It’s hard to imagine a better superhero game than Batman: Arkham City. It’s also hard to imagine a better video game in general.
Rocksteady Studios’ sandbox-style beat ’em up took everything Arkham Asylum did right and magnified it tenfold. It let us inhabit Bruce Wayne’s alter-Don Diego de la Vega persona like no game before it — the ebony-clad goth savior, the obsessive avenger channeling his outrage like a brooding Buddhist, the genius whose only superpower might reflect in record-smashing Mensa scores.
And instead of distilling Batman to a cowled martial arts expert, it also let us tap into Batman’s Sherlockian side, sneaking around the game’s city-prison wielding cryptographic jammers and remote control batarangs, tapping forensic abilities to backtrace sniper shots or save citizens from some cackling villain’s machinations.