Batman: Arkham City

[toblix]

The final AR challenge that you're doing is anything but a tutorial. In the game you'll never have to do anything as ridiculously hard in terms of gliding as that again.

Well, I'm glad to hear it. I'll probably keep at it until I make it, though, since getting back up and trying again is pretty easy.

As for the fighting, I found it great and exactly the same as in Asylum. I hardly ever used combos, instead relying on quickfire gadgets to push through every encounter.

Okay, that's great to hear, too. I'd like to master maybe a couple of combos, though – do you know how the tutorial thing you activate works? I got the impression you can "activate" the tutorial for a particular move, and then it'll give you a mini-tutorial whenever that move is available. If so, that's super-awesome.

[Roderick]

You can probably do that in the WayneTech upgrade screen. Select the move you want a tutorial for and it should have the option.

If you want an overpowered (if tedious) method to brute force your way through big fights, use the quickfire explosive gel. Throughout the animation Batman is invincible, it acts as an evasive jump (getting you out of the way) AND it leaves a bomb where all the enemies now are which you can detonate. It maked fights chaotic, but also a lot easier to deal with.

Of course, the freeflow combat is so satisfying and quick that you can pretty easily deal with huge groups of people.

[toblix]

Turns out I was doing it wrong. I changed my technique slightly and the whole thing became super easy. My shame levels have subsided.

[ThunderPeel2001]

My shame levels have subsided.

Not by too much, I hope.

[toblix]

Don't worry, I'm still pretty goddamn ashamed.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Don't worry, I'm still pretty goddamn ashamed.

Excellent.

[Gwardinen]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/08/batman-arkham-city-pc-delayed-again/

I may cry.

[miffy495]

Oh well. I guess I have time to play other things first now. That ain't so bad. Mario 3D Land, you win the bid for my gaming time!

[Nappi]

Speaking of delayed PC version:

http://www.thehut.com/games/platforms/pc/batman-arkham-city-the-dark-knight/-batman-begins-bluray-bundle/10564453.html

[Gwardinen]

Speaking of delayed PC version:

http://www.thehut.com/games/platforms/pc/batman-arkham-city-the-dark-knight/-batman-begins-bluray-bundle/10564453.html

Well either they knew ahead of time about the release date or they're very quick to update. It doesn't begin a conspiracy theory, though, since the Dark Knight/Batman Begins BluRay bundle has existed for a while I believe. If it happened to have been scheduled for release on the 25th and then Arkham City was delayed, I would have lost my mind.

As it is I suspect the extra week is just to give it a bit more distance from things like Assassin's Creed, Saint's Row and the long tail on Skyrim and Modern Warfare. That said, it does sort of make the problem of being "late to the party" even worse, so who knows at this point which path results in the fewest lost/delayed PC sales due to this nonsense.

Let me put it this way; if I hadn't gotten a code for the game free with my new GPU, I would have bought/rented it on a console by now, giving Warner Brothers a smaller cut/almost none of the profit.

[Nappi]

Well either they knew ahead of time about the release date or they're very quick to update. It doesn't begin a conspiracy theory, though, since the Dark Knight/Batman Begins BluRay bundle has existed for a while I believe. If it happened to have been scheduled for release on the 25th and then Arkham City was delayed, I would have lost my mind.

Actually by "Speaking of delayed PC version" I meant that the following will be completely unrelated. I just wanted to point out a rather good deal. Sorry for the confusion.

(The release date was 25th already yesterday, but I don't think there is any conspiracy going on.)

[ThunderPeel2001]

Yeah, that's an excellent deal!

[toblix]

Just finished this and:

Possible best game of 2011. I forget so quickly what games have come out when, but surely few of them can compete with this?!

Incredibly solid. There are so many things going on in the game, but it still feels really solid and properly planned out. You'd expect there to be lots of weird glitches and unexpected edge cases, but it always feels like, no matter what you do, they've thought of it, and you get little pieces of conversation, always relevant.

Well-paced and well-balanced. You earn new gadgets and moves constantly throughout the game, and the game balances this out masterfully by introducing new enemies and obstacles.

Best boss battles. All the boss battles were really fun and they fucking knew when to stop. My problem with video game boss fights are that they tend to have at least one too many stages, and the fun of discovering patterns and weaknesses is ruined by that final crescendo of difficulty – but not here!

