After cleaning up Gotham for a few weeks, we’ve learned a few things we’ll take into our second playthrough in Game. Since Rocksteady doesn’t hold your hand very much, getting a few tips before going on patrol is a good idea.
1. Start a fight.
Even if you’ve played Arkham before, it will take time to relearn how to fight because Rocksteady doesn’t include a tutorial. Your default set of moves is shown in a sub-menu, which isn’t very helpful. The first few hours of the story will be hard, so as soon as possible, go out on the streets, fight some regular thugs, and go back to the basics. If you don’t, the higher-level squads will beat you up in the end.
2. A war of attrition
The fact that the sandbox is open to everyone can be bad. Even if you see a possible threat, that doesn’t mean you’re ready to fight it. Some guard posts are guarded by huge sentry guns that can kill you in seconds, and if you find kidnapped firefighters by accident, you might get into a fight that will kick your . In a side mission, it’s best to come back later if you don’t have a tool to deal with a certain danger.
3. Update the Glide
If you put the camera in the middle of any ledge, a pop-up will tell you that you can use the Batclaw to either pull yourself up to that ledge or use it as a platform to launch yourself into the night sky. The device can be upgraded more than once to make the repel faster. Each upgrade adds a boost charge and sends you even higher. Since you’ll spend a lot of time going back and forth between the three islands, you should upgrade this as soon as possible.
4. Side-Missions
The icon at the top of your mission wheel shows your main story arc. The icons show side missions around the rest of the wheel. There will be a few of these at the start of the game, but more will become available as you progress through the story or find new places. Use the analog stick to choose any of them and make it your main goal.
Its direction will be labeled on the navigation system at the top of your screen, and a convenient Bat signal will be sent into the clouds above Gotham, right where the mission is. If you’re not in the center of a story goal, you can stop what you’re doing and do something else. Useful if you’re tired of what you’re looking into or don’t have the right tools.
5. Mapping Gotham
This time, the three islands that make up the sandbox world are full of guard posts, watch towers, aerial drones, and mines. You can add their locations to your map if you see them, are close enough to hear guards talking on the radio, or get information from Alfred about where they are every so often.
If you get up high, it’s easy to spot watch towers and aerial drones. Just look for the red search beams that come out of both. Mines buried in Gotham’s streets make a high-pitched beep and flash a red light. The Batmobile is the best place to look for these things.
6. A map of Gotham
Along with enemy invasion, there are two of these multi-part missions whose locations depend on what you can see or hear. Around the sandbox, firefighters who have been taken are being kept secret. You’ll run into a big group of bad guys when you find it, leading to a fight or some Invisible Predator moments. The other mission needs you to be a detective.
Several bodies are put on rooftops in Gotham as part of a ritual, and their killers leave an audio calling card. Listen for opera music coming from loudspeakers as you walk around the city. Even when you’re close, it’s hard to figure out where the gruesome displays are, so glide to find them.
7. Medical Assistance
Forget about brutes, sworders, and thugs with electrostatics. The enemy army’s most dangerous people are the medics, who can bring downed soldiers back to life if given a chance. Later, tech gadgets can mess up their gear and fry the healers when they use it, but you should first figure out how to get to them before you fight anyone else.
8. Hammering the Heavys
The huge Brutes also give people headaches. They’ll block any straight attack, so use your cape to make them dizzy first, then hit them hard. It takes up to 15 hits to kill them, so the best thing to do is clear a crowd of everyone except Brutes and thugs without weapons first.
You can still block other attacks while beating someone down; if you’re quick, you’ll have time to keep going. So start a beat-down combo, only block an attack that comes your way, and keep going. If the Brutes have blades or tasers, stun them with the disruptor first. If two Brutes have weapons in a group, kill everyone else before going after them.
9. Fix the bodies
A clever move. Do a silent takedown, and then spray explosive gel near the body. When squads come to check on a friend, you can set off an explosion and kill a few more enemies at the same time. Note: Some types of soldiers can find the gel and defuse it.
10. Drones and being invisible
This is explained in-game through a specific situation, but it’s worth saying again. Use your remote hacker’s device on drone pilots to get the codes for their robot friends. Then, use the robot buzzards to attack the drone operators’ teams.
You’ll run into soldiers whose gear makes them hard to see when you’re in Detective mode. You can eventually change this with a later gadget update, but for now, keep an eye out for their radio chatter. That icon still appears in Detective mode, so you can use it to get a rough idea of where they are.
