Arkham City Post #13: Confronting Mr. Freeze

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!

Part 12: The Demon Trials

With a sample of Ra's Al Ghul's blood in hand, my next objective was to bring said blood to Mr. Freeze at the old GCPD building.  However, I was distracted by several new challenges on my way back up to the surface.  There were groups of armed enemies using backpack-mounted sensor jammers, preventing me from scanning the room with Detective Mode.  There were enemies wielding riot shields, who required a special arial attack to disarm.  And to top it off, I received word over Strange's radio that a new prisoner had just been introduced to Arkham City: Mayor Quincy Sharp.

I was so eager to use my new Interrogation skills on that slimy, power-hungry excuse for a psychologist-turned-politician that I dropped my primary objective and headed straight for him, despite Oracle's warnings to stay on task.  When I found him, I was glad I did, as he was about to be shot full of holes by a group of understandably furious inmates.  When I took out the thugs and got my hands on Sharp, all he would divulge was that he decided to put Hugo Strange in charge of Arkham City because he had "powerful friends."  Who could be more powerful and influential than Strange?  Joker was out of commission with his sickness.  Penguin and Two-Face are more small-time crooks than story-driving masterminds.  Ra's Al Ghul was suffering from a Lazarus overdose meltdown.  But as this information provided more backstory than an actionable goal, I filed it away and headed to Freeze.

Victor was able to synthesize the cure easily enough using Ra's's Lazarus-enhanced blood - score one for the insight of the World's Greatest Detective.  But once he was done with the procedure - which produced two drinkable vials of cure - he did something utterly confusing:  he took hold of one vial and placed the other in a locked safe.  Right when it seemed he was going to hand over the McGuffin to me, he thought he could get tricky and make some demands of his own:  apparently Joker had kidnapped Freeze's frozen wife Nora as incentive to develop the cure in the first place.  Freeze now wanted me to find and retrieve Nora before he would deliver the cure to me.  And before I could even begin to negotiate, he crushed the vial he was holding right before my eyes!

The funny thing is, I would have gladly agreed to help reunite Freeze with his wife; what harm would there be in aiding a genuinely troubled (and sometimes downright helpful) supervillain in his quest for peace of mind?  And if he'd given me the cure beforehand, it would have only made it easier for me to complete that mission.  But instead, I had to teach the frozen popsicle a lesson.  His armored suit and devastating freeze gun made him too powerful to face head-on, but luckily the forensic lab provided a veritable plethora of options for me to make use of in taking him down.

His suit was equipped with a heat tracker, so he was able to follow whatever path I took through the lab. Luckily I was able to use that fact to lure him into a number of traps to inflict some damage: I could set up some explosive gel next to a weak wall, I could perform a takedown by jumping out from under a grate or smashing him through a window or dragging him off a ledge or just sneaking up behind him, and I could nail him with one of my signature gliding kicks.  In addition, my new gadgets contributed to my efforts: I could jam his gun with my Disruptor or I could use the Remote Electrical Charge to fire up either an electromagnet or a motor that electrocuted some water on the floor, stunning him long enough to deliver a Beatdown.

The armor on his suit was so effective that I had to deliver several of these takedowns to fully defeat him - plus I had to use diversity, since he was tactically smart enough to adapt to my methods (i.e. freezing the grates, vantage points, windows, electromagnets, etc. so I couldn't use those takedowns twice).  After his beating, Freeze's fit of madness subsided and we could get back to logical discussions about both of our problems.  When I agreed to go after Nora on his behalf, he agreed to give me the cure... but to our horror, when he opened the safe, the vial was missing!  In its place was a note from Harley Quinn, who must have crept in, accessed the safe from the wall side, and stolen the cure while I was tied up with Freeze.  Man, what is it about these supervillains that always make them insist on fighting me instead of just agreeing to work together for once?  It looked like I had yet another hoop to jump through before I got to taste my precious cure...

Part 14: Down the Rabbit Hole