Batman: Arkham City Review: As Good As Arkham Asylum?

I rarely buy console games anymore. I play them, but I spend so much more time on the PC that it hardly seems worth it to go out and get a new copy of the hot new release for the Xbox360 or Wii (still don't own a PS3.) I do, however, have an active Gamefly Account, and I make use of that to get to play new-ish games, one at a time. I was exceptionally lucky this month, as Batman: Arkham City popped up in my queue on release day, and landed two days after it was available for sale in stores. I loved Arkham Asylum, with the deliberate and dramatic staging of boss encounters, lore detail specific even on obscure points enough to satisfy a comic book geek and the feeling when playing well that you ARE Batman. Terrifying helpless goons dropping down from rafters, using a wide variety of gadgets from the utility belt, and satisfying melee combat made the first game almost perfect. I can say that the sequel improves on the original in all the right spots.

The game opens with a press conference concerning the new prison facility within downtown Gotham, a section of the city walled off and left to the criminals, heavily patrolled by guards ensuring that nothing escapes. The populations of both Arkham Asylum and Blackgate Prison are dumped within and left mostly to their own devices. This is, of course, a terrible idea, and it is no surprise that it is the brainchild of Batman villain Doctor Hugo Strange. Enter Batman, investigating what is really going on inside the walls of the prison, what has happened since the last game, and taking some extremely surprising turns along the way. The city environment is open, allowing for rooftop travel across long distances, gliding and using grappling tools to soar through the air.

Fans of the first game will note that nearly every major Batman villain who didn't take a major role in Arkham Asylum is present in this game. The big players, like The Penguin, Mr. Freeze and R'as al Ghul are brilliantly staged boss fights, whereas more minor villains such as Calendar Man or the Mad Hatter are featured in sidequests. The only characters returning in plot-centric roles who were also heavily featured in the first game are, of course, The Joker and Harley Quinn, and The Riddler remains ever-present at the source of secret collectibles/unlockables. Every single villain plays to their personal strengths, and they aren't abnormally good at something they shouldn't be just in order to craft a challenging boss battle. For example, The Penguin is extremely heavily armed with weapons and stolen/smuggled technology, but his melee combat ability it laughable. Despite the fact that the little fat man drops after only a few punches, he is an extremely formidable villain based on his henchmen, equipment and planning.

Story-wise, it feels like there are really two plots going on at the same time which cross paths from time to time. Dealing with the Joker and the aftermath of his having injected himself with the TITAN serum at the climax of the first game is an ever-present goal while trying to find out exactly what Strange is doing in the new prison facility, and how he ever managed to make this monstrosity happen. Actually believing that Gotham would let the Arkham City project fly in the first place is the hardest bit of the plot to swallow, and you're hit with it off the bat (no pun intended.) If I had a singular complaint about the film, it would be that the main plot is pretty short. It was an engrossing story, but I'd beaten the game after two evenings and a solid long session on one weekend day. I've gone back to work on sidequests, but as I'm not huge on hunting down optional content, I'm effectively done after only I'd guess 16-20 hours of play.

The graphics are top notch, and the sound is even better, though I found myself playing a LOT in "Detective Mode" to make certain I wasn't missing the location of a goon who was hiding somewhere in the muck and grime dressed mostly in black and brown. There were a few frustrating technical issues as well, as I had a half dozen unexplained crashes to the Xbox dashboard claiming I had "corrupted DLC." Since I was playing a rental copy, I had no DLC whatsoever (no playthroughs as Catwoman or Robin for me.) Also, attack animations are very occasionally sometimes a split second longer than they should be, sometimes exposing you to attacks you are helpless to prevent. This flaw is noticable on normal difficulty, and nearly game-ruining on hard, as enemies do so much more damage per strike.

