Well I guess I'll start by explaining the basic storyline. As the game's name implies the game takes place in Arkham City, which is a super prison situated within Gotham City. Arkham City is ran by a scientist known as Hugo Strange, who as usual has his own personal army. The game begins with Bruce Wayne (Batman for those who don't know) protesting that all these criminals being situated in the same place, left to their own devices is not a good idea, this is when Strange's military forces turn up and capture Bruce and throw him in Arkham, Bruce then breaks free and is able to make it to one of the rooftops where Alfred (Batman's trusty butler) sends Bruce a pod with all his Batman Gear. During his escape Bruce learns of a plan that Strange has known as Protocol Ten, not much is explained about Protocol Ten at the beginning, all Bruce knows is that whatever it is will commence in around 10 hours. Batman makes it his mission to find out what Protocol Ten is and stop it, encountering all the biggest super villains of the Batman world.
The Gameplay within Batman is pretty similar to the first game, for those who haven't played the first game, it is alot of fist fighting combat, but it feels and flows nicely. Using a combination of direct attacks and counter attacks you can string together a combo multiplier which unlocks special take down moves to use within the current combat situation.
With the game being based around a Free Roam environment the movement system has been redeveloped from the first one, which pretty much allows for close to continuous gliding around Arkham City, doing the Augmented Reality Side Missions you can unlock better Grappling Hooks which help with travelling around the city.
Gadgets wise, as you progress through the game you gain access to more useful and interesting gadgets. Ranging from an Electric Charge gun that allows you to gharge electrical devices to get through certain doors, etc, to a Weapon Disruption device which allows you disable enemies weapons without them knowing, which gives you the advantage in a gun fight.
In terms of Graphics it's about on par with Arkham Asylum, which isn't a bad thing at all, because the graphics of the first game were ahead of its time. The cinematic use the same rendering as the gameplay graphics so there is no lose of immersion within the game.
Speaking of the the cinematics, the voice acting and the character movements are very impressive and the storyline is told rather nicely.
I am currently around 40% progressed through the game, after playing around 2 - 3 hours each night for the past week. I would say that this game is quite impressive, personally I'm not a big Batman fan, but I'm quite enjoying both the storyline and the gameplay. The only down point I can identify so far is the repetitiveness of the combat, which after a couple hours of playing takes it's toll and I lose interest. I always return to the game a little while later ready to continue, I think a break is needed every couple of hours just to ensure that you still enjoy the game rather than feeling like you're just persisting through the fight just to progress the story.
Overall this is a pretty sound game, I would highly recommend it to most people interested in a good story driven game with very well thought out and polished gameplay features.
Rating: 9 out of 10
