Batman: Arkham City roundup

Great video games can be both a blessing and a curse. Pop in the disc and instead of savoring the experience, you end up devouring everything it has to offer; from getting all the achievements to finding every hidden item. Before you know it, you've finished off the last morsel and you're now watching the credits roll and instead of feeling full, you crave more.

It's easy to argue that Batman: Arkham Asylum suffered from this problem, but Rocksteady Studios recently announced a New Game Plus mode in Batman: Arkham City to help resolve the issue. The new mode allows you to retain all of Batman's gadgets, abilities and XP from your first run-through of the game, but amps up the difficulty with meaner thugs and tougher bosses. Batman also won't have his “Bat-sense” to counter incoming enemy attacks, but after smashing through throngs of thugs the whole game, chances are you won't need it.

This new mode looks to add tons of replay value to an already huge game, as Rocksteady has confirmed that Batman: Arkham City will be larger and longer than its predecessor.

"We have the single player game with the full narrative, and for that you're talking about the 20-25 hour mark. But if you want 100 per cent complete, with finding all 400 Riddler trophies, finding all the cameos, then we reckon that's at least 40 hours of gaming," said Rocksteady lead narrative designer, Paul Crocker. “From a sheer size point of view, it's about five times as big as Arkham Asylum.”

Aside from the size and length upgrade, let's take a step back and have a quick look at some of the other goodies that'll be in store for Batman this time around. First of all, the number of challenges and villains has increased from the first game. Whether he's hunting down all of The Riddler's 400-plus trophies, closing the book on The Joker, taking down The Penguin, facing off against Mr. Freeze, teaming up with Catwoman and dealing justice to Two Face or finding out what Hugo Strange has in store for Arkham City; the Caped Crusader's definitely going to have a busy night.

Players will also have more control over Batman's cape-gliding abilities to help him traverse over rooftops and between buildings in Batman: Arkham City. Used in conjunction with the grappling hook, it could be possible to cover the whole of Arkham City without touching the ground.

"We wanted the player to experience the freedom and exhilaration of gliding down alleyways and soaring above the skyline, and this has meant [adding] nearly twice as many moves and animations as in the original game," said Rocksteady game director, Sefton Hill.

Easily one of the best aspects of Batman: Arkham Asylum was its freeflow combat system, which allowed for Batman to take down groups of Joker's lackeys with stylish, bone-snapping moves. Rocksteady upped the ante in Batman: Arkham City and armed the Dark Knight with tons more attacks, including integrating his gadgets into combat and the ability to take down multiple enemies at once.

The combat and predator challenge maps will also return in Batman: Arkham City. Batman, Robin, and Catwoman are already set to fill the roster. There's also a rumor of a possible fourth character in the works, but Rocksteady hasn't revealed any further information on this yet.

One thing Rocksteady has released is the inclusion of 3D support on all systems. This feature will also be available even if you own a regular HDTV.

With the myriad of content Rocksteady's promising - and what's yet to be revealed - Batman: Arkham City is shaping up to surpass its predecessor when it swoops onto store shelves for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC on Oct. 18.