Harley Quinn's Revenge Review

Batman Arkham City - Harley Quinn's Revenge

By: Julian 'MakAttack' MacDonnell

Xbox 360

-Spoilers For Arkham City Abound-

Coming off the highly anticipated and well received game that is Batman Arkham City, developer Rocksteady has finally decided to continue where they left off. With both Talia al Ghul and the Joker dead, Batman/multi-billionaire industrialist Bruce Wayne is left defeated. Losing both a quasi-lover and his most well known villain, Batman seems to feel that though he ended the reign of Hugo Strange on Arkham City, he failed at ensuring everyone got out alive. But with the closing credits there was one thing left unaccounted for; a certain love interest of the Joker's. As the title to this downloadable add-on implies, Harley Quinn has returned to Arkham City to try and do what the Joker never could; kill the Batman. Fueled by nothing more than her anger towards our already downtrodden hero, will this night be one the Dark Knight won't soon forget, or will it fade into obscurity as much grander and threatening events are looming just ahead?

This epilogue chapter starts a few days after the end of the Arkham City siege with Robin swooping in to the now defunct prison to locate Batman who went missing just a couple days earlier. With Harley Quinn taking up residence in the abandoned shipyards and taking three police officers hostage, her overall plan becomes painfully clear and her so called revenge quickly turns mundane. That's all the set up you need really. Truth be told, I'm willing to tell you all of how the story goes. Why? Because beyond that there is no story. Or at least no story that is meaningful in any conceivable way, shape or form. There's no plot progression and no further character development beyond us seeing how the events just a few days before have affected Batman and Harley Quinn. And just about everyone who played through the main story can figure that out on their own. When the credits roll, it comes from no where. Actually, when it's all said and done, it feels like a slap in the face for thinking that a developer as great as Rocksteady could actually deliver something as good in DLC form as they have with regular retail releases.

In terms of gameplay, all you get is the ability to play as both the fully upgraded Batman you have come end game of the main story with all his cool little bells and whistles, and the boy wonder Robin with a very similar yet limited skill and gadget set. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoyed playing as Robin. While he does have extremely similar moves and gadgets compared to Batman, there are some things that differ him from the Dark Knight that I found interesting. Keep in mind that as of yet, I haven't picked up any of the single character DLC's, so this is my first time playing as him. The first gadget is a shield that actually allows for direct confrontation with gun wielding enemies. With the shield soaking up all the damage from gun fire, you get to move forward with it drawn out and, when you get up close, perform a shield bash on the enemy and then follow it up with some good ol' fashioned melee combos. On top of that, Robin also has what's called a snap-flash. The idea is that it's a quicker to deploy version of the explosive gel that is best used in combat to stun enemies. However I only ever found it useful once and that's when I was put in a specific scenario where it was implied by the game to be used. And even then I didn't have to. I could have just as easily beat up the two thugs regardless and nothing negative would have happened.

The only other good thing I could say is that it was nice to go into an Arkham boss battle using Robin. Something that was very akin to the final battle between Catwoman and Two-Face in her last mission. That's where everything positive about this piece of content I have to say ends. For gameplay sake, everything I did here was done before, if not a bit better, in the main story or the Riddler challenges. Outside of a slight free roam of the Industrial District and going through the shipyards, you are cut off from the rest of Arkham by an invisible wall. It's good that at least some resemblance of the open-world aspect of the main game was kept, even though there's no reason to explore and it feels extremely linear as all hell. Well ok, I take that back. If you're really desperate for achievements, you could go out and try to track down and destroy all 30 Harley balloons littered around the two areas that you are taken to during the course of this chapter. You can do that if you're honestly that desperate. But just so you know, nothing else happens when you pop all 30 balloons. You get one achievement(or trophy depending on your system), that's it.

I could have saved myself the ten dollar price of admission and still got the same great combat and stealth gameplay that comes with an Arkham game without feeling like I just threw money into my trash bin. I actually feel that the day one DLC Catwoman missions are of actual value as opposed to this. At the very least, her missions add insight to the story beyond what we see when playing as Batman. On top of that she allows for a vastly different play style similar to playing as Spider-Man with her abilities to climb up walls and swing around the city. Beyond the campaign you get some achievements and a few character trophies to look at. No extra Riddler rooms or missions, no chance to play as Robin outside this epilogue chapter, no new skins for Batman or Catwoman. Nothing. This whole package feels just so incredibly hollow.

Sadly with all the advertising Rocksteady did for their first Arkham campaign DLC, it falls severely short of what I expected. While I wasn't expecting a grand ten or so hour tale that would take us through events that lead directly to the start of the next game(which would have been awesome regardless) I was expecting a little more from this package. What we get here is a 2 hour long campaign with no story and no replay value. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. If you were lucky enough to pick up the Arkham City Game of the Year Edition first, then this epilogue is worth playing if only for the hell of it. It is included in the purchase price after all. If you're like me however, and got Arkham City well before hand and decided that this could be neat to play, do yourself a favor and don't get this. If you actually want some bang for your buck, try the character DLC instead. At least there you get new content in the form of several new characters and challenge rooms.