Arkham City Post #4: The Joker's Steel Mill

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!

Part 3: The Church

It was almost time to pinpoint the origin point of Joker's radio transmissions... but I was distracted once again by a distress flare in Gotham Harbor, near where I started my AR Training missions.  As I entered the building, I was surprised to see none other than Bane, his gigantic roided-up frame hunched over a map on the wall.  Apparently he has some weird sixth-sense for news of the Titan formula, having so much of it in his blood stream, and he had caught wind of 12 containers of the stuff that Joker had somehow managed to get off Arkham Island.  He claimed to want the Titan destroyed as much as I did - apparently he wants a monopoly on the physique-enhancing chemical market - so we agreed to each take out six containers and then meet back at the harbor.  Hey, if I can keep track of four side missions, why not five...?

Each container thankfully contained a radio homing beacon, and my Bat Computer was able to mark the location of all six on the map.  The closest one was guarded by a few hapless Joker thugs, and after dispatching them with ease, I made short work of the container with my explosive gel.  The second container appeared to be locked deep within the Sionis Industries steel mill... which was incidentally the location of Joker's radio broadcasts.  Interesting how my paths always seem to converge.  There didn't appear to be any clear way in, so Alfred stopped just short of suggesting I dive through the main chimney, referring to the strategy as "suicide."  But desperate times sometimes call for desperately taking a page out of the Santa Claus handbook.

Note to self: whenever Alfred describes something as "suicide," remind me to file it under "daring and awesome and fun to boot."  I grappled over the lip of the chimney, and immediately divebombed into a drop which I knew ended with a lake of molten hot magma, the natural by-product of the steel industry.  (I should know - I'm having a movie filmed about me in Pittsburgh, PA, the steel capital of America.)  I prepared to pull up dramatically and glide gently into the inevitable crack in the infrastructure, but luckily there was a wire spread across the pit, onto which I gently settled.  I must say, all this tightrope business in the early part of these adventures has me feeling more like the Prince of Persia than the Dark Knight.

Once inside it was a matter of sneaking through the vents until I came upon the giant empty space of the loading bay.  There was the doctor who Harley had kidnapped from the Church, and who had apparently failed to find a cure for Joker's illness.  As punishment for her failure she was about to fall victim to a giant clown with only one arm... but in that arm he held a gigantic sledge hammer, from which he got his name (the nearly 40 clowns waiting around him referred to the giant as "Mr. Hammer").  But at the last second, the clowns dragged her away to the smelting room, where she was to be guarded by a group of armed thugs, waiting for some unimaginable purpose.  Maybe Joker wanted her alive, just to lure me in there.  Whatever the motives, I obliged by clearing the room and rescuing the doc.

From her I learned that Joker was suffering from an illness caused by his blood being contaminated with Titan - Bain's influence reentering the atmosphere.  At least the disease didn't also make him bigger and stronger, like what happens with a Titan overdose.  Having a sick Joker on the loose is bad enough: it makes him desperate.  Never mind a sick Joker overpowered by an experimental chemical.  I also grabbed a piece of some industrial electrical machinery and modified it to allow me to shoot a remote electrical blast - picture Raiden's lightning bolt, except that it also allowed me to power up certain electrical devices remotely.  Thankfully, one of those devices was the door that let us out of that room.

Another one of those devices was a wrecking ball in the loading bay that I could swing back and forth to crash through the wall Joker was hiding behind.  But I couldn't use the controls before I tangled with Mr. Hammer himself.  It's a good thing my battles with the Titan henchmen at the Asylum prompted me to master a new combat move: the Ultra Stun, wherein I could triple-button mash Stun to take care of overlarge enemies like this guy.  Before I punched his lights out (pictured above), I noted his Russian accent and distinctive tattoos.  Then I went after Joker.

I burst in on Harley Quinn weeping at the feet of a shrouded figure seated in a wheelchair.  She pleaded me to leave them alone.  I tossed her aside like a ragdoll.  After failing to respond to verbal questioning, I used detective mode to scan the vitals on the figure in the wheelchair: deceased.  That's when the real Joker jumped out from behind me and hit me with a double dose of knockout gas.  And that's when I was knocked the fuck out...

Part 5: The Search for Mr. Freeze