9.9/10
Arkham Asylum was a game that seemingly came out of nowhere in the sense that it's a superhero game that was actually good. With Arkham City, Rocksteady took everything great about AA and made it better, specifically through the fact that Batman's gliding ability was only ever briefly used in AA, yet in AC you could traverse the length of the city without ever touching the ground, and that was an important addition to a franchise that wants you to become Batman.
The combat was as simple and as satisfying as it was previously, with a few new moves added in to keep things feeling fresh, and there was a good selection of new gadgets to play with as well. The boss fights were also greatly improved over AA, with no Killer Croc style disappointments (I'm avoiding naming my favourite for spoiler reasons).
It wasn't a short game by modern standards (I think I completed it in around 15 hours), where there are many games that clock in at well under 10 hours, but I still felt that it could maybe have had a few hours added to the story to flesh things out a bit more, rather than having over 400 Riddler challenges to solve as a means to extend the game. My only other complaint is that you can't jump from the top of Wonder Tower and glide all the way down to the city, which was probably a design decision based on it not being a true open world game, but that is me being incredibly picky.
It's my choice for GOTY and also for favourite 'new' franchise of the generation, even though it's obviously based on a character that's been around for decades.
VGChartz
