BATMAN ARKHAM CITY HEART OF ICE SERIES

BATMAN ARKHAM CITY HEART OF ICE SERIES

That's the best boss fight in the series thus far, but still, this is such a straightforward copy of it that it prevents Cold, Cold Heart's climax from having an identity of its own. Freeze that awaits you back at GothCorp plays out a lot like the battle with him in Arkham City. Just because Bruce Wayne beats up a bunch of thugs the same way Batman would is no reason to suspect he might be Batman. It's a diversion that sacrifices narrative momentum to increase the chapter's duration, and the trade-off isn't worth it. After making your way deep into the GothCorp facility, you encounter a wall of ice that you can pass only after collecting the pieces of a drill from the nightclub and a few other spots around the city, at which point you then have to return to the wall of ice in GothCorp. You also pay a brief visit to a dingy nightclub owned by the Penguin, but it's here, as it nears its conclusion, that Cold, Cold Heart starts to lose the narrative focus that has thus far had you hot on the heels of Freeze and putting together the pieces that explain how he came to be and what it is he's after. The game opens at a charity gala at Wayne Manor, and later takes you to the offices of GothCorp, whose grand entry area evokes the feeling, familiar from The Animated Series, that Gotham is a city stylistically trapped in 1920s sensibilities. Most of your time in Cold, Cold Heart is spent in new locations created for the DLC. Freeze, but you come to understand his desperation as Batman learns that the truly coldhearted one is the ruthless industrialist whose actions made Freeze what he is. Freeze perhaps Batman's most sympathetic adversary, and by using his origin story as the basis for its narrative (lifting many elements directly from the classic Batman: The Animated Series episode 'Heart of Ice'), Cold, Cold Heart takes on a melancholy mood. Victor Fries' wife Nora is 'alive' but not really alive like too many women in comics, she exists not as an individual with her own value but serves only to fuel the anguish of a male character, and because she is literally being kept frozen, she gives slightly different meaning to the phrase 'woman in a refrigerator.' Still, his anguish over her fate makes Mr. It takes only a few hours to complete, but thanks to its strong narrative, a few great locations, and a more focused structure, it's pretty good while it lasts. Cold, Cold Heart, the new downloadable content for Arkham Origins, is better about this. Where Origins stumbled was in its pacing, trotting out its expected components in a meandering fashion rather than giving those components the supportive context they deserved. These aspects are tried and true they are necessary components of any Arkham game. ItвЂ™s a good fight, if nothing terribly novel except for icicles you can drop on his head by tossing a heated Batarang at them.It wasn't the brawling or the stealth or the grappling and gliding around environments that held Batman: Arkham Origins back from being a good entry in the Arkham saga. Freeze is mostly a retread of what we saw in Arkham City, but a bit tougher. It just gives you one fewer weapon to work with. Oddly, Cold, Cold Heart does away with the Glue Grenade gadget, but doesnвЂ™t replace it with Arkham CityвЂ™s Cryo Grenade (which was presumably changed in Origins because Mr.

They still pretty much defeat the purpose of this otherwise excellent combat by letting you just punch everybody in the face, regardless of what weapon or armor theyвЂ™re carrying. It unfortunately doesnвЂ™t change how the Shock Gauntlets (now Thermal Gauntlets) work, though. The bulky new thermal Batsuit looks pretty cool, in that вЂњBatman needs a custom suit for every situationвЂќ sort of way. TheyвЂ™ll encase you in ice if you hold still, but their attacks can be turned to your advantage if you dodge at the right moment and cause them to rake the beam over other henchmen. (Fortunately they barely call in the overused big brutes at all.) My favorite thing in Cold, Cold Heart, though, is the new freeze-ray thugs. There you fight through a few predator encounters, one of which is fairly tough, and the usual brawls with a good variety of enemies. It begins in the absurdly cavernous Wayne Manor and then briefly returns to the PenguinвЂ™s club, but the bulk of its two hours takes place in a pretty generic gray-and-blue cryogenic research lab.

Batman arkham city heart of ice