Let's Play Batman: Return to Arkham City - Episode 4

I've fallen behind on these blog commentaries to accompany my Let's Play of Batman: Return to Arkham City, because... well, there are no excuses, I just didn't do them. But I'll make up for it with rapid fire posts about episodes 4 and 5, starting right now.



Jumping right into a breakdown of my personally added music, I once again cut in the main menu music from Arkham Asylum while I'm picking my next upgrade, which I believe is the fourth overall. Since there will be a lot more of these upgrades throughout the course of the game, with most (although not all) being accompanied by this music, I'm not going to note each one individually from here on out. The most interesting thing about this particular upgrade is that it is selected not by Batman, but by Catwoman, since they share experience points and can purchase upgrades for each other. Since you only play as Catwoman a handful of times during the game, it makes a lot more sense to always get the Batman ones, which is what I do here.

But even though we play as Catwoman for the majority of this episode, the character I would pick to represent Episode 4 is Poison Ivy. Even though she does significantly factor into the story later on down the line, this is the episode where she gets the most screen time, and it's the only one where we fight against her brainwashed henchmen. Notably, her role in Arkham City pales in comparison to both the preceding and subsequent games in the Arkham trilogy, so check out my Let's Plays of Return to Arkham Asylum and Arkham Knight for your Pamela Isley fix.

After we're done with the Catwoman segment, we get an in-game music-less cutscene when Batman talks to Joker using the smartphone our hero finds taped to his chest. For this key conversation, I use the same cue from the Animated Series episode "The Last Laugh" that we heard back in Episode 2, after scanning Joker's sniper rifle. I don't feel too bad about reusing it so soon, since it is bar none the best example of Joker's musical leitmotif in the series.

This chat is the last time that Batman uses the phone itself, since he knows the importance of using a good hands-free system while fighting crime. For the brief moment when Batman inserts the SIM card into his gauntlet-based Bat-bluetooth, I use the sting from the extended soundtrack cue "Meet Mr. Hammer," which we saw in the last episode.

Immediately after that, we call up Alfred to give him the latest update: Mr. Freeze has been working on a cure for Joker's (and my) infected blood. Since the topic of conversation is everyone's favorite cryogenic scientist, I use the introduction to Mr. Freeze's first Animated Series appearance, an episode titled "Heart of Ice."

The only other personal music in the episode is another brief instance of the track "Watcher in the Wings" from the extended soundtrack, to go over the second part of the side mission with the same name, and then one more use of the Arkham Asylum main theme for another upgrade... but I said I wouldn't talk about those individually anymore. Stay tuned for another blog recap coming real soon, and new episodes every Tuesday!