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LTTP - Batman: Arkham City: GAF Lied

Arkham City takes all the mechanics from Asylum and perfects them. The combat literally could not be more polished. It's a better game over all, but Asylum does tell a better story due to the way the games are set up.
 
Spring-Loaded said:
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AC is just a better game and a better Batman simulator. Don't let anyone try to tell you differently. The first experience with AA might be better than the one with AC, but any further analysis will show which one is superior.
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Well said.

I loved AA, make no mistake. But the combat system alone keeps me on AC.

1500/1500 on 360 and making my way through the PS3 version now. Should wrap it up in time for Origins.
 
I didn't care for City...I got bored and stopped playing. Open world type games never resonate with me that well. One of the few exceptions is Assassins Creed series.

I don't know why.
 
LevityNYC said:
I think people just felt that Arkham Asylum was a tighter experience. Nothing in Arkham City was as good as the Scarecrow sections in Arkham Asylum.
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Pretty much this. I think I enjoyed Arkham City overall as a game better in the mechanical aspects. The combat was A+, the bosses were great, and I loved all the side missions. However they went a little overboard with the Riddler Challenges. A little TOO many.

Arkham Asylum was a much tighter story with better overall and memorable setpieces, but the combat mechanics and boss battles weren't that great.
 
Dang0 said:
I agree, Asylum was great but City is just so much better. Using the grapple to basically fly through the levels, the side quests having interesting stories, the bosses, and the finale... Such a good game!



Here's hoping Origins isn't the Dark Knight Rises.
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I agree with that, the only downsite was that the main story was way too short. AC needed one more big major dungeon.
 
I enjoy city much more, but narratively it is a little sloppier by trying to incorporate such a massive amount of the batman mythos into such an ambitious story. It assumes you know all the characters and the pacing at the very end is kinda bumpy. I still prefer it despite that. It also is open world compared to asylums metroid.

It really is just preference, as theyre both great.
 
I could give a fuck about story in videogames so I have to go with City. Assuming that Asylum had some superior story in the first place.
 
While I don't agree that AA is better than City, saying that AA is better than City doesn't automatically make City a bad game.

You're comparing two great games together, shouldn't have put off City for that long OP.
 
The combat makes all the difference to me. AA was good and original but I never messed with hard mode or the challenge rooms because it wasn't that much fun to do unique combos. AC had combat that felt so fluid and fun that I kept coming back to try to get better and try to get higher scores. I feel like AC might have been too easy so many people never used the combat past just tapping the X button over and over. Hard mode made AC feel amazing.
 
Arkham Asylum is an A.

Arkham City is an A+.

Arkham City did everything better than Asylum: better combat, better bosses, better levels without backtracking.

The next level for the Arkham "series" is to add more true detective functions for Batman, possibly with an 'adventure gamey' structure of finding clues, solving crimes, and so on.
 
I loved both of the games for different reasons. Overall I'd say Asylum is a bit stronger then City, but it's one of those situations where I totally understand where people would enjoy City more then Asylum. Either way they're two of the best games to come out during this generation.
 
I liked both, but I felt Asylum was definitely the better game. I liked the story and the Metroidvania of it better. Also I didn't buy any piece of shit Harley Quinn DLC for Asylum.
 
I believe there is no wrong answer when it comes to this, it just goes to show both games are similar but different, hence many people disagree on which one is actually better, I really enjoyed Asylum because it felt like such a fresh experience and City was a great game too, it's all subjective in the end.
 
EatinOlives said:
-Combat suffers similarly. They pile on moves but run out of buttons, so they do the whole "button + modifier combo" deal to effectively double their button inputs, except it makes the control scheme a confusing clusterfuck. Some refinement definitely could've gone a long way..
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No way, breh. Arkham City's combat system is so close to perfect, and the Quickfire Gadgets were an excellent way of making the gadgets more useful both in combat and out. I constantly use my Quickfire Batclaw and Explosive Gel while I'm stealthing, for instance. Knockout Smash one guy to draw all the other enemies over, Quickfire Explosive Gel on his body, knock down three guys, throw in a Smoke Bomb and go to town on them.

Quickfire Explosive Gel and the Multi-Ground Takedown are incredibly useful in combat, too. You plant the gel, wait for just the right moment when enemies are crowded around it, then you detonate it, throw three Batarangs and squeeze in one more punch and you can get about seven guys with the one M-G Takedown.
 
