Batman: Arkham Asylum

[Tuffty]

Those people are quite frankly idiots as the combat system in AA is perhaps the most fluid battle system I've played, that at times you forget there's animations involved and it's all one effortless combo. And it's anything but simple when you aim for getting 3 stars in the combat challenges. Rocksteady needs to avoid listening to these fools and just keep doing what they're doing. If anything, I'd say the boss battles could be a little more interesting, but guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Catwoman seems to suggest there could be co-op? That would be pretty good if maybe it was like SC: Conviction, where you have a single player that's focused on Batman and co-op side missions to tackle as well.

[pikapikapika]

Yeah!! even though I can't pass the hardest fighting challenges for the life of me I still want it to remain the same!
Plus if I had to learn a whole new system, that would suck

[thatonezombie]

What if the Catwoman stuff isn't co-op but rather a 2nd playable character in the single player in the same way MGS 2 did except if that happens, I hope its a 50/50 split 

[coachie]

Some new tidbits I found

- all gadgets from the first game are available from the beginning
- there will be more puzzle's
- Batman can interrogate some of the prisoners

and storywise

- Two-Face wants to execute Catwoman!!! (to gain respect among his fellow prisoners)

[Tuffty]

Oh snap! Man, with those little tidbits of info sound amazing. Batman interrogation, gotta like the sound of that. Can we do it like in The Dark Knight and smash their heads against a window? Where did you get the info coachie?

*EDIT*

Nevermind! Found the source, as well as a few more tidbits here

When's this out? Next August?! 

What if the Catwoman stuff isn't co-op but rather a 2nd playable character in the single player in the same way MGS 2 did except if that happens, I hope its a 50/50 split 

First thought that comes to mind would be something like RE5, where you have an AI partner accompanying you, or have a friend jump in. Except, that's fine for RE5, where the game's almost tackled into levels, or missions. Arkham Asylum had no such clear cut between acts, and I don't expect the new one to do the same otherwise it could be a bit of an atmosphere killer. So if that structure's kept the same, I wonder how you would get a friend to join in.

That's the only reason why I still think there will be a seperate co-op section if that's the case.

[pikapikapika]

I was playing The Punisher on Xbox recently, and you could interrogate everyone, that was a cool feature

Where did you get the info coachie?

I'm totally picturing that interrogation scene from TDK with Coachie (Joker) and Tuffty (Batman) right there

[A1]

Batman Arkham Asylum Easter Egg - Arkham City Teaser

[coachie]

^
Hey, that's cool.
I always had the suspicion there was more to this area, but I never tried blowing up the walls.

Where did you get the info coachie?

I only had a german source and was too lazy to search for an english one

Thanks for the link, they mention more stuff and more detailed than in my source.

I'm totally picturing that interrogation scene from TDK with Coachie (Joker) and Tuffty (Batman) right there

LOL Pika
at least picture me as Harley and not the old, ugly Jokster   


Autumn 2011 is a long time to wait, but they will put the time to good use and bring us an excellent sequel!

[pikapikapika]

LOL Pika
at least picture me as Harley and not the old, ugly Jokster   

That sits better in my mind too, you'd be a cute Harley! 

(I only said Joker because of the scene in the movie <3)

[Tuffty]

[coachie]

Don't know if these are for real, but they're supposed to be AC screenshots

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53510290@N05/

[Tuffty]

^ Seems they've been taken down. There are some scans here

Oh my, Harley Quinn!

[A1]

OMG 

[coachie]

^ Seems they've been taken down. There are some scans here

Oh my, Harley Quinn!

Shoot
But the pics are basically the same as in your link, only a few different.

And yeah Harley 

[Tuffty]

Some leaked details about what happens early in the game as well as a few gameplay improvements. Obviously some early spoilers, but I found it not too bad. Having said that, I don't think I want to hear anymore about the story til I actually play it...a year from now  :

