3D Vision 2 brings a new level of immersion to Batman: Arkham City and Trine 2

Batman: Arkham City

Batman: Arkham City is an extraordinary game with a deep story with superb voice acting.  The Hollywood actors in the upcoming Batman movie voice their roles perfectly and with great emotion.  It is an exceptional game that can be approached by many different styles of play and its DX11 visuals are the current state of the art for the Unreal engine.

Batman is a love story and also the story of Cain and Abel.  It explores insanity and the duality of human nature – good and evil.  The bosses are also the bosses from the Batman comics and they are satisfying to battle.  But it is also a kick-ass fighting game where special moves and combos can be chained with devastating and satisfying effect on the NPCs and bosses – or it can be approached from a pure button-mashing method.  Strategy is necessary however to take down armed opponents.

Arkham City is a semi-open world that can be explored in any direction the player wishes although the storyline is relatively linear.  You follow the compass to complete your goal and then on to the next challenge.  There are many hours of play in the side quests and in acquiring Riddler Trophies, and with completing the challenges without even touching the main storyline which is by itself more than a dozen hours long.

Batman: Arkham Asylum was the first game we ever played with 3D Vision.  It is rated 3D Vision “Ready” – Nvidia’s highest standard for 3D PC games. Surprisingly, Batman: Arkham City was only rated “good” originally by Nvidia for 3D Vision.  However, it responded well to tweaking, and long gaming sessions in 3D are the norm – much longer with 3D Vision 2 than with the original and 3D Vision (1).

Unfortunately, the DX11 patch helped performance but perhaps worsened the 3D experience.  The issues with 3D Vision were with some objects rendering at the wrong depth and lens flares were especially annoying at times.  The DX11 patch addressed performance issues with 64-bit operating systems but seemed to introduce some additional issues with 3D vision also.

Fortunately the latest beta GeForce 290.53 drivers have elevated the game from “Good” to 3D Vision “Ready” although we still play with Motion Blur, Off and with everything else set to DX11’s “extreme” setting.  Lens Flares are optional and make almost no performance difference.

We followed the green on screen prompts that are overlaid over every game that Nvidia has tested with 3D Vision. Generally, Motion Blur is turned off for the best 3D Vision experiences and FXAA on high does not have the performance hit that MSAA takes in Batman.Upon playing Batman in 3D Vision for the first time, we were totally impressed by the stunning 3D effects and nearly flicker-free images with only a hint of ghosting that was quickly minimized by the hot keys and by adjusting the convergence.  The 3D effect is especially extraordinary when gliding about the city and looking for targets to drop down on.

Batman is a dark game, but the original 3D Vision makes it about 30% darker.  There are no such issues with LightBoost and 3D Vision 2 glasses.  We compensated easily with the gamma and our screen’s brightness to make it nearly as light as in 2D and without washing out colors which were perfectly rendered with no color shifting at all. Color is just as accurate with the 3D Vision glasses as without them.  We also lowered the brightness and lost some of the color ghosting whichs make the player fatigued.

The cut scenes of Batman appear to reach deep into the screen with only a few situations where objects projected out of the screen. At first, we played with the depth relatively low, then experimented in later playing sessions with increasing depth until ghosting starts to occur. Then the hot keys are used by fixing an an element in the near field and adjusted until the object no longer has an edge bleed and the ghosting nearly disappears.

The sense of immersion increased by playing Batman with 3D Vision 2, and this time it was a bit easier to actually play the game in 3D over 2D because of the advantage to aim more precisely in 3D by being able to judge depth more accurately.  This is the first time that this editor has consistently encountered this mechanism in any game and it is a great plus and hopefully will be the future of 3D implementation.

Batman: Arkham City brings another great chapter of the Batman Saga to life. We will make it a DX11 part of our ABT benching suite immediately to replace Batman: Arkham Asylum. Both games feature quality built-in benchmarks that we have compared to actual framerates that we encounter in-game so as to relate the benchmark to playing the game.

Batman: Arkham City builds upon the foundation of Batman: Arkham Asylum as it sends players into Arkham City, the new maximum security prison for all of Gotham City’s thugs and insane criminal masterminds. Set inside the heavily fortified walls of a large district in Gotham City, the sequel introduces a brand-new story that draws together a cast of classic characters and villains from the Batman universe, as well as new and enhanced gameplay features which include playing as Catwoman.

Batman: Arkham City features a new cinematic story, written by five-time Emmy award winner Paul Dini set within an interesting and unique environments that is playable in DirectX 11 with advanced lighting and shadow features as well as tessellation. PhysX and 3D Vision are added features for GeForce owners to add to the immersion of the game and to the overall experience.

