Which is why it was rather hilarious to find myself getting more excited when Jax Dinn, a publicist and our chaperone for the Warner Bros tour, brought us through to their private studio for a played demonstration of the new features for Batman: Arkham City. But it's really hard not to be – Jax has a natural stage presence and even if he was putting on a show with his teeming excitement, it had its effect and got you smiling.
The show started off by accenting just how huge and how detailed Arkham City is, which is a big departure from Arkham Island. Jax repeated some important words about the original game, such as how claustrophobia morphed in the sequel into the open world sandbox. He kept pointing out the tinier details of the cluttered and dirty streets, with the signs of use and decay such as fire drums used for warmth or torn-apart cars. In our brief tour very little of the visual aesthetic was repeated, breathing a huge amount of life and variety in the scenery, both wide and small.
Batman gets around much faster this time, not only relying on his grapple gun but also having a dive/glide function, where glide gets you further but you need the momentum that the dive gives you. Batman swooped around the city a bit, showing off a lot of the colorful scenery, until landing on a rooftop and taking a quick look around with Detective Vision, new and improved. Jax said that they heard the complaint that there was no reason to turn the mode off, and have adapted to it.
The outlines of buildings are much harder to see in Detective Vision, meaning that traversing around is much more difficult and can lead to bumping into walls, and while it does offer fantastic benefits – such as threat assesment by color-coding weapons and Ballistic Trajectory for your crime-solving – would seriously handicap you in most exploration and some combat scenarios.
Sitting on the building, Rebecca – a Rocksteady publicist who was playing the game while Jax talked – flicked Detective Vision on, and saw a handful of thugs standing on the nearby roof. Jax explained that they had upgraded things so more combat options were available, and she demonstrated by zip-lining up to the roof and, in the same command, smashing a thug's head into the wall Batman dangled from. While in melee with the thugs, she even used the grapple to bring a thug in close for a quick takedown.
On the roof, the command showed up on screen as “Take a Break”, just as Batman walked over to a pair of kittens drinking milk from a saucer. Jax joked saying that Batman was not above taking some time off, and that he was quite fond of felines, just as the camera panned and Catwoman appeared. Exchanging no dialog and nothing other than a glance, Batman walked off and leapt from the roof, leaving the camera hovering over Catwoman.
What I love about this is that 'playable Catwoman' is that it isn't like the promise of playable Zero in Mega Man X3, where you are fitted with a thousand qualifications such as how you can't use him in boss fights, and only once per level, and if he dies you lose him permanently. Catwoman is playable in that she's a comparison to Batman. She can traverse the city, finish her own missions, rough up thugs, search for collectibles, and basically do whatever you'd think Catwoman could do.
Catwoman has a wholly different skillset from Batman for movement. Batman has his cape for the dive/glide powers, but Catwoman has her whip. This would normally make her traversing difficult, but instead they increased the speed at which she scales buildings, giving her handholds that she hops to swiftly with the tap of RB, like...well, a cat.
Jax explained that while Batman is trying to enforce some stability and shut down the madness going on in Arkham City, Catwoman is more than happy to use the situation to her advantage, and – in the brief demo playable – Catwoman teamed up with Poison Ivy, working to find a special plant.
Catwoman doesn't have Batman's gadgets or cape, which limited her options, but instead she has the ability to walk on ceilings. This was showcased in a pretty terrific encased room where, instead of stalking around avoiding gun-toting thugs Batman style, Catwoman slinked around knocking out guards and pickpocketing them to get access to a later room where her prize was held. Her entire schema has subtle tones of thief overlayed the normal Batman-centric objectives the rest of the game had, and it was a nice change of pace.
She also has her own altered sight, Thief Vision, which outlines items worth stealing like keycards or jewelry, secondary avenues like vents, and vaguely outlines enemies. With no gadgets aside from her whip, she's completely different from Batman in feel and thematics – he can read what weaponry an enemy is carrying, and he has Batarangs, which means he can be much more frontal-assault to the common thug. Catwoman has no idea if that baddie has a gun or just a piece of wood, so she thrives on climbing on the ceiling, silent takedowns, or just pickpocketing and taking off before anyone in the studio knows what the hell happened.
While Rebecca played Catwoman on the ceiling, stalking between, Jax kept narrating the events, and he explained that none of the guards were operating on a pre-set path. Everything was dynamic – which is why it was all the funnier seeing Jax tense and giddy when Rebecca made a dangerous move and took out two guards at once.
The demo ended on a cliffhanger, when Catwoman opened a briefcase that glowed like it belonged to Marsellus Wallace, and it cut before it was revealed, switching quickly to a confrontation between Batman and The Penguin. This showed off some of the story segments, though – almost painfully – the name of someone The Penguin had captured was omitted. If that annoys you, imagine how I felt hearing it censored out, Dethklok Metalocalypse style.
The Batman combat became the center focus then, with Batman now fighting over twenty thugs simultaneously. And while it works to have him take out massive troops of enemies simultaneously, even mixing in the grappling hook for long-range pull-ins, it seems to be a lot swifter than it used to, almost irritatingly so. I never got to that mission in my time with the game, so take this with a grain of salt, but the visceral tightness of Arkham Asylum's combat seemed to be trying to take on too much at once, sending Bats from one thug to another at a blinding speed.
After that, the demo wrapped up and we were let out, and I couldn't think of any questions other than, “Why isn't it October?” The promises of bigger and better bosses and an entirely different character under the control of Catwoman in the sandbox of Arkham City is everything I wanted in a Batman game. Arkham City is aimed at Xbox 360, PS3, and eventually the upcoming Wii-U.
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