Batman: Arkham City

Houngan · 2012-08-19T20:10:58.000Z

CLWheeljack:

Finished the game and the DLC this weekend. I didn’t particularly care for the DLC. Since it’s so small-scale, it re-uses the same internal areas, and there isn’t much outside. It’s a little fun to use Robin, but he doesn’t have as many toys, and you don’t really get a chance to explore what he does have.

SPOILERS AHEAD for the people just starting the game.

Do people think there’s anywhere left for them to go with another game in this series? I heard that they’re working on a Golden Age Batman game next, which, having finished Arkham City, kind of makes sense. I don’t know where else they go with the Arkham universe. Joker’s gone (presumably for realsies), and they’ve used up pretty much all the other credible villains as guests in the Asylum and City. Plus, it’s hard to imagine anybody else taking the lead role after Hamill’s Joker.

Not only that, but I think they really need to shake up the structure for another game. While the Riddler dynamic worked great twice, it would be stretching it to try to do it again. One of the end-game thug conversation even lampshades that. He says something like “What’s next? Arkham World? It’d never happen.” So I think that taking a break with another time period makes sense, and far from being a cheap one-off or cash-in, its a good call narratively.

The only other thing I could think of would be to advance the timeline 20 years or so, and do Son-of-Joker vs. Batman Beyond, or a Dark Knight Returns kind of thing, or even give a bigger time-share to Robin or Nightwing, maybe with slightly more differentiated gameplay for each. Not exactly like Sly Cooper 3, but maybe something along those lines. Any other ideas for how they could make it work?

Hard to say, as you point out the move from contained arena to city arena was an obvious and major step forward but where to go from there? There’s always a JLA game that could take place in several different “Arkham Cities” depending on the character you were playing at any given time, and I would buy that shit in a second. But the Batman universe is, by definition, a contained universe. There are only so many gadgets and combat animations/combos you can have before it gets old.

H.

peterb · 2012-09-23T06:21:59.000Z

Harley Quinn’s Revenge: that was a nice little amuse-bouche. Too bad you can’t play Robin in the main city map.

Meanwhile, I can’t get past the first encounter with Ivy’s thugs as cat woman in New Game+

Houngan · 2012-09-23T08:32:04.000Z

peterb:

Harley Quinn’s Revenge: that was a nice little amuse-bouche. Too bad you can’t play Robin in the main city map.

Meanwhile, I can’t get past the first encounter with Ivy’s thugs as cat woman in New Game+

Start every fight with caltrops and abuse ground takedown.

peterb · 2012-09-23T11:52:33.000Z

What I’m finding is that in New Game+ there is inevitably one or two guys who aren’t affected by the caltrops, who then kick my ass while I’m trying to do ground takedowns. The sheer number of enemies is just a problem here for me. I guess I suck.

WarrenM · 2012-09-23T12:33:07.000Z

Focus on countering until you see an opening to attack. I mean, that sounds obvious but it works when you’re out numbered by a large margin. Plus it’ll give you practice at reading their tells…

peterb · 2012-09-24T08:27:31.000Z

I scummed my way past it after like 20 failures. It turns out that due to a bug you can do sneaky takedowns by climbing on the ceiling below them.

The fact that I gave catwoman no armor during the main game did not help with this. I’d get 3/4s of the way through and then just one or two mistakes and she’s down.

Syzygy · 2012-09-26T22:39:27.000Z

Hmm yeah I think I completed all upgrades by doing the side missions before starting NG+. I’d guess most people did so and it’s tuned with that assumption.

CLWheeljack · 2012-09-27T06:28:20.000Z

At the very least I finished the last Riddler missions before considering my first play-through done. Sees like by the time you’re there, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get 100% upgrades.

TimJames · 2012-11-25T14:44:05.000Z

Background guide with some folder locations: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2331974

Hex editing instructions:
http://community.batmanarkhamcity.com/forums/showthread.php/16709-change-of-GFWL-gamertag-savegamed-lost…?p=308362#post308362
http://community.batmanarkhamcity.com/forums/showthread.php/16709-change-of-GFWL-gamertag-savegamed-lost…?p=308254#post308254

Quick summary:

Make backups of XLive and your savegames. See the first link. For retail editions, try Documents\WB Games\Batman Arkham City\SaveData
Start up your new edition and create a new save game slot.
Find the new .sdg file. If this is Steam, see the first link for folder locations.
Use a hex editor (Tiny Hexer) to open the new save game and copy between bytes 0x00 and 0x13C as mentioned in the second link.
Open your old .sdg file from your save game backup in a hex editor.
You may have some additional bytes before the “lvs4” (or 0x6C767334) part. Delete those. Now the “lvs4” should be the first bytes in the file. See the third link.
Paste the corresponding bytes from the new save game to the same relative location in the old save game, between “lvs4” and " …" (inclusive) or between 0x00 0x13C.
Copy your modified old save game to the same place you found the new one. You might need to rename it or mess with Steam Cloud, I don’t know.

