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Batman: Arkham Asylum wasn’t simply the best Batman game ever made, it was one of the best games of this generation — a story-driven thriller which put Batman through hell as he attempted to survive one long night trapped in an asylum teeming with angry villains. Being confined to a single, isolated location meant the game had control, setting the pace of the story and directing you through it on its own terms.
   

Arkham City doesn’t have that structure. The eerie isolation of the asylum has been replaced with a large, open section of Gotham City, one that’s fun to explore but immediately releases any tension the story attempts to build up. While the narrative opens and closes wonderfully — the most directed moments of the game — the entire middle section lacks any sort of drive or focus because it has to adapt itself to the player’s pace. A moment in the narrative in which Batman races to find an antidote for a poison, for example, allows you to wander around the city for a few hours before continuing on.
   

The game tries to compensate for the lack of structure by throwing everything it has at you, which ends up making the plot feel that much more scattershot. Every five minutes, a well-known character shows up either to threaten or help out Batman, only to vanish for the rest of the game. Two-Face pops up at the beginning, gets beaten up, then disappears without having had any bearing on the plot. Halfway through the game, Robin flies in from nowhere for a single scene before Batman sends him off, never to be seen again. A good chunk of the main campaign is just busywork and loose plot threads; a parade of disconnected moments that exist to kill time between the exciting intro and finale.
   

There are two types of games fighting for dominance here: the story-driven campaign and the massive, open world chock full of secrets and side stories to complete.
   

The latter one wins out. Exploring Arkham City is far more satisfying than following the lurching plot; it’s a city you can spend dozens of hours getting lost in. There are over 400 Riddler challenges to beat — everything from solving puzzles in the environment to pulling off certain moves during fights — and a bunch of side quests to take on, most of which are more satisfying than the main campaign. The tension of Arkham Asylum returns when Batman must frantically race between phones to trace calls from a demented serial killer, or survive a strange psychedelic dream brought on by hallucinogens from demented villain The Mad Hatter.
   

There was a sublime art to the minimalism of Arkham Asylum that is lost in Arkham City. It’s still a great game — one that offers a truly massive amount of content in an unbelievably detailed world — but it lacks the meticulous pacing and structure which made its predecessor a true masterpiece.

Bits & Bytes

Just Cause — the over-the-top action franchise which focuses on unbridled destruction and actually lets you surf atop planes — will be returning in 2012 with (hopefully) an even more insane third instalment.

Upcoming Releases

Nov. 8 — Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (PS3, 360, PC); L.A. Noire (PC).
   

Mel Stefaniuk is a writer who can tell the difference between Mario and Sonic.