, even third rate wannabe slasher villain Zsasz. This game offers such an interesting look into the Batman Mythos, it's got a who's who of famous names and fits them all perfectly in the story (as if a city wide prison wasn't a good enough reason for these characters to appear in the game). I especially like the choice of giving Clayface and Hugo Strange such a prominent, story-important role in the game itself. Clayface might be someone who people recognize and enjoy from the animated series, but I don't think a single person looked at Hugo Strange and thought "wow, my favourite Batman villain finally made it to a game. Oh hell yes!"

Another thing that this game does well is that every boss fight has the characters fighting to their elements, it doesn't have the Joker shooting himself full of Bane-adjacent gunk to fight you as a hulking monstrosity. Hell, you don't even get to fight the Joker, not really anyway. And I didn't mind a single bit. Just like I didn't mind fighting the RIddler. The way they are used in the story just works. The combat also flows much smoother than Arkham Asylum, and the movement in general around the city cured me of the syphillis that the movement in Asylum gave me.

Playing as Catwoman really dragged me down, I will say. I liked how she played, but every time the story flashed to her I immediately just stopped caring about everything that was going on and started playing the game like a braindead Let's Player. It dragged down what could have possibly been the perfect Batman game, and instead it's the perfect Batman game & Knuck- Catwoman. Such a letdown.

Anyway; glad every woman you rescue and every woman you don't rescue in this game has her makeup smeared.

(Played on Series X via remaster)

This is the first time I've beaten Arkham City. I got a disc copy for PS3 when it came out in 2011 but my German Shepard puppy (who is now 13 lmao, shout out to Zeus) somehow got the disc out of the console and chewed it up. One whole dog lifetime later, I finally found the time to play through it.

As a disclaimer, I am doing a series playthrough so I didn't do any side content really, just an 8-9 hour mainline through the story. With that said, I liked City roughly as much as Asylum, maybe a tiny bit less. It feels like a one step forward, one step back type thing.

The better: I think the pivot from metroidvania to open zone with some Metroid flavor is a similarly successful pivot to the one the Jedi games made between Fallen Order and Survivor. It's a good evolution. The combat is more fun and has more impact, with thoughtful new tricks that iterate its now-legendary gameplay to solid effect. The story is better and more personal, even if the characters still vary in quality a lot. Better boss fights. Slightly less backtracking than Asylum. The high points here story/game wise are better than the equivalent points in Asylum.

The worse: Something big was lost in the shift from the cohesive, consistent, polished, perfectly paced structure in Asylum to City's downright strange pacing. City tells 70% of its story in 3 hours and then makes you spend another 4-5 hours on the last chunks. it has a tendency to make the story move too fast when it should take its time and then pad things out with enemies/puzzles when you're ready for the game to be over. City has good, real boss fights but it also has a bunch of really flimsy boss encounters that make it seem like Rocksteady ran out of money at the finish line.

Really good, important game -- just maybe shows its age a little bit more than I expected in 2024. As an aside, I played the BioShocks last year and the thing I realized is that PS3/360 era games now totally have a classic games vibe to them. It's so odd.