Batman: Arkham 3 Confirmed

[Shem]

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[Alexrd]

Nice TV spot:

 

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[Taak Farst]

Day 2 of Release.

 

Completed the campaign, and currently finishing the side missions. Decent length. Horrible bugs such as not being able to get into the vent in the Burnley Watchtower, but the campaign is a good one. Just don't expect huge differ from Arkham City (If it isn't broke, why try to fix it?) and you'll have fun. The story has some GREAT character development, ESPECIALLY in terms of the Joker. Black Mask turns out to be a relatively boring character, which disappointed me a lot, but I will not spoil why or how.

 

I have so many problems with the multiplayer that I almost don't want to play it at all. First and foremost is the re-occurring (seemingly for everyone) progress loss bug. I hit level 14, left the game, came back to find myself back at level 1. Secondly, the villains are overpowered. Bane and the Joker both have far too much health, and Bane can kill all enemies, including Batman and Robin, with what is LITERALLY one button. The Batman and Robin team almost never wins due to one of the two either leaving or being incompetent. There is only one game mode which makes the whole thing seem like a rushed alpha, which corroborates with the amount of minor to major bugs and glitches there are in it.

 

Single Player: 8/10

Multiplayer: In its current form - 3/10

With Improvements: Perhaps 6.5/10, good fun

[igyman]

Haven't finished the game yet, so I can't give a full and proper impression, but so far it's somewhere in the middle for me. It's definitely less polished in terms of gameplay and bugs are abound - the tower vent as Taak mentioned, but I've encountered another major bug which is the Deadshot mission. I've beat him and his henchmen (why does he even have henchmen!?), but the game doesn't register the objective as complete and does not close the case and no amount of leaving and reentering the area helps. There's also some confusion with the collectible markers (I'm showing 3 uncollected items in Park Row, but I only see one icon on the map and I've interrogated all of the marked informers). Those are the major ones I've encountered so far.

 

Other than that, I love what they've done with the city. The new area looks great and is more or less the same size as the old and heavily redecorated one (Arkham City). Speaking of which, when I say heavily redecorated, I don't mean just the holiday decorations on the streets, I mean the actual section of the city has been rebuilt, so to speak, and is not flooded and rundown as it was in Arkham City, the central section (with the tower) is now also accessible, although there isn't much to see there.

 

As for the story, I haven't really made up my mind about it yet. Its beginning was pretty weak, the first appearance of the Joker was also kid of meh, but the second one definitely improved my opinion of how the story is going, so I guess we'll see.

 

The music is also pretty good, not surprising since it was done by Christopher Drake, who already has experience with Batman, having done the music for Batman: Year One and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. That said, as good as it is, it's not quite as memorable and catchy as the music from Arkham City. Still, it's definitely a plus for this game.

 

That's more than enough from me for now.

 

EDIT:

Well, I've completed the game last night and sadly my overall impression is still that the game is kind of mediocre. The story is not as good as that of either of the previous two games and the lack of polish is evident in many bugs in gameplay (my save is still suffering from the Deadshot completion not registering and thus I'm unable to unlock the last Most Wanted case. I've managed to unlock the Burnley tower thanks to a glitch someone found, so I at least finished that particular Most Wanted case) and visuals (environment texture and model streaming can sometimes fail, leaving you with a close up of a low res model and texture of a building). All in all, not crap, but definitely the weakest Arkham game so far.