Batman: Arkham City

Several months have passed since Batman defeated the Joker's attempt to take over Arkham Asylum. Unfortunately, the asylum was almost overrun by Poison Ivy's out-of-control plants in the process, rendering it useless. To replace it, a section of Gotham City's run-down docklands has been sealed off and converted into a new prison and asylum, with most of the city's most dangerous criminals incarcerated there. Appalled, Bruce Wayne enters politics in an attempt to shut down the facility, only to find himself arrested and thrown into the prison. He has to survive, find a way of resuming his Batman persona and bring down both those running the prison and defeat its array of inmates at the same time.

Arkham City is the direct sequel and follow-up to 2009's Arkham Asylum. Arkham Asylum was the game that, after dozens of failed attempts, finally 'got' the Dark Knight and made him into a credible computer game character. It did this by giving Batman a strong, dark storyline to follow, an array of gadgets to use (both in investigations and combat) and welding together the 'gritty' approach favoured by Christopher Nolan's movies with the more colourful and bizarre world of the Batman comics. It also had a great combat system and some solid stealth mechanics.

The follow-up is, inevitably, bigger and more epic. Arkham City sprawls across a much vaster area than the old asylum and is open to exploration from the very start (the asylum unlocked section-by-section as you went through the game and was more linear). The game is also divided neatly into both the main storyline and a series of side-missions, some of which are quite lengthy and involved in themselves. The main storyline involves Batman having to face (and, in some cases, work alongside) villains such as the Joker, Two-Face, the Penguin, Mr. Freeze and Ra's Al Ghul before taking on the director of the prison, the sinister Hugo Strange. However, a ton of other villains show up in the side-missions, including Deadshot, Zasz, Killer Croc (though only in a brief cameo), the Mad Hatter and Bane. Rather than feeling over-saturated, like almost any superhero movie with more than two villains, this gives the game the feeling of existing in an already-extant world, with a large amount of optional information available (via the Batcomputer) to fill players less-versed in the DC Universe on who these people are.

As with Arkham Asylum, the game involves tracking down clues to solve mysteries and beating a quite staggering number of thugs into unconsciousness. The game's setting also allows you to spend quite a lot of time perched precariously on building corners, gazing broodily into the night before spotting some passing thugs beating up a civilian and swooping down to deliver some vengeance. The setting allows you to 'be' Batman even more completely than Arkham Asylum, which is highly satisfying.

That said, the open world environment does offer some problems as well as some improvements over the first game. The first game benefited highly from its focused, linear structure that gradually opened up the asylum as you progressed (and allowing you to backtrack and reach previously-inaccessible areas with later-acquired gadgets). This second game sprawls flabbily in its opening sections, with the game taking a while to give you some sense of what you are trying to do. Once it does and you're alternating the main storyline with optional sub-missions the game kicks into a higher gear, but it's a slight disappointment that Arkham City isn't on fire from its opening moments the same way its predecessor managed.

The biggest surprise from the game is that the bigger setting doesn't necessarily translate into a notably different experience from the first game. There's about half again as much content (I completed Arkham Asylum in 11 hours and City in about 17) and a few more major locations, but the game's bigger canvas often translates in you taking three minutes of rooftop-swinging to move between locations rather than a minute of running as in in Arkham Asylum. The game - surprisingly - reuses the same locations several times over missions just as Asylum did in a clear cost-saving move, and after a while you realise that more than 90% of the buildings in the city cannot be entered or interacted with other than swinging from their rooftops. The much bigger location certainly gives rise to some new gameplay experiences, such as chasing down a serial killer on a time limit before he strikes his next victim, but it's not as transformative to the gaming experience as you might expect. In fact, after a while I was regretting the fact that we didn't have a full Gotham City game, with you being able to explore the city of Gotham as a whole and using vehicles to help complete missions as well as Batman's gadgets (which, a few minor additions aside, are pretty much the same as in the first game).

