Should You Buy Batman: Arkham City? Yes

Rocksteady’s follow-up to its acclaimed 2009 Batman: Arkham City is a fantastic sequel. It’ll be out soon for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (and on PC this November). Would we say it’s worth your while? We would…

Kirk Hamilton, notorious Batman previewer who finished the game last night: Arkham City is both bigger and deeper than the first game—every aspect of its predecessor has been enhanced and upgraded, and the whole experience is polished to a mirror shine. The voice-acting is outta sight, combat is wilder and more challenging than ever, gadgets are creative and empowering, and the soundtrack kills. And the whole thing is simply huge, with dozens of surprises in store. Play this game. YES

Owen Good, not just an expert on sports games: We seem to be saying yes to every big game, making this autumn’s gut checks a gut punch to the wallet. But Batman: Arkham City has been one of the most desirable games all summer and not even recent choices made by the game’s marketers could spoil that. I played the game for about an hour at Comic-Con; the the free flowing combat carried forward from Arkham Asylum is can’t put-it-down seductive and setting it in an open world is an excellent evolution. My gut says yes. YES

Evan Narcisse, the new guy: From the very beginning, you get the sense that Rocksteady’s understanding of how to deliver a Batman experience has deepened and matured. All the accessibility of the first game’s systems—combat, puzzles, gadgets, locomotion—remains, but with more complexity for veteran players. Being open-world makes it a bigger, richer structure and Arkham City uses more of the Bat-mythos in a more fully realized way. Arkham City represents everything that’s good about sequels and that’s why you should buy it. YES

Stephen Totilo, who preferred Superman as a kid: A friend of mine put it well when he said it’s like a Batman game set in a world as open and rich as the recent Assassin Creeds. YES

Luke Plunkett, a tough man to please: Get it. Then get it again, in case the first copy breaks. Arkham Asylum suddenly feels like a tech demo for this game, City’s sandbox scale and open-ended mission structure fitting Batman’s stealth-then-face-punching approach perfectly. You won’t feel like you’re pretending to be Batman. You’ll feel like you’re Batman. YES

No surprise here. Those of us who have played the game think it is fantastic. We’ll have a full review of Batman: Arkham City for you next week. A few days prior to the game’s initial release on Tuesday the 18th, we’re saying: get it…. and, if you want to play as Catwoman, get it new.

You can contact Stephen Totilo, the author of this post, at [email protected]. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.