Batman: Arkham City

Once again, Rocksteady does an amazing job at making Batman awesome. In this one, you even get to play as Catwoman to change things up a bit. The entire game, including DLC took me about 21 hours to complete.

So instead of my normal review structure, I'm just going to say that it was every bit as good as Arkham Asylum, and then some. I'll now go into the and them some.

What I liked:
Unique gadgets? Yep, they added quite a few, including my all new favorite type of grenade that let's me incapacitate a single enemy in a fight, and take them down last. There are also tons of new enemies. Enemies with body armor you have to focus beat down, or they just keep coming back at you. Enemies with car doors, and you have to knock it out of their hands with a cool move. They also kept all the same ones as before (guns, knives, stun rods, snipers, etc.)

The boss fights step it up to a much better level than the first. There are actually tactics relevant to the boss, and it's not as repetitive. They also look awesome.

What I didn't like:
Zsasz kept calling on a nearby phone whenever I got close to my next objective. Then he'd make me fly across the entire city to answer another phone, just pushing back my progress! Inconsiderate jerk! Well, that's what he's supposed to do, and at least I got my grappling hook speed boost from the VR training. Yes, you should get that as soon as possible, and yes, the VR training are ridiculously hard. Especially VR training #1. If you miss a single target, you fail, they tell you you failed, and you have to run/fly/climb your way back to the start to retry.

The other thing that was a bit annoying was that it wasn't as straight-forward for me to figure out where to go, even with an icon standing over the map. This is probably because the game went from an asylum, with narrow passages, limited pathing to an open city. I'm also really bad at figuring out what a game wants me to do, so there's that. =\

And there were a few fights where it was tight quarters against very tough opponents. Dying a few times, listening to Joker/Strange/etc. tell me I'm dead, and trying again. Still better than just repeatedly fighting 2-3 pseudo-Banes like in the first. =)

The equipment upgrades are good, but after a I got about 1/2 way in, I was just filling out the rest because I had the points.

In summary, if you liked the first one, get on this now. It's amazing and well worth whatever price it's currently listed for.

DLC: Harley's Revenge
2-3 hours of solid story, fights, and trying out a new character. Also much fewer distractions than the main game. Get it.