Batman: Arkham City

[Architecture]

They featured Tim Drake as Robin in Arkham City, so there's precedent set for using less-known characters in major roles.

[SecretAsianMan]

I don't really think of Tim Drake as lesser known.  Perhaps not as well known as Dick Grayson, but probably better known than Stephanie Brown or Cassandra Cain.  Maybe that's just me though.

[cyrix]

It all depends on when you were and active reader.

Mostly I just think it would suck to lose Oracle as a good, strong (however you want to phrase it) character who is disabled. This actually just happened in the new 52 stuff that DC is doing right now and people are understandably upset about it. Oracle is a great disabled character because her loss of ability came naturally, and her recovery and transition into oracle were believable and not just a tacked on disability for inclusiveness sake or whatever.

 

She was a better character as Oracle than Batgirl.

Also lets not forget the rest of the bat-family adjacent lady characters you could play as: Huntress, Black Canary, The Question (Renee Montoya version) etc.
those might be outside of rocksteady's contractual allowances though.

Anyway I think we can all agree that any of them would be better than none.

Actually a co-op bat family game where you are rescuing batman (or maybe bruce wayne) could be cool. 

EDIT: EVEN BETTER YOU ARE RESCUING ALFRED! Batman is off planet for some Justice league nonsense and Alfred gets kidnapped and the bat-kids (not ness. kids anymore) have to save him! Total fan service I know, but it's what I crave.

[SecretAsianMan]

Oh yeah, I totally agree that having her around as Oracle is great.  It's just sad that because this is a video game it means you won't be able to play as her.

[Twig]

I have no idea what Oracle is, but I'm going to go off of what I assume a physically disabled superhero would be... I'd play a managerial Batman game where you are some kind of super-hacker informant and there are two parts of the game: 1) Uplink and 2) Sending members of the bat family out to deal with various criminal activities.

 

Maybe you could control said Batfamily members ala Recettear. They gather more intel, and you, as the super-hacker informant, put those pieces of intel together to see the bigger picture, and then send said Batfamily members out yet again.

 

WELP I JUST MAYBE KINDA SORTA TOTALLY INVENTED MY FAVORITE SUPERHERO VIDEO GAME

 

SOMEONE MAKE IT PLEASE

[SecretAsianMan]

Oracle is the identity that Barbara Gordon takes after the Joker shoots her in the spine and she loses the use of her legs.  Because of her genius intellect and computer skills, she basically becomes a superhero hacker and forms her own all female team, the Birds of Prey.

 

Also that sounds like an awesome game.

[Bjorn]

I have no idea what Oracle is, but I'm going to go off of what I assume a physically disabled superhero would be... I'd play a managerial Batman game where you are some kind of super-hacker informant and there are two parts of the game: 1) Uplink and 2) Sending members of the bat family out to deal with various criminal activities.

 

Maybe you could control said Batfamily members ala Recettear. They gather more intel, and you, as the super-hacker informant, put those pieces of intel together to see the bigger picture, and then send said Batfamily members out yet again.

 

WELP I JUST MAYBE KINDA SORTA TOTALLY INVENTED MY FAVORITE SUPERHERO VIDEO GAME

 

SOMEONE MAKE IT PLEASE

 

 

Didn't double fine make some super hero management game for iOS?

 

Answered my own question, Middle Manager of Justice!  I had completely forgotten about it.  I think it and Happy Action Theater are the ony two DoubleFine games I've never played. 

[Twig]

They did make that game, but I didn't much like the looks of it when I messed around with it on my friend's iPad a while ago.

 

I like that my assumption of Oracle was basically exactly correct.

[lobotomy42]

So, hey, I just popped the now $5 "GOTY EDITION" of this game into my PS3 to play it because apparently it was the best thing ever in 2011.  "Cool, I like Batman" I thought and decided to give this a spin.  "Oh yeah this is by those Arkham Asylum guys! That game was rad" I further said to myself as the game booted up and Batman appeared on screen.

 

Here's the thing, though, after a few hours I kind of hate it. 

 

The plot seems to be all over the place. I'm having trouble getting past the basic premise of Gotham making their prison into a city -- or is it making a city into a prison? Either way, WHAT THE FUCK. There are all these towers and skyscrapers and indications of industry and all I can think is: Who would run their business in a city of psychopathic prisoners? Why would I ever commute to work to my 12th-floor office job if it means sneaking past several dozens heavily armed thugs that work for one of a handful of super-villains? Or are they prison guards? What kind of economy can possibly prosper in a supervillain prison city? What the fuck is wrong with the people in Batman-universe?!? ("Oh, hey, let's elect a city council on the basis of their successful plan to turn our city into a giant prison.")

