(My list of reviews -http://teksyndicate.com/forum/pc-gaming/im-writing-reviews-so-pick-what-you-want-out-what-i-currently-own/122876#comment-1266105-, do post what you want reviewing, these reviews will go in both blog and fourm just for ease of access)
The night sky is calling for the dark knight again.
Story....
You are Batman (NOOOOOO you dont say...) although you start as bruce, who gets kidnapped by Hugo Strange (If you duno the villans get reading the comics) and taken into a walled off section of Gotham called Arkham City, you are a major part of Protocol 10, a plan set in motion with bruces escape. Its upto you as batman to stop it, but this is not going to be easy, there is Joker, Mr Freeze, Cobblepot (Penguin) Harley, Detective Dent and other characters loose in arkham, as well as the in-mates in a full scale war between Joker/Harvey/Cobblepots fractions.
Also there is a big spoiler at the end, dont go youtube it, play through the game on hard and watch it, its very satisfactory and gives a sense of reward, trust me i did it 1st time play through :)
Gameplay...
If you played Arkham Asylum its the same stuff but in a sort of open world landscape, its not skyrim scale but its a good size for both Catwoman and Batman to cover with ease, You will use Stealth/Combat and gadgets to stop protocol 10, they are the same setup as Arkham Asylum also, but what aint broke dont fix, and they improved all the systems!!!
Stealth is improved, its made more challenging later on with enemies using thermal sensors to detect batman up on the gargoyles also they use Proximity mines on guards so if you get near.. BOOM!! and thats really it for stealth.
Combat (Freeflow system) yes its back and the same as before except each gadget has its own hot keys and you can do multiple takedowns, thats all...
Gadgets can be used easier in combat and theres more of them...
So not much..
Catwoman can be played as also inside the story at specific points when the story needs her,
So yeah not much to say really, if you experienced Arkham Asylum even the demo, you know what to expect, but what is here works so dam perfectly...
Graphics!!!!
The game is not super taxing, i ran it at the max settings using a 250 GTS and i5 2500 with 8GB of RAM my new AMD would destroy this game, but dont let the low specs make you think this game isnt good looking, because it is, It is very well optimised such like deus ex HR was, but the graphics are again better. I havent noticed a texture that doesnt look good, although kill cams at the end of combat looks a bit clippy it doesnt detract from the experience, i actually stopped and looked at the city for a while, only a few games have made me do this, one is Skyrim with Super ENB running and the other was World of Warcraft when the new engine was installed. Anyways the game is good looking and is on par with most other games out there but lower resource cost WIN WIN!!
Overall...
So its batman, so that puts it above 8 already, 2nd its got good visuals so again puts it up, 3 the gameplay is epic, puts it up again, so i give it a 10/10, just because of everything fitting and working well, and its batman and i like batman... simply put GO GET THIS GAME and maybe its DLC :) if you need a demo i think steam provides one and OnLive give a 30 Min demo i think :)
Anyways get voting for your next game (Link at top!!!)