By Andrew Smee on November 25th, 2011.
Batman: Arkham City is now playable on Steam, after a week of mild confusion over its availability in various regions. However, more pressing concerns have arisen now that it’s been properly released: the DX11 support seems to be as broken as the bat after a few rounds with Bane, rendering Brucie’s latest adventure unplayable with the current DirectX package.
By Alec Meer on November 25th, 2011.
Cloud gaming service OnLive is banging its drum for new members in the UK again, so they’re reactivated their remarkable £1 offer (which they’re surely making a massive loss on – they must have ton of marketing money stored up). Your first purchase after joining currently costs just 100 pennies, and that includes the likes of Batman: Arkham City, Saints Row 3, LA Noire, Lord of the Rings: War In The North and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. All PC versions, but tweaked for OnLive – which in Arkham’s case means no GFWL. Woo! OnLive has its issues, but I really rather like it – I’ve played quite a lot through it now, and while the experience differs from game to game for a lot of titles on a decent ISP the experience is pretty incredible. Especially if you have the microconsole thingy and are sat back on a sofa – with your face stuffed directly into a monitor the cracks are that much more visible.
Oh, and if you already have an OnLive UK account, that doesn’t stop you from creating a new one purely to nab a game for £1. Repeatedly, in fact – you just need a different email address every time. Snicker.
A Good Year For Open Worlds
By Jim Rossignol on November 24th, 2011.
This year has been unusually rich in the kind of game that I most enjoy: those that are open-ended, or provide a sandbox world for me to mess about in. We usually get a couple of these every year, but in 2011 we seem to have run into a minor bounty of the open stuff, which is good news for explorers and meanderers alike. I’ve gone into a bit more detail about why this pleases me below.
By Alec Meer on November 8th, 2011.
It was rumoured, and then it was confirmed, and then we were all like :(
For it is true: the man of bats will not strike back on PC in 10 days’ time, but instead in 17 days’ time. A small wait, perhaps, but we’ve already had to hang on for almost a month later than the console-folk. Yes, the already-delayed Batman: Arkham City PC port, mooted to be the very bestest version of Brucie-boy’s semi-open-world swinging adventures thanks to various technical jiggery-pokery done with the help of NVIDIA, has been delayed anew. November 25 is the new date, which at least is safely after all Big Three of November’s remaining new releases – MW3, Skyrim, Saints Row 3 – are all done and dusted and we’ll have time to think about something else/sleep.
There’s no word on why the PC version was delayed, and what the state of play will be for the various DLC by then. Oh well. Here’s a Nightwing DLC trailer to tide you over.
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By Alec Meer on October 31st, 2011.
Batman! A game so good that Yahoo awarded it 6/5, thus unwittingly demonstrating that review scores are little more than a media pissing contest whose only real beneficiary is publishers’ marketing departments and people who like to shout at other people on forums. Which is exactly why we don’t give scores here. Can Arkham City possibly live up to such drooling superlatives? Well, I can’t yet speak for the PC version – which isn’t out until November 18, though we’re hoping to have code before then – but I did spend far too much of my week off playing the console version (I’m sorry, I just fancied getting a different sort of RSI on top of the one I already have from my mouse and keyboard), thus have a very good sense of the game itself if not its technical aspects and improvements on PC. So, if you must, consider this not a Wot I Think, but an extended preview offering some idea of what to expect in a few weeks.
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By Alec Meer on October 19th, 2011.
I’m so sorry. There’s going to be a proper scandal about that. GamesIndustry.biz or Gamasutra or someone will probably run an expose about the awful corruption at RPS. Last week, I brazenly claimed, to your face, that this would be the last Batman: Arkham City trailer we’d post before the pointlessly-delayed PC release next month.
I LIED TO YOU.
Because here’s the first proper PC footage of Arkham City.
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By Jim Rossignol on October 18th, 2011.
The nebulous “November” date for Batman on PC has been confirmed for the UK as the 18th, and VG247 note that Amazon has the US one date (predictably) for the 15th. The PC version is going to support 3D, DX11, and a bunch of the other in-vogue technologies, making it one of this years most graphical games, or something.
Reception of the Batman on the console boxes has been uniforming rapturous, so it’s probably worth the wait for a definitive PC version. Or not. Depending on the tightness of your Bat-fetish. Alec pointed out that the last trailer was here, but expect a heaving torrent of game footage soon, as the game hits other, lesser machines on Friday.
By Alec Meer on October 14th, 2011.
Well, maybe. Suppose it depends on whether they squeak out any particularly tasty DLC. With the game due for release on the unantialiased darklands of console next week and currently drawing huge review scores – but sadly delayed on PC – its constant torrent of promotional videos is now capped off by this launch-ish trailer. It’s very dramatic! It implies Batman facing his darkest challenge since all the other dark challenges he’s faced and will no doubt continue to face! It features some slightly troubling voice acting!
It also looks rather cracking, which makes me only grumpier that we’ll have to wait a few weeks to play it on our faithful game-towers.
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By Alec Meer on October 6th, 2011.
The seemingly endless drip-feed of character announcements for Batman: Arkham City is starting to get on my wick. Yes, we know there will be supervillains in the game. Can we not just play it now? Please? Also in there, Mr Marketing has slowly told us, are a raft of playable Bat-Chums, including Batman’s diminutive protege Robin, who’s been redesigned as a sort of scrappy thug. Why would anyone want to play as Robin instead of Batman? I mean, Robin. But you can see the speedy wee fellow in action below.
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By Adam Smith on September 26th, 2011.
Arkham City is going to be packed full of villains but the place wouldn’t be complete without the Joker. We knew he was going to be there, of course, but this trailer tells us a little bit more about what he’ll be doing. Referring to deadly plans while holding up a twisted carnival mirror to Batman’s unsmiling granite face and cackling like Luke Skywalker’s demented uncle, that’s what he’ll be doing. Nothing much new then, although he is looking more horrible than ever and hopefully now he’s not pulling all the strings (unless he is), he’ll be more chaotic and frightening. Just when I’m feeling extremely happy at the idea of beating up goons and twirling my cape in their faces, the trailer ends with a release date. It’s not the right one though.
By John Walker on September 20th, 2011.
Sigh, the disease is spreading. Batman: Arkham City on PC, formerly set to be released alongside the consoles, has been pushed back a month. The 360 and PS3 versions of Warner’s game are still coming out on the 21st October, but our version has been given the ambiguous and extremely unhelpful date of “November”. Absolutely no reason is given, so we’ve contacted Warner to find out what’s up.
Meanwhile, four new colourful screenshots don’t exactly make us feel much better about it. They’re below.
