Eurogamer Expo 2011: Most wanted
We highlight the titles that we're excited about come this Christmas
In this follow-up to Arkham Asylum, the asylum’s former warden has been made mayor of Gotham and has had part of the city’s slums walled off to become a mega-prison, known as Arkham City, where the inmates are free to do whatever they desire as long as they say within its confines. Needless to say, this turns out to be a less than brilliant plan and there’s only one man to pick up the pieces.
Arkham City takes everything the development team liked about Arkham Asylum and builds upon it, creating more space to explore and developing the fluid and dramatic motion of the combat system. Above all else, the game is designed to make you feel like Batman, whether it’s the gadgets, the combat skills or his ability to leap and glide across the city’s rooftops.
The world itself is significantly larger – about five times the size of the one we explored in Arkham Asylum. The world’s more open and events don’t necessarily have to happen in a strictly linear order, although the Rocksteady team is keen to emphasise that all your available actions and decisions are in keeping with their vision of allowing the player to become Batman.
For those who don’t necessarily feel that Batman is the be-all and end-all of Gotham’s night life, you also get to be Catwoman for a while. Described as “faster, sneakier and not [as] morally correct”, she certainly wasn’t averse to fighting extremely dirty in the sequences we played, with a couple of finishing moves that’ll make any man watching wince.
Batman: Arkham City is due out on PC on 21st October.