I loved Arkham Asylum. On my old PS3 account, I completed all the main challenges, every collectible, the only things I didn't get around to were the brawler challenges, neither with Batman or The Joker - but that's because I was having too much fun with the main game more than anything. I found no faults with it, although I realize nothing is perfect; whatever the game's flaws were – they were completely forgotten if not missed completely, and overshadowed by what it got right.

Arkham City has taken all of that and made it better. I have not touched my consoles in months – Friday night, on a whim, I went into Best Buy and there it was on display, I glanced at the back – and before I could read anything the chick working the section says "just buy it – you'll like it."

Taking her professional opinion into consideration, I went ahead and followed the advice. No regrets here.

As per usual, I selected the hardest difficulty; perhaps a bit overconfident of me given that, as I said; I've not touched a console in months, and I hadn't played AA since its release. I couldn't remember how the controls work, but the devs did such a great job it's not at all hard to figure out within a few minutes of playing around.

The game is set roughly a year after the events after AA, the inmates of the Asylum and the Prison (Blackgate?) have been corralled into an old part of Gotham's slums now called the titular "Arkham City" (seehowididthat? Says the devs) The game opens with Bruce Wayne speaking out against this new setup and is immediately captured by one of the games many antagonists, thus begins the game. I won't go into it anymore – as there is too much awesome to do it justice, and it really should be played first hand by anyone that enjoyed the first game.... actually - even if you didn't play the first game.

Single player games with this sort of quality are few and far between in my opinion, so much attention and time is given to the next "great" FPS to sate the mindless needs of the masses to run and gun – it really makes this dark and gritty game stand out and shine… a diamond in the rough, so to speak.