By ALAN MAN of The Box Office Watchmen

If you feel like you can't wait for director Christopher Nolan to submit his next entry into the Batman film library, here are some new juicy details on the upcoming video game sequel to 2009's Rocksteady Studios Batman: Arkham Asylum. It was a wild day of Batman: Arkham City scoops and rumors. (Spoiler warning!)

Here are the latest details on the storyline, gameplay, and graphics:

Storyline

What separated last year's Batman: Arkham Asylum from most comic book-based video games (and their iterations) was the feel of the game. Simply put, we all felt like we were actually Batman stuck in Joker's maze, rather than someone merely controlling a bunch of moving pixels on our TV screens. There were plenty of iconic villains, subplots, cinematic cutscenes, and familiar artifacts and locations. Batman: Arkham City is headed in the same direction.

Our friends at ComputerAndVideoGames.com tell us that Arkham Asylum and Black Gate Prison are "unfit to hold inmates," and Arkham City is some sort of makeshift city created by Quincy Sharp. Also, the scoop is that Sharp lost in a mayoral race, and in a fit of rage he purchases the slums and walls them off, creating Arkham City (Perhaps he's going to create a 19th-century style town to haunt its inhabitants and leave them no option but to incestuously procreate a la The Village). Actually, it's not that far off. Apparently, Sharp will have his mercenary-turned-guards surround Arkham City to prevent any escapees.

There will be a couple of familiar villainous faces. The word is that Two-Face and Catwoman will be featured prominently, along with Mr. Freeze and Hugo Strange. Stalwarts like Joker and pi-Zsasz will be back, as well as the subject of every fanboy's weirdo motley clown fetish, Harley Quinn. Without revealing too much, early word is that Two-Face will get the lion's share of the scenes (the most face time? Get it? Because he's called... gah, nevermind).

Gameplay

Another fantastic element of Batman: Arkham Asylum was its easy-to-learn-hard-to-master gameplay. The controls were both intuitive but challenging. The game departed from the mechanics of other superhero beat 'em ups by focusing heavily on stealth attacks, which was praised by even the most critical of Batman fans. Batman: Arkham City appears to follow Blizzard Entertainment's lead in developing Starcraft II: don't fix what ain't broke, just add on to it.

One rumor is that you can use gadgets during fights. For example, you can apply the explosive gel on a henchman and splatter Chef Boyardi all over the walls. Another new feature is the ability to pull off multiple counterattacks for "Suuuuper Combos!" Batman's utility belt will also carry a smoke bomb. Lastly, Rocksteady has intimated that the forensics aspect of the game will be featured more heavily this time around. (Scoops courtesy of ComputerandVideoGames.com)

Graphics

Batman: Arkham Asylum was certainly a babe of a game to look at. The dark, dreary atmosphere of the game made you feel like you were actually locked up in Arkham. Batman's costume also became tattered as the game wore on, and near the end, he sported a 5 O'clock shadow that even Seacrest and Timberlake would envy. The game required more than one play-through to really absorb each detail.

Batman: Arkham City will have bigger ambitions with hopefully the same execution. The city will be heterogeneously designed and drawn to portray the feel of a real-life city. The colors look to be more vibrant this time around, allowing the full palette range -- from Harvey Dent's multi-purple suit to Mr. Freeze's crisp, light blue get-up -- to dazzle us on screen. And if Rocksteady just gives us the same effort, then we can anticipate the same attention to detail and plenty of "ah-ha!" moments upon discovering obscure graphical shout outs to the source material.

Lowdown

Batman: Arkham City drops sometime in the fall of 2011, giving Rocksteady plenty of time to fine tune the mechanics and graphics. Hopefully for the impatient, Rocksteady will issue a drawing for beta-testing keys sometime in early-2011. Until then, we have this teaser trailer (courtesy of HolyFragger.com):




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