Batman: Arkham City/YMMV

• And the Fandom Rejoiced: Arkham City will be on the Wii U. For Nintendo fans, at least.
  • Furthermore, Nintendo's 2012 E3 added that all DLC will be included with the game, as well as armored costumes for Batman and Catwoman.
  • Catwoman being a playable character in the Story Mode.
  • Robin announced as a playable character for Challenge Maps.
    • And the later announcement that Nightwing will also be playable in Challenge Maps.
  • The Reveal that Batman Beyond, 70's Batman, The Dark Knight Returns Batman, DCAU Batman and Earth One Batman are as alternate skins.
  • Arkham City keeps Arkham Asylum's Game Over screens.
  • "Harley Quinn's Revenge", the post-game DLC additional quest, where Batman and Robin deal with Harley following the ending (see above) of the game proper.
• Anticlimax Boss: Hugo Strange, Deadshot, Victor Zsasz, Bane and The Riddler.
  • In fairness, the main challenge for most of those guys is getting to them, a lot of them wouldn't be a good physical match for Batman anyway, and Batman has already tangled with two of them in Arkham Asylum.
  • Strange is a Non-Action Big Bad in the comics for the most part. He is a very muscular man due to genetic engineering and exercise, but he does this to emulate Batman but is incapable of bringing himself to fight people head-on due to both fear and pride in his manipulative skills. It appears to be the same in this game, so if he doesn't know how to fight, then there is no way Strange could take on Batman in a straight-on fight.
• Award Snub: Spike's Video Games nominated Arkham City (and by extent, Rocksteady) for many things, notably Mark Hamill for best male voice-over. In the end, it lost several awards to Skyrim, Bastion or Portal 2. Most frustratingly, Mark Hamill and Tara Strong lost to GLaDOS and Stephen Merchant (the two did not complain that they lost, rather that the awards ceremony was rather shabby). To be fair, the game still won Best Xbox360 Game, Best Action-Adventure Game, Best Adapted Game and the Joker received the Best Character award.
• Awesome Music:
  • The main theme perfectly captures the awesome feeling of Batman and also feels like it's been mixed with the music from the Nolan films.
  • The first gameplay trailer uses The Heavy's "Short Change Hero" as the soundtrack. It's appropriate, awesome, and will stuck in your head for hours after watching it:

This ain't no place for a hero... this ain't no place for no better man...

• • Lykke Li's "Get Some" for the Catwoman also qualifies. The really Nolanesque theme from the Hugo Strange trailer does too. Heck, if you watched any trailer for this game with the sound on, it was awesome for your ears.
  • "Mercenary" by Panic! At The Disco on the official soundtrack is the perfect song to play the combat challenge maps to.
  • This Court Is Now In Session a.k.a. Two-Face's Boss Theme.
  • The piece of music that plays while Batman is paying his respects to his parents in Crime Alley.
• Badass Decay: Poor, poor Bane... While for the most part fans love what the Arkham games have done for the series' villains, the same can't be said for the man who broke the Bat. In this game, Bane's side mission is pretty much a fetch quest where you go around the city in order to destroy containers full of Titan. While it turns out that Bane was keeping Batman distracted so he could hoard the share of the Titan he was supposed to destroy, he ends up out-gambitted by Batman and trapped in an elevator left in a pretty much helpless state. Instead of a Magnificent Bastard, Bane instead is more of a desperate druggie who ends up getting trapped in something he could easily break out of. While Arkham Asylum wasn't exactly kind to Bane either, he at least had the excuse of looking like a dumb brute thanks to being suddenly exposed to a ton of Titan and at least got a proper boss fight. And it's especially jarring due to his portrayal in Arkham Origins where he's much more of a Genius Bruiser true to the comics.
• Base Breaking Character: Catwoman. Some see her as one of the game's highlights, while others find her too terrible to play as outside of combat.
