Looking Back at Arkham City...COMBAT

[batdomination]

@007JediKnight: can you please stop making so many posts just praising the batman. We all think this is a great game, and realize that batman is intelligent and can fight extremely well. But yabab was saying there are some people who can fight batman, and he is saying they should add a new system to fight experienced fighters so the fighting is more diverse. I suggested making it like a boxing match, zoom in on the fight and make it like fight night, where you fight and have it based on reflexes and punches, and dogdes and weaving in and out. When you fought a thug that was by himself, all you had to do was punch him 3 times, it was way too easy. And he was saying you usually fought people when it was wide open. You didnt ever really have a cramped fighting area, and if you did, there was usually only 2 or 3 bad guys. Please tell me you understand now 007.

And how would adding more of this stuff make it too hard? I think it would make it more fun so the fighting isnt always the same. I think it would be fun if they make certain fighters be experienced like batman and they have you and him duking it out until you are so low on health that you have to dodge a lot, and make countering them to the point where you have to press it at the exact second, that way it would make countering harder, and give you a reason to use the dodging and weaving more. You could also throw batarangs at them to throw them off. I think that would be awesome. They could make the enemies have a certain attribute so you know that they are able to fight you one on one.

[batfan08]

There is one thing about combat that has agitated me in both Arkham Asylum and Arkham City: the human body. There needs to be blood. I'm not talking about profuse amounts, but the blood in these two games, or lack thereof, feels like it's lacking in authenticity. When a highly trained fighter like Batman connects with one of these guys, I'm more appalled by how they can make it without any bloodshed.

When he connects with a jaw, I expect to see a few teeth knocked out; when a guy is getting up after being knocked to the ground, I want to see him spit up a little bit of blood. Actually, the physical aspect of combat is one of the worst parts of the games, in my opinion. The physics team, or whoever is responsible for this stuff, really needs to step it up in future installments. When a punch connects with a side, I don't want it to look like Batman is punching a man made of bricks, I want impact, I want to see that hit rippling through the man's side, just as it would if Batman hit an actual human being.

[batdomination]

@batfan08: the lack of blood doesnt really bother me, but i will admit, sometimes when batman breaks a guys arm, the movement of the arm doesnt really look like it is being broken, it looks a little unrealistic. But thats just a minor gripe.

[Proteus500]

[*]What you liked
-Batman's moves look and sound stylish and powerful.
-He has a large set of moves with most or all being useful. In some games, balance is a little poor such that you can just abuse one or two moves to get through most fights. This game does a pretty good job of making most of the moves useful.
-Combat is very smooth and Batman responds very quickly to the inputs you give him.
-Combat is easy to pick up, but there is some good depth in which skill is rewarded.
-His moves include both strikes and grabs, which helps with the immersion that Batman is a master of many forms of martial arts.
-Different enemies require different moves to avoid and hit them (e.g. armored thugs/guards, electric-baton yielding thugs. This adds good variety to the combat.
-The game does a pretty good job of targetting the correct opponent. For example, if a regular thug and an armored thug are standing right next to each other, if you press "strike" while being a good distance away from them, you will target the nonarmored thug.
-Very nice variety of bosses to fight.
-Not directly combat related, but I like having the leaderboards for the combat and predator challenges.

[*]What you think improved
-More stylish and useful moves added since Arkham Asylum. Beatdown was a nice addition.
-For the most part, combat felt relatively similar to Arkham Asylum, but this not a bad thing as combat has been done very well in both games.

[*]What your favourite part of combat was
-Batman has many stylish and damaging moves which are all useful and the enemy has nice variety that requires you to use different moves to attack or avoid them.