Overall, Batman: Arkham City was great despite its flaws, since nearly every hour of gameplay contained some experience that was jaw-droppingly awesome. I won't spoil the ending here, but those who have beaten the game appreciate the bold and potentially controversial choice made in the game's final twist. I can honestly say I was not expecting what happened, and I'll be very curious to see what they might to in light of the game's ending for any possibility of further games in the series. If you love to hunt and explore for every last collectible and unlock all varient costumes, concept art and bonus game modes, I'd recommend this game as a purchase. If you are like me and are mostly satisfied with getting to a certain level of completion % and then stopping, this is an absolute must-rent.

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Aquaman #1: No One's Favorite Superhero Returns.

What would you do if your existence was reduced to a walking punchline? You'd live as easy target, butt of many jokes, everyone knows you, no one likes you save close friends and family. This is the existence for a lot of D-List Celebrities, as you can't be a universal comedy punching bag without being famous. Now, imagine the same scenario only bullets bounce off you, you can jump over your neighbor's house, lift thousands of pounds without breaking a sweat and mentally influence millions of animals. You'd be Aquaman. He gets a bad rap for being a lame superhero, mostly from people who have never read an issue of one of his comics. In addition to the powers I've mentioned, he, of course, wields an ancient trident of great power and is the ruler of most of the planet, considering that the majority of the surface of the earth is covered in water. When DC Comics relaunched its entire line in the "New 52," Aquaman #1 was on the list for a reboot. What do you do with a character whose name inspires cheap laughs?

I never thought I'd say it, but Aquaman is awesome.

Aquaman has, since his introduction in 1941, partially earned the scorn and derision of comic book fans over the years. He's had more than a few lame villains, including one of his archenemies, The Fisherman, and by the Silver Age of comics, he was saddled with a crippling weakness (touch water once per hour or die.) Over the years, the character has been re-interpreted and rebooted, from aquatic training and science, through half-atlantean powers and a retcon in the late 1980s to combine all of his origin stories. In the mid-1990s, the character was given a "dark and gritty" makeover with gladiator-style armor and a retractable harpoon hand, as well as a violent and tortured temperment. No matter how many times his style and origins changed, the snarky comments from casual comic book fans and people who haven't picked up an issue in years persisted.

Instead of ignoring the scorn heaped on the one time leader of the JLA, in Aquaman #1, written by Geoff Johns, it is embraced. Aquaman seems to have returned to his Silver Age roots in terms of origin stories as an atlantean prince and heir with a human father. Police, criminals and the average person on the street sneer at the powerful and noble figure, laughing in his face and making cracks about "talking to fish" and asking if he needs a glass of water. He's torn between the surface world and the sea, and despite his reputation as a laughingstock, he defends the surface world that mocks and scorns him. We get to see his powers in action, brief flashbacks to his time with his father, and his origin story is woven in subtly and mostly shown to us, not told in hamfisted expository fashion. We even get a partial answer to the question that is begged: If people laugh at you on the surface, why stay up there?

Aquaman vs. Hipster. Oh god, "The Hipster" is a terrible idea  for a villain.

I've read, mostly out of curiosity, a handful of DC's New 52, and of the titles I've made it through so far, Aquaman #1 is by far my favorite of the bunch. The writing is superb, artwork is in line with the best DC can bring to A-List titles and the pacing through the panel layout it just about perfect. By acknowledging the character's reputation for being lame and demonstrating why it is an undeserved label, the audience instantly sides with Aquaman and develops an attachment to the character, mentally defending him against the slurs of the ignorant. I will go so far as to make an extremely controversial statment, in a series of words I never thought I'd type. If all I was considering was the strength of their respective first issues in the DC reboot, completely ignoring decades of character history and associated mythology and art, I'd look at Aquaman and Batman. Then I'd say "Aquaman is better than Batman." Something in my stomach lurched at typing those words in that order, but there it is.