• Best Boss Ever: A lot of people consider Mr. Freeze to easily the best boss in the game, bar none. It's easy to see why as well, because his boss fight puts your intelligence to the test by forcing you to ambush him in all sorts of ways, and each time you hurt him, he'll make sure that you can't use the same method against him twice. You will basically have to know how each piece of your equipment works, especially in New Game Plus mode where he's a lot more difficult than usual.
  • Ra's Al-Ghul is also considered to be a fantastic boss, especially since you're tripping out after drinking directly from a Lazarus Pit, which causes you to hallucinate the battle taking place in a vast desert landscape where you get to pull off feats like taking down a huge sand monster, as well as counter twenty opponents at once, where you can usually only do that with up to three enemies.
  • And Clayface as well, it's just so thrilling to lob freeze grenades at a towering mud monster while dodging his long-reaching, hard-hitting attacks and following up by slicing him into pieces with your fallen lover's sword. And that's not going into the insane final phase where he starts spawning a never-ending group of claymen while launching mud balls at you while you have to stun him and hack him to bits... Overall, this game REALLY improved off of Arkham Asylum's somewhat lack-luster boss fights.
• Broken Base: The reactions towards Arleen Sorkin being replaced by Tara Strong as the voice of Harley.
  • For some, Scarecrow not making the cut into the game despite being one of the most popular members of Batman's rogue's gallery. Even with the ending scene in Arkham Asylum confirming his survival and his segments possibly being the most memorable aspects of the first game.
    • The ending scene of Arkham Asylum doesn't unambiguously confirm Scarecrow's survival. One of three villains reaches their hand out of the water to grab the box of Titan; which one is selected at random. Not to mention that Scarecrow is in the game; he simply doesn't figure as part of the storyline.
  • To access the Catwoman segments, one has to input a code that comes with the instruction manual and only works once, which means anyone who has bought the game used has to pay for content that some people think should have been part of the game. Regardless of the fact that the game is still several dozen hours worth of content without it.
  • Now there's the Riddler putting innocent people into deathtraps that Batman must rescue, prompting cries of "They turned the Riddler into Jigsaw!". Riddler's been doing that since the 1940s. A good villain needs to establish a credible threat. There's not much menace to a guy dressed in question marks who just leaves a bunch of riddles lying around for no apparent reason.
  • Robin being available as a Challenge Map character probably counts. The fact that this Robin is Tim Drake, and his entire costume. This has probably been rectified by the announcement of Dick Grayson as Nightwing though.
  • The reveal of the new skins is bringing this, particular the Batman Beyond and Batman: The Animated Series skins. The complaints about the Beyond skin focus around the fact that it portrays Batman as being bulkier than he was in the show, despite the fact that its Bruce Wayne wearing the suit, not Terry McGinnis. The complaints about the The Animated Series skin focus around its deliberately cartoony design and how it doesn't fit into the realistic game design, ignoring the fact that the 70s Batsuit is essentially a realistic rendering of the The Animated Series suit. And they've even managed to combine them both with "Why couldn't they make the Beyond skin cartoony like the TAS skin?".
• Complete Monster:
  • The Joker is as bad as ever, what with him mailing his toxic blood to all the different hospitals in Gotham, holding Nora Fries as a hostage to get Mr. Freeze to cooperate with him, killing Talia Al-Ghul... Not that it stops Batman from mourning his death though.
  • The Penguin has been turned into a sadistic cop-killer in this continuity, so it's no surprise that he qualifies for this. A lot of the criminals in Arkham City are terrified of him, some even view him as being worse than the Joker, which is saying a lot.
  • Professor Hugo Strange tries to present himself as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, but is still ultimately a monster due to the atrocities he ends up committing without any remorse. It's safe to say that he's just as bad, or maybe even worse than the criminals he despises so much.
  • Once again, Victor Zsasz is still psychotically obsessed with murdering people. It's worth telling that the local criminals who are pretty okay with assisting people like the Joker are unnerved by him, with career criminal Catwoman flat-out refusing to enter his hideout.
