Batman-Arkham-City posts

Batman Arkham City will be getting some pre-order bonuses from various retailers but at the moment those bonuses are just being hinted at on the upcoming super hero action game's web site. We do know that people who put their money down on this game at GameStop will get an exclusive "Joker's Carnival" challenge map when the full game is released.

It also lists Best Buy as offering a pre-order bonus but at the moment the site only says its offering a "combo pack" for Batman Arkham City fans. It looks like both Amazon.com and Wal Mart will also have pre-order bonuses but those have yet to be revealed.

[Via Joystiq]

Arkham Asylum was one of our favorite games of 2009, so it only follows that Arkham City will likely be one excellent game as well. This trailer depicts Batman as he swoops throughout the new open environments, encountering characters such as Catwoman, Two-Face, and Harley Quinn. It's decidedly light on cutscenes and heavy on action, which is always the kind of trailer that we love. Mechanics are king, after all. Plus, it shows off the prominently featured new cast in motion and some of Batman's new take-downs.

Download Batman: Arkham City 'Gameplay Debut' Trailer
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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.

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:

On Sunday we began our multi-part feature on Big Download's most anticipated PC games due (at least at the moment) for release in 2011 with the first person shooter genre. Today we continue our series with all of the action games we are excited to get our hands on the next year that don't have the first person perspective as its main viewpoint.

This next 12 months will see quite a few pure action games on the horizon including a reboot of one of the biggest game series of all time, a return appearance by a certain Dark Knight detective and a game where all of the action is happening inside your comatose mind. Really. Here's our action game list for 2011, in order of the games' expected release.

Hugo Strange is one of Batman's more tenacious and unknown foes. Premiering before crazies such as Two-Face or Joker, he is one of the only villains to correctly deduce Batman's true identity of Bruce Wayne. Naturally, in their desire to create another worthy villain for Batman to fight, the developers of Arkham City have included the deranged psychologist in their game, and if this trailer is any indication, he's going to be an absolute beast. It's a cinematic, and toes the line of the uncanny valley, but the action is spectacular and it really captures the brooding style of the comics.

Download HD Batman: Arkham City 'Hugo Strange' Trailer
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