Batman Arkham City = Overrated

Yes, I'm going to get a lot of heat on this one, but it's a much praised game with a 96 metascore which has it's share of significant faults. Don't get me wrong. It's still a very good game, just not an excellent game or a monumental one.

The visuals are great and the cutscenes are phenomenal but they can only take you so far. It unfortunately falls into a predictable pattern of fight-cutscence-fight-cutscence. Granted, the fact that many favorite characters of the Batman series are definitely a plus. But aside from the glitter, the core gameplay truly hasn't evolved.

Batman generally takes out his foes with stealth, attacking by surprise, yet the game requires you, most of the time, be in plain sight. Combat is linear, and especially when rooms get smaller, your options dwindle.

The only real practical thing is to mash buttons to punch, and the press the counter button (like a quick time event). It is essentially a button-masher most of the time. Add the frustrating difficulty spikes and it can be a true nightmare to play.

I guess just imagine what it would be like if they took the movie The Dark Knight but carefully dosed you with 2 minute clips of it each time you kill 10 enemies. Yes, it's that kind of a game. A skinnerbox game.

Still a very good one. Just not an imaginative or creative one.

I think it's fantastic, although it's bloody too damn easy. I really hope they increase the difficulty of the next game, Arkham origins.

Overall I know City is an improvement over Asylum, yet I preferred Asylum in every possible way over City, with the exception of Harley's design.

I didn't like it nearly as much as Asylum, but it is a good game.

Whatever, any praise those games receive is well deserved.

It's a welcomed improvement on Asylum; I'll be able to play Origins tomorrow, so I'll see what that is like.

I completely disagree.

The idea that the game is "fight-cutscene-fight-cutscene" might be technically true if we're ignoring the stealth segments, boss battles, and steady flow of unlocks that are constantly evolving the gameplay. You're constantly getting new gadgets to make both combat and stealth encounters more exciting, the boss battles change the overall pace throughout the entire game (Mr. Freeze was something fresh), and additions like blade dodge were subtle innovations to the beat em' up/counter system we got this gen.

You get more out of the game with the more you're willing to put into it. Sure, you can "button mash" your way through it by only punching and countering but screw that. I'm going to rack up 100+ combos while using every tool and move at my disposal and feel like a bad ass doing it.

I'm also a huge fan of New Game + as well. It's a nice difficulty adjustment that's more than "enemies hit harder and take more damage" that's the norm for different difficulty settings.

Add in the great challenge maps and the campaign challenges, great story, wonderful atmosphere, and so on, yeah, Arkham City deserves it's high praise.

@ drekula2

WHAT ! How dare you ! If you only knew how furious I am right now and the only thing stopping me from strangling adorable Kittens in rage is your well thought analysis of those other games. But this time you've gone too far ! :( . Apologise Immediately !

I thought it was fantastic and well worth every bit of praise that it received. Rocksteady did an amazing job of improving upon the excellent Arkham Asylum. I did wish that AC had more Scarecrow in it.

Is this your thing now? Are you going to start creating these threads every day? At least wait for the other one to get off the first page before going off your soap box again.

Also, just a word of advice. Do not choose the thread title 'Overrated'. It's a terrible way to communicate your message. Think long and hard and come up with something more descriptive. Make it something more substantial.

I can't help but notice a pattern here friend.

You thought Red Dead was overrated. Now you're posting a thread about Arkham City being overrated.

You clearly don't care for open-world games. Sandbox gameplay puts the player in charge of their own story, their own progression, and in a lot of ways their own fun. Emergent gameplay is the name of the game in this particular genre. And that doesn't appeal to everyone. You seem to want a more structured experience. That's fine of course, many do. But that doesn't make the games overrated just because you don't care for them.

A games appeal is never going to be universal. As I said in your last thread about Red Dead, I can point out a lot of critically acclaimed games that I simply do not care for one wit. However I'd never say they are overrated just because they aren't made to fit my own personal tastes and desires for a game. Same with film, same with books, etc.

Either that or you're deliberately trolling. But I don't like to assume the worst in people so I'm going to hope that this isn't the case.

Batman generally takes out his foes with stealth, attacking by surprise, yet the game requires you, most of the time, be in plain sight. Combat is linear, and especially when rooms get smaller, your options dwindle.

