Looking back at........Riddler Challenges

[mohomahailija]

Trophies were a fun diversion without complaints. But about the Challenge rooms:

I completed AA challenge rooms 100% and still continued to play them for dozens of hours. But as AC hit I just couldn't ignore the sense the repetition and lack of innovation and I didn't even bother getting 100% in it. Every challenge has you beat up the same 4 waves of enemies or clean up a room silently, in areas that I've seen in story mode.

But. I loved playing as Robin and Nightwing. So I feel that is where next Challenge mode needs to strike - Forget all about Batman, whose gameplay we have seen to the death. Instead change up the gameplay by making Challenges focus on everyone else. Allow us to choose pretty much any hero or villain (Joker, Harley, Penguin, Two-Face, Bane, Poison Ivy, Gordon, Batgirl, Zsasz, Ra's, Clayface...) and beat up a group of thugs or clean a room. Additionally make us play as Penguin who invades Joker's turf and uses his umbrella to complete his objective. Or make us play as Clayface whose goal is to escape Arkham by using disguises...

And co-op challenges too. Batman & Robin specific co-op or competitive challenges would be awesome. As would Two Face vs Penguin turf war. Or Bane & Killer Croc working together against thugs or competing who kills the most thugs. All the stuff that you don't remotely see or do in story mode.

Now someone says that they rather focus on good story mode instead of challenges, and so would I. But AC has lots of samey repetive challenges. I wouldn't mind if Arkham 3 only had about 5-10 challenges and maps as long as they're unique and completely different from what story mode offers.

1. Combat survival - "Pick any character and defeat as many thugs as you can"
2. Predator survival
3. Co-op Combat - "Work together to take down the thugs"
4. Co-op Predator
5. Competitive Combat - "Who defeats the most thugs and gets highest score"
6. Competitive Predator
7. A handful of character specific challenges - "Sneak your way away from Arkham as Clayface", "Infiltrate Joker's hideout and steal information as Penguin", "Stop the rioters burning down the park as Poison Ivy", "Defend your turf while taking over Penguin's turf as Two-Face", "Protect Nora from attackers as Mr Freeze", "Steal as much valuables you can before time runs out as Catwoman" etc.

Being able to play as a dozen characters and in multiplayer would truly set Challenge rooms apart from the story and breathe new life into it.

[Hunter50502013]

•Did you enjoy finding the trophies?
-Yes.
•What did you think of the challenge rooms?
-They were alright. Too easy though and repetitive.
•Were there too many/too few trophies?
-Too Many.
•What did you think of them compared to Arkham Asylum?
-Way better for sure.
•How would you like them to evolve?
-I would like fewer Riddler trophies but have them all connected to a puzzle. A hard puzzle. Increase the difficulty in puzzles and make more deadly.
-Also, after you complete one of the puzzles and the used puzzle is just laying around, have it erase off the map when the player is looking the other direction, so their isn't used riddler puzzles all over the place.

[benbushnell]

question:
1)yes but i thought there were too many
2) i like them but i feel there should be something different maybe something online like assassins creed maybe,i would like to play as every character and maybe as you play through the story you can unlock different playable characters and each character has their own objectives and their own way to survive.
3)too many
4)alot better but still repetitive
5)i think riddler should be envolved in the main story eg like in arkham city once you saved the doctor in the steel mill you find a riddler box and you open it and it has a messge from riddler saying something like hello batman its i the riddler come and save my hostage if you ignore this invitation shes dies.

[BatmanEM]

•Did you enjoy finding the trophies?
-Yes. Some were pretty tough to obtain!

•What did you think of the challenge rooms?
-They were alright. Fun, but a little boring after a while.

•Were there too many/too few trophies?
- I wouldn't add more that's for sure.

•What did you think of them compared to Arkham Asylum?
-Way better.

•How would you like them to evolve?
- I think it would be cool to have all of them connecting to some sort of puzzle and have them all out of sight to force players to really search for them.

As far as the challenge rooms go I'd like to suggest maybe some type of short story challenges. For example one can be where you have to fight through a bank to stop Two-Face from killing a hostage or detonating a bomb or something to that effect. I would also love to see some co-op challenges where you fight alongside Robin or Nightwing (even if it's only an AI)

[New_Roosterman]

Hi all,

Last week you guys had some awesome insight into what you thought of the combat in Arkham City.

Now we want to know what you thought about Mr Nigma in Arkham City:

• Did you enjoy finding the trophies?
• What did you think of the challenge rooms?
• Were there too many/too few trophies?
• What did you think of them compared to Arkham Asylum?
• How would you like them to evolve?

Thanks!
SarahMay

Whilst I enjoyed the Challenge Rooms, with the trophies I thought there were way too many - especially in relation to the Riddler. Sorry as much as I love this game I'm not going to find 400 trophies, especially when there are no hints on how to get some of them (such as the one behind gates or that have pop ups in front of them).

I spent hours going mad trying to get one down near the water which had a gate which popped up over the targets you are obviously were to batarang. Despite having all the gadgets I could not work out how to get the gate to stay down so I could batarang. I just went "f#@# it" and bypassed them. Not all of us are the world's greatest detectives.

[Ibnal'Xufach]

I liked finding all the trophies I was able to get. The ones I didn't know how to work I didn't bother with until after I got the strategy guide--there was so much going on with the game itself, I just couldn't be bothered to figure out how to work the ones I didn't know the strategies for.

