This time around Batman has free reign to explore Arkham City, freed from the confines of Arkham Asylum you’ll be spending your time soaring through the rooftops, scaling the buildings, creeping through the alleways and in such a large area as Arkham City, your going to struggle to see all of it and find all the items, side missions and Riddler riddles.

It’s possible to make your way through the main story with few detours for side missions and collectables in around 6 hours, your main objectives will be highlighted on your HUD and guide you in the right direction, but to truly appreciate all the effort and time that the Dev’s at Rocksteady put in to making Batman:Arkham City, the game that it is, your really going to need a guide.

Step up the Batman: Arkham City Signature Edition Guide by Bradygames. The guide is 272, jam packed, pages of information, maps, character bio’s and much more. The guide covers the title on the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC and will arm you with all the information your going to need to get all your trophies, achievments and medals on your prefered platform.

By the numbers.

The guide contains.
5 pages of information on basic and advanced controls.
12 pages of information on weapons and techniques.
2 pages explaining the use of Waynetech.
28 pages, containing 31 Bio’s for the main heroes and villains of Arkham City.
2 pages giving details of the main menu and a glossary of all the terms used.
82 pages of walkthrough for the main mission.
10 pages specifically for the Catwoman DLC.
59 pages relating to the Riddler and his riddles, locations, solutions and even a list of which concept art, if any, is unlocked by solving the riddles.

The guide also contains walkthroughs for the 12 side missions and a list of all the medals available in both campaign and ranked challenges.

As an extra little bonus, the guide also includes a 5 page, sneak peak, of the Batman: Arkham City graphic novel.

This is the only official guide to be released for the game, although many other guides and sites claiming to have walkthrough’s will surely crop up, I personally feel they will struggle to beat the quality of this guide, both in information provided and quality of content, and nothing beats having the information at your fingertips when you find yourself it a tight spot.

The guide is beautifully presented, with screenshots taken from the game in the key areas and graphics for the maps. The bio section of the guide is amazingly detailed, going as far as detailing height, weight and even eye colour for each of the main players in the game. Even if you are new to the Batman Universe, this guide will give you a better understanding of the characters you will be meeting in game to allow you to appreciate the game on a deeper level.

The guide is set for release on the same day as the game, and has been given a £12.99 rrp.

A second Limited Edition hardback version of the guide is also being released with a rrp of £19.99.

In my opinion, this is £12.99 of anyones money well spent, and I think that the background knowledge provided by this guide, will enhance the pleasure of playing the game, even if you only read the bio’s section.

This is certainly shaping up to be the most amazing FPS visually this year.

Check out the full build on The Gadget Show Channel 5 Mondays 8pm

Well what is RAGE, The game itself is a first person shooter/RPG set in a sort of Post Apocalyptic wasteland which is well thought out and nicely executed. The apocalypse in question here has been caused by a giant meteorite hitting the Earth and you play as one of a select few humans put into suspended animation and buried in safety deep within the ground.

Its mainly a single player affair with about 10-14 hours of game-play depending on how you decide to play the game and how much you wish to explore the semi openworldness that Bethesda has gifted us with. There are some great buggy type vehicle races to be had and some nice side quests to keep you busy, The game also has alot of re-playability as there are several classes and ways to play the game to get your achievements/trophies.

The game-play is nicely thought through,  the graphics are beautiful in places and   it does run very smoothly thanks to its 60fps smooth scrolling  and the fact that much of the processing power is given over to dealing with this rather than trying to texturise every last thing in the game. Character animations are good and the weapons look nice (if somewhat mundane) and work well within the game.

Sound is surprisingly quiet in the game, there is no background music ingame or in the menu system, only the sound of guns, vehicles and characters break the silence during gameplay, The voice acting however is superb.

So how does it play, Well RAGE is pretty linear overall and there are a variety of sections/types of game-play including buggy racing, which apart from serving as transport between the cities in the wasteland  also allows you to gain “money”  to help upgrade your ride and fit weapons, armour and turbo’s, which you will need to get past the thugs throughout the game who will try at every opportunity to kill you.

The main part of the game will be spent in city centres, These are the place’s where you will be engaging in your missions and quests, collecting items to sell and bartering for weapons/ammo. Firefights are frequent and IMO quite easily dealt with thanks to the fact its so easy to gain ammo and  upgrades to your weapons which are pretty par for the course if you have ever played any FPS (there’s little variety here).

There are also a couple of good Multi-player Options to get stuck into with online buddies if thats your bag, The first of these is the Road Rage mode which sees you competively racing around in games such as Cap the flag and so on. The second and IMO more playable online fare is Wasteland Legends which is a competitive co-op mode in the game, it works like this, You and a friend take on missions in various parts of the game un-related to the single player mode, you conquer the enemies and try to beat your “partners” score. Its much better than the first option.

Overall if you are expecting this game to be anything like Borderlands or Fallout you are going to be extremely disappointed, Its a good game in its own right but lacks variety and innovation which is what should be driving games like these forward, I felt at times I was playing DOOM or QUAKE with updated graphics.

I wont give games scores as I feel that would give false opinions against other reviews what I will say is that I am glad this came to me as a rental game as it would be traded already had I bought it.

Bottom line here – Rent or wait for a price drop!

Coming from a non comic person who vaguely knows a bit about the Batman universe I find myself really anticipating seeing the huge array of villains and other characters which this release is set to bring. I managed to aquire all the riddler trophies and collectibles in Asylum so heres hoping theres much more to come in city with its open world and playable characters.