Presiding malevolently over Arklicim City, with a threatening poster campaign and Tannoy announcements, is a new character (to Rocksteady's game at least) Hugo Strange.

This is Arkham City, both an anarchic nightmare and a madman's dream come true. The insane supervillains of Arkliam Asylum and the brawling thugs of Blackgate Penitentiary have all been transported into this walled area of Gotham. So a large area of Gotham has been slapped with compulsory purchase orders, the residents evicted, and a wall erected. So lie's bringing the madhouse onto the streets. Taking all the credit for Batman's work in his failed facility, lie's convinced the populace that what Gotham needs to be crime-free once and for all is a super-facility bigger than any one building. The events of Arkham City take place a year after those in Asylum, and Sharpe has been hard at work.

In the first game, Quincy Sharpe was the corrupt governor of the Arkham Asylum and he made no secret of two things: his contempt for the human rights of lawbreakers, and his plans to become mayor of Gotham. So, having delivered the comic book look, with the scriptwriter and voices of the '90s cartoon, where do you go from there? Well, where else is there? Gotham City, stupid. Batman may be a flexible franchise, but lie's got rules, and Arkham Asylum played within them rules with love and art. It was pitch perfect, sitting cheerfully alongside the beyond-black psychopathic graphic novel with which it shares its name, the commercial dark tint of the Christopher Nolan movies, and the approachable kid-friendly action of the '90s classic The Animated Series. It's accepted that Arkham Asylum was a defining moment for Batman in videogames, the first time he'd ever been done right. The first look at Arklicmi City showed no such timidity.

While it was the best opening to a game since Freeman's monorail ride, it didn't give you much of a feel for the game. Taken to a room in Eidos, we were shown Batman accompanying Joker into the iconic madhouse, and not much else. When The First round of publicity for Arkhctm Asylum came out there was the impression of a certain lack of confidence.

Game batman arkham city