Rocksteady-Studios 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.

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.

While we wait for more info and screenshots to be released for Batman: Arkham City. the first Batman game from developer Rocksteady is ready for yet another sale. Yep, the Game of the Year edition of Batman: Arkham Asylum has a big price cut at the Steam PC game download service.

Normally priced at $39.99, the Game of the Year edition is now on sale via Steam for just $13.60, a 66 percent discount. The game is almost a steal at that price and if you have not yet played it you need to do so before Batman: Arkham City comes out.