The other night I finished Arkham City. By which I mean I finished the main story. By which I mean I finished about 40% of Arkham City.
It’s kind of weird. I’m not always all that into side quests, but when a game is more than half side quests I feel like it’s worth giving them a shot.
However, there’s one side quest I have a serious problem with, which is the one involving rescuing Mr. Freeze’s wife.
To do a bit of nerding, I’ve always liked Mr. Freeze. As a Batman villain, he made sense to me. For anyone who doesn’t know, Freeze has a few origins, but the basis is that he is in love with this babe, Nora, who is cryogenically frozen because she had an incurable disease. Freeze is working on a way to cure her and at some point has an accident of the variety we see in comics, the kind where it would completely kill you OR give you amazing powers.
What I like is that he isn’t just a jagoff who is trying to kill Batman because he thinks Batman has foiled one too many of his elaborate plots to do some nonsense crime. He really just want to cure his wife, and it’s weird and obsessive, but at least it’s something I can get my head around
In Arkham City, though, we have a problem.
During the game, Batman becomes infected with a disease. And has to rescue Mr. Freeze from the Penguin, which is no easy task. After saving Freeze’s life, Batman sets him to work making a cure. Which he does. But when Batman attempts to retrieve it, well…
Okay, so then you have to beat the shit out of him. Nothing new. So you beat him like a frozen, bald bastard.
THEN, you go to get the vials filled with antidote from his safe, aaaaand they’re gone. Stolen by the Joker.
So let’s review.
1. Batman rescues Mr. Freeze.
2. Batman asks for an antidote.
3. Freeze creates the antidote but attempts to use it to force Batman into rescuing Nora.
4. Batman refuses and Freeze tries to murder him.
5. Batman beats the shitsicles out of Freeeze.
6. Antidote is stolen, Batman leaves empty-handed.
7. THEN, Freeze goddamn asks Batman, if he’s got a minute, TO SAVE NORA.
I’ll say this, Mr. Freeze, though likely possessing frozen balls, gots huge balls.
To be fair, he does figure out vaguely where Nora is and marks the approximate area on the map. Sure, the marked area comprises about 1/3 of the entire playable area, but still, he tried, kind of. Sort of.
What I do appreciate about this side quest is that it’s at least got a storyline to it and, I assume, it goes somewhere. A lot of side quests really don’t. In fact, most of the ones I can think of consist primarily of collecting a bunch of shit that’s nearly impossible to collect all of without going through piece by piece with a hint guide, which has always felt pointless to me.
The real question is, are the side quests in Arkham City worth it?
On the one hand, some of them seem story-oriented and interesting. And as another incentive, if 60% of the game is comprised of side quest, it’s pretty hard to walk away without making some attempts. If you leave the side quests off the table, you’re saying that you don’t care about MOST of the game.
But here’s the other problem. I’m not a huge completionist, but when it comes to 100%-ing a game I can’t help but feel like I’m in or out. It’s cool to run through a game and finish it, and it’s sometimes cool to 100% a game, but I don’t see the point in 75%-ing a game and then calling it a day.
Honestly, the idea of collecting all the Riddler trophies and solving the puzzles and swinging around and waiting for a payphone to ring doesn’t interest me. In fact, in a weird way the monotony of those side quests has me stalled out.
I mean, look at this shit:
What about that is going to be fun? Me trying to fly a DC hero through a bunch of hoops, literally? Wait a minute…this is giving me a familiar feeling of shitty comic book game deja vu…
So here’s the thing. Good on Arkham City for having some decent side quests that have a little purpose and story to them. And bad on Arkham City for also including the old model of small tasks where the primary handicaps to players are frustration and pure boredom, both born of repetition. It’s a fun game and all, but there’s not shortage of fun games out there. And while Arkham City might be one of the better games, the Arkham City side quests, standing alone, are not more fun than the main storyline of most games.
We’ll see how things go. But so far, it looks like I might get up to about 47% before performing a classic Pete “fuck this shit!” and playing something else.