[*]What you didn't like
-The combat challenge maps felt too similar to one another. Most of them just contained regular thugs. They didn't have the variety (electrocuting floors, nonbreakable guns, an endless survival mode that progressively became more difficult) that Arkham Asylum did. I know the endless survival map Iceberg Lounge is available as a separate dlc, but not having it as a default challenge map seemed like a step back.
-This seems to be a bug, but if you use Disarm and Destroy AND there is a knife/broken glass/sword-yielding enemy near you that you were NOT targetting, it will cause them to instantaneously start attacking you and the D&D move doesn't come out. Because the attack comes so unexpectantly, you get hit which is a little frustrating.
-Playing as Robin during combat has some flaws. When doing his special Throw (X+O), he will sometimes grab empty air and spin and throw nothing. When doing a beatdown, it is possible for stun baton wielders to target Robin from off screen and instantaneously attack and hit him. When riding on the back of a Titan, like in Funhouse Brawl Extreme, Robin is still vulnerable and can be hit by another Titan's attack.
-In the Iceberg Lounge endless survival map, weapons that drop on the floor are never removed, but weapons keep falling from above onto the floor. Eventually, there is so much "stuff/junk" on the floor, that the cpu (I play on the PS3) can no longer maintain combat at normal speed. The game slows down tremendously. At around 70 million pts the speed of the game had dropped down to about 1/4 of normal speed, and I eventually stopped playing because the slowdown made gameplay a pain. Another flaw of combat on the Iceberg Lounge map is combat should become more and more difficult over time, but this map never reaches any high level of difficulty and you can go on indefinitely.
-Considering Dr. Hugo Strange is supposed to be trained to peak human ability similar to Batman, there should have been some kind of combat with him. It was anticlimactic for him to basically be pushed around by Batman once you reached him.
-The attack of stun baton wielders, which is to instantaneously shoot across the room, seemed very goofy and "unrealistic" compared to all the other attacks during combat.

[*]What could be improved
-Batman has too many moves where he is completely invulnerable (e.g. redirect, special combo takedown, Batswarm, etc.). This reduces the feeling of risk and immersion, that Batman is human and that his life is in danger when he takes on a group of thugs.
-The combat challenge requirements are too low. For most of them, I achieved 3 medals on my first attempt, and I am probably an average gamer. So these for the most part didn't feel like challenges at all. I recommend increasing the score requirements.
-The camera is pretty good for the most part. Sometimes though near walls, the camera zooms in too much so that you can't see that someone is about to hit you.
-Incorporate a timer into the combat challenge maps which affects bonus points only. The time in which you complete the challenge would not be necessary to triple medal it. However, incorporate it so that you can only achieve really high scores by BOTH using as many of Batman's different moves during combat AND by being efficient and ko'ing everyone in a short period of time.
-On harder difficulty levels, have Batman take more damage. Although I could easily die in predator situations when multiple armed thugs started firing at me, in combat situations Batman took so little damage that I almost never died during combat.
-A combat challenge map where you go through each of the bosses (where appropriate).

[*]What new features you would like to see
-A challenge map where you fight the story bosses in sequence.

[*] Any Arkahm Asylum/Arkham City comparisons
I assume this section is not restricted to combat.
-Arkham Asylum's story was more cohesive and better.
-Having the more free roam nature to Arkham City and having a bigger map was a nice improvement over Arkham Asylum.

[007JediKnight]

@007JediKnight: can you please stop making so many posts just praising the batman. We all think this is a great game, and realize that batman is intelligent and can fight extremely well. But yabab was saying there are some people who can fight batman, and he is saying they should add a new system to fight experienced fighters so the fighting is more diverse. I suggested making it like a boxing match, zoom in on the fight and make it like fight night, where you fight and have it based on reflexes and punches, and dogdes and weaving in and out. When you fought a thug that was by himself, all you had to do was punch him 3 times, it was way too easy. And he was saying you usually fought people when it was wide open. You didnt ever really have a cramped fighting area, and if you did, there was usually only 2 or 3 bad guys. Please tell me you understand now 007.

i see your point now. but you also see my point, right? if you wanna have a "cramped" fighting area, just move into a more-"cramped" fighting area.


