Let's Play Batman: Return to Arkham City: Episode 7

It might be hard to believe, but a full two-thirds of Episode 7 of my Batman: Return to Arkham City Let's Play is part of the main story missions. Watch the video below and see if you can which parts are mandatory, and which are side missions:



If you guessed that the first "act" was the one comprised of side missions, you'd be absolutely right. But it's understandable if you thought the rest of the episode wasn't particularly story-centric, since by the end of the episode, we're still not able to progress very far into Penguin's museum, which is the goal of our primary objective. But sometimes you have to go a long distance out of your way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

You see, Penguin had set up his base of operations inside the Cyrus Pinkney Natural History museum, which, as a municipal structure, I should have been able to hack my way inside using the Cryptographic Sequencer. But since Oswald Cobblepot has access to military grade equipment for some reason, he was able to block the signal back to the Batcave using communications jammers, which are inconveniently spread all across the map. So while destroying them is necessary for progressing through the main story, it's also a task that could be pretty easily isolated and lifted out if necessary.

But before getting to that in the episode, I tackle a pair of actual side missions: gliding through advanced augmented reality obstacle courses and chasing after a couple more of Victor Zsasz's ringing phones. This Zsasz element provides the only real opportunity to name this episode after a character, even though we were introduced to the self-scarred serial killer in the previous episode, and we won't complete his side mission until many episodes later. But since Calendar Man's only appearance was in the previous episode and we don't get our first real meeting with the Penguin until next time, I was left with precious few choices.

Meanwhile, the AR side missions provide the only real chance to insert any personal music - namely the Arkham Asylum Main Theme while I'm in the pause menu searching for the next mission. I know I said I wasn't going to highlight any future uses of this track, but it's basically the only one in this episode, so I'm making an exception. Oh, there is one other track I added: after destroying the third jammer, Batman does some VO commentary about how he's now able to get into the museum. This happens after the predator challenge music stings out, so I spiced this moment up with a track from the extended soundtrack (which we also heard earlier in this episode, upon entering the museum for the first time) called "Entering Penguin's Turf."