6. Batman: Arkham City (2011 - Xbox 360)
Like its predecessor, Arkham City does a great job of introducing you to the world with an
interactive opening movie. Arkham City was the much anticipated sequel to the massive hit, Batman: Arkham Asylum. It received nearly unanimous praise as being loyal to the comics, loyal to the action genre, expansive enough to keep players playing, well designed, and well written. As the first sandbox Batman property Arkham City put Batman in an all out prison-arena of heavily armed criminals and super-criminals with the goal of uncovering a conspiracy, containing a thousand pissed off bad guys, and spending his spare time solving childish puzzles or practicing his flying. While Arkham City was an excellent and stunningly beautiful game many folks (myself included) found it a bit too expansive. The free roaming style of gameplay opened many doors for the design team create a more involved universe, and allowed the player to spend hours upon hours attempting to finish side quests or just explore. The downside of that, however, was that the game world lost its sense of narrative progression. Even though Eidos went out of their way to drop in dialogue and alter the scenery to give us the feel that the world was moving on, the fact that Batman might take time off from saving the city to spend 4 hours trying to glide through some floating rings was quite an interruption. That, added to the fact that thugs seemed to simply walk around in circles all day waiting to be killed, and it's clear that the designers were willing to sacrifice Arkham Asylum's sense of flow for Arkham City's freedom. But don't let my stunningly concise and totally mind blowing criticisms stop you. Arkham City is without a doubt one an absolutely amazing, it wasn't quite on par with it's predecessor.