  • Calender Man could qualify as well, seeing as how he's committed all sorts of repulsive deeds including matricide, patricide, and multiple accounts of murder even against his own goons for petty reasons over the years, and smugly reminisces about them without so much as a hint of remorse.
• Creepy Awesome: Calendar Man. He just sits in his cell, recounting his horrific crimes that he did on specific holidays, and yet is more memorable for it.
• Demonic Spiders: Armored enemies in Predator challenges. They're immune to silent takedowns and most other kinds of stealth KO, forcing you to use the very loud Beatdown to take them out. In the harder Riddler's Revenge maps, where being spotted is practically instant death, this is a major issue. Said harder challenges also love to give armor to already dangerous enemy types, like snipers.
• Designated Love Interest: Talia. Her and Batman's past is only mentioned, and sounds like a mere one-night stand. Both dislike the way the other deals with criminals, the two barely interact, and yet the writing implies they are in love.
• Disappointing Last Level: The entire game is spent building up Protocol Ten, and in the endgame Batman finally takes on TYGER and infiltrates Strange's lair, the Wonder Tower. However, the TYGER personnel fight the same as the thugs you fight on the street, just a few of them have stun sticks now and need to be attacked from behind, otherwise you can beat them up just fine with the same tactics you've used all game. As for the Wonder Tower, infiltrating it amounts to two predator sequences and a fight with a group of guards, and the last predator sequence before Strange is just six guards, child's play for a properly upgraded Batman.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Harley Quinn gets a lot of sympathy for her distress over the Joker's illness and later on, death, though these people end up forgetting about her carrying out Joker's orders to brutally execute doctors who fail to cure him, trying to murder a small squadron of cops in Harley Quinn's Revenge, and being an all around psychotic individual.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • Mad Hatter is this to many players as his only scene in the game is one of the most memorable portions of the game. Like Scarecrow from the previous game, many found his side mission to be Nightmare Fuel and he tries to take control of Batman and the mask he puts on him.
  • After decades of being a rather lame, gimmicky villain, Calendar Man received a darker, edgier, and grittier retooling that with it brought him a decent following that's growing since the game's release.
  • Mister Freeze also counts as he's not even really a villian and is seen in a very sympathetic light by many players. It helps that his boss fight is awesome and very memorable.
• Even Better Sequel: Many of the reviews posted agree that Arkham City is much better than Arkham Asylum. And considering the reviews for that game...
• Evil Is Sexy: Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn and Talia Al-Ghul are all incredibly hot villainesses. Catwoman isn't quite evil, but is still incredibly sexy.
• Foe Yay: As one would expect, Batman and the Joker engage in lots of this with most of it coming from the Joker's end. Not only do his phone calls to Batman sound like they're coming from a spurned lover (with the Joker even playing it up to comedic effect in his first phonecall), but Batman seems to be affected by the Joker's death even more than Talia's, to the point to where he carries his corpse bridal-style out to Commissioner Gordon and remains shaken by the whole ordeal.
  • And with Talia al Ghul being present, she and Bruce have their fair share of flirting (though like with the Joker, most of it is from Talia's end).
• Game Breaker:
  • While there aren't really any for the main game, Bat Swarm is extremely handy in Combat Challenges; it gets everyone off of you, can get you a few thousand points if your combo is high enough, and makes the Liuetenants a piece of cake (do the move close to them, pummel them to get your combo gold again, then do it again as they start to recover).
  • Not full-on game breaker, but damn close: the Batarang Takedown. When executed, any enemy that's been knocked to the ground gets pelted in the head and instantly knocked out. It makes you feel like a total badass to instantly neutralize seven or eight mooks with one move.
