Vadersville
Posts: 2898
Joined: 30/9/2005
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Spoilers for Harley Quinn's Revenge
Was anyone else really disappointed with the story in this? It was ripe with possibilities! At the start I was really excited at all the little hints of something bigger. But none of these paid off at all! At the start one a TV is playing the video recording of the Joker from the main game's story, repeating over and over "You left me to die..." It's surprisingly eery and obviously teases that perhaps The Joker might not be quite as dead as we thought... Heck, at the start there's a newsreport from Vicky Vale on the radio when you first see Harely and the three police hostages as Robin with Vicky asking Commissoner Gordon to confirm reports that the Jokers body is missing.Throughout the DLC then there are loads of the Joker mannequins with tellys for heads. But the scrrens are smashed and The Joker's laugh sounds freakishly ghostly. Later on there's pictures scribbled on the walls showing Joker rising from the grave. Now I was at two minds here, because Joker's death was a brave move and I don't really want them to retcon that but what I did want was something resembling an interesting story. I was convinced that the big reveal would be that Harley had stolen Mr.J's body and was trying to revive him using the Lazarus Pit that Batman destroyed. Zombie Joker would have been cool! But instead we got a giant Joker robot! Don't get too excited though. It' does absolutley... FUCK ALL.
Nothing and I mean nothing, of any significance happens in this. It's called Harley Quinn's Revenge but what exactly is her plan for revenge? Well, it's apparently to set up shop in the Joker's old hideout to lure the Police so she can kidnap three coppers so she can lure Batman back into Arkham City, subdue him, put him in a glass globe where he will suffocate but wait, that's not the end of the plan, she'll give him enough oxygen to last two days so that Robin and Oracle will get worried and Robin will come looking for him and spoil her said plan but then she has a back-up bomb anyway but its so crap it doesn't kill anyone! What.
I was so disappointed with this. Gameplay wise it's fine, if a little short, but the story is a complete cop-out. Rather than taking a brave moves like the full game did (killing off Joker, Hugo and Talia) this actually goes out of his way to undo some of the original. Remember how there was a positive pregnancy test in Harley's office. Great! Set up the possibility of a third game with Harley and the Joker's kid as the main bad. Somewhere I even read a crazy theory that the baby would be used to harvest organs to bring The Joker back... So what happens in HQR? Well the positive test is still there, but now there are another 20 pregnancy tests. All negative. This royally pissed me off. What a fucking cop out. I tried to think of a good reason why they had doen this retcon, maybe Harley had lost the baby and that's why she's even more psycho than usual? Maybe someone's stolen her baby (unlikely because this is only a few weeks later but it is based on a comic book and it could be a mutant baby...), maybe she's a ganger and the real Harley is in the future being held hostage by an eye patch lady who wants the baby to use as a weapon against Batman? But no, its completley ignored suggesting then that this is just Rocksteady changing their mind. Also, later on you can overhear two thugs discussing whether the dead Joker that Batman carried out was actually The Joker or Clayface. Really, Rocksteady? Really? Don't even think about it!
At the end it looks like they've taken a page out of A Death in the Family and daringly killed off Robin. "Now you know how it feels" Harley spits. "What have you done?!" Batman snaps. So, was this what Harley was planning all along? Depriving Batman of his sidekick to make him feel the smae pain as her? But then, oh wait, Robin is still alive. How? It's not explained but then neither is how Batman and Harley escaped themselves. Must have been a crap bomb. Borrrring.
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Confusion is a way of life, not a state of mind
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Printable Version
RE: Batman : Arkham City - 
The fact that Robin escapes is kudos to him stepping up as a character. I'm sure Rocksteady treaded a fine line as well so many people still hate Robin. So they need to make him a badass ... but then he can't be better than Batman as so many people would get up in arms about it. 
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