The follow-up to the immensely popular Arkham Asylum, released in 2009, is set to hit stores in October. The game is titled Batman: Arkham City and it is without a doubt, the most excited I’ve ever been for the release of a game. I’m not a huge ‘gamer’, so for the most part I wait and buy my games used. Arkham City however, has been building anticipation far too long for me to wait on. With this game, I’m gonna be one of the cool kids, and I’m gonna buy it on day one. No waiting around this time.
My excitement has been building since December of 2009 when we got this teaser trailer:
No big surprise that the Joker has recovered from the wounds suffered in the first game, but his appearance definitely set a tone, and people got excited.
As 2010 progressed we discovered more and more details, and suspicions about which characters would appear started getting confirmed. In the fall of 2010 the game developers released a large number of screen shots online, and again, excitement swelled.
Then, come December they gave us this:
That was enough for me. I was sold. After all, the first game was undeniably the best superhero game ever made, there was no way I was skipping this. Plus you know, my whole ‘Batman Obsession’ thing…
Earlier this week, Rocksteady Studios and Warner Bros released the first full length trailer. No more teasers, just a good old fashion, over 2 minute trailer.
This, is that trailer…
Holy Crap. That was awesome.
“This Ain’t No Place for a Hero.”
Those are the lyrics that so brilliantly echo throughout the trailer for Arkham City. They seem to ring true as Gotham appears to be over-run by Batman’s ‘Rouges Gallery’. What was once a great city now appears little more than a run down Hell-hole. And that’s no place for a top-notch Hero to reside, but like Jim Gordon said at the end of The Dark Knight:
“Because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.”
“This Ain’t No Place for a Hero.” Just think about that. The most famous “hero” in all of the comic book universes is Superman. Supes resides over beautiful Metropolis. A big shiny city full of live. Gotham on the other hand is dark and dank and mostly filled with despair. The great twin cities of the DC Universe are as different as their protectors. And while Superman is for sure the protector of Metropolis, I look at him as more of a do-gooder than a hero. Superman faces very little personal risk, as he is almost never in peril, while the Batman is subject to all sorts of deathly situations. Metropolis completely accepts and embraces Superman, an outsider, while Gotham native Batman is hardly afforded the same accommodations. That makes Batman endeavors even more heroic. Jim Gordon was right, Batman is not their hero, he’s more than that. He is what the city needs, even if it doesn’t want him.
This time around though, you will have to be the best Batman you can be if you want to save Gotham again. IGN is reporting that the Riddler and his trophies will be back, but significantly harder to obtain this time:
In Arkham Asylum, Riddler trophies were found somewhat easily — you just found them by spotting question marks painted on walls and ceilings. Things aren’t as easy this time around. Though there are question marks viewable only in Detective Mode (Batman’s version of x-ray vision), they often point in the direction of informants who know the nearby locations of Riddler trophies.
Find these goons and you can beat the information out of them. But knowing the location of a trophy (which appears on your map) doesn’t mean getting it is easy. Many trophies are surrounded by traps or require some ingenuity from Batman to nab.
IGN also noticed something I missed in the trailer. What appears to be Black Mask, getting quite the beat down around the 26-second mark.
“This Ain’t No Place for a Hero.”
Arkham City is set to officially hit stores October 18th in the U.S., and on the 21st in Europe.
Grizzly Bomb 
Every year I get a little big closer to pushing video games entirely out of my life and interfering with my productivity. Every year, I find myself spending less and less of my time playing distracting (albeit fun) games and then regretting the two weekends I lost- vowing to play no video games for the next six months. And then, every year, something like this game comes out and makes me do it again.
Great share. It looks really good.
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I have never been more convinced that I need to purchase a modern gaming console
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