The only real practical thing is to mash buttons to punch, and the press the counter button (like a quick time event). It is essentially a button-masher most of the time. Add the frustrating difficulty spikes and it can be a true nightmare to play.

Credit @drekula2

See, you got greedy. You could've just stopped at Red Dead but you didn't and now you just come off as a terrible gamer with no skills.

First you claim that the combat hasn't evolved when anyone who has put in any time learning the combat knows it's seen its share of enhancement and tweaks. Secondly, you complain that the game forces you to button mash and then complain about the difficulty spikes. This is easily the stupidest thing I've read all day, so much so that I feel like going back to Red Dead thread and deleting my post where I agreed with you.

The game's combat requires you to think, analyze and react quickly to the situation. You have to use every single move in your arsenal to tackle every single enemy, and that alone is a sign of a button mashing game. You seem to be one of those dudes who chose not to learn this brilliant new combat system and decided to bitch about it on message boards instead.

First rule of bitching on message boards is that you need to know what you're talking about. If you cannot give the game enough time and effort to learn the mechanics then you dont get to shit on it.

And you certainly dont get to call it overrated.

You know what really is overrated? This whole "overrated" thing. Don't see the appeal. It's tired, played-out, and downright boring. There are much better ways of expressing displeasure with things.

@ S0lidSnake

If you he tells the truth, nobodies gona read it. A white lies is necessary, just like if you wan't somebody to reply to your point, you gotta mix in a tiny little insult with the rest of your rational argument. Sadly, Thats the human condition.

I approve of this message. :)

Slightly overrated but yes.

I disagree with just about everything you are saying.

When I first got Batman Arkham City, I played it for about fifteen minutes and stopped. I did not play it again for nearly eight months. When I gave it another chance, I really enjoyed it. Arkham City deserves its metascore. There is plenty to like about AC as a game.

Stealth is the main way to play and how you can play most of the time. You cannot beat Mr. Freeze without it. Combat is not a button mashing fest nor is it linear. It is dynamic. There are numerous ways to deal with opponents. Most of Batman's tools are at your disposal most of the time you have them. Boss battles require specific techniques and tools to beat them, but that is what makes them Batman villains. Have you not ever read those comics or watched the cartoons and movies? He always does that. It is why the Joker is his greatest villain: He is so difficult to counter because of his unusual psychology.

The story itself is interesting to me. They used character source material creatively.

This. Except that I think the city portion was too empty and boring whereas every part of the Asylum overworld map was used brilliantly.

Did you know the Legacy forum merged with Primary Games Discussion to make Games Discussion? I am just letting you know now, so you are not surprised by more of this sort of thing later.

Wiouds has covered Doom enough times across multiple threads to last us a lifetime. Black_Knight could tell you all about it.

The term "over rated" is over used. I think the term "over appreciated" would be a more accurate way of describing your feeling on these games. That way you don't come across as denying their objective inherent qualities.

Firstly, I'd love to know what game you consider to be worthy of universal praise given your penchant for deriding quality software.

Secondly, I'm going to dismantle and disprove everything you've written here, quote by quote.

"The visuals are great and the cutscenes are phenomenal but they can only take you so far. It unfortunately falls into a predictable pattern of fight-cutscence-fight-cutscence. Granted, the fact that many favorite characters of the Batman series are definitely a plus. But aside from the glitter, the core gameplay truly hasn't evolved."

That is entirely incorrect.

The game, which uses a portion of Gotham as an open-world hub, is not organized in the manner you claim. While you can opt to engage roving criminals in stealth or open combat the missions are varied and implement stealth, boss battles, exploration, and detective work.

Thus, you first criticism here is utter nonsense; factually incorrect information for the purposes of spreading your inane propaganda.

"Batman generally takes out his foes with stealth, attacking by surprise, yet the game requires you, most of the time, be in plain sight. Combat is linear, and especially when rooms get smaller, your options dwindle."

First, if you are going pretend to know something about the mythos of the character you should at least do a bit of research before claiming that Batman's primary mode of attack is stealth. Go read a couple of comics and you will discover his methodology for dispatching enemies is as varied as what is present in Rocksteady's game and he employs brute force and combat prowess as much as stealth. And bear in mind that they hired Paul Dini, one of the most respected comic writers in the field today, to pen the script.