  • The secret to breaking combat challenges is Redirect. The AI can't handle it well. Literally just attack once, redirect, repeat. It overrides attacks that could be countered, knife attacks that have to be dodged 3x, titans, everything. Throw in the occasional takedown for armored enemies but as long as you remember to redirect after every attack you will get 60-70ks in no time. Getting larger comboes gives better multipliers.
  • Critical Strikes. It's one of the first upgrades you can unlock, and it not only allows for extra damage on properly timed combos, but increases the experience multiplier by 2x instead of 1x on a properly timed hit. Master your time of it and you can hit multipliers in the 30s and higher on large groups of enemies, allowing you to effortlessly rake in experience.
  • Freeflow Focus, which slows down time when a 12 hit combo is reached. After you obtain it, you barely need to counter anymore, although the slow-mo ends if combo finishers are used. It was nerfed in Arkham Knight, and instead adds damage without slow-mo.
• Goddamned Bats: Shielded and Stun Baton mooks. Both of them can't be countered and instantly end your combo if attacked head-on (damaging you too in the case of Stun Batons) The Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors methods to defeat them aren't difficult, but in larger brawls it can be easy to accidentally punch one via Damn You, Muscle Memory!, which can easily break your high-score attempts at Riddler's Revenge maps.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Remember how the Joker mockingly aimed the Titan Shot at his head to make it look like a suicide shot back in Arkham Asylum? After the end of this game and what the Titan wound up doing to him, that moment takes on a much darker tone....
  • "Twinkle twinkle, little Bat. Watch me kill your favorite cat."
  • In Batman: The Brave And The Bold, in "The Knights of Tomorrow!", the Joker is sick and dying, with what seems to be like short time to live, all while he acknowledges his own Joker Immunity ("I'm the Joker! I always survive!"). Come this game, where the plot similarities are, at most, almost uncanny.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • In the epilogue, various mooks can't accept that Joker's dead. Several fans believed the same, coming up with theories where he could still be alive until it was flat-out confirmed in Arkham City: Endgame that he was dead, showing his corpse being cremated and everything.
  • Thanks to two easter eggs: his mask ironically being found perched as a crow's nest and the contents of his Nightmare Fuel boat, many fans are convinced that this is exactly what Scarecrow is doing at the moment. And it turns out, he was!
• Inferred Holocaust: It's never said whether Batman and crew somehow found a way to cure all the people with Joker's poisoned blood in them, but there isn't exactly enough cure to go around for everyone by the time the credits roll...
  • If this version of Lucius Fox is anything like the version in Batman Begins, he should have no problem synthesizing a cure for the entire city based on a small sample. Then again, given Oracle's assessment of the rate of infection, it's almost assured some of the victims will die before that can happen.
    • According to the Downloadable Content "Harley Quinn's Revenge", Bruce managed to synthesize a cure in time to save the two thousand with the Joker's poisoned blood in them. Or at least most of them, anyway.
  • Also, all those times Batman finishes an arena-style fight, only for the 'arena' to blow up or wreckage to fall immediately after it's finished. It's doubtful the unconscious goons were moved to safety beforehand... examples that spring to mind are the Joker fight just before Protocol Ten initiates and the Tyger guards in Strange's tower.
  • Speaking of that, during the race to stop Hugo Strange, he says that fatalities caused by Protocol Ten are reaching twenty-two percent. One in five of the inmates Batman took down were killed in the destruction.
• Jerkass Woobie: As psychopathically evil as she is, it's hard not to pity Harley Quinn as her puddin' is deathly ill, and you can tell she's doing her damndest to keep her head screwed on. This status increases even moreso when Joker dies, and you see how much it affected her in "Harley Quinn's Revenge".
• Like You Would Really Do It: A real-world example: before the game was released, several news outlets spoiled the plot point that Batman finds The Joker lying dead while Harley cries over him, in the first two hours of the game. Most of the outlets expressed shock and near-indignation that something this shocking could have happened that early in the game, and there was an immediate backlash from fans who thought the plot was completely spoiled. Then it turned out that everyone fell for the "oldest trick in the book": as soon as Batman finds his "dead" body and turns his back, Clayface posing as a seemingly rejuvenated Joker pops up behind him and shoves a stun gun into his neck while the real Joker continues to play dead until Batman is completely knocked out.