We agree with our web master that this game is absolutely top notch and worth calling in sick from work for. He calls it a perfect mix of story-driven and semi-open world with spectacular fighting combos that can be chained for devastating results. You will need at least a couple of days off of work to finish this game. Let’s take a look at the story and the game play before we preview the new DX11 features as well as PhysX and 3D Vision

The Story

Batman: Arkham City begins 18 months after the events of Batman: Arkham Asylum. Quincy Sharp, the former warden of Arkham Asylum, was elected the Mayor of Gotham City. He clamped down on crime and overhauled Gotham City’s prison system, closing the Asylum. Mayor Sharp ordered that a derelict district of Gotham City be totally walled off from the rest of the city and heavily fortified. He ordered all of the city’s criminals and madmen to be transferred into this new, urban mega-prison – Arkham City.

Batman believes that this is a terrible idea and that Arkham City is about to explode out onto the streets of Gotham. He is right and you have a new massive challenge to undertake.  Many of the important characters in the Batman universe are in the game and they usually represent special boss challenges such as the Penguin and his cohorts.

The Gameplay

Batman is not super-human and he cannot take on armed NPCs directly. Even with his custom armor, multiple gunshot wounds will quickly end his crime-fighting career. As Batman or Catwoman, the player will need to adopt tactics depending on which enemies they are facing.

As in the original game, it is always wise to survey your surroundings and plan out your attack beforehand. Use the rooftops and vantage points to move around silently. As in the Asylum, Batman can drop down behind a thug and perform Takedowns including performing a Knockout Smash as an instant finishing move to clear rooms quickly.  Probably one of the most satisfying elements of the game is the ability to chain ten combo attacks together for a devastating way to clean out an entire room.

Sometimes it is easier to use the environment to perform the many varieties of takedowns. This can include smashing through floor grates or weak wooden walls and grabbing enemies. You will earn XP bonuses for using a variety of takedowns and you can earn multiple bonuses for taking out enemies in different manners.  Leveling up earns the player a chance to unlock gadgets or fighting combos as they progress.

SURVEILLANCE

Batman’s cowl has an advanced communications system built-into it which allows him to communicate with Alfred or other allies, eavesdrop on phone calls, or enter Detective Mode. One of the most useful features of the cowl is called Local Surveillance.

The cowl automatically scans the surrounding area for relevant noises or trouble spots. Upon identifying an important conversation, the audio is delivered directly to Batman and displayed on the HUD. Surveillance can be followed up by initiating Detective mode with a further pop-up. Local Surveillance is useful to locate thugs or political prisoners and to stay up on gossip and tips.

Batman’s entire costume is a mobile arsenal of high-tech gadgets and forensic equipment. A benefit of being fabulously wealthy is that Batman can also upgrade his skills and gadgets after acquiring enough XP.  Catwoman can also benefit by upgrading her weapons and she has her own “thief vision”

Side Missions & Playing as Catwoman

There are 12 main side missions in Batman: Arkham City. Some side missions are available early in the campaign, but more unlock as you progress. There are also a variety of Riddler challenges that will prove once and for all who is smarter. There are also political prisoners to save and Challenge Rooms to clear that were also created by the Riddler.

Catwoman was recently incarcerated inside Arkham City where she may be hunting down Two-Face for her own reasons. Her style is markedly different than Batman’s. While Batman uses expensive gadgets and ziplines to get around Arkham City, Catwoman uses her whip to swing from point to point, in addition to using the claws in her gloves for the grip needed to scale buildings.

Catwoman is also a master of stealth and can fix onto any mesh ceiling which gives her the ability to travel above the heads of her foes. Catwoman can even drop down on foes from above and take them out with a Takedown before returning to the ceiling to escape. Every surface may provide a tactical advantage for her and a player can become quite creative.

Catwoman’s arsenal includes pouncing, using her trademark whip, and bolas. If the mob is too large, she uses caltrops. Caltrops are small spikes that can be used to keep enemies away or to isolate an enemy in combat. They can even be used during combat.  And her skills will be needed to battle her own boss fights.

With PhysX enabled and set to “High”, the money littering the floor in the vault reacts to character and weapon movement in real-time.  It works very well together with 3D Vision to increase the player’s immersion.  It is highly recommended that a player use a dedicated GeForce video card together with their primary card just to experience the PhysX effects on high as even a GTX 580 will have some performance issues if it tries to do everything at high detail and high resolution.