the difference between Batman Arkham Asylum, and Batman Arkham City, is that in Batman Arkham Asylum, the location took place in a mansion/mansion-grounds/semi-"hospital"-wing/library/greenhouse/a-bunch-of-other-stuff-that-used-to-be-there-(like some factory or something (one of the Arkham cops guarding the "closed-off tunnel"/"abandoned tunnel" was talking about it when talking to Batman for the first time)) and therefore the environments were more "constrained", "confined", and/or "cramped" (like a room of a house, or a hallway, or less "open" areas).

in Arkham City, you were [basically] combating in a portion of the city of Gotham, that's been closed off and walled off to make room for the thugs and vermin of Gotham City, while 'keeping the rest of Gotham City "safe" '. so therefore, you had more wide-open (and/or much wider and/or much-more-open) areas; city streets, rooftops of buildings, courtyards of buildings, open and abandoned subway-stations, and other stuff like that. (like Rocksteady said, the combat [this time around] would take place about 80% outdoors, and 20% indoors). you only went indoors if you really had to go indoors (like, when you went to go to the Steel Mill. or you went to go inside the old GCPD building to find Freeze. or you went into the Church to rescue the Arkham-City doctors and Medical-Team. or you went inside the Solomon Wayne Courthouse to rescue Catwoman. or you went into the Museum to look for Freeze and ended up battling the Penguin's thugs in some small confined areas (like hallways and that "Lobby" with all those display-cases in there that made fighting in it sort of "cramped") and in other more-"wide open" areas, like the "Gladiator Pit" and the room where Freeze's "in Hawaii" display-case was (which was admitedly a bit more cramped than the Gladiator Pit, but still somewhat more wide-open than other rooms in the Museum)).

i don't know what's going on with Arkham 3, (and even if i did, i just hope it's a really awesome Batman game), but, to please all of us, i second your opinion: maybe now that alot of Batman's bad-guys/Rogues-Gallery/thugs have been beaten in this universe (ie. the Arkhamverse) in the first two previous games (ie. Bane, Killer Croc, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, (and yes, the Joker, but Batman also beat him in Arkham City) in Arkham Asylum, and Two-Face, Freeze, Penguin, Solomon Grundy, Ra's Al Ghul, and Clayface, (and like i said previously: Joker) in Arkham City), maybe in the third game we could bring in some Batman-villains that can fight (in a FIST-FIGHT) on equal terms with the Batman (i don't know of many that can do that, other than [(MAYBE)] Ra's Al Ghul (we all know that he's gonna use his Lazarus Pit lol. he's OBSESSED with it!, lol); Killer Croc (he didn't die in Arkham Asylum (ie. referring to the "Batman: Arkham Asylum" game, not the location/place/asylum itself), and like we saw in Arkham City (ie. referring to the game, not the place), he's still alive; Red Claw (a character that i saw in the cartoon "Batman: The Animated Series". i don't know if it's possible, feasible, and/or a good idea, that she exists in this universe (ie. the Arkhamverse) though); Hush (don't know if he can fight [in a fist-fight] on equal-terms with Batman but i know he has a grudge to hold against Bruce Wayne, and so i'm guessing that he's gonna return in the third game); Two-Face (i dunno, maybe he might return in the third game. all we know so far is that he didn't die in the second game. Catwoman didn't kill him. he just went into hiding (at least that's what i'm hearing from the leftover inmates in Arkham City); Man-Bat (he's at least strong-enough to give Bruce-Wayne/Batman some of a challenge, and he can fly also, making/necessitating Batman [have] to invent and/or develop some sort of Jetpack in order to fight him on equal ground (ie. in the air), unless Man-Bat's gonna be flapping for a while in the air, then occasionally come down to a rooftop to breathe and catch his breath, and while [he's] there [on the rooftop] Batman can attack him); Mad-Hatter (i don't think he can fight on equal terms (in a fist-fight) with Batman though. but he does have his mind-control chips in his hats. plus, i'm guessing he's gonna want revenge on Batman [(at least in the third game)] for ruining his hat); Great White Shark and/or Black Mask (maybe none of them can take on Batman [clean/fair-and-square] in a fist-fight -- maybe they can't, maybe they can. i dunno -- but i'm guessing they really are gonna want some revenge [and/or at the very least to take a shot] at Batman; any other ideas, you're more than welcome to reply. (and by "you" i mean "anyone reading this").