I think his grasp of the character eclipses your own.

As for combat, as other have already pointed out, your woefully inept analysis is blatantly evident. Not only do you denote the combat as "linear", which is a nonsensical adjective within the context of this mechanic, but your claim that the size of the room minimizes or negates player options is, once again, factually incorrect. The combat is not affected at all , in any way, by the size of the space where the free-flow combat takes place so once again you critique is either pitifully undercooked or knowingly false.

"The only real practical thing is to mash buttons to punch, and the press the counter button (like a quick time event). It is essentially a button-masher most of the time. Add the frustrating difficulty spikes and it can be a true nightmare to play."

This is where the ignorance of your pedestrian analysis and deconstruction becomes truly embarrassing. To claim that the only viable strategy is button-mashing is demonstrably false and if you'd like, I can happily link a few thousand videos proving just how deep and tight those mechanics actually are. Even more interesting is how oblivious you seem to be to the massive evolution in the combat that occurred between AA and AC, the latter having far more diverse enemy types and techniques that specifically negates the viability of button-mashing and forces more creative strategies for defeating enemy biomasses.

It is also grotesquely asinine to refer to the counter technique as a QTE. As a point of fact, it is the antithesis of such a mechanic and rather is implemented in such a way as to be both optional and entirely malleable, allowing the player to use it, ignore it, or counter multiple assailants when the opportunity arises.

"I guess just imagine what it would be like if they took the movie The Dark Knight but carefully dosed you with 2 minute clips of it each time you kill 10 enemies. Yes, it's that kind of a game. A skinnerbox game."

At this point in your critique, you tread into blatantly stupid territory, first making some entirely nonsensical analogy about Nolan's The Dark Knight and then referring to the game as a "skinnerbox."

I had to Google the term because you not only forgot to capitalize it but for some bizarre reason you turned it into a compound word. Incidentally, you could probably make the tenuous argument that all games are a form of a Skinner box, so that really wasn't particularly clever or insightful, though it does manage to fit snugly with the rest of your banal and laboriously dull criticism.

"Still a very good one. Just not an imaginative or creative one."

This seems like an odd conclusion given your overall analysis. Essentially you claim the game is linear, uninspired from a design perspective, contains combat that is shallow and masher-centric, yet you refer to it as a good game?

Did you even read your own review or was the idea to be as inflammatory as possible before pulling back the reigns of your derision to soften the inevitable blowback?

Also, the game is rife with creativity, including the excellent Riddler Challenges, varied boss fights, and the best and most innovative melee combat engine of this generation.

So in summation, you are completely and entirely wrong. Not only are most of your complaints factually incorrect and immediately disprovable but you present them with an air of authority that is almost comically ironic when contrasted with the fumbling and infantile manner in which you have erroneously and egregiously deconstructed something you clearly do not understand.

The wonderful thing is that you can't even hide behind subjectivism with this review because most of what you are claiming is objectively incorrect.

So thank you for making it easy.

I actually started playing it today. The combat is still impressive and I'm enjoying it, but it's too early for specifics.

To my surprise, I greatly enjoyed Arkham Asylum, but I wasn't sure if I would ever get Arkham City. I have to admit that it simply came off as a somewhat redundant and unnecessary game. But this weekend it ditched GFWL so I nabbed it for measly $4,59.

Disagree with pretty much everything you said. First off every single game ever made can be described in a similar manner to: "fight-cutscence-fight-cutscence". (FIFA: "You just kick a ball around", Portal: "You just shoot some portals and then there are a couple of jokes" etc.). In AC's case it's not even true as its gameplay pillars are: stealth, combat, enviromental puzzles, navigation.

Your description of combat is something I have heard before and makes me think you are not very experienced/skilled at it. AC's combat is not about surviving. It's about making it look good by stringing together long and varied combos (similar to something like DMC). You need to reach a certain skill level before the combat clicks, but once it does it's loads of fun. It's very skillfully put together in terms of animation transitions and pacing. Key is to resist the mash-button temptation and cool down :)!

Stealth is also excellently crafted and the key here is to move quickly and chain together various takedowns. If you want the gameplay to show its true potential I recomend going for challenge room leaderboards. The tools are there, it's up to you what you do with them!