  • Joker's sick? He might die? Yeah, right. This was even Lampshaded in the enemy chatter at one point. Only, they really do. Joker dies at the end.
  • Takes on a meta-plot thing, as the twist is that The Joker gives Batman a hint early on the game that there is actually an impostor standing in for him. The leak takes on a whole new meaning, seeing as though it led fans to think that the Jokester will make it out of this one alive.
  • Then in the bonus mission Catwoman is caught in an explosion, but she survives it.
• Magnificent Bastard: Hugo Strange, invoked by Catwoman. And by extension, Ra's Al Ghul.
  • Not really: the plan was all Strange, Ra's just provided the resources and support to see if Strange was "worthy". Plus, Ra's was a little trigger-happy about the whole You Have Failed Me....
  • Riddler almost applies, but he gets out bastarded by Strange and, of course, the man himself.
  • It would be a sin if Joker wasn't on here. It's practically tradition.
• Memetic Mutation: "Two guns, bitch!"
• Moral Event Horizon: Penguin's nightmarish torture of a cop over his museum lair's intercom just because said cop mouthed off to him definitely counts, though him trying to beat Bruce Wayne (who he doesn't know is Batman) to death does as well since for all he knows, Bruce is just a rich guy whose family was more successful than his. Bruce (as far as Penguin knows) did nothing wrong to him personally.
  • Hugo Strange creating Arkham City counts as a whole, as the whole thing is essentially a concentration camp not just for criminals, but those who either outlive their usefulness to him or speak out against him. And that's not even going into him feeding Mad Hatter's killing urges, causing Warden/Mayor Sharp to snap and go batshit insane, torturing and brainwashing people to serve as his private military...
  • While he didn't quite cross it, Ra's threatening to kill Talia, his own daughter in order to get Batman on his side gets him dangerously close to it due to the fact that he was willing to throw his own flesh and blood under the bus in order to force Batman to become the heir to the League of Assassins.
  • Then there's Riddler snapping and putting Arkham City's medical team in various horrifying death traps, showing that his obsession with trying to outsmart Batman has very likely put him past the point of no return.
  • Hush crossed this by murdering six innocent people, cutting off their faces while they were still alive, and making his face a perfect copy of Bruce Wayne's all to ruin his life over a petty grudge.
• Most Annoying Sound:
  • "Augmented Reality Training started." "Augmented Reality Training failed." Unless you're crazy skilled or decide to forgo the rest of those missions, you will be hearing this a lot.
  • "This is hardly a surprise. I always knew I was better than you!" "Well, well, so the shaved monkey has failed! How utterly, utterly expected." "What's wrong? Has your primitive brain given up and accepted that I, the Riddler, am better than you?" Needless to say, the Riddler having only three death quotes for all four characters in Riddler's Revenge soon gets very, very annoying, if his insufferably smug attitude didn't piss you off already.
  • The Enemy Chatter can be pretty annoying and repetitive at times; particularly if you're busy doing something and a Mook happens to have caught sight of you and keeps yelling challenges at you.
  • The Political Prisoners you have to save from being mugged, which are all just Crispin Freeman screaming, sobbing, and pleading at the top of his lungs, over and over again until you can locate where it's coming from.
  • Some fans feel this way about Tara Strong's portrayal of Harley Quinn, which is even higher-pitched than Arleen Sorkin's. Acknowledged in-universe where a lot of the Joker's henchmen and even the Riddler himself consider her to be incredibly annoying.