Many great side-missions that pop up everywhere.

If you can only get one game this year, you should get Arkham City, as it contains the gameplay of a billion games. I finished the story today, having made sure to go after side-quests whenever possible to avoid that thing where you run around the barren post-game collecting dumb shit, and I still only have half of the Riddler trophies/riddles/challenges. Also, there are challenge rooms or something, which I'll probably never try, but I guess is something.

All the talk of disappearing save-games makes it really stressful to load up the game, as I keep fearing it won't find my save.

I guess this is the last Batman game from Rocksteady.

[toblix]

I spent probably ten hours collecting those god damn Riddler trophies, riddles and challenges, and then I find out there's not an achievement for it.

[MrHoatzin]

That graphic needs an iStock watermark.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I spent probably ten hours collecting those god damn Riddler trophies, riddles and challenges, and then I find out there's not an achievement for it.

Wow. That's nuts.

[Nappi]

Is there still an achievement for collecting, say, 80/100 of them? In my opinion that is usually the best way to handle those kind of collectibles.

[Roderick]

Your reward for collecting the Riddler trophies is to close the Riddler storyline, which is fun and better than an achievement (though it's ridonculous that they didn't put it in). You can finish the Riddler after doing about 80-90% of the Riddler trophies.

[Gwardinen]

The PC version is unlocked on Steam for the US, and preloadable for everywhere else. Except if you have a free copy from nVidia and you're outside of the US, it seems, in which case you still can't download it. Guess which camp I fall into.

So, I'm using a VPN to fake myself as an American to download the game, and then I'll either have to take Steam into offline mode for the next three days or keep using the VPN so it will let me play the game.

The irony? If I wanted to get a pirated version I could have downloaded it without a VPN slowing me down yesterday.

[Cigol]

The PC version is unlocked on Steam for the US, and preloadable for everywhere else. Except if you have a free copy from nVidia and you're outside of the US, it seems, in which case you still can't download it. Guess which camp I fall into.

So, I'm using a VPN to fake myself as an American to download the game, and then I'll either have to take Steam into offline mode for the next three days or keep using the VPN so it will let me play the game.

The irony? If I wanted to get a pirated version I could have downloaded it without a VPN slowing me down yesterday.

Same boat as you but reading on the forums you can apparently do this;

You can trick Steam into pre-loading it once 1 region has unlocked.

Press Windows Key + R to bring up the "Run..." dialog, then type the following

steam://install/57400

The install wizard should appear. Click through it. Once it disappears, the game will still look like nothing happened, but if you switch to "Downloads", you should see the game being downloaded.

[Gwardinen]

Cool, that's good to know. At least from now on (starting after Arkham City as I'm too scared to screw with it now that I have the download going strong) I can preload without a VPN and just use the VPN for actually getting it to decrypt and allow me to play the game. Then it's likely offline mode for me once my free trial of this VPN runs out.

Edit: My connection speed was actually being quite strange with the VPN so I decided to try it your way. It's actually quite bizarre, not only does it not show it in the library, in the downloads page it refuses to acknowledge its download speed or add to the total downloaded at the top of the page. Yet, the actual downloaded amount on the Batman: Arkham City item itself is going up so I know it's doing something.

Edit Edit: By the way, I forgot to mention, this game is large! I'm pretty sure the 360 version fits on one dual layer DVD, but the Steam download is 16.8GB!

Edited November 22, 2011 by Gwardinen

[miffy495]

Installed! I may have a chance to play it for a bit this afternoon, but probably not! I'll likely be waiting until Thursday, but at least it's finally on my damn machine!

[Erkki]

Hmm... I just totaled the games I want that are out/should come out pretty soon and it's over 200€ on Steam I guess I'll just go with Skyrim and leave Batman waiting for Christmas sales or better times.

[Gwardinen]

I finally got it working last night after a bunch of Steam and Games for Windows Live shenanigans, only to discover that the DX11 features basically don't work on nVidia cards at the moment. They cause huge framerate drops whenever the camera is moved quickly, despite the game running with total stability the rest of the time.

Boy do I feel good for waiting for the technically superior PC version for a month.

[Nappi]

But hey, at least you can enjoy the physics physx!