Batman: Arkham City Message Board older than one year ago

I still wouldn’t be surprised if Rocksteady Studios was soon revealed as a two-game studio also prepping a Superman game (that's just me musing, by the way), but even if that’s not true, Variety’s report about the Batman: Arkham City developer working on another Batman game, this time set in the Silver Age, is exciting.

It’s just a rumor right now, but Hollywood trade Variety isn’t your average outlet, so take this one with more than a grain of salt.

The next Batman game is reportedly “highly stylized” and focuses on the first meeting between Batman and The Joker. Actor Mark Hamill has famously voiced Rocksteady’s take on The Joker in Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, but Luke Skywalker has emphatically said he wouldn’t return for another game.

The Silver Age saw the original debut of the Justice League of America. Introducing more characters in a game would coincide with DC Comics’ ambitions to follow in Marvel’s footsteps and eventually have its characters united on the silver screen.

It's expected other super heroes would show up. Metropolis, for example, was mentioned several times in Arkham City, and Rocksteady has been known for hiding secrets in plain sight about its next game.

Variety are reporting that the next Batman game will be a prequel to Arkham City set in the 1950s “Silver Era” of DC Comics. They report that a “New, highly stylized title is being developed as a prequel that revolves around Batman’s first meeting with the Joker. It’s based on the Silver Age of DC’s comicbooks from the 1950s when the Caped Crusader teamed with other heroes like Superman and founded the Justice League of America.” I can’t imagine it will be quite like the Silver Era comics, as it seems likely that they’ll want to discard contemporary grit for hapless 1950s camp. It could, however, see the game visited with a new visual style, even if the tone remains much the same. It’ll be interesting to see. Man, I need to go back to Gotham, now.

Thanks, Polygon.

With everything else that went on last year I felt like we skipped over Arkham City a bit, which is a shame because it was a great game, with ideas aplenty. Also: Batman. Anyway, consider this your reminder to take a look if you haven’t, because there’s a demo gone up on Steam, giving you limited access to Arkham’s open-world Batman ‘em up. Perhaps them compare those experiences with Adam’s verdict.

Thanks Blue!

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that sidekicks have a purpose. They are, after all, easily kidnapped by arch-nemeses, generally ineffective unless dwelling in their natural habitat of the hero’s shadow, and rarely capable of putting together a costume that doesn’t implicitly beg for a super-powered swirly. I have to say, though, that Batman: Arkham City’s Harley Quinn’s Revenge DLC looks pretty promising. Robin’s doing his best Ezio impression while searching for his missing Batmentor, and Harley Quinn seems to have completely lost it, which has apparently put her in a bit more of a murdering mood than usual. Admittedly, the “Payback’s a bitch” tagline seems a bit ill-advised given Arkham City’s less-than-savory history with the word, but the rest looks rather impressive. Grapple past the break for the full trailer.

(more…)

Revenge is a dish best served cold – or at least lukewarm, in this case. On the upside, Batman: Arkham City’s story-concluding DLC-based chapter is en route to PC, Warner told Eurogamer. That, however, is where things take an almost amusingly convoluted turn into asylum-worthy madness. So, first off, the PC version of Arkham City: Game of the Year Edition – to which the DLC’s launch is tethered – has no release date beyond “TBC.” The console versions, meanwhile, appear to have had their releases scheduled by Warner’s executive VP of wearing a blindfold and throwing darts at things. In the US? May 29. Fair enough. Everywhere else, though? September 7 – just in time to get totally buried in the holiday game avalanche. If the PC version follows release tradition, that could see it swinging in to save the day well after the nick of time in October. Catch an incredibly brief glimpse of the DLC in action after the break.

(more…)