also, regarding the "fighting in the dark": i think it's a really interesting idea. and i saw a YouTube video in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTEMl...eature=related that showed an episode of "Batman: The Animated Series" in which Batman (there's a scene in there), in the dark, escapes from the bad-guys holding him hostage. he even attacks and incapacitates Killer Croc (and strings up Harley Quinn like a fish hanging upside-down after you catch it and hang it from a tree-branch to take a photo [of yourself] next to the hanging fish) while in the dark. if memory serves me the episode's name was "Trial", http://dcanimated.wikia.com/wiki/Trial.

when Batman says "who says i'm leaving?" was one of my favorite parts, :-D . (not to mention, when everyone's searching for him in the dark (with only the flame from Two-Face's Zippo-type lighter lighting the way) and Harley unknowingly walks backwards right to where he is, and he puts his arm and hand around her and clasps her mouth and the next time Joker and the other thugs see her she's hanging upside-down with her mouth-gagged and wearing the straight-jacket that was holding Batman captive).

And how would adding more of this stuff make it too hard? I think it would make it more fun so the fighting isnt always the same. I think it would be fun if they make certain fighters be experienced like batman and they have you and him duking it out until you are so low on health that you have to dodge a lot, and make countering them to the point where you have to press it at the exact second, that way it would make countering harder, and give you a reason to use the dodging and weaving more. You could also throw batarangs at them to throw them off. I think that would be awesome. They could make the enemies have a certain attribute so you know that they are able to fight you one on one.

i see your point [there] also.

[yabab]

I realized that I won't have the time to make this extensive, so I'll just point out a couple of things to try and make you picture what I mean: go play the train combat challenge that comes with the Robin DLC. That will give you a slight picture of what I mean: you try to stun one thug, you pretty much stun everyone in front of you. You try and redirect an enemy, you end up aerial attacking someone you just stunned. Place gel on the ground and everyone, because of how tight the room is, ends up on the ground and you're forced to ground & pound thugs even though you haven't pulled off all possible moves to rack up that nice fat bonus at the end of the round.

Another thing is this: let's say you have 14 thugs, divided among three different rooms. These rooms are linear and separated by only one entrance. The first is a corridor, the second is a balcony and the third is the courtyard below. So you have a scheme like this:

CORRIDOR <- WINDOW -> BALCONY <- RAILING -> COURTYARD

So let's say you're engaging 6 enemies in the corridor, all fine and dandy, and let's also assume you're pretty decent at the game, therefore you keep your combo up all the way to the end! Now let's say you want to move into the balcony area and start to raining hell on the 3 enemies in there without losing your combo. Well, you're out of luck - walking, running towards the window, or simply jumping the window and trying to attack the other group will probably make you lose your combo. Same goes if you were in the balcony, just knocked out the three thugs and want to jump down onto the courtyard to finish off the fight by attacking the 5 enemies below, you'd lose the combo.

Want to see a practical example of this, load up Arkham Asylum and try playing the combat challenge map Shock 'n Awe. Thugs will run for the gun rack, forcing you to pursue them - you lose your combo by disengaging and jumping over the railing onto the next platform. Same thing when Harley starts electrifying the platform you're on: you either end the round quickly or lose the combo. It's binary, there's no other possible outcome.

Both the game's level design and/or combat design never fully support this gameplay flow.

