I've already declared that Harley Quinn's Revenge is what downloadable content should be based on a 30-minute preview of the single-player story expansion for Batman: Arkham City. Luckily, after playing through the entire two-hour campaign, I'm not going to try and weasel out of that statement. Although I wish the ending was a bit more satisfying, that's nitpicking. Harley Quinn's Revenge offers a fresh take on the gameplay we love and expands the narrative developer Rocksteady has worked so hard to create. This is the type of DLC story-driven games should be pumping out.
Picking up a few weeks after the events of Batman: Arkham City, Harley Quinn's Revenge opens with Batman missing. Seems Harley took over the Joker's old haunt in Arkham City, Batman went to investigate, and now the Caped Crusader hasn't been heard from in days. As such, we start as Robin investigating the scene, jump back to Batman to see what went wrong, and then flip flop to tell the tale.
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This is the type of DLC story-driven games should be pumping out.
Needless to say, that's rad. Harley's DLC is familiar but fresh. Robin's moves (his bo staff becomes a shield, he can grapple to people's chest for a zip kick, etc.) are the same from his downloadable challenge missions, but this is our first chance to try them out in a story situation. We get to hear Robin talk to Oracle, see him use detective vision, and become Batman's savior. That's a nice shakeup after dozens of hours patrolling rooftops and looking for Riddler trophies as the Dark Knight.
Make no mistake, this is the same gameplay I lauded back in October with its reversal system, combos and gadgets, but viewing it through this new lens makes it exciting all over again. Using a shuriken instead of a Batarang is a bigger deal than you might think, and as someone who hadn't really played since the game came out, I enjoyed slipping back into the game I loved so much. It was like seeing an old friend again.
Save him, Boy Wonder!
But it's worth pointing out that you can't ignore the mission at hand here and go scope the city for side quests as the Boy Wonder. Harley Quinn's Revenge is a standalone mode off the main menu and doesn't tie into your previous saves or the open world, although it does have a collectable set of Harley balloons to find and a bunch of new Trophies/Achievements.
The missions you'll tackle drop you right back into taking out snipers and wailing on guys with stun guns, but they can be a bit fetch questy, focusing on collecting keycards and defusing bombs. Still, I never got sick of heading out on the next leg of my journey because the enemies are always varied. Even though I'm taking on room after room of guys as I make my way around the steel mill, Harley Quinn's Revenge tweaked the formula with each group.
Switching out the enemy types is great, but the continuation of the Arkham City story kept me playing and justifies the purchase. Challenge rooms and costumes are enticing to some gamers, but I wanted to know what happened to these characters after Batman walked out of that theater with Joker's dead body. To pick up here and find the Dark Knight's friends concerned about him emotionally -- as if he's grieving for the Joker -- is alarming and intriguing all at once. Batman's always been unhinged, so how crazy is he now that his partners are this concerned for him?
However, that question is the DLC's major downside. It's never answered. We're teased with the information that Batman is struggling with the loss of his arch nemesis and his lover Talia, but we never get to see it. We never get to see him deal with it. I'm not going to spoil the ending here, but don't expect to have any more closure than you did before. In fact, this might even raise more questions for Batman's character than the original Arkham City ending.
But that's not the worst thing in the world -- just something for us fans to obsess over until the next game, piece of DLC or comic book chapter.
Greg is the executive editor of IGN PlayStation, cohost of Podcast Beyond and host of Up at Noon. Follow IGN on Twitter, and keep track of Greg's shenanigans on IGN and Twitter. Beyond!
CLOSING COMMENTS
Harley Quinn's Revenge is two more hours of Batman: Arkham City for $10. That's really all you need to know, right? It's pretty, it's fun to silently KO people with a bo staff, the voice acting is great, and an epilogue revolving around an emotionally broken Batman is intriguing. I wish the missions were a bit more varied than the fetch quest/fight formula and that we had a closing conversation that summed up what Batman's going through, but Harley Quinn's Revenge is a great update to what's going on in the Arkham City universe.
