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

(75th Review!) We’re back in the city that raised me. Batman Arkham City was a landmark game in my teen years and one I returned to on a yearly basis for all of high school. A decade has passed since my last playthrough and Arkham City still feels just as special as it did all those years ago. Playing this after an extensive playthrough of Arkham Asylum has made me really appreciate just how many little changes went into improving this sequel. The combat is far more consistent with combos rarely being broken by random happenstance. The addition of way more special moves and way more variance coming from the greater number of enemy types eliminates the tedium that the original game occasionally had. This goes extra for the Predator sections which had a huge glow up. The story is of course amazing and successfully tells an engaging narrative while also bringing in a significant amount of Batman’s villains (with even more being included through side missions). I’ve often found Hugo Strange to be one of the more underrated villains so seeing him play such a significant role here was awesome. This was also my first time completing the entire Riddler side mission and while I feared the incredibly lengthy mission would get tedious I was actually surprised with how much fun it ended up being. All in all this game is still just as good as when I first played it 14 years ago. Now that I’ve been gaming in my Xbox again I feel like my old tradition of the annual Arkham City playthrough is back.