EatinOlives said:
-Combat suffers similarly. They pile on moves but run out of buttons, so they do the whole "button + modifier combo" deal to effectively double their button inputs, except it makes the control scheme a confusing clusterfuck. Some refinement definitely could've gone a long way.
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I hardly had any trouble with the improved combat and button inputs in AC, it was nice to have a whole new array of moves at your disposal.
 
matrix-cat said:
No way, breh. Arkham City's combat system is so close to perfect, and the Quickfire Gadgets were an excellent way of making the gadgets more useful both in combat and out. I constantly use my Quickfire Batclaw and Explosive Gel while I'm stealthing, for instance. Knockout Smash one guy to draw all the other enemies over, Quickfire Explosive Gel on his body, knock down three guys, throw in a Smoke Bomb and go to town on them.

Quickfire Explosive Gel and the Multi-Ground Takedown are incredibly useful in combat, too. You plant the gel, wait for just the right moment when enemies are crowded around it, then you detonate it, throw three Batarangs and squeeze in one more punch and you can get about seven guys with the one M-G Takedown.
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Added moves were great, it just controlled sloppily. Was not a good idea to simply superimpose the new functions on top of a control system that was built from the ground up to be inherently simpler. For the first several hours I had to mentally stop a do a double take remembering which button combo did what, which isn't common and just a sign of a bad control scheme in my experience.
 
There is no reason for people not to play this, I just ordered the GOTY without all the GOTY text all over it from Amazon for $15. Can't wait to play it!
 
I found them equally good. AA was an incredible first game in the series while City expanded the franchise as sequels should and had a deeper story to boot.
 
Both are fantastic, but if I had to choose only one, I would go with city.

Arkham City was in my opinion, everything a sequel should be.
 
I was really into AA, but AC didn't do much for me at all. I loved the atmosphere and the way that AA was laid out, but the open world in AC kinda turned me off a bit, it felt less focused in some ways. They're both very good games though.
 
Yep. AC is a much better game than AA. Not sure what GAF is smoking.
 
Oddly enough, I felt like Arkham City had too MUCH stuff to do. It felt stifling. Asylum, in comparison, was a much more finely crafted experience.

But AC has the Mr. Freeze fight and that's probably one of the best bosses in videogames ever so...
 
I think I played City wrong. Started the game, did the intro missions, and then when the world opened up I found an early side mission and wondered why the story just kinda stopped. Then I found the AR fly-through-loops thing and I COULD. NOT. GET. IT. RIGHT. Stopped playing and never bothered to go back.

I keep meaning to go back, especially since I now have the GOTY version on PC, but I never seem to get around to it. It just rots along with a bunch of other theoretically awesome games I never got back to (like XCOM and Dishonored, I KNOW I KNOW YOU GUYS).
 
arkham asylum got a ton of points for being the first great batman game.

i feel thats why so many think its better. it was the first time they got to play as batman and had a really good experience.

arkham city however takes that and cranks all the technical elements up to 10.

i beat AC and then beat AA after, and i believe AC is by far the better game.

i sincerely believe if you took the batman IP effect out of both those games and played them both as "catman" with "hoker" as the arch villain, you'd feel AC is the better game.
 
Arkham City did everything better, aside from the "videogame level" feel that isn't as doable in an open world game. But the most important thing: no cooldowns for remote Batarangs.

My friend and I played City first, and right off the bat we exclaimed how cool they were, and thought it would have been easy to fuc* them up by putting a cooldown or any other limit on their use. We also thought it was a very well crafted game, nearly perfect in most areas. Later on we played Asylum, and realized that City was so good because all the problems it addressed were present in Asylum.

Also, the shotgun blast hits in Asylum lacked impact and a touch of timing.
 
Asylum was an amazing experience. I didn't like City nearly as much. Making it an open world game threw off the pacing and it didn't feel like the tight narrative that the first game was. It felt generally sloppy and with too many insignificant things to do. Also, to me, Asylum had just the perfect amount of villains, and compelling ones at that. City just felt like they were trying to get as many cameos in as they could.
 
I love both AA and AC, but my personal favorite goes to City. I'm afraid that Origins won't touch it (or AA for that matter).
 
When people say the Scarecrow sections were excellent, do they mean the cool story side of them with the hallucinations or the shitty sidescrolling levels with the awful controls?
 
City may make incremental improvements to Asylum's mechanics, but Asylum comes together in a way that is greater than the sum of its parts. It has a level of polish and attention to detail (from the design of the different wings to individual villain's cells) that City lacks. And it has a great progression, expertly expanding your arsenal and opening up the world in a deliberate, interlocked way that feels organic and well-suited to your growing level of competence.
 
Both games are really great but I think I prefer City, spend over 40hrs in that game and had a blast...gliding through the city never got boring, the combat was simplistic but so fun plus you could always had something to do and look for due to the riddles.

Only complaint I have with City is the Harley Quinn DLC which was an overpriced piece of shit IMO.
 
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