I have impatiently anticipated Batman: Arkham City since I first finished Batman: Arkham Asylum. The sequel had a lot to live up to and it did more than that surpassing Arkham Asylum with flying colors.

The game starts off with the player controlling Bruce Wayne which personally made me stand up and say, “What?”. The first game let you dwell into the mind of Batman, but gamers did not get to see the Bruce Wayne side of the caped crusader. The most astonishing part of playing as Bruce Wayne was that at one point Bruce, while talking to Alfred, said, “Hugo Strange knows that Bruce Wayne is Batman”. This single sentence allows people to dive into the Dark Knight’s psyche which Arkham Asylum didn’t allow the player to do as much.

Arkham City has been formatted around the 1993 Batman comic Knightfall. Rocksteady, the creator of Arkham City, did so well keeping the game in touch with the comics. From the villains to the scenery the game’s perfect. Rocksteady also did a great job capturing Batman’s villains personalities and putting them into a fantastic story line. I won’t spoil which villains are in the game and which ones are not, but I will speak about two that I have not encountered before. The Abramovici twins which are two gargantuan previously conjoined twins that are now enemies. I have not gotten far enough in the game to learn enough about them, but they are very interesting to me. I can’t wait to find out about their back story.

The graphics are even better looking than Arkham Asylum. The scenery more so than character graphics since the character graphics did not really need to be changed. They were already close to perfect in Arkham Asylum. The fighting and gliding systems had an upgrade as well. In Arkham Asylum the fighting was very repetitive while in Arkham City it has a far better fluidity and a larger variety of moves Batman can use to take down enemies. Silent takedowns, weapon attacks, boss battles and even countering have all improved drastically from Arkham Asylum. I could play just the combat for Arkham City for hours and never get bored. The gliding system got a little more intricate as well. Now players can dive bomb targets or fly straight down and come back up quickly to have a boost in flight time. With the size of Arkham City it’s a relief knowing that with the new gliding system it’s easier to get around.

Everything about this game has blown me away. The graphics, the story line, the villains, the features and the combat are all beautiful. From what I have played so far Batman Arkham City is one of the best games I have ever played hands down. My rating 10 out of 10.