Somewhere between flying through a city dressed like a bat and putting thugs in their place I had to tell myself I wasn’t Batman and go to class. Batman: Arkham City, the highly anticipated sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum, allows you to live out all your Batman fantasies through an amazing narrative that will leave you feeling like you’re actually Batman.

Batman: Arkham City takes place after the events of Arkham Asylum. Someone had the bright idea to section off a part of Gotham and give it to Arkham and let the criminally insane run free in there.

Obviously this isn’t the smartest plan so Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, protests this, and while doing so is arrested and thrown into Arkham City. Batman: Arkham City doesn’t try to do anything new in terms of combat situations or puzzles.

It sticks to what made its predecessor so great; combat that makes you feel like the Dark Knight and detective work that develops the storyline. What is so special about this game is how they approach it. Arkham Asylum was a fairly linear game where Arkham City is an open world and lets you explore the city and what its dangerous inhabitants have to offer.

This is the biggest difference in gameplay and allows you approach situations, combat and story wise, in a new way. Exploring in this game feels like the game Assassins Creed, it’s actually one of the most enticing parts of this game that makes you feel like Batman.

While you are flying through the city and scaffolding buildings, which is just as satisfying as punching a thug in the face in slow motion, you’ll run into side quest that will further develop the plot .

You’ll run into side quests that involve characters like Mr. Freeze and are just as detailed as the main quest. The cast is star stellar and pull off an amazing vocal performance that drives the story forward. Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker himself, reprises his role as the Joker for the last time and performs a pitch perfect performance.

Whenever Joker laughs it will send tingles down your spine. The plot requires amazing voice acting performances since it brings a plethora many of Batman’s greatest villains to center stage.

Two-Face, Penguin, Joker and others fight over territory in Arkham City and will be seen throughout the game. Whenever you hear them speak it pulls you into the game and will have you playing for hours trying to figure out what will happen next… it’s that good.

Combat is simple, but fun. Not much has changed from the first game, but one thing that is different is using Batman’s gadgets mid-combat. You can now use his gadgets easily throughout combat to take down thugs in creative ways.

My personal favorite is using the Bat Claw to pull an enemy towards you to clothesline them to them to the ground. This addition makes every combat situation new and fun even though each fight, unless it is a boss battle, is similar.

Arkham City has much to offer. The story offers plenty to do between the actual story line and side quest that will have you flying through Arkham City for weeks. Arkham city also offers challenge maps that let you take on waves of thugs to test you Batman skills.

So there is plenty to do that makes it worth your money. Batman: Arkham City is the best game that has come out this year so far and deservers your attention along with the rating of 10/10.