- Arkham City is four or five times larger than Arkham Asylum.
- The game starts by being briefed by Alfred, he explains the Two-Face vs Catwoman situation and you start heading to the area where the two are located.
- Batman is now much more agile, he is now able to plunge into a dive mid glide to accelerate flight.
- Two-Face has a gang roaming Arkham City, you will find them wearing face masks replicating their boss'.
- Criminals who aren't connected with any super villains roam the street.
- Story suggests that Professor Strange has been kidnapping Gotham citizens who are opposed to Arkham City.
- One and half years after the original game.
- Use new detective mode to discover a thugs super villain boss. This will be used to find The Riddlers men.
- The Riddler is in Arkham City, they hint you are almost certain to come face to face with him.
- Jack Ryder has been put into Arkham City due to him becoming to close to the truth on the city while working on an expose. Rocksteady were hesitant to reveal what Ryder had uncovered.
- Your first meeting with Two-Face is early on in the game. You are greeted with him displaying Catwoman tied up side down to a baying crowd of criminals. His two conflicting personalities being voiced out loud.
- Two-Face decides Catwoman's fate with the iconic coin toss. She gets lucky this time.
- The first confrontation with Two-Face results in Batman getting shot in the chest only for Catwoman to slip out of her chains and hit Two-Face into the acid she was about to be chucked into. A flirtatious conversation is then held between Catwoman and Batman only to be interrupted by a smiley face sniper dot rolling up Catwoman's suit. The shot is fired and misses her by a whisker.
- Your first detective mode experience is finding the bullet hole on the floor and figuring out its trajectory.
- Trajectory reveals the location of the shot. A bell tower housed by the Joker.
- Joker has a potentially fatal desease.
- Calendar Man is confirmed.
- The date and time effect your interaction with Calendar Man, set your console of PC's time a month ahead from last and you will receive a completely different conversation.
- Batman's launcher has received an upgrade, you can now stop at anytime instead of being forced to the end every time.
- You are pitted against a lot more thugs at once compared to the original game.
- Increased amount of combat animations.
- Phone booths ring only for thugs to stand by it, afraid to answer. Rumours going round suggest anyone that answers these calls end up dead.
- The mysterious caller ends up being Victor Zsasz, this starts one of many side quests in the game.
- To start the side quest you must follow a number of ringing phone boxes only to greeted with him at the final one.
- Co-Op seems to be hinted. Catwoman has very similar combat techniques to Batman when in game.
- Rocksteady suggest Crime Alley will make an appearance.
- Rocksteady insist that the only confirmed villains so far are the ones you have seen.

[Tuffty]

Some new screens:





I got every star for the combat challenges Now for the last predator mission, which is really tough to get all 3 stars for. Can't work out how to engineer a scenario where I can drag away 3 guys over a railing.

[Tuffty]

I got my issue of Games tm recently which has Arkham City as the main feature:



Some really interesting facts which you can take out of it:

“When we started out on Arkham Asylum, our two real touchstones were to make a game that was as authentic as possible, and also a game that was great fun to, and to combine these two things. And out priorities are the same for Arkham City”

“Every decision we make here is based around Batman, and what Batman would do in the situation: does the game totally reflect who Batman is? Also, coming in to Arkham City, we wanted to make the same step up that we made with Arkham Asylum. We wanted to challenge ourselves. Internally, we wanted to make that same step up again, and the big thing we wanted improve really was this wish-fulfillment of being Batman on the streets of Gotham. How does it feel to glide through the streets of Gotham, taking on supervillains? That’s the thing that got us excited.”

“As a studio we’re not really driven by doing technology for the sake of it. We are a gameplay studio, so our first goal was always to ask how we can release a better Batman game. It’s always about our desire to make a better Batman experience.”

Sefton Hill on vehicles
“This is a funny one. There aren’t any playable vehicles in the game because what we’ve really focused on is Batman himself. We see him as the ultimate vehicles, if you like. Our drive has been to focus on Batman’s ability to get around. Obviously, you’re now in a much more expansive play area than you were in the first game, so a part of our development has been expanding Batman’s navigational abilities, adding different ways to glide around, new ways to use the grapple-boost from the top of buildings. That’s been a massive part of development, to give wish-fulfillment of feeling what it’s like to be Batman inside the district of Gotham City. Our focus was to expand Batman as a character rather than give you lots of different vehicles to go in.”

Sefton Hill on combat
“We’re not trying to completely revise the system because we had a lot of positive feedback from people who played the first game, and something that we wanted to do was create a system that was easy for people to get into but still had that depth to it. We wanted to expand and build upon that system, and make the second iteration of Freeflow rather than make a complete new combat system. So it will definitely be building on the sold structure that’s already there.”

“We’re adding a whole load of new moves for Batman. We have beatdown, which is the ability to do a quick, focussed attack on an enemy without knocking him down; we have environment counters where you can smash enemies into walls; we have combo counters where enemies can attack multiple times in one movie, multiple enemies can attack at once and you can take them down; you can do aerial attacks where you flip up off enemies into other enemies; you can do projectile counters where you parry thrown objects back at enemies. So we’re really expanding the number of moves that the player can do, but still building on the core system of ‘strike, counter, stun, evade’ that we had in the first game. As well as that, we’re also allowing the player to combo in all their gadgets. Something we didn't do completely in the first game was to totally integrate the different gadgets that you have into the Freeflow system.”