I'm starting to wonder if the TC's plan is to make threads to purposely bait Gramm into making more award-winning fool-schooling posts.

If that was his plan, I'd say he's accomplished it with gusto. lol

I request that you create a new thread called The Last Of Us = Overrated. Please... I always wanted to hear Grammiton' thoughts. Damn you Grammy for not posting your final impressions in the Official TLOU thread.

P.S. I cannot wait for Origins, will be amazing!

Batman Arkham City and what i have seen of the new Batman is proof that most developers only hit that golden spot once.

Batman AC was a good game but it wasn't a huge improvement over Batman AA, Arkham Asylum was just such an epic new and brilliant batman game that any game that followed it would have a hard time living up to those standards.

Batman Arkham Origins is not developed by Rocksteady.

@Gram: Well played, sir. Well played.

Just one thing- the combat system. "Most innovative"? Definitely. "Best"? I disagree. Captain America: Super Soldier is still hands down my favorite method of punchin' stuff. It may not be as well executed(or as varied), but I still think it takes the cake as the most impactful and impressive, when done right by a skilled player.

That Captain America game was more fun than it had any right to be. Adding the shield into the combat with that delightfully metallic "BooooooNG!" sound effect added an awful lot to it's charm.

I wouldn't say it's as good as Arkham though. Either of them. Batman simply has too many moves in his arsenal by comparison. But Cap was a blast nonetheless. :)

Come On TC ....... You can't just slander Batbrain and run off, where are you ?

@ZZoMBiE13: that wild-ass clang when you hit someone with the shield was happiness of an auditory nature.

I understand it wasn't as varied or technically proficient as Batman's system, but there was something the grab button added, and the fact that you had to manually pummel the badguys that made it feel more hands on. There was something about hitting that perfect flow in Super Soldier that just made me feel more like an honest to god super hero than even hitting 300+ hits in Arkham City.

Yeah, that game was a blast. They went way too far with the collectible nonsense and didn't bother to, you know, hide any of them. But the combat was a great time. Even did most of the combat challenges.

I will say though, there isn't much that I've done in gaming over the past 10 years that felt as great as getting those super high combos in the Arkham games. The combos combined with the gadgetry, combined with Batman's takedown maneuvers and later in City when they added multiple takedowns and the ability to break weapons... Damn man I need to go boot up Arkham City. See if my scores are still in the top 2000 of the leaderboard.

@ZZoMBiE13: Last time I played it must've been in the weeks leading up to TMNT: Out of the Shadows. I peaked at 86th and last time I checked had slipped down to the 160s.

Batman Arkham to me was more akin to Guitar Hero- where playing well was more meaty thwacks and snapping bones than guitar god solos and blue lightning.

Captain America: Super Soldier was more akin to the beatem ups I grew up with, where you punch a guy until he stumbles, then lay him out. And the story was so direct- it led you from point A to point B and it was short but kept a constant level of excitement. Batman seemed to drag on, giving you so many things to see and do that it just felt unnatural that daylight never rolled around. The entire game Cap starred in could be completed in ten hours(down to 6, if you really rushed it), and so it made perfect sense that the game itself takes place in a similar timeframe.

It may be a small thing, but I take notice. I mean, when a game hits all the major notes right on cue, what is there to take note of but where it misses on a small thing?

Same here!

Yes slightly overated.

It's a very good game, but I'm convinced that it it didn't star Batman people wouldn't care for it half as much as they do. Combat is shallow, the city is not very fun to explore and iconic villains appear for nothing than pointless cameos. There's also a fair bit of repetition. Arkham Asylum is definitely better in terms of atmosphere and setting.

Oh you silly, dawn DID roll around. It's just that in Gotham, it's always dark. Even during the day. :P

@Black_Knight_00: "Shallow"? When's the last time you saw a beatem up with a deeper move set?

Strike, counter, stun, dodge, redirect, combo batarang, freeze grenade, explosive gel, batclaw, REC, blade dodge takedown, aerial attack, ground pound, area stun, instant takedown, disarm/destroy, multiground takedown. I still suspect I may have missed something.

So what, exactly, is shallow about it?

