2.5/5 ★ – LucasOnPS4's review of Batman: Arkham City.

The stealth gamemode is what always kept me coming back to Arkham City, but the campaign gets so fucking boring after just a few hours. I guess it has a decent setup where the joker was secretly still alive, but it's the same cat and mouse shtick as the last time except scattered throughout an entire city that has no variety in inviroment. When you make a game based on open world where you can go on side missions, the most important thing is to make those side missions identifiable and memorable for unique reasons. When a Nintendo series meant for children can do that correctly, then you have absolutely no excuse. Generally speaking, I like open world games more than linear stories, but sometimes less is more. The claustrophobic feeling that the first game had was perfect for the horror that it was, you can't do that in a giant wide open city where your only excuse for not leaving is because your character doesn't let you and you have to fight like a thousand goons to move from one location to the next. Sure the combat is better than the last time, but I never asked for the entire game to be burried under a giant pile of fight scenes. And when you're as uninterested in completing the game like I am, you still have to get through hours of scavenging that takes more time than the average video game already does. Like seriously, how long is this fucking chase going to last? I'm getting tired of this trickery bullshit that Batman faces with every side villain, just let me have my assasination so we can be over with. Or better yet, give me a skip button so I don't have to sit through 10 minute cutscenes of characters talking! It wouldn't be such a pain in the ass if the game wasn't so repetative tonally. The first game was mostly horror but it had some touching moments where Batman helped innocent people. That kinda happens in this game every... 30 minutes maybe, but for the most part it's just dark and gritty all the way through with no quiet parts to elevate it, and as such it becomes a slog That's the word I'd use to describe Arkham City: A slog Every startup is another lottery bet on how much of your time it can waste before you can give yourself a break