Gamescom 2011 Hands Off: Batman: Arkham City

What it is: Batman: Arkham City is the sequel to the critically and commercially successful Batman: Arkham Asylum, made by Rocksteady Studios and set to be published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

Arkham Asylum impressed with its polished gameplay and was the first truly successful game based on a comic book. As you can imagine, for the second time around, Rocksteady wants to take even bigger risks, introducing an open world, in the form of Arkham City, more enemies, including The Riddler, The Penguin, Two-Face or Dr. Hugo Strange, as well as friendlier characters of The Dark Knight, like Catwoman or Robin.

How it is: Rocksteady Studios presented the third major part of Batman: Arkham City at the game’s special presentation at Gamescom 2011, in the form of the Challenge Rooms that will be in the title, besides the open world with its main storyline and the variety of side-quests already depicted.

Two characters were showcased in the Challenge Rooms, in the form of Batman, of course, and Catwoman, one running on a PlayStation 3 and the other on the Xbox 360, both in stereoscopic 3D.

First up the players went through the regular combat challenge rooms, where they needed to plow through increasingly difficult enemy waves while trying to rack up as many points by chaining up takedowns and keeping the combat as freeflowing as possible.

After that, an Invisible Predator room came up, where players need to go through an area filled with enemies and take them down without being spotted. Things are quite tougher this time around, as the AI is even smarter than the one in Arkham Asylum. As such, players need to use all the tools in the their arsenals, as well as the special powers of each character (like Catwoman, who can climb on certain ceilings).

Last but not least, a friendly race through the open world of Arkham City was set up, with players needing to get from one point of the map to another by gliding and grappling along the way. Moving through Arkham Asylum became tedious after a while, so seeing the players move about without even touching the ground was great.

When and on what: Batman: Arkahm City is set to appear on October 18, in North America, and October 21, in Europe, for platforms like the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and is scheduled to appear next year for the Nintendo Wii U.

We have a special page with all our Gamescom 2011 coverage.