No spoilers: Arkham City

[trinityvixen]

I am roughly three hours of game play into Batman: Arkham City (which you shouldn't read as me actually getting far, since I'm reeeeally bad at video games), and I have some thoughts.

-I wish I could play as Bruce Wayne. But Bruce Wayne doing Batman-esque things. You get to start the game as Bruce. (This is not a spoiler as it is literally the first

Comments

[fairest]

WHEN WILL OUR COPY ARRIVE. I WANT TO PLAY IN THE ALLCAPS-EST WAY.

[trinityvixen]

Like you don't have enough things to be doing as is, missy? I just read your post and my overwhelming impression is that I am a homebound shut-in and totally slacking since you seem to be able to do everything and medical school and WHOA. Seriously, you can do ALL THE THINGS and get the video games in, too. That's just unfair!

Arkham City is fun, though. You know you'll lose a lot of time to it, time you shouldn't, by any rights, have.

[edgehopper]

I spent pretty much all of Saturday night and Sunday on it...supposedly I'm getting close to the end of the main story, I think.

Some brilliant person in Gotham got the idea to wall of a section of the city, stick all of their criminals in it (in a universe with over a dozen supervillains as well!), wall it off with hundred foot high steel walls and military helicopters patrolling the border, put Dr. Strange in charge of security, and othwise let the criminal run wild inside of it. This walled off prison section of town is "Arkham City." That enough Gothamites supported this plan to make it happen proves that Gotham has the stupidest citizenry of any nation in any place, fictional or historical, and I'm shocked they haven't just sold the entire city to Nigerian spammers at this point.

[trinityvixen]

I mean, they continue to live in a city where there are not only supervillains, there are a plethora of supervillains, all of whom are not only disruptive but violently so. I'd say "stupidest citizenry" is probably a given. At least in Metropolis, you know Superman will rebuild the stuff he breaks, or that he could. I just didn't know they were this desperately dumb.

All the snark aside, the game delivers this news extremely disjointedly by showing Bruce Wayne being dragged off. First of all, stupid citizens or no, you cannot kidnap a billionaire and declare him insane for participating in politics. (Would that you could with some people...) There is no way in hell this Strange person wouldn't have, like, the federal government shut down his experiment in the first place, but kidnapping prominent citizens and journalists and locking them up in a place that makes Gitmo look like sunny Florida? Nuh-uh. Never happen. It might if it were just the journalists, but not Bruce Wayne. Would NEVER happen. But it does happen and I'm sitting

[jethrien]

According to the tie-in comics, Strange brainwashed the mayor and convinced him to let Strange's hired thugs outrank the police. And it's not like anyone ever pays any attention outside of Gotham to what happens in Gotham anyway.

[trinityvixen]

Catwoman has the ability to hang from above if the ceiling is a grated one. Meaning she crawls around, upside-down, with her tushie hanging out as is. Was the walk really necessary? You be the judge.

In all seriousness, it's a complete failure of the game designers to know how women tend to walk, sexy or otherwise. I really do have to wonder if that's what the mostly male game designer demographic of the population think women walk like normally or if they don't give a flying fuck and are writing code to get their jollies. Either way, ick.

[moonlightalice]

This game approaches the rape-yness level of A Song of Ice and Fire. It's really upsetting to me and I don't think I'm going to bother playing it.

Also I have no idea what's going on or why...

[trinityvixen]

The real problem is that there are too many things to do. I'm trying to track down Mr. Freeze, but payphones keep ringing all over the goddamn place and I have to answer and then do an errand to track down Zsaz. It's maddening.

[wellgull]

I dunno, I think I'm going to disagree on the Catwoman-sexy thing. a) There's such a thing as trying too hard, and b) never promise crazy a baby.

[trinityvixen]

A) She's only trying too hard in this game (Catwoman in Batman Returns was pretty sexy while making it clear she's fucking nuts) and B) She doesn't want a baby, despite her attempt to breastfeed villains as she fights them (given her couture, I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet).