Arkham City Post #16: Confronting Joker in the Steel Mill

WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!

Part 15: Pre-Steel Mill Adventures

Upon heading back into the Steel Mill, I was greeted by a video message from Joker.  He dropped hints in his chatter that this would definitely be our final confrontation, the most telling being a meta-reference to the disappointing ending of his favorite TV show that "all took place in a church."  Way to date the piece, Joker; I thought Gotham City was supposed to be timeless.  I didn't watch that particular show myself, but the knowledge that Joker was a fan just made me want to punch him in the face all the more.

All my new technology came in handy, especially the Freeze Grenade, which I needed to create ice rafts on the various water channels buried deep within the steel mill.  I also learned a new trick: throwing a Remote Control Batarang through an exposed electrical arc, imbuing the projectile with an electric charge.  This allowed me to power up various hard-to-reach fuse boxes in the area.  I surprised Dr. Stacy Baker, the doctor I had rescued in my first trip to the mill.  Apparently she had done a pretty good job staying out of sight, seeing as she hadn't been recaptured.  Her survival might have had something to do with the lead pipe she tried to take a swing at me with, before she saw who I really was.  I was glad she was able to curb her swing first, ask questions later instinct... cuz if she had connected with that pipe, I don't know if I would have been able to curb mine.

As I was crawling through a particularly isolated steam vent, I saw the strangest sight: Harley Quinn, bound and gagged without a soul in sight.  After some coaxing, she let on that there was some proprietary stolen Mr. Freeze technology hidden in the boiler room.  (This turned out to be a cluster grenade that could freeze multiple enemies to the ground at once.)  I didn't think twice about how she found herself in that particular predicament.  I chalked it up to one of the newly-revitalized Joker's famous mood swings.  Had I stopped to question her a bit more, I might have learned something that would help me later on.

Instead, I continued on to Joker's secret lair, where he was gazing at himself in a mirror.  Only when I saw his sickly, scarred, pockmarked, still clearly Titan-infected reflection, I was shocked: could the cure not have worked after all?  But when the actual villain turned to face me, it was the familiar, emaciated yet healthy figure of Joker himself.  He had the nerve to try and teach me some kind of moronic lesson about something or other... as if I had anything to learn from that sick clown.  Then, to my surprise, he jumped down off his platform and challenged me to fisticuffs, one-on-one style.

Well, this was a new streak of courage, which promised to make this final showdown all the more gratifying.  In these types of situations, my enemies usually resort to throwing wave after wave of henchmen at me.  Rarely am I afforded the opportunity to deliver a beatdown to the main crime boss himself (Penguin was clearly the exception).  But no matter how many times I tried to deliver a finishing blow, the fiend wriggled out of the way with near superhuman quickness.  Right as my gratification turned to frustration, the tried and true group of henchmen came.

These were not just your typical thugs with weapons - which ran from bats to knives to fire extinguishers to riot shields.  But the one-armed clown (whose other half I left beaten up at Penguin's headquarters) and a beefed-up Titan Henchman as well.  This Titan monster was more powerful than the ones I faced back at the Asylum - as he charged, he protected his face from a quick Batarang, removing one of the main ways I could incapacitate one of these brutes.  This left my arsenal with only my new move, the Ultra Stun, and it was hard to get in close enough to execute the "full attack action" (or, more colloquially, the triple button-press) it took to pull it off.  But it was all worth it, because when I did jump on its back to take control of it, I could independently execute each of its moves: the charge, the ground pound, and the regular punch.  That made it much easier to eventually take out the entire crowd.

Then, just as I was about to stand triumphant over Joker's debilitated form, wouldn't you know it a train falls on me.  That's right, a train.  And guess who goes unconscious (again).  Yerp, that would be me.

Part 17: Protocol 10 In Effect