Courtesy of USA Today, we have more details from the upcoming game:
"Catwoman is hanging upside down over a vat of acid, while Two-Face addresses a small army of 25-30 inmates.
Perched above their view is The Dark Knight, ready to pounce. But 1 vs. 25 can't be very good odds, right? Only if you're an inmate.
The world is huge, 5 times larger than Arkham Asylum. With that in mind, Batman has a few fresh methods for quickly traversing the city. Batman uses a gliding technique to fly from building to building. Quick zips with the Batclaw can send him soaring high in the air, or he can dive, then glide back upward to maintain momentum.It's tricky to execute at first. Timing the rappel move or transitioning from a dive to a glide requires a little practice, but really helps get Batman moving quickly across the very large city.
But, sometimes, even Batman needs a time out from all that traveling. During a separate, hands-off demo of the game, a handful of kittens sit atop a ledge, with a prompt to "Take a Break." Enter Catwoman.
The feline foil to Batman is much faster and more agile, quickly climbing up buildings and slinking across rooftops. She's also quick in combat, cracking her whip and tossing bolas while pummeling opponents.
Catwoman has her own set of missions separate from Batman. During one quest, she attempts to infiltrate a vault to pick up an orchid for Poison Ivy. To enter the vault, she has to swipe three key cards from heavily armed guards. She uses a "Detective Mode" like Batman, only she detects items she can steal.
It appears Batman: Arkham City will be a larger game on several fronts. A representative from Rocksteady Games says the main story lasts 20-25 hours, and can go longer depending on how much players explore."
Also, we are treated to more in-depth gameplay courtesy of gamrreview.com
"After beating up a group of henchmen as Catwoman, I switched over to Batman. Jamie from Rocksteady then explained a little bit about getting around the city. Pretty simple to fly everywhere. Hold A and walk off the top of a building to glide. Right bumper shoots out your grappling hook. Double tap A while you're grappling toward something, and instead of stopping, you will fly past it at incredible speed, a la Spider-Man. Then do a quick dive and pull back (like the cape in Super Mario World!), and you'll get so much air that you can actually glide from one side of the city to the other without touching the ground. Batman doesn't fly. He falls in style.
As Batman, I decided to find a few Riddler Trophies first. There are 400 of the things hidden around the city, and every so many that you collect unlocks some more Riddler death trap levels that you'll have to outwit to win. Riddler is unique in that respect, because he seems to be an almost completely optional enemy. I know there are 400 of the things, but they're hidden in ways that actually seem to make sense, unlike, say, the pigeons in Grand Theft Auto IV, or the flags in Assassin's Creed which feel just that much more tedious with far fewer tangible rewards.
After learning how to fly and fight, I went to the courthouse to rescure Catwoman...... From a window on the second floor (I snuck in), I entered Detective Mode by hitting the left bumper, which acts like a sort of Heavy Rain or Metroid Prime scanning mode: wire frames, skeletons, the works. If I didn't survey the area first, I wouldn't have seen the gunman on the third floor, who would have annihilated me if I had tried to just leap into the crowd down below and start fighting. I snuck up behind him and took him out silently, then leapt down and beat the crowd below.
Then Two-Face shot me in the head. Good thing I'm Batman. Catwoman and I took him down then tied him up .... then I saved her from being sniped by the Riddler through a window. She ran off, and I used my detective skills to triangulate the bullet hole in the floor with the hole in the window, determining that the Riddler must've shot from a tower in the middle of town. My next objective.
Before I took off, I noticed one other thing in Detective Mode besides the bullet's path: there was someone sitting in the basement. "Is that a prisoner?" I asked Jamie.
"That's Calendar Man," Jamie told me.
If you're not familiar with DC lore, Calendar Man is one of the single lamest villains in history. He only comits crimes on certain days of the year.
In Arkham City, however, he is messed up, and thoroughly creepy. He's in a cell in the basement of the courthouse, just sitting there. He's pretty beefy, and bald. There is a yearly calendar on the wall next to his cell, with various dates circled. Christmas Day, New Year's July 4th, some other days that I'm not sure are holidays. Jamie (Rocksteady) hinted to me that if you play the game on one of those specific dates (real world time), you might just have something happen with Calendar Man... That's an awesome way to keep players coming back to your game once a month or so, long after they've collected that final Riddler Trophy."
Damn. How awesome is that last bit about Calendar Man?
Batman arrives Oct. 18 for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360".