 

Even beyond the premise, the plot is nuts. 

So there's some secret plan called.. I don't know, Project Ten or something like that? It is some omniously generic name that I guess we heard from the Penguin after Bruce Wayne was dumped in Arkham City for reasons that are not clear.  So I'm trying to discover that.  Also, Catwoman is here and Two-Face wants to kill her because she stole something from him, I think.  So then Batman saves her in an attempt to get information, but Joker tries to Catwoman to lure Batman into another trap where Joker tries to kill Batman.  So Batman pursues this for awhile, survives the trap, then fights with Harley's minions for awhile. Harley says that Joker is dead but Surprise! Joker is alive, he has knocked Batman out and given him some blood. Why? Because Joker is dying from his evil Joker blood and so now Batman is invested in finding a cure! Except, wait, Batman is Batman and doesn't give a shit.  So Joker has also infected other people to further incentivize Batman to find a cure! (Except, wait, why did Joker put it in Batman then?) And now suddenly we are off to find Mr. Freeze because of some reasons and Catwoman is literally crawling her way over to Poison Ivy for yet more reasons.

 

The gameplay is mostly unchanged from Arkham Asylum. Except that the tightly interconnected Metroidvania style overworld has been replaced with a sprawling open city map to explore.  And by "explore" I mean hit R1 over and over while occasionally checking the map to verify your trajectory is correct and wait for some dialogue to trigger to indicate you have arrived at whatever the next thing is.  (And also, if you want to beat more people up along the way, you can do that, because Batman just loves   Are there no ordinary citizens in this prison city? (Sorry, still not over that.))  I guess it's not actually more improbable than a rich man dressing up as a bat to fight poor people, but for some reason Batman's ability to constantly grappling hook across enormous city blocks - or better yet, DIVE HEADFIRST INTO THE STREET and then suddenly grapple hook up - kills believability for me. The combat and stealth seem so far essentially similar to Arkham Asylum.

 

Am I missing something? I feel like this game gets nothing but praise (and spot-the-misogyny side conversations) but is in fact an enormous step backwards from Arkham Asylum in terms of very broad design principles.  In some ways it looks and plays very similarly, but it lacks all of the pacing and measured approach of Asylum, where combat and stealth and bosses could all be dealt with as if solving some sort of puzzle, the story was gradually spooned out as the player progressed, and the areas were designed with careful interlocking components. This game feels much more like a checklist of AWESOME GAME FEATURES that were thrown together because it was thought that they were necessary.  Maybe my opinion will change later, but at the moment, I maintain that this game is a hot mess.

[Merus]

I think part of it is that Arkham City isn't a metroidvania; they've very much abandoned that in favour of an open-world game that gives players the opportunity to be Batman out on patrol, because the big response from Arkham Asylum was that the mechanics were all great but people wanted a game where you were Batman flying around Gotham.

[lobotomy42]

Yeah, and I guess that makes sense but then why not just set the game in Gotham City, then? Why not include parts of a city that *aren't* run by psychopaths? The whole prison-city premise is an bizarre leap.  The open-world-iness would go a lot further, for me at least, if it felt like an actual world rather than some arbitrary map that was obviously contrived for a video game.

[SecretAsianMan]

I can't speak for other people, but I enjoyed Arkham City because it was just a lot of fun.  The plot is of course ridiculous, it's practically mandatory in a game like this to have an absurd story.  But I don't find the setting any more contrived than the depiction of Arkham Asylum.  The way that place is laid out seemed fairly ludicrous to me (who puts gargoyles on the interior of a building?).  And like Merus said, having Batman wander an open world felt better to me than being confined like in Asylum.  Again, these are all personal opinions that you're totally welcome to disagree with.  I do agree that it probably would have been better to place it in Gotham at large rather than a walled off chunk of it, but it seems like Arkham Knight is doing that, so I'm not really gonna complain too much about it now.

 

And to answer the question of are there no ordinary citizens, no there aren't.  Arkahm City is a big prison (think Escape from New York) and the closest thing to innocent civilians you're going to get are the political prisoners you sometimes save.

[Brannigan]

there still are metroidvania aspects in terms of needing gadgets/unlocks to get to certain areas, but it's definitely way toned down compared to the first game because of the setting.

[Merus]

I think the walled-off criminal city was a compromise between actually being in Gotham and not having to actually build Gotham and its civilian populace. (I suspect this is why they inexplicably put Arkham City in Uptown, so you could get a few iconic locations like where the Waynes died). Arkham Knight's doing the same thing, contriving a reason to get rid of civilians so the only people on the streets are bad guys.