FXAA is a shader based image filter developed by Nvidia which reduces visible aliasing. It is applied along with other post processing steps like motion blur and bloom. For game engines making use of deferred shading, FXAA provides for less of a performance and memory hit over using deferred shading with MSAA. Not only does FXAA cost less in terms of a performance hit, but the visual difference is very clear over not using it at all.  It is probably the preferred method of reducing visible aliasing with 3D Vision.

Tessellation in Batman: Arkham City

Batman: Arkham City offers support for DirectX 11 tessellation which is a good way to increase the level of detail in a scene.

Look very carefully at the tessellation on the vine set to “high” (no, not there! – at the vine below) and compare the three levels of tessellation from left to right: none, normal and high.

Since Epic added support for DX11 tessellation to the Unreal Engine, Rocksteady also used DX11 tessellation in Batman: Arkham City for displacement mapping and smoothing on characters and environments. Displacement mapping adds fine geometric detail to a mesh using data sourced from textures. This means the artist can more easily set up complex displacement-mapping effects, such as animations.

Mesh smoothing adds tessellated triangles to break up harsh angular outlines. The technique used in Batman: Arkham City is based on a watertight variant of PN triangles and it is applied on objects which should appear sinuous or organic, such as power cables, pipes and trees.

Of course there are many other DX11 tessellation points of interest in Batman: Arkham City including, Virtual Dicing, Mip-Mapping, Multi View Soft Shadows (MVSS), and Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion (HBAO). The visual result is a real-time lighting and shadow placement solution that takes depth in account while being smoothed by a blur kernel which gives the player a realistic effect.

Combining all of these features creates an impressive cinematic look to Batman: Arkham City and immerses the gamer into Batman’s dark world.

Cut-scenes are in 3D

All of the elements of Batman: Arkham City are in 3D. This includes everything from the interactive 3D character portraits to every in-game cut-scene. The in-game cut-scenes are rendered in full HD 1080p 3D video for the highest quality cinematics. The characters from the Batman: Arkham City universe come alive in stereoscopic 3D Vision.

Let’s look at the game’s system requirements as well as the more specific recommendations for playing with GeForce cards and playable settings with PhysX and 3D Vision

Batman Hardware Requirements, Performance & Conclusion

 

Minimum System Requirements

• Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP, Vista or 7
• CPU: Dual-Core CPU 2.4 Ghz
• RAM: 2GB
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA 8800 or ATI 3800 with 512MB of VRAM
• Sound: Microsoft Windows XP/Vista or 7 compatible sound card (100% DirectX 9.0c-compatible)
• DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
• Hard Drive: 17.5GB free disk space
• Input Devices: 100% Windows XP/Vista or 7 compatible mouse and keyboard

Recommended System Requirements

• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7
• CPU: Dual-Core CPU 2.5 GHz
• RAM: 4GB
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 or ATI Radeon HD 6850 with 768MB+ of VRAM (DirectX 11 compatible)
• Sound: Microsoft Windows XP/Vista or 7 compatible sound card (100% DirectX 9.0c-compatible)
• DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
• Hard Drive: 17.5 GB free disk space
• Input Devices: 100% Windows XP/Vista or 7 compatible mouse and keyboard or Xbox 360 Controller for Windows

Performance

Here is Nvidia’s chart featuring playable settings of what a gamer can expect with selected GTX 500 series video cards. We can mostly confirm this with the very same cards that we used with some slowdowns that happened occasionally; once after a boss fight, the game became a slideshow and it required restarting the game.  There are still some DX11 bugs even after the patch.

3D Vision Performance

The average expected performance when running the built in benchmark with 3D Vision enabled at 1920×1080 resolution, FXAA High, DX11 Disabled, and PhysX High is 35 fps for the GTX 560 Ti and 38 for the GTX 570.

As a more direct comparison with PhyxX on Normal, using our own stock GTX 570 at 1920×1080 resolution in 2D with DX11 effects Extreme (Motion Blur, Off), you can expect about 53 fps average.  Switching on 3D Vision 2 at the same settings will give you about 38 fps average.  So there is much less than a 100% framerate hit.  These results are with the very latest beta drivers.

 

Conclusion

Batman: Arkham City comes highly recommended. We agree with our web master and give this game a solid 9 in 2D and a 9.5 playing in 3D Vision 2 for the added enhancements of better depth gauging for aiming and gliding.  This game is highly recommended for 3D Vision and it will be our benchmark for a long time to come.  We can’t wait for the final DX11 patch.

«1. Introduction2. 3D Vision vs. 3D Vision 23. 3D Vision 2 requirements4. Unboxing the ASUS VG278 Bundle5. Gaming with 3D Vision 26. Trine27. Batman: Arkham City8. The Verdict9. View All»