Still, if Arkham City is less of Grand Theft Gotham and more Arkham Asylum Redux, that's no bad thing. Combat is still physical and rugged, undertaken with impressive animations and combos. There's a greater variety of moves and opponents which makes the combat varied without becoming over-complex. The stealth mechanic is still enjoyable, with the game being at its best when you can take out a whole room of enemies with no-one realising where you are. The investigation side of things is still somewhat lightweight, but at least nods at Batman's detective origins. The story is decent and the voice-acting is as superb as its forebear, with Mark Hamill again taking top prizes for his gleefully deranged role as the Joker in what is his swansong appearance as the character. The scene where the Joker is taunting Batman only to get side-tracked into a puzzled analysis of the final episode of Lost is definitely the game's comic highlight. The game is, overall, a ridiculous amount of fun once you get over the slight hiccup of the start.

Arkham City (****½) is available now in the UK (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3) and USA (PC, X-Box 360, PlayStation 3).

The Dark Knight Rises

Whilst Batman Begins were merely a successful superhero movie, its sequel, The Dark Knight, was a bona fide phenomenon. The movie was both critically acclaimed and hugely successful, making over a billion dollars at the box office. Director Christopher Nolan hesitated over making a third film, worried it could not possibly live up to expectations (especially given that the tragic death of Heath Ledger meant that the Joker could not return). Ultimately he decided to embrace the challenge and has delivered a - somewhat - satisfying resolution to his take on the Dark Knight.

Picking up eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, Gotham City is now virtually crime-free thanks to laws passed in the wake of Harvey Dent's death. Batman (who took the blame for Dent's death) has disappeared, with Bruce Wayne now living in seclusion. Commissioner Gordon, guilt-ridden by both keeping the secret of Dent's insanity and death and Batman taking the fall for it, is planning to retire. Suddenly, the city is plunged into chaos by the arrival of Bane, a former member of the League of Shadows who is planning something audacious. Wayne is forced to don the mask of the Batman once again...

Drawing on elements from the comics - most notably the Knightfall arc - Nolan has created yet another story in which Wayne's character is dragged through the wringer. From the start we know this is not going to be as dark as the previous movie: the title and the thematic direction of the movie are both about redemption. Wayne is haunted and trapped by the decisions he made previously and cannot move on, despite entreaties from Alfred to do just that. When Wayne Manor is robbed by a clever thief, Selina Kyle, Wayne is reinvigorated and gets back in the game, just as the true threat from Bane becomes apparent.

The Dark Knight Rises is driven by Nolan's typically intense direction and some exceptionally good performances. After being a bit lost in the mix in the previous film, Christian Bale brings his A-game to this movie and forms its heart. As usual, Michael Caine gives excellent support as Alfred and Gary Oldman continues to be brilliant in every scene. However, it's the newcomers which really impress. Anne Hathaway is particularly excellent as Selina 'Catwoman' Kyle, with an angst-ridden character that rivals Batman (though with a superior line in caustic humour). Joseph Gordon-Levitt is also superb as the police officer determined to live up to Batman's ideals, whilst French actress Marion Cotillard does great work as Miranda Tate (really impressing in a small role). Unfortunately, Tom Hardy's impressively physical work as Bane is undercut by a somewhat unconvincingly campy vocal performance. Intermittently disturbing, Bane's voice veers too much from the unintelligible to the ludicrous to be truly effective.

As usual, there are both great action setpieces and a laudable focus on characterisation, with several of the most powerful scenes in the movie being dialogue exchanges between Wayne and Alfred, or Wayne and Gordon-Levitt's Blake. Nolan also overcomes The Dark Knight's biggest issue, its dodgy pacing, by making the story in Rises bigger and giving more work to do to the supporting characters. Still, whilst the story is paced better it's still very long at just under three hours and the movie can't quite sustain interest consistently over its full length.

Where The Dark Knight Rises runs into problems is the underlying conflict of the whole series, namely how well Nolan's more realistic take on the franchise can mesh with its sillier excesses. Nolan's dedication to keeping it (relatively) real is stretched thin in the latter part of the film as the situation gets increasingly ludicrous and some contrived double-crosses and plot twists not so much dent disbelief as completely shatter it. After two movies spent dodging cheese and corn, Nolan can't quite keep up the dance any more and there are some groan-inducing lines and moments as the movie draws to its climax.

The Dark Knight Rises (***½) is a decent ending to the trilogy, with excellent performances and atmosphere let down by the decision to embrace cliches rather than subvert or challenge them. The ludicrously bombastic score doesn't help either. However, Nolan has still managed to deliver the best third entry in a superhero franchise of all time and the movie remains extremely entertaining. It is on general release in the UK and USA right now.