Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that sidekicks have a purpose. They are, after all, easily kidnapped by arch-nemeses, generally ineffective unless dwelling in their natural habitat of the hero’s shadow, and rarely capable of putting together a costume that doesn’t implicitly beg for a super-powered swirly. I have to say, though, that Batman: Arkham City’s Harley Quinn’s Revenge DLC looks pretty promising. Robin’s doing his best Ezio impression while searching for his missing Batmentor, and Harley Quinn seems to have completely lost it, which has apparently put her in a bit more of a murdering mood than usual. Admittedly, the “Payback’s a bitch” tagline seems a bit ill-advised given Arkham City’s less-than-savory history with the word, but the rest looks rather impressive. Grapple past the break for the full trailer.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
Posts Tagged ‘Batman: Arkham City’
Robin’s Hood: Harley Quinn’s Revenge Trailer Goes Batty
By Nathan Grayson on May 18th, 2012.
Arkham Horror: Harley Quinn’s Revenge DLC TBC On PC
By Nathan Grayson on April 25th, 2012.
Revenge is a dish best served cold – or at least lukewarm, in this case. On the upside, Batman: Arkham City’s story-concluding DLC-based chapter is en route to PC, Warner told Eurogamer. That, however, is where things take an almost amusingly convoluted turn into asylum-worthy madness. So, first off, the PC version of Arkham City: Game of the Year Edition – to which the DLC’s launch is tethered – has no release date beyond “TBC.” The console versions, meanwhile, appear to have had their releases scheduled by Warner’s executive VP of wearing a blindfold and throwing darts at things. In the US? May 29. Fair enough. Everywhere else, though? September 7 – just in time to get totally buried in the holiday game avalanche. If the PC version follows release tradition, that could see it swinging in to save the day well after the nick of time in October. Catch an incredibly brief glimpse of the DLC in action after the break.
Patchman: Arkham Fixy
By Alec Meer on March 20th, 2012.
As roughly 50% of the emails to the wheezing RPS inboxotron over the last week will attest to, Rocksteady and Warner have not exactly displayed willing enthusiasm when it comes to the PC edition of Batman: Arkham City. A long- and mysteriously-delayed launch followed by DirectX 11 performance that was about as smooth as stinging nettle moonshine, then the final insult of the eventual patch screwing up many folks’ savegames despite leaving many of the initial problems unresolved. And then, silence. Months-long silence.
Our own attempts at establishing just what the flipping fudge was going on came to naught, which made the torrent of increasingly florid complaint emails we were copied in on all the more distressing. Now, finally, Rocksteady have put out a patch. It claims to fix all the right things, which you can find below. Let us know here if it has or hasn’t worked. Also, whether or not you’re wearing any manner of headgear right now. We’re always interested in that.
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BAFTAs 2012: Portal 2 Takes The Prize
By Andrew Smee on March 19th, 2012.
The British Academy Video Game Awards took place on Friday night and Portal 2 was awarded highest honours, taking home little gold faces not only for Best Game, but also for Story and Design. Congratulations to Valve, who by this point must be making plans to put up some new shelves of award-bearing load strength. The popular vote went to Battlefield 3, which also won awards for Online Multiplayer and Audio Achievement.
The full list is celebrating after the jump.
To The Axed Cave! Gotham By Gaslight
By Alec Meer on February 28th, 2012.
Gotham by Gaslight - aka Victorian Batman vs Jack the Ripper – was a big deal for comics back in the early 1990s, what with it both transplanting Bats into a new setting and being a self-contained tale rather than the usual unending episodic fare. Sadly it’s been largely ignored in this modern age of ultra high-tech Batmen and Grant Morrison miring poor ol’ Bruce in endless, obtuse fantasy stories about nothing, but a few years ago Day 1 Studios were set to make a videogame based upon this 19th Century superhero. You’ll know Day 1 from FEThreeR, the Xbox MechAssault games and the upcoming PC multiplayer mech title Reign of Thunder, so their heritage perhaps isn’t really in the vein of the quiet, thoughtful oddness of GbG.
Whether or not they’d have pulled it off is something we’ll never know, as it was canned before development started in earnest – but a leaked proof-of-concept animation trailer does suggest it could have been an especially atmospheric steampunk odyssey.
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Writers Guild Award Noms For Brink and Bats
By Adam Smith on January 12th, 2012.
The UK Writers’ Guild Awards took place at the end of 2011 but the American guild like to time their ceremonies a little closer to the Oscars so that they can fall into Awards Season, which isn’t actually a season at all. You may remember that a man named Gillen was nominated for the UK award, along with Ed Stern whose script for Brink received a nod. The winners were the writers of Enslaved though and that doesn’t exist on PC so we neglected to mention its victory. A belated round of applause to Alex Garland and Tameem Antoniades. So, who has received a nomination from the American guild? Read on.
