Batman: Arkham Asylum/Arkham City.

[The Romulan Republic]

I noticed that Arkham City was fairly cheap in the Apple Store and I have some questions to ask while deciding weather to buy it:

1. Do you have to play the first game to understand the second game?
2. How far into grimdark does it go?
3. How heavy is it on supernatural elements? I tend to prefer my Batman a bit more realistic (i.e. Nolan-style).
4. Presuming I only have money for one game, should I get the first or the second?

Thanks for any information.

[Grumman]

1. I have only played the second game, but there's nothing in the first you need to know to make sense of the second. If you know the Joker's backstory - that he fell into a vat of chemicals that made him look like the Joker - that's good enough.
2. In the second game central Gotham has been walled off and turned into a huge open-air prison full of supervillains, gangs and political prisoners. There are some other bits that are probably more grimdark than that, but they are also spoilers.
3. It's not Nolan style. Poison Ivy has great big plants that brainwash people into zombies, Bane's more Hulk than Hardy, Mister Freeze has a gun that can encase people in ice. But the game doesn't mug at the camera.
4. I've heard that the first is better, but I've only played the second, and it was pretty good. The ending annoyed me, though.

[Tribble]

I agree with Grumman's post though YMMV with the ending. I thought it was good.

And of course, the voice acting is fantastic.

[Grumman]

What I didn't like about the ending was... Spoiler

...what it did with Talia. I am not as enamoured with the Joker as some people seem to be, so it annoyed me that of the two dead people Batman could have carried out of Arkham accompanied by mournful music, they picked the Joker and not Talia.

On the other hand, I'll happily forgive that decision if Talia comes back in the next game after a couple of her ninjas give her a dip in a Lazarus Pit.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Only played the first one (I have the second but haven't played it yet). I would start at the first one, not just for story, but for the evolution in game mechanics and designs as well, but that's just me.

Like you, I prefer relatively-down-to-earth Nolan-style adaptations of comic book superheroes, but I didn't really have a problem with the Arkham series' style. It's essentially the same as the 90s Batman cartoon (even going so far as having the same voice actors for Batman and the Joker, the latter being Mark Hamil).

I don't remember the original being particularly grimdark. Batman still doesn't kill people (despite violently beating their faces in this never seems to result in fatal cerebral hemorrhaging!), etc.

[Eleas]

I'm not the biggest fan of Batman, but Asylum was a great game that really knocked it out of the park when it came to redefining what a superhero game was all about. It feels as if Asylum took Batman as a character, looked at all the stories about Batman, then asked themselves how to make a player feel as if they were the protagonist, distilling it down to those elements. City is bigger and more muscular, but it does unfortunately get more formulaic -- the open world nature of the game is much more pronounced and it suffers a bit from the flag-hunting escapades common to such games. The combat system is, however, even better than in Asylum. The boss encounters were mostly meh. The detective missions were even easier than in Origins. Catwoman was a fun character to play but poorly plotted, and the story while bombastic failed to engage me.

Those are minor gripes however. Together with Origins, the Batman games have thus far been phenomenal. The fighting system is fluid and responsive, with a meaty kinetic feel to it; the architecture and lighting manages to out-Burton the Tim Burton movies, and the game never loses sight of the fact that you are Batman.

[GuppyShark]

I really hated the Catwoman segments. Considering they were 'DLC' I wish I could 'un-unlock' them.

[Dread Not]

City is bigger and more muscular, but it does unfortunately get more formulaic -- the open world nature of the game is much more pronounced and it suffers a bit from the flag-hunting escapades common to such games. The combat system is, however, even better than in Asylum. The boss encounters were mostly meh. The detective missions were even easier than in Origins. Catwoman was a fun character to play but poorly plotted, and the story while bombastic failed to engage me.

The first time I went back to Asylum after multiple completions of City, I was amazed at the amount of stuff that wasn't in the first game like perching on narrow ledges and a variety of takedown maneuvers in Predator encounters. To me City improved on pretty much every aspect of Asylum, the only exceptions being vague aspects like "atmosphere." The story in both games were pretty forgettable to me, though Asylum's felt much less flimsy by the end. The resolution to City is just bizarre.
Spoiler

Hugo strange at the beginning threatens to reveal Batman's identity if he interferes, yet never follows through on that threat even when he's on the precipice of defeat. Clayface's weak as hell motivation for throwing in with the Joker is that it's "the role of a lifetime!" And once the final boss is defeated and the cure is destroyed, Batman seems totally unfazed, and it's left totally unaddressed that now hundreds of hospital patients will die horribly because "the World's Greatest Detective" failed to detect a sickly clown with his X-ray vision before said clown pounced on him. Plus the aforementioned Talia thing.

All that aside I consider City the far superior game. The Metroidvania design is handled better in Asylum's more restricted world, but I think City still handled it well and I enjoyed the light Riddler puzzles. I thought the only memorable boss encounter in Asylum was Killer Croc, and I still found the Freeze and Clayface encounters in City more enjoyable. In addition to the improved and more challenging melee combat, there are just so many awesome tools and obstacles they added. I feel really bummed playing Batman without gadgets like the smoke pellet, line launcher tightrope, or freeze grenades, along with not having to deal with backpack jammers, proximity mines or armored thugs. And I find gliding around Gotham to be one of the most enjoyable means of getting around in an open-world action adventure.

4. Presuming I only have money for one game, should I get the first or the second?

My preference is obvious, but really neither of them should be missed. And Origins is less polished, but still quite fun for those who enjoyed the previous two titles.

[Eleas]

I thought the only memorable boss encounter in Asylum was Killer Croc, and I still found the Freeze and Clayface encounters in City more enjoyable. In addition to the improved and more challenging melee combat, there are just so many awesome tools and obstacles they added.

While Freeze was a proper "boss battle," I think it's the best one yet; it works much better than both Croc and Clayface or any of the other boss battles to my mind. I think it's the combination of setpiece encounters (another thing both games did really well) and predator stealth. Multiple approaches, the feeling of being both hunter and hunted, and having to strike from shadows and then disappear while the battlefield constantly changes all add up to a challenge and a feeling of Batman-ness that simply can't be approached by fights like the ones against Ra'as al-Ghul, The Penguin or Solomon Grundy.