[batdomination]

@007: i do understand what you're saying, its just that there werent as many areas that were very tight. I hope they make some more areas cramped when you're fighting, like fighting in a narrow hallway or even on a train. While we are on the subject, i hope they have moving fighting areas. You know what would be awesome, you are on part of train, but thugs try to lose you and disconnect the train carts, and you have to jump to the other train carts while fighting other thugs. It might be tough performing moves work when in tight areas, but Rocksteady could make it work.

@yabab: you said it perfectly, whenever you want to go in a new room, you lose your combo. I think the key could be making access to the other rooms much easier, maybe by making a simple button press, and it would have batman dive or jump through a window into the other room and land right next to the other thugs, and the combo score would pause while you are jumping to keep the score alive. Make the rooms feel connected and able to easily get into the next one flawlessly too. It would be making movement feel just as flawless and flowing as the combat. The environment can be made just as vital as the fighting.

[MRBIG83]

Having recently completed Arkham City on new game plus and achieving 100% completion, but still craving more Batman action to fill the time until the new dlc, I decided to go back to Arkham Asylum.

The first thing I noticed is that Rocksteady really improved the combat in Arkham City. I actually found Arkham Asylum combat hard at first because the targeting was awful, combos broke down very easily, Batman was slow to punch and got hit too easily. What I am saying is that Arkham City combat is so much better.

One concern is now that I have gone back to Arkham City, the combat is far too easy! I'm never happy obviously!

Keep up the good work, looking forward to Arkham 3.

[007JediKnight]

@007: i do understand what you're saying, its just that there werent as many areas that were very tight. I hope they make some more areas cramped when you're fighting, like fighting in a narrow hallway or even on a train. While we are on the subject, i hope they have moving fighting areas. You know what would be awesome, you are on part of train, but thugs try to lose you and disconnect the train carts, and you have to jump to the other train carts while fighting other thugs. It might be tough performing moves work when in tight areas, but Rocksteady could make it work.

i see your point, but i'm sorry, moving fighting-areas are not going to happen in a city. it's just not realistic/a "realistic" situation. (unless, for example: a terrorist [or a Batman-thug (ie. enemy of Batman. or one of the bad-guys from Batman's Rogues-Gallery. you name it :-P )] planted a bomb onboard a subway train, monorail train, etc. and Batman (obviously) needs to stop it. so he hops on board that train. and there are (obviously) henchmen, thugs, and bad-guys waiting for him (since they have to guard the train (and the bomb) from anyone interfering with it, and/or trying to disarm it. and they know Batman's gonna do just that; he's gonna hop onboard that train, and try to stop that bomb [from going off]). and so they try to fight him. and there you go: bad-guys are fighting Batman, while on a moving train/while on a moving vehicle).

likewise, Batman Arkham Asylum and Batman Arkham City both had the perfect balance of cramped, not-so-cramped, and very-cramped areas within their setting. (Arkham Asylum being a island, mansion, mansion grounds, and other stuff that's been converted in [to all be part of] a asylum. and Arkham "City" just being basically, a walled-off part of the city of Gotham).

i respect your opinion though.


while on the subject of "fighting on a train", have you yet tried that challenge-map that's included in the Riddler DLC pack, in which you fight on a train? (not to mention, you fight on the train while it is MOVING?).

okay. i guess you have. (judging how you reacted to yaba's comment and explanation just now).
(but let me know if you haven't. all the new DLC maps are REALLY awesome! :-D ).

[007JediKnight]

@007: i do understand what you're saying, its just that there werent as many areas that were very tight. I hope they make some more areas cramped when you're fighting, like fighting in a narrow hallway or even on a train. While we are on the subject, i hope they have moving fighting areas. You know what would be awesome, you are on part of train, but thugs try to lose you and disconnect the train carts, and you have to jump to the other train carts while fighting other thugs. It might be tough performing moves work when in tight areas, but Rocksteady could make it work.

