There is an important question we all must ask ourselves one day: can I afford to be Batman? If the price for all of those wonderful toys in Batman: Arkham Origins is too high for you, then the folks at the Humble Bundle have got you covered.

Starting today, The Humble WB Games Bundle offers a set of top games from Warner Bros., including a few that feature copious amounts of caped crusader. You can pay what you want for F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, F.E.A.R. 3, Lord of the Rings: War in the North, and of course, Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition.

Exceed the average payment and you'll receive two additional games: Scribblenauts: Unlimited and Batman: Arkham City Game of the Year Edition. Which means you'll have even more chances to claim "I am the night!" to loved ones or random strangers.



As usual, the pay-what-you-want scale allows you to divide your payment between a chosen charity, the Humble Bundle group, and the developers. This sale's featured charity is We Can Be Heroes, an organization owned by DC Entertainment (the purveyors of Batman-related media) that fights hunger throughout the world. That's pretty heroic.

The Humble WB Games Bundle runs from Nov. 5 to Nov. 19. Previous Humble Bundles have been extremely successful, so there's no reason to think this one will be any different.

Batman: Arkham City is still weeks away on PC. Those of us with consoles have had to face a tough dilemma. Buy it now and save Gotham before Battlefield 3 and Skyrim come out, or hold fast until it's finally released on November 18. Stand fast! Improved physics make for much moodier cape-whooshing, and the extra layer of heavy Gotham fog will hopefully make it a more atmospheric experience on PC. Find out how your machine will handle Arkham City with these system specs, spotted over on Eurogamer. There are also three new screenshots showing the Bat at his best.

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 per cent DirectX 9.0c-compatible)
DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
Hard Drive: 17.5GB free disk space
Input Devices: 100 per cent 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 per cent DirectX 9.0c-compatible)
DVD-ROM: Quad-speed (4x) DVD-ROM drive
Hard Drive: 17.5 GB free disk space
Input Devices: 100 per cent Windows XP/Vista or 7 compatible mouse and keyboard or Xbox 360 Controller for Windows

 

 

 

Batman: Arkham City is arriving a month late on PC. Which is annoying. BUT, the PC version will come with a few extra bonuses. Those running NVidia GTX cards will be able to take advantage of the extra PhysX effects present throughout Arkham City. See the first video above, spotted via RPS, and check out the Nvidia site for more.

So those enough with GTX cards can expect glowing, bouncy sparks, swirling wreaths of paper, shards of ice and low Gotham fog. DirectX 11 cards will also be able to take advantage of "tessellation," a technique that shatters polygons into smaller components that can be raised and lowered according to the whim of the graphics artist, creating more detailed 3D models. The first screenshot of Batman: Arkham City's tessellated environments has been released. And... er, yes. Those leaves certainly look more detailed. Just look at that... foliage. Oh my.

We learned several weeks ago that the PC version of Batman: Arkham City would be slipping into November. On the day that the game hits consoles in the States, Warner Brothers announce that we can expect it on PC on Friday November 18. A whole month away! By the time Arkham City reaches PC, the first Nightwing DLC pack will already have been out on consoles for more than two weeks.

No reason is given in the statement as to why the PC version is late, but there are four new screenshots for us to stare at longingly. If you're looking for a new desktop background, the larger version of the above thumbnail (without speech bubbles) looks spectacular blown up, and there's a shot of Joker's face in gruesome detail. Click to see each screenshot full-size.

Batman will receive some unlikely help against Arkham City's rogues gallery in the form of his one-time nemesis Bane. A recent panel at the San Fransisco Comic-Con, covered by Go Nintendo, has revealed that the 'man who broke the Bat' is to have Batman's back in a less homicidal sense, and will appear alongside the player as an NPC character in Rocksteady's upcoming bat-'em-up.

The monstrous former villain will be Batman's ally in a series of side missions in which Bane and The Bat must track down a shipment of chemical contraband that's gone awry. That's not to say that he's all calmed down since his defeat in Arkham Asylum, however. Edge report that his trademark ram attack can still cause Batman serious damage should he be accidentally caught in Bane's way during a fight. One of the highlights of Arkham Asylum's troubled boss battle with Bane was his careless disregard for the henchmen he bowled over on his way to the Dark Knight, and now we can expect to experience being one of these accidental casualties during the more hectic fights.

Bane joins the already impressive cast of classic characters from the franchise, which boasts appearances from The Riddler, Two-Face, Penguin and Soloman Grundy, though we can't help but feel some slight disappointment that we won't get to control our new ally like we will Catwoman. You can watch the whole Comic-Con panel via the GameSpot's YouTube video.

The latest Batman: Arkham City trailer has landed on Gamespot, giving us our first look at The Penguin. Rocksteady's vision of Cobblepot pegs him as a squat cockney chap. It's hard to judge whether this makes him more or less threatening, so to tip the scales he keeps undead hulk-thing Solomon Grundy chained up in the basement.

Grundy is an almost-impossible-to-kill zombie villain who appeared in an old Batman story called The Long Halloween, which was a heavy influence on the recent Christopher Nolan Batman films. Hopefully fighting him will be less monotonous than the boss battle with Bane in Arkham Asylum. We'll find out when Arkham City is released on October 18 in the US, and October 21 internationally.

 
Oh dear. The Riddler has started kidnapping civilians and dangling them over deadly drops in Arkham City. If there was only some sort of man dressed as a bat nearby to save the day. Oh, wait. Bad news, Riddler. There is. Not only does he have the brains to solve your puzzles, he can also punch you so hard in the griddle that you'll never riddle again.
 
At least the Riddler's showing more ambition than he did in Batman: Arkham Asylum in which he featured as a disembodied voice on the other end of Batman's intercom. We can look forward to teaching Riddler a lesson when Arkham City comes out in North America on October 18, and Europe on October 21.

Update: According to the official Batman: Arkham City Twitter feed there are a series of clues hidden in the trailer above. If you figure out the puzzle, you have until Friday to post your answers on the Arkham City forums. They don't say what will happen next.

Our fellow E3 warriors on the show floor managed to track down Rocksteady co-founder and Batman: Arkham City game director, Sefton Hill for a quick chat. He talks a bit about his ideas for the future of the Batman series, and what he loves most about working with Batman. You can get a good look at the Dark Knight in action in the fresh batch of Arkham City E3 screenshots. Part two of the video interview below. The game's out on October 18 in the US, and October 21 everywhere else.

The Batman: Arkham City trailer earlier revealed that Catwoman will be sharing the limelight with the Dark Knight for Rocksteady's next game. In motion, she fights like an angry fetish shop with a style that is perhaps best described as "cat-robatic." You'll find the four new images below, including one of Batman, so he doesn't feel left out.

If you live in the UK, you'll want to mark Friday October 21 on your calendar, preferably with a giant bat symbol, because that's the day Batman: Arkham City hits store shelves. Rocksteady have been teasing us for months already with their trailers and brilliant screenshots, now we're going to have to wait until the other side of summer to pound the streets of Gotham. That's seven whole months away! It's fine for Batman, bats can hibernate, what are the rest of us supposed to do?