*This review contains spoilers for Arkham City*

Released in 2011, Arkham City is the direct sequel to Arkham Asylum. Despite being a sequel to Arkham Asylum, the world is much different. This game features an open world environment you are able to explore as Batman. You can follow the main story, complete side missions as they pop up, or just run around the city fighting crime or collecting Riddler trophies.

While I am not always the biggest fan of open world games, Arkham City does it very well. The open world is kept reasonably small, allowing for everything to have a very compact feeling to it. There isn’t too much to do (except Riddler trophies), but there always is something to being doing. That’s a fine line to walk, and I think it was done pretty well here. If you are a completionist, there is plenty of content here for you. For me, I just completed most of the side stories and the main DLC mission.

The story is a little contrived (a mega prison in the middle of a city, which Batman only learned of recently and has no idea what has been going on in there?). And a lot of the characters actions don’t make a lot of sense (Dr Freeze attacks you despite engineering a cure for you, Hugo Strange’s role). The game does pretty well with what is given, but I think a stronger foundation could have made for a much more compelling story. The twists especially are very weak because both of the large ones make little to no sense and don’t end up mattering at all.

The Catwoman sections are a low light of the game. The first two sections of her story occur at the beginning of game. Then the last section occurs towards the end, ruining the pacing of the final act. Had there been more meat to her story, it could have been pretty enjoyable. Catwoman also just feels weaker than Batman, lacking a lot of gadgets, making combat more boring due to that. There is a final mission where Catwoman defeats Two-Face, but it doesn’t feel unique or interesting. She just fights her way through the museum, then beats him up. I feel that these sections could have been much better but ultimately were forgettable due to their short nature and lack of interesting content.

The combat is a high point of the game though. The free flow system works well and using Batman’s gadgets feels really fun. Most encounters also have multiple ways to defeat enemies, with breakable walls, grates, or other environmental options. I do wish there was a better way to control crowds, as at some points you are thrown into fighting twenty enemies and it can be frustrating at moments. The city is also designed really well. It truly feels destroyed, run down, and in the middle of a gang war. Parts of it are underwater, on fire, and just plain falling apart. I really like the world design and think it is one of the best parts of this game.

This game shines at moments in the side missions, despite most of them being a little on the short side. I really enjoyed the Cold Call Killer mission, in which Batman finds ringing phones through Arkham City. Victor Zsasz is calling and he threatens to kill his hostages, unless Batman finds another ringing phone somewhere in Arkham City. Once Batman finds the phone, Zsasz begins to elaborate on his backstory while Batman slowly tracks his call signal. This happens several times, until Batman finally tracks down Zsasz and rescues the hostages. Since this can trigger whenever Batman is near a phone, it provides a good break between missions, and Zsasz’s voice actor does a great job of selling him as a truly insane person during the calls.

On the topic of side stories, I did not bother to complete the Riddler trophies. Having to collect 400 (440 with Catwoman’s) Riddler trophies across Arkham City is too many, especially when most aren’t riddles, they are just objects to be found. I would be more compelled to find them if there were less, but with more difficult or interesting riddles to solve. I found about 100 through just playing the game, but had no desire to seek out the rest of them.

The DLC to this game, titled Harley’s Revenge, sees Robin rescuing Batman from Harley, then Batman beating up some robots and defeating Harley Quinn. While this DLC was not bad, it was very short. In total, it took me about an hour to beat the entire DLC. I only played as Robin for about a third of that time. I would have liked to have seen something more adventurous and daring. This DLC really didn’t add much of any value to me, even with Robin the core gameplay loop is exactly the same.

And finally, I would just like a normal one-on-one fight with the Joker. So far in the series, Batman has only fought weak versions of the Joker and a giant Titan Joker. A full fight versus Joker with all of his clown gadgets would be a really fun concept and I don’t understand why it was never explored.

I think this game is pretty decent, but it is clearly a little undercooked in all areas except for the combat. Everything could stand to be a little longer, with more meaningful content. It just feels like a jumble of everything. This does give it a great comic book vibe It’s not bad by any means, but there are some obvious areas which could be improved. Some of the side missions stood out, the combat was fun, and the world design was great to experience.