As I was tying up Copperhead and locking her into a shipping container to await the arrival of the police, she plead with me to let her go in exchange for the location of where Joker was holding his meeting with all the remaining assassins. However, since Electrocutioner was still at large, the unique electromagnetic signal produced by his gloves would lead me right to the lot of them. At the risk of sounding like a reality TV ingenue, everything happens for a reason: I gaffed and forgot to adequately secure an unconscious supervillain, but his freedom made it easier for me to accomplish my new objectives. It wasn't, however, a mistake I would make again.
The signal from the gloves led me to the historic Royal Hotel, outside of which there was an entire squad of heavily armed SWAT Officers guarding the front entrance. At first this seemed like too tall an order, even for me, and began to search for an alternate route. But then I remembered what happens in the main menu sequence if you wait around long enough before pressing start - a thrilling scene of me jumping directly in front of a couple of armed thugs and escaping without a scratch. [Another thing that happens in the main menu is that Christopher Drake's evocative musical score integrates Carol of the Bells into the main theme for an extra-Christmasy feel, but that's not totally relevant here.] So I used the disruptor on two of the outlying officers, threw a smoke bomb, and jumped right in. It wasn't my most graceful encounter - the fight involved mostly mindless evading and a whole lot of quickfire Batarangs - but I came out on top in the end... only to find that the front door was locked anyway. I guess you can't believe everything you see in an opening title sequence.
I eventually found my way into the hotel lobby via the underground parking structure. I rode an elevator - featuring some Christmas-themed elevator music, which was not as cool as if it had been James Bond-themed, like in GoldenEye - up into the lobby, which was being patrolled by a group of thugs that had been converted from Black Mask's service into the Joker's. By the way, when I mentioned that Roman Sionis was Italian, it was not just based on his given name (Rome is the capital of Italy after all), but also on hearing his henchmen refer to each other as "paesan" and use the exclamation "madon" - as in "Madon, that Vicki Vale is hot. What I'd like to do to her..." It was rather frustrating taking them all out, not because they posed a particularly difficult threat, but because I was at the point in my Dark Knight Challenge progression where I had to perform four "exotic" takedowns - vent, corner, explosive gel, and hanging ledge - and no matter where I stood on the ledge directly above my last opponent, the takedown prompt just wouldn't come up. I guess that Sonic Shock Batarang is nothing more than a pipe dream.
After receiving an A grade for clearing the room, despite missing out on that fourth elusive takedown, I was rewarded with the object of my search in a most shocking fashion. The Electrocutioner himself crashed through the skylight and landed with a dull thud, following an exchange that almost certainly involved the Joker revealing himself as the man behind the (Black) Mask to the three remaining assassins and pushing poor Buchinsky out of the penthouse window. (I can only assume this is how it went down, since I wasn't there after all...) I never like to see anyone full-on die, but like the Native Americans before me, I didn't let any part of him go to waste, as I scavenged his extra cool shock gloves. Good thing I did too, because as I made my way up to the penthouse, I found that Joker had converted the hotel into his own personalized death trap, including setting up a twisted Simon Says-esque game that I was forced to play in order to save an innocent victim's life, and decking out the ballroom with twisted amusement park funhouse roller coaster rides. He certainly wasted no time in establishing his own unique dramatic style.
Upon reaching the penthouse, I found to my horror that the Joker had rigged buildings all over the city with explosives, with all the detonators set up in a row right here in the room. I watched helplessly as the Clown Prince of Crime blew up a building right in front of me, the explosion visible through the frosted window of the penthouse. Thankfully it was only an empty construction site - he was only making a point with that one, but I knew I had to stop him before he could take any lives. I easily overpowered him physically (pictured) and got a couple of good punches in, when I found to my annoyance, that the mercenary known as Bane had stuck around to act as the Joker's personal bodyguard. Bane proved himself the most cerebral of the assassins, assuming (correctly) that I would make my way to Joker, whereupon the giant of a man would be lying in wait. This incarnation of Bane drew more from The Dark Knight Rises than from the Animated Series, seeing as he had a host of mercenaries at his call and that he began our encounter wearing a stupid jacket - but at least it wasn't furry and at least his mask didn't cover his mouth, making him at least semi-understandable.
We exchanged our first few punches to the strains of Rossini's overture to The Thieving Magpie (shades of A Clockwork Orange), but when the fight brought us outside onto the landing, Bane stripped off his jacket and activated his supply of Venom, the supersteroid that somehow amplifies both his skeletal and muscular structure. At this point, he didn't approach the size and strength he would attain in our Arkham Asylum fight - perhaps the Venom had been building up in his system all that time, causing a more massive reaction to the drug - but he was still by far the most formidable opponent I had ever faced. When he got into a Venom-induced rage, he would charge over and over again, forcing me to madly dodge out of the way each time. Not even a Batarang to the face would slow him down (funny how he would become MORE susceptible to that trick later in his career) and God forbid I happened to dodge anywhere near a corner, because he would turn on a dime and hit me three or four times without fail. Thankfully, since he was not quite as superhuman in size as he would eventually become, I was able to straight up counter some of his attacks and use combat takedowns to damage his Venom pack, but no matter how many times I did so, there was always some left in the tank for him to utilize. Plus there was the usual influx of Joker's thugs to worry about.
All through my sojourn through the hotel, Alfred was in my ear about calling Captain Gordon to help me with the fight against Bane. I was of course against it, being in the lone wolf stage of my character development, but towards the end of that fight I was glad that Alfred made the anonymous call against my wishes. Just as I thought I could take no more punishment, two helicopters appeared out of the sky and opened fire chasing Bane into a helicopter of his own, manned by his mercenary crew. Unfortunately Joker's men returned fire and sent the police helicopters into a tailspin, and then Bane returned fire on us - with a rocket launcher, no less - blowing the Joker clean off the ledge of the hotel and into a deadly free fall. Staying true to my character, the only thing I could do in response was to leap after him and try desperately to save my new arch enemy...
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