The setup, as far as I can see it, may face a problem that Aquaman has always faced, and the criticism is worth mentioning. Aquaman has mostly pretty lame villains. In the first issue, the foes presented are generic criminals and a preview of stock undersea beasties gearing up for a showdown to come. With the possible exception of Black Manta, the new Aquaman doesn't really have anyone to fight who can make him continue to earn his newfound status as a cool superhero. I have faith in the writing at this point, and we'll see if new foes or new interpretations of old villains can step up to the challenge of inclusion in the bold new direction for a classic character. With one issue that isn't really focused on defeating bad guys (though there is some action in the pages) it is far too early to call out the series for a lack of cool villains, that is just a lingering concern.

Bulletproof? Not 100%, the one that hit him in the head
 made him bleed a little, and pissed him off.

With the streamlined version of a Silver Age Origin cleaning up the murky waters of Arthur Curry's origin and solid writing, this title has serious potential to be a standout success story in the mixed reviews from the New 52. We've got a character that is badass with a new direction that fans are likely to accept, because it doesn't discard or ignore what came before, we're just shown it in a new light. This is in stark contrast to the misogyny disguised as female empowerment in Catwoman #1, gaining headlines through strip clubs and casual sex with Batman in-costume, and other missteps in DC's move to remain relevant in years to come. For years, Aquaman may have been the target of bad jokes, but this first issue is showing who is getting the last laugh.

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Batmen in Elseworlds – The best of Bruce Wayne in alternate universes.

When I write about comic books, I tend to write about Marvel. I've declared my allegiance there, but that doesn't mean I don't like DC. I could do without most of the DC Universe, but c'mon... Batman. When thinking about my favorite heroes in all comic books, I don't usually even bother listing him. Batman is just assumed to be at the top of that list. One of the things that got me into the Marvel continuity was What If?, as I've mentioned before. That said, my very favorite DC titles come from a similar source, in their elseworlds imprint. In fact, my favorite single issue of a superhero comic is probably the final issue of the Elseworld title Superman: The Nail. Over the years, however, I've made a point of tracking down and reading almost every one of the Batman Elseworld one-shots and limited series. These titles are the best of those, in my estimation.

Batman: Holy Terror – This book was the first ever to be published under the Elseworlds logo, and one of the many that takes familiar characters from Batman's corner of the DC Universe and places them in a new time and place, re-telling their origins through trappings of the transplanted genre. In this story, the Reverend Bruce Wayne of Gotham is told by his friend James Gordon, an inquisitor in charge of investigating the deaths of Bruce's parents that their deaths were part of a state conspiracy, and not a random mugging. His crusade to bring those responsible to justice in the Dark Theocratic Government brings him into contact with Barry Allen, and a witch whose spells are cast backwards, reminiscent of Zatanna. In the cape and cowl as a servant of God and Justice, he runs into the conspirators in the midst of "Project Green Man," involving a certain alien who crash landed in Kansas.

Gotham Noir – This one I rushed right out to purchase, as I'm a huge fan of detective stories and Film Noir. In some ways, this tale is more about Jim Gordon than it is about Bruce Wayne. We see Gordon, a washed up drunk and private investigator trying to deal with his demons when he gets pulled into a mystery. He has to find his way out of the bottom of a bottle and find out what really happened to the girl he failed to protect. Along the way, he has to confront what happened back in the war, and deal with criminals and thugs around every corner of the darkened streets of Gotham in the late 1940s. We meet several incarnations of classic characters from the DC Universe, including Harvey Dent, Selina Kyle and a version of The Joker. Batman himself is present, but it is unclear by the end if he is real, or hallucinations brought on by Gordon cracking under the pressure.

The Doom That Came to Gotham – Mike Mignola, of Hellboy fame with Dark Horse, spins a 1920s tale of a Bruce Wayne that could have come straight from the pages of H.P. Lovecraft. All of the looming cosmic horror and pulp adventure, with secrets Man Was Not Meant To Know lurking behind the mystery of it all. There are shades of much of the Cthulhu Mythos in this, most notably The Mountains of Madness near the start of the tale. Oliver Queen and Harvey Dent make cameos, and we are treated with 1920s versions of Mr. Freeze, The Penguin and both R'as and Talia al Ghul. Throughout the three volume series we also meet Alfred, James and Barbara Gordon and all three pre-Stephanie Brown incarnations of Robin – Dick Grayson, Jason Todd and Tim Drake.