The challenge rooms were great; the only thing that would've made them better would've been being able to have full access to them after you leave. For example, in the 3rd room (where you have to pick a guard from one of three shells), you can't go back to the area where you save the guard. That was disappointing because it meant I had to play it again just to see the fear canisters there.

The number of riddles and trophies took me aback, but once I saw how large Arkham City was, I realized it was a good amount and evenly spaced. I failed to see why Catwoman had her own trophies, however. They are pointless.

Compared to Arkham Asylum, I like them much better. As for evolving, maybe give some of them their own challenge rooms where you have to enter a room and collect between 5 and 20 while avoiding obstacles and figuring out how to access the areas they're in. As for the riddles, maybe not have them stand out so much. Finding out what the riddles were was pretty easy as anything that had color in it was a riddle solution. And I don't mean make the riddle solutions darker, I mean brighten up the game! I love dark stuff as much as the next guy, but video games and movies are going off on this disturbing trend of doing everything they can to remove color and keeping within a very small color pallette. That's stupid and it visually sucks. Color does NOT have to suffer in order to have a good game or movie! And PLEASE no more of that orange and blue contrasting ****! This is another disturbing trend in both movies and games. Every time you have color, it's either a blue background with something orange in the foreground (like detective mode in blue and active areas in orange) or the color is so muted it's like the director/developer is ashamed to even have it at all. Bring back the color and thus make the riddles harder to find!

Another thing I'd like to see regarding the the Riddler challenges: If the Enigma Machine is brought back; I want to see Batman working it. What was the point in putting all that detail into a device that's only briefly seen?

EDIT: Really? C-R-A-P gets sensored?

[closrapexa]

This has probably been said before, but for a game that lends itself so well to replays, the Riddler trophies are actually a drawback. First of all, I thought it was a bad idea to have a 1 to 1 ratio between games; why must I play an "easier" setting each time I want to play Story+? It becomes work, and that's unfortunate. I would like the option to play Story+ constantly, it makes no sense that I can't.

Secondly, which ties in to the first, with some of the side missions dependent on trophies, it means collecting all of them, every time. I've played the game several times now, and have probably collected something like 3000 trophies. Some of the mini-games the trophies make you play are fun, some less so, but again, first time around, brilliant. Second, cool, I'm better at it. Third, meh. Fourth... fifth... please... leave me alone....

[hello12312]

•Did you enjoy finding the trophies?

-Yes.

•What did you think of the challenge rooms?

-Too easy and repetitive, felt like you where doing the challenge maps just with out the beat downs / take downs.

•Were there too many/too few trophies?

-Just right. but they felt to easy after awhile.

•What did you think of them compared to Arkham Asylum?

-More challenging than Arkham Asylum, which made me love it

•How would you like them to evolve?

-A harder puzzles. More of a mental (type the answer here, hit this sequence) than physical (like run though this,
use this) challenges to solve the puzzles. Also NO detective mode when solving the puzzles. This is what walk through are for.

[batdomination]

maybe have the riddler an even bigger presence in the next game, and he could even team up with another villian to make him even more dangerous.

[DocSmoothJew]

Hi all,

Last week you guys had some awesome insight into what you thought of the combat in Arkham City.

Now we want to know what you thought about Mr Nigma in Arkham City:

• Did you enjoy finding the trophies?
• What did you think of the challenge rooms?
• Were there too many/too few trophies?
• What did you think of them compared to Arkham Asylum?
• How would you like them to evolve?

Thanks!
SarahMay

Maybe a bit late here but I wanted to provide my feedback on the Riddle side mission/challenge as I really hated part of it.

Using a scale of 1-5 where necessary...

- Finding trophies would be a 2 for me. Some of it was absurdly annoying trying to figure out if it was on top of the building or buried behind a destructible wall or something else, but at least there's an indication once you reveal it on the map with a Riddler henchman as to whether or not it's in a building.

- The challenge rooms were about a 4 for me. The rooms were quite fun and how I felt the trophy hunting should be (challenging but not so absurd as to require 10 tries in some cases).

- Too many/few trophies... a 0. Hands down thought there were way too many. If I wanted to go building to building and clear it I'd pull out a copy of SWAT 4 and go wild with flashbangs and assault rifles. I enjoy the hell out of the combat in the Arkham games and I felt like the whole Riddle quest/mission in general marginalized it like crazy (even if it was involved here and there a bit - needing to fight your way to a trophy or something).

- Compared to Arkham Asylum, I felt like there were way more which bothered the heck out of me but the thought involved in getting some of them was a bit better (grain of salt with this one since it's been quite a while since I played Arkham Asylum).

- How would I like to see the Riddle Challenges change, more things like the Riddle rooms and a lot less trophies. It needs to feel less like a chore and more like something I do as I go along. The aspect of the whole thing where you have to go back to buildings you have no reason to be returning to just because you didn't have the gadgets unlocked yet is terrible and feels completely counter-intuitive. Most importantly, I'd like to see that last percentage of the game I haven't completed once the main story is done to be less about the checklist of riddles and trophies and more about rounding up the scum. I'd really love to see more focus on making the enemies static (no respawning because I finish playing for a while and close the game) so the game is complete after you round them all up.

Thanks