Hold Onto Your Hats, Bats: Winter Walk
By Adam Smith on December 20th, 2011.
Phew. I was just about to scribble some rot about the release of free challenge maps for Arkham City, which are only downloadable through Games For Windows Live. As I was staring at the error message that greeted my attempt to install them, a tweet landed ‘pon my shoulder and whispered in my ear: “Why all this effort to clobber villains at the Jokers Carnival, and in the Iceberg VIP Lounge and Batcave? Even if you were doing it using the free Batman Incorporated skin it’d just be fisticuffs. Better to take a top-hatted stroll in the snow.”
By jove, what a grand idea that was. You can watch a slightly interactive documentary of my turn around the environs thanks to Winter Walk, which is as pleasant a way to while away a few minutes as you’ll find today. Thanks to Dan Marshall (@danthat).
A malodorous creature
The Games of Christmas ’11: Day 13
By Alec Meer on December 13th, 2011.
Did you know that when he’s not delivering presents or selling Coca-Cola, Father Christmas actually spends his days in cocktail bars enjoying the good life, the old rapscallion? Why, he’s even been known to frequent the racetracks and beaches of Monaco in the company of young starlets. That’s his reward for picking a job where he only has to pull on the costume once a year. But not everyone has it so easy. Let’s take a peek inside door number thirteen.
Arkham Pretties: Nanananananana Patchman!
By Alec Meer on December 7th, 2011.
Batman: Arkham City arrived on PC crazily late, and launched with a pretty much borked DirectX 11 mode. Which didn’t make a lot of sense, given what a song and dance NVIDIA and Warner were making about its graphics, and if forum-hounds’ apparent discovery that the release build was compiled back in September is to be believed. Finally, though, a patch has arrived which purports to fix it, for the price of 190MB. Unless you’re running 32-bit Vista or 7, in which case it makes DX11 performance even worse. To the point that you’re advised to only run the game in DX9 mode. Sigh. Another patch is apparently due, though.
A few other wotsits have been rejiggered too – full details below. No, they haven’t removed any of the preposterous levels of DRM, sadly enough.
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How much blood could a dead cat bleed if a dead cat could still bleed?
Important Dialogue Analysis: Arkham City
By Alec Meer on November 28th, 2011.
“You’re going to bleed like a dead cat.”
At first, I thought this was just clunky dialogue, some poor writer struggling to come up with yet another cat-based reference for Batman: Arkham City’s thugs to bellow at Catwoman, as a break from the rather more disturbing threats and insults they so frequently offer. Many have commented that the game’s dialogue, especially incidental comments from thugs, is unimpressive. And sometimes troubling too. Puzzling, given how lavish and polished the game is in almost all other respects. Then I sat down and thought about it properly. What if there was something I was missing? What if that line, “you’re going to bleed like a dead cat” was rich in subtext and nuance I was just too ignorant and lazy to pick up on? And what if, in turn, that meant all the apparently wretched incidental dialogue in the game had been misinterpreted? What if we’d made a terrible mistake? There was only one thing I could do – a careful, stage by stage analysis of the sentence in question. Only then could I truly uncover its mysteries. Some might ask why this game, of all games, should be subjected to such painstaking analysis. I have one word that perfectly addresses all such queries: “because.”
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A Knight On The Town
Wot I Think: Batman Arkham City
By Adam Smith on November 25th, 2011.
Bruce Wayne has finally returned to my PC, ready to swoop and scuffle his way through the prison-district that is Arkham City. It’s no secret that I used to wear Batman pajamas when I was a youngster, nor that I have been known to shed manly tears when thinking of the Caped Crusader’s tragic origins in Crime Alley. These facts make me the ideal person to tell you Wot I Think of this new crimefighting caper.
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- Brainkite : “Looks awsome, i love the design and the music” on It’s Totally Underground: The Cave’s First Trailer
- wonkavision : “"Every" and "time" do not become one word just because they appear next to one another.” on Space Is Infinite, Time Is Brief: Kinetic Void
- Alaric : “I've seen the movie, and it is quite excellent!” on Indie Game: The Movie Coming To Steam
- Ministry : “I would like this better if there was a first person view on horses. But either way i'm happy.” on Horse Amore: Next Skyrim Update Adds Mounted Combat
- Ministry : “You could almost see Murray easy up about mid-way through the interview after RPS said "shit". Before that Murray had his "good guy" face on. ...” on Xcommunication: XCOM – Enemy Unknown Interview