The Batman Vampire Trilogy – Starting with Batman and Dracula: Red Rain, this series gets darker and darker as it progresses. Rather than putting Batman in an alternate time or genre, we see what happens when the Dark Knight gets involved with the Lord of Vampires. From the initial books dealing with his battle against the Dark Prince of the Undead through his own struggle against his nature upon contracting vampirism itself, we see Bruce Wayne's dark side through the lens of horror. The story plays with Batman's already tortured psyche and inner demons and shows us what happens to that character we already know when he is gripped by something inside him he cannot control. Bruce Wayne is already compulsive, tortured and extraordinarily driven to the brink of insanity, add to that a unholy thirst for human blood and we have a great superhero/classic horror crossover tale.

Batman: In Darkest Knight – This series resembles the Marvel What If? Line more than the others because it is based on a simple question, and following the answer to that question to a possible logical conclusion. The question is, in this case, what would happen if instead of the power of the Green Lantern passing to Hal Jordan, what if it had gone to Bruce Wayne? We get a very different take on classic moments in the Green Lantern canon with a different bearer of the ring, and some of Wayne's past interact with the problems facing the Green Lantern Corps in unexpected ways. Sinestro is, in this Universe, responsible for the creation of supervillainous versions of Harvey Dent and Selina Kyle, completing a triad of Green Lantern villains tainted by Bruce Wayne's own past.

These stories are not in any way the whole of the Batman Elseworlds tales, just a few of my personal favorites. Though I never read all of it, Gotham by Gaslight is also worth a nod, and technically Frank Miller's classic The Dark Knight Returns could be considered an Elseworlds title, but I think that story might deserve an article all its own. I may at some later date return to the topic to revisit the Superman Elseworlds which also occupy a special place of honor in those few DC Titles I actively pursue and read whenever I can get my hands on them. 

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The DC Universe is ending, long live the DC Universe.

A story that broke last week while I was busy writing about E3 has given me a little time to think about it and what, if anything, it means to me. I've made it clear that my comic book allegiance is primarily to Marvel, but let's face it. Superman was the first tradtional comic book superhero, and Batman... is Batman. In light of this, even a Marvel fanboy like me sits up and takes notice when DC announces that as if September 2011, all its superhero titles are canceled. Yep, in their current form, all those comics are done. There will be a relaunch of the entire DC line with any books being resurrected coming back with new #1 issues. The big reset button just got pushed on the entire Universe, and everything starts over.

Cover - Action Comics #1.

There are a few questions that arise naturally from an announcement like this. Why would DC do such a thing? Is it a publicity stunt or cash grab? What does all this have to do with the state of comic books in general? The announcement about some of the specific titles to be relaunched has provoked other reactions, most notably the return of Batgirl with Barbara Gordon in the cape and cowl. DC has been no stranger to controversy in storylines recently, but one thing is for certain. You make a decision like this, and it gets people talking, and people talking about your product is rarely bad for business.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened. DC had to clean up the overly complicated and confusing multiple continuities is had with the mega-event Crisis on Infinite Earths back in 1985. There were different versions of many superheroes depending on which continuity you chose to follow, and new readers were put off by trying to keep it all straight. Dimensions were destroyed, heroes died, and the DC Universe was relaunched as a single Universe, only one version of each hero and plot to keep track of. I suspect that the motivation behind the Universe reboot and series relaunch is very similar.

Not "Ultimate" anything... still the Goddamn Batman.

