I realize I’m late to the party as Harley Quinn’s Revenge has been out for three weeks now. But seeing as Batman: Arkham City (review) is one of my favorite games, I feel obligated to review it. Also, some of you may remember I was doing a little series of posts back in November called “Judge’s Batman Extravaganza.” Basically, after getting hooked on Arkham City, I went and watched all the live-action movies and a majority of the animated shows; I was on a Batman binge. I had meant to finish it up by the end of November, then forgot, then partially revived it in December with a post about LEGO Batman 2 (which is awesome by the way), the forgot again. I figured it would be a good time to revive it now to commemorate the release of the awesome LEGO Batman 2, which will be the final post in this series. Expect that sometime next week–hopefully. For now, here’s a review of Harley Quinn’s Revenge.
HQR is set after the events of Arkham City, so if you haven’t played the game yet (and why wouldn’t you at this point?), then it’s best to come back to this piece of DLC later. The narrative of this DLC is pretty simple: Harley Quinn lures Batman back into Arkham City. He’s captured, and it’s up to Robin to bail him out. The greatest selling point of HQR in my opinion, is the chance to play as the Boy Wonder in a story driven setting rather than a Challenge Map.
Robin plays much differently than Batman or Catwoman; he uses a bo staff, and he’s got his own little gadgets to experiment with. The snap flash was the most intriguing, but it definitely was the most fun to use (it stunned enemies but had to be placed on them or environmental objects). He also has a bullet shield built into his staff, which you can ram enemies with, and his zip-kick was awesome to use in the middle of a fight (the zip-kick allows Robin to instantly close the gap on an enemy and give a nice kick…it was sometimes moar convenient than Batman’s hotkey grapple hook). Also, Troy Baker did a fantastic job delivering Robin’s lines, and it was nice to see some banter between him and Batman. But unfortunately, there wasn’t as much as I was hoping for.
The real star of the show is the titular character herself, Harley Quinn. Tara Strong absolutely knocked it out of the park, and I made every attempt to listen carefully to all the lines she delivered. However, despite the Robin story element and the remarkable performance by Strong as Harley, I can’t really justify the $10 price tag for about only 2 hours of gameplay. The narrative isn’t that compelling, although it does show how the death of the Joker has affected Harley and Batman (but more so with Harley…I guess we won’t see the full affect it has had on Batman until the next installment). Still, it is more Arkham City gameplay goodness, and I was finally able to achieve that 50 hit combo (I’ve gotten 49 so many times, only to get the yips and fail). I actually made it all the way to 100 against those Joker bots!
If you want a nice 2 hour time kill, then pick up this DLC. Otherwise, you might just want to watch a “Let’s Play.”
Rating: 
Mr. J says to pick up this DLC...or else!