You’re basically copying the GFWL “key” (I don’t know if this is related to the CD key) from your newly created save to the old one, then making the format the same.

Now I have all the DLC for $7.50 and still have my old savegame with NG+ unlocked. I also feel smugly satisfied that I defeated (fucking) Games for Windows Live. What a piece of shit.

Jazar · 2012-11-25T15:49:32.000Z

Thank you very much for this. I got the steam deal after owning the GFW from GreenMan. Now I gotta transfer my completed save. Love this game.

TimJames · 2013-03-23T07:26:38.000Z

I’m slightly less enthusiastic about this game after playing the campaign twice. I did that so I could disable the overhead alerts. But the campaigns in these two games don’t hold my interest when I play them a second time. It feels like the stealth and boss fights get in the way. They slow down the pace. Of course, I don’t want the entire campaign to be fighting. But I only enjoyed the pacing the first time through. I would’ve liked to disable the alerts for a single playthrough.

I’m no longer snobby about them at least. I’m used to seeing them after putting so much time into the fighting challenges. Anyway, they’re somewhat irrelevant if you decide to go with the critical strike / redirect combo strategy.

As far as the DLC goes, I thought the Robin, Nightwing, and Harley addons were merely pretty good. Post-release DLC never seems to recapture the magic of the original game for me. The last fight in the Harley DLC was oddly fun though. That was the only moment where I thought “hey, this is new and cool.”

Lloyd_Heilbrunn · 2013-06-05T14:21:24.000Z

Alright, I finally bought this in the Steam GOTY Midweek sale, even though I never got that far in Asylum.

I play the Catwoman scene, and a pretty long intro scene with Bruce/Batman.

Finally reach the next area(God forbid a game in 2013 where I can save whenever I want), get the spinning Bat symbol in the lower right, which IIRC, means it is saving the game.

I exit out, and a couple hours later I start it again. I get no load save icon or menu and it restarts the game over.

WTF is going on?

habibi · 2013-06-05T17:11:36.000Z

Games for Windows Live. That’s what happened!

Did you download the latest client?

Lloyd_Heilbrunn · 2013-06-05T18:43:10.000Z

The only thing Steam installed was the game. I get nothing about Games for Windows Live when I run the game. What is supposed to happen?

lordkosc · 2013-06-05T18:55:20.000Z

Game should load via steam, then at the main screen (Batman standing) GFWL should load ( the little pop down box in the top middle of the screen.)

Lloyd_Heilbrunn · 2013-06-05T19:05:39.000Z

Ok, I don’t get the GFWL thing at all.

Was it supposed to install when I downloaded the Game?

I don’t think I have it from any others that I haven’t uninstalled.

Any idea on what I should do?

lordkosc · 2013-06-05T19:27:02.000Z

Download GFWL and install it. It might find Arkham City? I have no idea…

Then I’d reinstall Arkham City , or re-verify it , if GFWL can’t find it.

Its been awhile since I’ve played a game that required GFWL, so I am a bit unsure.

TimJames · 2013-06-05T19:31:58.000Z

I believe if you’re playing in offline mode, you can’t save. That’s what those games usually threaten me with at the start. If GFWL isn’t running, then it’s obviously not in online mode.

Lloyd_Heilbrunn · 2013-06-05T20:13:14.000Z

What a mess:

I google GFWL and get this:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5549

So I download and install.Try to run it and get told I need LIVE ID to run it:

Sends me here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15106

Which says it is for Windows 7. Which I don’t have.

But I try it anyway, and get an error message everytime I try to install it.

And GFWL does not run without.

Anyone have any thoughts, aside from never buying a Steam game that doesn’t really run on Steam again?

lordkosc · 2013-06-05T21:09:22.000Z

This is where you get a LIVE ID:

https://signup.live.com/signup.aspx?lic=1