Sefton Hill on factions
“The different criminal factions are really interesting. When all of these people escaped from Arkham Asylum, you would think that it would leave to chaos, but what actually happened was that order formed as the Joker managed to recruit a number of inmates to follow him. It’s the same with Two Face and other characters within Arkham City. So the way it will work primarily is the that all these people will be working to support their own boss and their own criminal supervillain that leads them. But the player’s actions in the main story events will affect that. You’ll definitely see Batman and the player’s actions really affect Arkham City, and the structure and hierarchy of the gangs. That;s something that we though was really important.”

Sefton Hill on side-quests
“One of the key things we wanted to do more of was the idea of taking in optional side-stories as you play through the game. That;s a big new element of Arkham City, that while you do have the main narrative you also have these optional side-quests which feature different villains who have been locked up inside Arkham City. We tell their story, how they got there and how Batman interacts with the. How different people - for example Zsasz - how would he react when locked up here, and how Batman would interact with him? You can jump into those quests if you want to find out more about the world, as well as earn extra XP and upgrade rewards when doing so.”

Sefton Hill on Villains
“We’re really spoilt. We’re the cliched kid in the candy shop because there are so many great villains to choose from. But the story and characters are so important to us, that instead of picking villains we want to put in simply because we like them, we’re asking ourselves what is the best and most interesting story we can tell, and we’re picking villains who can challenge Batman and give the best dramatic beats for that story. It’s a great position to be in because we’ve got such a great Rogues’ Gallery, and that’s why we’re no introducing our own characters. Once we’d got a story and framework in place, we look at which villains can challenge Batman based around that story.”

“We are making the game for Batman fans, but also as a great introduction to Batman for those people who aren’t familiar with every aspect of the universe. We always provide the bios for every character and, when we introduce them, we always make sure that the player understands who they are, what motivates and differentiates them. That’s something that we’re always very mindful of, and we do a lot of testing just in case. We’re not just throwing a lot of faces at the player without them understanding who they are. They motivation behind these characters is so important to is that we’ll always spend a lot of time focusing on those elements. We’re not just trying to squeeze as many characters as we can into the game; we’re picking the ones that will tell the best story. Each of those characters will be there for a reason.”

Sefton Hill on boss battles
“Boss battles were interesting in Arkham Asylum. They were started quite late in development, so the first thing we wanted to do for Arkham City was to start them really early in production. Our focus this time is that each of these villains is going to try and challenge Batman in the way that they’re strongest. Batman is a great all-rounder, but these people are going to use what it is that makes them special, and use those abilities to take Batman down. So the main thing in terms of how we’re going to develop these, in terms of production, is that we’re spending a much greater proportion of our time on them. We’ve got some great boss fights lined up and some really surprising ones too.”

“Since everyone's inside Arkham City is technically already incarcerated, Batman can’t really arrest people and lock them up. So that creates an interesting dynamic between Batman and the villains. There are some friendly people there that you’ll have to help, such as the triage group that;s in there offering medical support to people, but at the same time there are also people in there who have their own agenda, and there are some fragile alliances that Batman will have to form in order to get through the night and survive. There will be some people in there whose objectives might temporarily line up with those of Batman,, so I think there’s an interesting dynamic there.”

Sefton Hill on Robin
“Yeah, I think you definitely can. There’s a checkered past for him, but I really feel that some of the latest iterations of the character in the comic book universe are really interesting and exciting. I don’t really want to say much more than that, but I definitely feel that, if ind right, he can be a fascinating character.”

Sefton Hill on Batman
“You never saw Bruce Wayne himself in the first game but I do feel that we still touched on his character, and that’s also something we’d like to develop for Arkham City, it’s something we’d like to develop for Arkham City. It’s really important to us that we let the player feel the drive, motivation and origins of what makes Batman who he is. For us, that’s what Bruce Wayne needs. It’s not about being this unstoppable fighting machine; it’s about understanding why he’s doing this, and what his limits are. There are obviously a lot of things we did in the first game to show that psychological aspect of Batman, and show who this man behind the mask is. That;s something that we’ll continue in the game because it’s something that really interests us. It differentiates Batman as a character.”

Source: http://arkhamcity.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=923

I think they can do Robin justice, definately. Certainly looking forward to see how the boss battles turn out.

Also, I got 100% complete on Arkham Asylum. Golds for combat and predator missions. Only need to complete it on hard for all the achievements

[coachie]

No vehicles is a defenite plus imho, but I'm still a bit concerned about the new combat system.
Still I will get this game, no matter what

[Tuffty]

Apparently there's new footage shown at the Spike Video Game Awards this weekend, but here's a teaser trailer:

[Tuffty]

Extended trailer! Looks amazing!

VGA 10: Exclusive Hugo Strange Reveal Trailer HD - Batman: Arkham City