i do see your point also, regarding the example you just gave (ie. "You know what would be awesome, you are on part of train, but thugs try to lose you and disconnect the train carts, and you have to jump to the other train carts while fighting other thugs."), but this is a Batman game, and Batman doesn't necessarily do that in the cartoons. there hasn't been one cartoon, comic-book, comic-series, game, and/or movie, in which i see Batman do that. likewise, the FreeFlow-Combat system has to do with fighting (ie. [I]combat[I]), not navigation. therefore, what you're suggesting is actually an improvement to the navigation.

likewise, regarding what yabab said, "

Another thing is this: let's say you have 14 thugs, divided among three different rooms. These rooms are linear and separated by only one entrance. The first is a corridor, the second is a balcony and the third is the courtyard below. So you have a scheme like this:

CORRIDOR <- WINDOW -> BALCONY <- RAILING -> COURTYARD

So let's say you're engaging 6 enemies in the corridor, all fine and dandy, and let's also assume you're pretty decent at the game, therefore you keep your combo up all the way to the end! Now let's say you want to move into the balcony area and start to raining hell on the 3 enemies in there without losing your combo. Well, you're out of luck - walking, running towards the window, or simply jumping the window and trying to attack the other group will probably make you lose your combo. Same goes if you were in the balcony, just knocked out the three thugs and want to jump down onto the courtyard to finish off the fight by attacking the 5 enemies below, you'd lose the combo.

Want to see a practical example of this, load up Arkham Asylum and try playing the combat challenge map Shock 'n Awe. Thugs will run for the gun rack, forcing you to pursue them - you lose your combo by disengaging and jumping over the railing onto the next platform. Same thing when Harley starts electrifying the platform you're on: you either end the round quickly or lose the combo. It's binary, there's no other possible outcome.

Both the game's level design and/or combat design never fully support this gameplay flow.

", i understand his point and i see his point. however, i reiterate: FreeFlow-Combat System is not for navigating around in the environment. it is for [fist-to-fist] combat. likewise, that's the way how that particular map was designed. i mean what do you expect? that Batman's in FreeFlow-Combat mode, and when he does a flying-kick to a bad-guy beyond the railing in one of the "upper" electrical-platforms (and Batman's currently on the lower, "central", electrical-platform), he (Batman) is just gonna " 'skip' over" the railing[,] so that his flying-kick connects[ with the bad guy]? and then that you keep having your combo, even though you stopped punching or kicking, and/or evading (press XX on the PS3) [the] bad guys? FreeFlow-Combat doesn't work that way. making a combo doesn't work that way. likewise, i agree with you: i too have had situations in which i am frustrated with that combat-challenge map, because i can't keep my combo, because that (what you just described perfectly and in perfect detail) happens. but there's nothing we can do about that. we realistically have to stop fighting (ie. stop making our combo) (ask any Martial Artist what he does when he has to run up somewhere, or run up some stairs, while he's fighting someone. he stops making his combo, he stops throwing punches and kicks, and stops what he's doing and just runs up the stairs/jumps up the ramp/jumps up to the railing and hops on to the other side of the railing), and run up to where we're gonna run [up] to, or jump up to where we're gonna jump up to, or jump over to the other side of the railing (like we have to do in that map), less we get electrocuted by the electrical-floor.

there's just nothing we can do about that.

I realized that I won't have the time to make this extensive, so I'll just point out a couple of things to try and make you picture what I mean: go play the train combat challenge that comes with the Robin DLC. That will give you a slight picture of what I mean: you try to stun one thug, you pretty much stun everyone in front of you. You try and redirect an enemy, you end up aerial attacking someone you just stunned. Place gel on the ground and everyone, because of how tight the room is, ends up on the ground and you're forced to ground & pound thugs even though you haven't pulled off all possible moves to rack up that nice fat bonus at the end of the round.

another thing i noticed: you want it to be much easier to make [big] fat combos, lol.

(lemme tell you something: if we had the "Beatdown" move in "Batman: Arkham Asylum", it would have been much MUCH easier to make big-a** combos, lol :-) ).