You can beat 90% of enemies by mashing the parry button. No timing required, just mash the Y button (mash Y and X if you want to make it quick). The only time any of what you mentioned is needed is when the shock stick guys show up.

Just watch this:

You can beat 90% of enemies by mashing the parry button. No timing required, just mash the Y button (mash Y and X if you want to make it quick). The only time any of what you mentioned is needed is when the shock stick guys show up.

The 90% comment is true for most brawlers and action games so the challenge comes not from mashing but from leaning how to mine and exploit those deeper mechanics.

And that video doesn’t prove shit. Frankly, the person playing the game sucks and I could easily rebut that "proof" with any number of videos that demonstrate the ridiculous level of depth and skill playing this game at higher levels requires.

What I find most brilliant about the combat in these games is that they effectively created a construct that allows casual gamers to curb stomp villains with ease while giving more experienced players the ability to pull off stunningly high level maneuvers and combos. You can literally decimate a room packed with enemies and never get touched while stringing together a single massive free-flow combo that doesn’t end until the final KO.

The combat in AA and AC is only shallow if you play it as such.

Gamers these days want games to force them to try new things.......... Fucking Babies !

Honestly I never understood the huge praise it got, either. I loved the game a lot, but people acting like it's a huge pinnacle of game design and stuff just come off as... Well kinda delusional. Sorry, Pikminmaniac. That being said, the combat is deeper than it seems, assuming you got after high scores in the fight challenges. Had a cool story, too, but I didn't see anything that it did outstandingly well compared to many other AAA games.

Overall great, but I don't get the "Goldy game" mindset some people have about it.

Fair enough, though the fact there are other brawlers with shallow combat hardly excuses Batman: two wrongs don't make one right. Plus there's a huge difference between a game with simple repetitive combat and a game where you can win most fights without even looking at the screen.

Why bother learning to pull off a complex combo to dispatch a group of enemies when you can more easily and conveniently eliminate them by mashing buttons? Sure, the more dedicated fans may want to spend time digging out the depth, but I don't see the majority of players bothering with that.

Just to be clear, I like the Batman games and I think the combat is incredibly cinematic and fun to look at, but at the same time way too automatic and assisted.

I never finished Arkham City, but loved Asylum. For what that's worth.

City's pretty damn awesome as far as utilizing the open-world it creates as part of its narrative and gameplay. For a game that has as many elements as it does, it does a smashing job on nearly every one of them. The script is weak towards the beginning and some combat sequences were extremely hard (don't even want to call that a fault since I hadn't played Asylum then but started City on Hard anyways), but man oh man, it does a lot of stuff right and the side missions are actually fun.

I almost never call side missions fun.

Asylum was relatively toned down and actually boring at points, but it was still much more fun. It felt a little too predictable and safe in some parts of its narrative and gameplay (and the boss battles were all-in-all pretty bad), but it had some great moments. Still, that game's more of a one-timer compared to the glory of City.

Firstly, you can’t play the game without looking at the screen. Just because some dipshit mashes a few buttons for a video to prove a specious point about modern gaming doesn’t mean the game can be played without actually paying attention and it certainly doesn’t denote the combat as automated or simplistic. (Do we even know what the difficulty setting of the game is in that video?)

Secondly, the inability or unwillingness by some to mine the deeper nuances of something does nothing to negate the fact that the challenge is there for the people who want it. Not only does the difficulty ramp up as you progress but the higher difficulty settings remove the counter prompt entirely so that this game can become something entirely different in the hands of skilled players. You seem to think that the inclusion of a difficulty slide denotes it as shallow and easy but clearly, most titles can be played as such.

For example, I could just as easily play Tekken Tag 2 on the “Very Easy” setting and probably blow through the entirety of the arcade mode blindfolded as a character like Eddy Gordo. By your metric, that would denote the combat as shallow and easy but clearly, that would be an asinine conclusion to reach based on such flimsy evidence.

And that intersects with your question: why somebody would bother to learn the nuances of the combat when they are not required for success?

As a core enthusiast I would think that question beneath you given that we tend to play games for more than the superficial and immediate thrill and rather probe those depths for advanced techniques that test our respective gaming acumen.

You can play AC (and many other games) in such a shallow manner but clearly, that is not how they were intended to be experienced, save for the casual consumer.