• No Problem With Licensed Games: Like the first game, Batman: Arkham City has received universal acclaim. Many critics have even stated that to call it the greatest comic book game of all time doesn't do it any justice proclaiming it as one of the finest action/adventure games ever released.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • The Mad Hatter's bit only lasts for one creepy intro and one fight scene, but damn if it isn't memorable.
  • Killer Croc. It's very brief and easy to miss; being accessible ONLY when after you fight Ra's Al Ghul, but players have found his Easter Egg appearance in the game to be very cool and wish he had a bigger role like he did in the previous game.
  • Robin, who pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment at the same time.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: This game has done wonders for many of Batman's less respected enemies, especially among non-comic readers.
  • Depending on your tastes, the Penguin is this for some people. While he's supposed to look ridiculous in the comics so he can get his enemies to underestimate him, a lot of people simply found him lame and love his characterization in this game as a brutish, psychotic thug with a love for torture.
  • The Riddler started getting this in the first game for non-comic fans and then blasted out of it in this game, becoming exactly like a Saw villain. Again, in the comics, this portrayal is common. But outside, this was a huge step up for his character.
  • Calendar Man full stop. Whilst his status as a Scrappy is debatable, there was no doubt he was hardly a respectable villain before this game came out. Once it was, there's little doubt Rocksteady really changed people's perspective on the character when he was made into a Nightmare Fuel story telling Easter Egg that legitimately is terrifying. In fact, the character may now be seeing a receiving a fanbase.
• Rooting for the Empire: After the entire game showed that Arkham is filled to the brim with violent criminals that kill you on sight, whose Enemy Chatter is half the time about how much they enjoy murder and torture, and all of whom voluntarily work for even worse bosses, the player may be forgiven for wanting to ask Strange to airlift the political prisoners and maybe Mr. Freeze, Ivy and Catwoman out and then just letting him have his fun.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus on the story DLC "Harley Quinn's Revenge". It was either too short, too gimmicky, or didn't properly take advantage of the Batman: Arkham Asylum-like linearity of the level design to proper effect like the first game which is what people might have expected, there's no side quests, and it doesn't wrap up any of the dangling plot threads from the original story leaving little resolution for the characters beyond snuffing out a potential Sequel Hook. It's by no means bad, just generally not seen as up to par with the actual game.
• Straw Man Has a Point: Batman became upset when he thought Talia killed the Joker. But as she pointed out, he never would have done it himself and it would have solved their problems. Batman even admits later on that no matter how often he caught the Joker, he'd always escape and cause more misery and death.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Batman's treatment of Robin has shades of this. To a wider gaming community, Robin is still seen as part of Batman's Narm Charm and seems out of place in the serious and gritty Arkham verse and Batman's annoyed and bullying treatment of Robin, almost as if he's embarrassed to be seen with him, and rolling his eyes at Tim's earnest offer of help seems like this. It's subverted since the Arkham Robin has won some fans and people generally regarded Batman's rudeness to him as a really Jerkish moment in the game.
• That One Boss:
  • Mr. Freeze on New Game+. To be more precise, Mr. Freeze on a normal playthrough is considered by many to be quite fun. But during a New Game+ run, he gets controller-breakingly frustrating due to his increased health and general badassery.
    • First, he's more aggressive than usual and faster.
    • Second, if you keep your Detective Vision on for an extended period of time, he jams it.
    • Third, and this one requires some explaining... There are a total of twelve ways to damage Mr. Freeze. On a normal playthrough, you only need to use five or six of them to defeat him (depending on difficulty level). But on New Game+, hits don't do as much damage on bosses, just like the mooks, so you'll need to use almost ALL of the techniques to defeat him.
    • Also, as in Hard Mode, he's completely invulnerable to a head-on attack and can kill you in under five seconds with his ice beam.
