Gaming Batman: Arkham City PC Review

Holy hand grenades, Batman! It's an Arkham City review!

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2011/12/02/batman-arkham-city-pc-review/1

 

"New weapons and special move combos are made available throughout the game and, while the latter are pretty useless considering the success we've had with simple button-mashing, "



I personally found that was the same in the first game thought it did not take away the enjoyment of the storyline, but agree - i just learnt one or two of the combos and did not bother trying the rest on a regular basis anyhow..

 

Playing Arkum Asylum for the first time at the moment, it sat on my shelf for a year before I got to it, I now wish I'd played it sooner as its terrific. TBH I would have bought Arkham City no matter what but now its a definite.

 

I really enjoyed AA and have also only recently played and finished it. I picked up AC a couple of days ago and am just waiting for some free time to get stuck in.

 

Why not mention the utter agony of DX11 not working properly for almost every single user, causing frame rate headaches!? Not to mention the awful securom/GFWL/Steam implementation.

This game is currently broken, and yet another review pops up praising it's quality - although your praise is tempered, I don't think you go far enough to give a broken game 85%

Surely a gamer's overall experience, rather than just the quality of the core gameplay (which I'm sure will be great and I'll enjoy it, when fixed) is important?

 

I was waiting for this review for a long time, but I've got the game before. The game is terrific! I really enjoy it. But it is true, the combat is too "console-like". You can do it with a single finger almost, but there's a lot to do in the game and the level of detail of the city is amazing!

This year will be hard to get a GotY...

 

It was crashing every ten minutes for me.

Disabling GPU physx and dropping the core affinity to two cores stopped the crashes. I don't have DX11 so that hasn't reared it's head.

The audio pops and crackles a bit though.

I am enjoying the game, but I agree with Joe on the slightly boring combat. I do miss the riddler challenges though - flicking a few switches to collect trophies is a bit crap; to the point that I often ignore them and get on with the mission.

Apparently the beta drivers sort out a lot of problems for nvidia card owners. I haven't tried them myself yet.

 

Can't say I agree there - the DX11 implementation is worthy of a mention, and maybe even a minor docking of score, but that's a minor niggle which will inevitably be patched out. It still looks fantastic in DX9, and it isn't hard to disable DX11 (which is off by default iirc).

Steam/GFWL/Securom issue? Works completely seamlessly from Steam for me - GFWL hasn't popped up or made a sound (save for the little login bleep at game startup) in 35 hours of gameplay, not noticed any troubles with Securom either.

Describing it as "broken" is completely over the top. If it was, virtually no-one would be able to finish it, as opposed to a few getting issues. Get out there and find a copy of Stalker:Clear Sky in it's original release form, then tell me Batman is broken.

 

I have a 580. The DX11 average fps is about 28. But on DX9 I get over 50, no glitches, no crashes, everything has been fine as of about 8hrs in. Several friends who are playing have said the same. I'm quite surprised to have heard about so many issues in the last few days, so I think it may be with a minority of users (though obviously that still needs addressing).
My only "complaint" is the DX11 problem. I don't care that much, it's not a dealbreaker, but I thought the reason the PC version was delayed by a month was specifically to implement this? So how could it not work? It just suggests they lied to cover a 1 month porting delay, which I respect a lot less.
Even GFWL (which I dislike, but was a predictable inclusion after the first game) wasn't an issue. It hasn't done anything. Copied my key straight out of the Steam popup, pasted into the GFWL popup & that was that. I didn't even need to update GFWL. Just hit enter to start offline. Which, considering I strum Enter as a game loads up after the first time to skip intros, is hardly a chore.

 

I can't speak to the DX11 issues - I'd been hearing about them before the game unlocked so made sure it was turned off before I ever loaded the game.

The only sound glitching I have noticed is on the nVidia tag at the start of the game in which I get some crackling and popping but everywhere else in the game sound is perfect.

Personally I've been *hugely* enjoying the game - its a pain having to run GfWL *and* Steam but to be fair as mentioned above GfWL more or less stays out of the way. Bit irritating getting two sets of achievement notices every time you tick some appropriate box.

The one thing I have found a bit tricky is the tempo of the hand to hand combat seems to have changed slighly - until I got used to it it did feel rather like I was playing with two left hands for a bit

 

I thought the combat was quite challenging. Maybe I'm some sort of noob I don't know, but if I tried to take on guys with knives, shields, stun batons and guns simply by mashing the buttons I tended to get pretty much slaughtered. Maybe it's easier on keyboard as I was playing on a pad.

 

Last pic.. It's Brucie from GTA IV!

 

Is anyone else finding that it takes a LONG time to start? I get the little Arkham City splash image in the middle of the screen, but then it takes about a minute to actually start the game.

Loving the game.. though I've been watching a lot of Batman: TAS recently so I am very much in the mood for it

 

i felt that the combat was terrific and even a step up from the first game

 

Same here, on a non-steam retail game. Apparently it's the securom check. Maybe I should have bought Batman from Steam instead, as pretty much all games in my steam catalog do not have long loading times as this :/

 

Spoiler

Gag/Ungag Harley.

 

Gah.. SecuRom. Before last night I had thought SecuRom was a thing of the past.

The only times I have used NoCd cracks is because of SecuRom on games I'd legitimately bought, while my pirating friend laughed with his complete lack of gaming issues.


I don't mind DRM when it doesn't ruin the gameplay experience, like Steam or having to be online to start the game (not a fan of always online).. but when I tried to play the game without the disc and the SecuROM error popped up there was a loud "..the hell?!" from my general direction and I had a flashback to a decade ago.

AND this was after they had already online verified me to decrypt the game.



Should've paid the extra £5 for Steam.

 

Great review on gameplay.

Where's the rest ?

Graphicss; sound, framerate performance.

???

Sloppy. 7/10

 

kinda feels like i've gotta rely on the comments to get the 'real' review

 

I'm left confused.

Which doesn't happen often with Bit-tech reviews. Usually they're an insightful and interesting take, and it's refreshing.

However not this time. Firstly though, I think it's 'fair' of you to remove the poor DX11 performance, as it's not really an interpretation of the game, which is still nice to look at in DX9 (especially in 3D.. mmm). A fix wouldn't go a miss though -_-

The confusion I have is how you can take a punt at the free flow combat, simply because you chose not to use some of the more interesting techniques and combos. The same could just as easily be said about any beat em' up for example if you chose to be a cheese-ball and tap X till your hands went numb.

They've added in additional grunts to give the player more to work with than in AA. No surprises there really. So you're pressing the same button occasionally, this happens in brawlers. Batman AA and AC have one of the best free flow combat mechanics in any game and it is definitely not a problem.

That said I do agree that the open world does leave me thinking "so what now" on occasion. Rather than to rush through the main quest, I went looking for the side-missions. Rushing for the pay phones whilst gliding and diving through the city is definitely awesome, but the Riddler trophies aren't as challenging as they are tedious this time round, and although it is an 'open world' you can't help but feel they want you to discover what it has to offer whilst throwing you along the main quest.

So a bit of a mixed view. Terrible combat though? Smoke something else, holmes.