It has been said many times by many people, but it bears repeating here. The comic industry is in trouble. All printed media is feeling the strain of a digital age where people are slowly migrating away from purchasing paper copies of certain forms of entertainment and information. Comics gets hit particularly hard due to decisions made in the 1980s and 1990s of what to do with the medium. Once it became clear that it was profitable in the short term to appeal to nostalgic comic fans interested in re-purchasing pieces of their childhood, that's what comic companies did, at the expense of attracting new readers. This is a problem because long-time fans get disillusioned, move on to other nostalgia after a while, or just plain die, and when they do, there has to be a steady stream of new fans to fight the attrition.

Marvel tried to address this a few years back with the Ultimates line, which longtime fans hated and ignored for the most part, but elements of Marvel Ultimates seems to have attracted some sort of fanbase, so I'm not calling that a failed experiment, at least not yet. DC is taking it a step further than Marvel did, saying, “We've got this relaunch, we're going to give you a new version of our world, and its going to be the only one.” This is a bold move that is going to anger a lot of long time customers, and some will probably stop reading DC comics because of it, but sometimes, you have to lose a limb in order to save the body, and without some sort of timely intervention, the patient is currently terminal. Is this going to be viewed as a smart move? Maybe not, but something had to be done.

Some titles will be canceled and will not relaunch, and other new titles will start fresh alongside Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, The Justice League and Green Arrow. They will also be folding certain books into the DC Universe proper, including the Wildstorm characters Grifter and Voodoo who first appeared in the Image Comics WildC.A.T.s, by Jim Lee. (I could have told you in 1992 which two characters would survive if you could only pick two from that team, and I'd have been right.) They'll also be launching Suicide Squad, a team of Death Row supervillains chosen by the government to go on missions they aren't expected to return from, though this team, in practice, will turn out to be “Harley Quinn and the Pips.” Harley Quinn was the breakout wildly successful villain created for Batman: The Animated series, and she was added to the DC Comics canon officially by the late 1990s. Her extremely violent, insane and overtly sexual incarnation from the more “mature” comics seems to be the version they'll push to carry that title.

More like "Suicide Girls Squad," Amirite?... heh, her, err... okay, I'm done.

Most of the characters are being reset to earlier points in their careers, as one of the challenges for a writer is to actually be able to threaten superheroes who have been through so much and gained experience and power from, in many cases 25 to 50 years of fighting superpowered criminals and saving the world. How do you write a legitimate threat to these characters without treading well-worn paths and straining credibility? Quite simply, you don't. You tell the same stories over and over again and ask the fans to believe that this time, the danger to the hero is different somehow, even when it clearly isn't. The solution: Don't re-tell origin stories necessarily, but roll back the clock a little bit, see the heroes when they are still figuring things out and crime fighting is dangerous business again.

One of the consequences to a rollback is that it puts characters in a different place. For Barbara Gordon, that place is out of a wheelchair and into her costume as Batgirl. Since the classic Joker story “The Killing Joke,” Barbara Gordon was paralyzed from a bullet The Joker put into her spine, leaving her for dead. Her paralysis made possible her transformation into the superhero information broker and surveillance expert Oracle, and she effectively led the Birds of Prey team, which even got its own TV series (mercifully short-lived and probably another candidate for yesterday's article.) Barbara Gordon out of her wheelchair provoked an emotional reaction from some fans with disabilities, as Oracle is a favorite, and very strong character to many. The response from Gail Simone of DC, who wrote Barbara Gordon as Oracle for years, boils down to a simple question. If characters are being healed, brought back from the dead, if this is an earlier point in their careers, why would the one constant being that Barbara Gordon is always in a wheelchair? A strong argument.

Oracle is a great character, but that is a very cool cover for Batgirl #1.

We don't know the specifics of how this will all work, what the crossover that ends the old DC Universe and ushers in the new will actually look like. The cynical geeks among us will deride the company for publicity and for grabbing for cash because collectors love “Issue #1s.” Me, I'm going to wait and see. I'll pick up the titles involved in the crossover, and at least browse some of the new books up after the relaunch, though 52 issues is no where near my budget. When we get to see exactly how and why this all plays out, I'm sure I'll come right back to this space with my opinion.

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