  • Two-Face can easily be this for Catwoman: like Freeze, it's a predator battle, but he's guarded by numerous armed mooks, damaging him naturally alerts him to your presence and after they figure out you're there, any mooks you take out will be quickly replaced by Two-Face: due to the above and Catwoman's limited number of gadgets and lower health, you're either forced to take potshots at him while he's separated and hope you get away before the reinforcements arrive (which isn't helped by the finickiness of her wall-climbing) or just beat the hell out of him, do your best to disarm any mooks that arrive to help him and hope you can deplete his health before you're overwhelmed. The preferable alternative is to jump next to Two-Face and beat the Christ out of him while throwing Catwoman's caltrops to either side of him to keep mooks away while you drain his entire health bar. Really, if you could play this battle as Batman, you could finish the battle in a single try by throwing a smoke bomb at him and kicking his ass practically unopposed.
  • "Harley Quinn's Revenge" contains a predator battle much like above, and since Robin has access to grappling hook and smoke bombs as well as having the same amount of health as Batman does, the mission is much easier when it comes to taking Harley down, not to mention the fact that there's much fewer reinforcements. However, to compensate for it, not only do you have to take down all thugs in addition to Harley when Catwoman's predator room ended the second you took down Two-Face, but there's 2 hostages in the room as well.
  • The Penguin can be this if you don't know that you have to wait for him to say "Gimme your best shot" or "I'll give ya a free shot", walk up to him slowly, and then use the weapon scrambler.
  • The battle in the Sionis Steel Mill near the end of the game against the Joker or actually Clayface in disguise, a huge amount of henchmen, Mr. Hammer, and a Titan henchman is as difficult as it sounds. While the Joker fights like any other of his mooks he's a lot more resilient and will continue to be a nuisance throughout the entire fight, all of the mooks get in the way whenever you're trying to hurt Mr. Hammer or the Titan, and if you try to focus on whittling down the mooks instead, the hard hitting Mr. Hammer and Titan will obliterate your health if they end up hitting you. Combine all of that with the fact that there are rollercoasters that will ram you and damage you if you hang around on the tracks in the room, and you have one hell of an irritating fight on your hands.
• That One Level: The final predator section outside the theater. There are about a dozen snipers dotted across various buildings, each one covered by at least two or three of the others. The architecture isn't conducive to being stealthy, so every time you take out a sniper, you risk getting a large chunk of your health chipped away by the others. This by itself isn't too bad, as long as you're patient. Unfortunately, it's very, very hard to be patient when the Joker keeps screaming "Continue Your Mission, Dammit!" messages at you every few seconds. After just a few of his speeches, you'll want the entire section to be over just so he'll stop being so condescending at you.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Augmented Reality Training. Most of them are merely hard. But there are a few in there that are button-destroyingly difficult, requiring not just god-like reflexes but insane amounts of luck to complete. Get used to hearing the Batcomputer's voice.
  • Some of Riddler's gliding/pad puzzles qualify as this. Not because they're hard to figure out, but because there's often no room for error. Forget what he does to the hostages; you are going to want to punch Riddler in the face for having to hear that awful pad-has-been-reset sound over and over and over.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks:
  • Penguin's redesign is this or Took a Level in Badass.
  • Robin's redesign definitely seems to be evoking this from certain parts of the fandom. In particular since this Robin is Tim Drake.
  • Robin's newly revealed characterization as a brooding, introverted man with a hair-trigger temper who cagefights in his spare time is also evoking this in parts of the fandom. Again, mostly because this Robin is Tim Drake. If this was Jason Todd or Damian Wayne, or hell maybe even Dick Grayson, it would be more in-character.
  • Nightwing's lack of lines is getting a bit of this, especially as part of his charm comes from his string of witty quips that he gives out in his fights.
  • Harley Quinn's redesign is this for those hoping she'd be more like the classic Sexy Jester look. Though the jester suit is available to her in Arkham Knight.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: One can't help but feel a little this way with Professor Strange. The trailers and the early game built him up as the Big Bad and he puts on a VERY good show, manipulating Batman, several of his villains and the entire city, seemingly always several steps ahead of anyone who might threaten him. It looked for a while that this game would pull him from obscurity and make him a top-tier Bat-Villain, but then it turns out Ra's Al Ghul was controlling him and you don't even fight Strange directly.
