Batman-Arkham-Asylum posts

Epic Games' Unreal Engine business just scored yet another major multi-year deal with a major publisher. This time its Warner Bros. Interactive who are paying an undisclosed amount to license the popular game development tools for all of the publisher's internal studios.

That includes UK-based development studio Rocksteady who used Unreal Engine 3 for 2009's acclaimed super hero action game Batman Arkham Asylum and will use it again for this year's upcoming sequel Batman Arkham City. The licensing deal will last until at least 2014. The engine is also the graphical basis for Warner Bros. Interactive' revival of the Mortal Kombat console fighting game series which will be released in April via developer NetherRealm Studios.

Batman Arkham City, the upcoming sequel to one of the best super hero action games ever made Batman Arkham Asylum, now has a firm release date. Publisher Warner Bros. Interactive announced that Dark Knight fans will be able to play the full version on October 18 in the US. Australia will have the game released on October 19 while Europe and other countries will have to wait until October 21.

Just a reminder: Batman Arkham City is being developed by the original title's developers Rocksteady and will feature Batman facing a host of villains, both old and new, in a section of Gotham City that's five times the size of the game world in Batman Arkham Asylum.

Batman Arkham City continues to impress us with its art style and Unreal Engine 3-powered graphics. That's especially true in a new batch of screenshots for the upcoming super hero action game. An example is above where Batman's arch nemesis The Joker looks like he's about to feast on someone.

The other screenshots, which we have added to our ever growing gallery below, show off more of Batman and the Joker's fun house-lair. If the game looks and plays at least as well as its 2009 predesessor Batman Arkham Asylum we may be smiling as much as the Joker is right now.

Square Enix published games are the subject of week long sales on both the Steam and Direct2Drive web site this week. Over at Direct2Drive the site has put all 40 Square Enix games on sale for 50 percent off for the next week.

Over at Steam it has put all 48 Square Enix games in one big bundle and put it on sale for just $74.99. That's a whopping 88 percent price cut from what each game would cost if you bought them seperately. Also Steam will cut one game from the publisher every day. For today that's Batman Arkham Asylum Game of the Year edition which has its price knocked down to a mere $7.50 until 1 pm Eastern time on Tuesday.

Batman Arkham City is the upcoming sequel to 2009's terrific single player-only super hero action game Batman Arkham Asylum. Many thought that the sequel from developer Rocksteady would have some kind of multiplayer mode. However IGN has the word that there will be no multiplayer in Batman Arkham City.

Chatting with IGN, the game's director Sefton Hill confirmed the news, saying, "Our thought process behind this was fairly simple: when we investigated adding multiplayer we asked, 'If we use all of the energy that is required to create multiplayer and instead focus this on the single player, would that deliver a better overall game?'" Hill said the decision to make the game a single player only experience was for the best, saying, " ... it would not have been possible to deliver Arkham City the way we wanted to if we'd have added multiplayer." The game is still due for release this fall.

Batman Arkham City will certainly be getting a lot more promotion and marketing than its 2009 action game predecessor Batman Arkham Asylum. One example of that is today's announcement of a Batman Arkham City six part comic book mini-series from DC Comics. The mini-series will start in May and will be written by Paul Dini who also wrote the script for both games. The artwork will come from Carlos D'Anda who helped with the concept art for the Batman Arkham Asylum game.

The storyline for the comic book will take place one year after the events of Batman Arkham Asylum and bridges the gap between the events of the two games as we see the shutdown of Arkham Asylum and the rise of the larger Arkham City to house Gotham City's worst criminals. In addition to the printed comic book mini-series, DC Comics plans to digitally release 8 page interludes in between issues of the comic that will put the spotlight on some of Batman's many enemies.

How big will Batman: Arkham City be? Pretty darn big, according to a new interview over at GameStop. Sefton Hill, the game's director over at developer Rocksteady, stated, " The footprint of Arkham City is about five times bigger than Arkham Island," the setting for Rocksteady's last game Batman Arkham Asylum. However Hill adds, " ... our primary intention was never to create a bigger gameworld just for the sake of it." While Arkham Asylum had a " pressure-cooker atmosphere" according to Hill, Arkham City will give gamers "a huge amount of navigational freedom, but they will also feel the extreme pressure of the challenges that they face."

In the meantime you can check out some more screenshots that have been released from Batman Arkham City in our gallery. You can also see a rather ... interesting ... poster after the jump:

Steam's big holiday sale continues today with a new batch of price cuts for PC games from now until 1 pm Eastern time Sunday. In addition to today's Steam deals, GamersGate ends its daily sales event with Men of War Red Tide for just $5.49. Also the streaming PC game service OnLive has put several games on sale for as much as 75 percent off from now until January 2.

The games on sale today on Steam today are as follows:

Batman Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition - $7.50
Splinter Cell series - Save 50 percent off all games in the series or save 60 percent off of Splinter Cell Conviction if you own Splinter Cell Double Agent.
Red Faction series - save 75 percent off all games in series.
X Superbox (all games in the X space sim series) - $19.99
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - $29.99
Dragon Age series - save 50 percent off all games in series
Monkey Island Special Edition 1/2 - $3.75
Altitude - $2.49
Shank - $7.49
Flatout series - save 90 percent off all games in series
Civilization V - $37.49
Tropico 3 Gold Edition - $6

Batman Arkham City got its first trailer reveal at the 2009 Video Game Award and on Saturday the upcoming sequel to 2009's acclaimed action game Batman Arkham Asylum will get yet another trailer. We've been promised that the visuals of this new video footage won't look like a video game but if someone had filmed what happens.

And that's not all. The trailer on Saturday will also reveal a villain that will make an appearance in the Rocksteady-developed game. Who could it be? Ra's Ah Ghul? Hush? The Red Hood? Ma Parker? The Bookworm? (OK, those last two came from the 1960's Batman TV show).

It was announced about a year ago and earlier this year Game Informer did the first real preview of the game but now it looks like the marketing for Batman Arkham City is ramping up. Today MSN Games hosted the a new teaser trailer for the game. It's only the second such video released for the Rocksteady-developed sequel to 2009's Batman Arkham Asylum.

The 30 second video, which you can check out after the jump, is a CGI-only affair but it does show The Dark Knight doing what he does best; kicking the crap out of the bad guys. We should see a longer version of the trailer on Saturday during the Video Game Awards show on Spike TV. Batman Arkham City is still due for release in the fall of 2011.