  • If it helps Ghul does make it clear that he only funded Strange (as he wants to see if Strange can be his replacement), everything was Strange's idea.
  • On a related note, one of the Riddler's interview tapes with Strange implies that Strange has a replica of Batman's suit hidden in his office. We never get to see him wearing it and he never tries to replace Batman directly. That's a reference to the Prey story arc that reinvented Hugo Strange. He does the same thing, and displays a lot more open jealousy for Batman than he does in this game.
  • A minor instance of this trope would be the inclusion of Jack Ryder, who throughout the game is only ever seen in his civilian identity instead of his superhero alter ego, The Creeper.
  • And ultimately, there's both the Catwoman and "Harley Quinn's Revenge" DLC. Catwoman's DLC could have presented a great opportunity to show what all is happening in Arkham City while Batman is busy with finding a cure to Joker's poisoned blood while trying to stop Protocol 10, and Harley's could have provided proper closure to the Joker's death. However, Catwoman's DLC focuses around her simply trying to recover all of her confiscated goods from Strange's vault along with a feud with Two-Face that is only present at the start and end of her DLC, and while her DLC is integrated into the main campaign, you only play through her parts sporadically with each chapter being very short. Harley Quinn's DLC, however, is simply a quick romp around the Industrial District with a new part of the Steel Mill, and there's still no real closure with The Joker's death: Batman is still emotionally ruined and Harley isn't any better off, leading many to think that both DLC's really lack potential.
• Uncanny Valley: Joker sometimes looks almost plasticine, possibly due to the fact that many times Clayface is acting as him.
  • The Joker always looks different than your average clown, but in Arkham City his dying, decaying form looks disturbingly realistic somehow and Clayface's version of him is disturbingly... just slightly "off".
  • The Batman: The Animated Series alternate skins deliberately evoke this: they're rendered in a completely different art style with mostly smooth textures and simple colors.
• The Unexpected:
  • Solomon Grundy, though less so in the game than in the promotional information, as there are several hints and explicit mentions.
  • Also the five different Batman skins for pre-ordering: Batman Beyond, 70's Batman, Earth One Batman, DCAU Batman and The Dark Knight Returns Batman.
  • The Nightwing DLC even comes with the Batman: The Animated Series skin of Nightwing.
  • There's actually many. Mad Hatter, Azrael and Clayface are probably the biggest ones.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Seriously, just check out the Hugo Strange trailer. It looks almost real! Seriously, it takes you a couple seconds to realize it's animated!
• What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: Like it's predecessor. Yes, it's has the USA rated of Teen, which is the equivalent of the PG-13 rating. Is this game for children? Most definitely not.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Political?: At least some of the fans interpretation of the game.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Most of the redesigns for certain characters can be passed off based on the setting of the game. Tim Drake's Robin design however has drawn some criticism. Notably, his costume looks more low-tech than Batman's does, wearing only ordinary pants on his lower body and with less protection up top, making him look a little more like someone trying to emulate Batman rather than his actual protege. However the real clincher is that his gloves have fingerless tips to them... meaning he's going to be leaving fingerprints everywhere he goes, thus bringing danger to the whole "Secret Identity" thing and seeming like an incredibly sloppy choice for a member of the Bat Family.
• The Woobie: Batman when he's reaching Rah's Al Ghul's lair, while suffering from the effects of Titan poisoning. He can't run at all and is constantly coughing, sounding almost like a child. You want to rush to the next checkpoint just to see him get better, any better.
  • Mr. Freeze, of course. He isn't even a villain, just being blackmailed by the Joker. While there is a Puzzle Boss fight with him, it's mainly to calm him down after after he gets the wrong idea. He even helps Batman afterwards.

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