Arkham City (Full Cinematics) - Hard, No Upgrades - Part 3: Meet Solomon Grundy
R.I.P. Kevin Conroy Full Arkham series Hard Mode No Upgrade playlist here: • Arkham Series - Hard Mode, No Upgrades This is a pretty fun stretch of the game. The Museum, in particular, is probably my favorite part of Arkham City, and one of the few sections of the game I find myself really enjoying without reservation. It's more like a stretch of Arkham Asylum, divorced from the complications introduced by the open world map, and it's full of neat lore and tidbits if you search all the exhibits. Just the best of what the Arkham series has to offer when it's firing on all cylinders. At 4:50 you'll see one of my favorite uses for Beat Down. For armored enemies, you can use a Beat Down to quickly build up a 8x combo, then launch immediately into Instant Takedown. This is much quicker than the proper way of continuing with Beat Down up until about 20x or so, when it usually kills an armored thug, although it does mean you're wasting your Special Combo and can't use it on another enemy. Still, this is a very useful crowd control technique since armored thugs can't be hurt by normal punches and accidentally targeting one will end your combo. At 5:41 we meet Mister Hammer's twin brother, Sickle. He's genuinely a bit tougher than his brother because his weapon swings in a wider arc, but otherwise he's straightforward. Bat Swarm is my preferred method for dealing with Lieutenant-type enemies, and it's just delightful. But on a No Upgrade run I don't have it, so instead I use him to quickly build up Instant Takedowns and use them to dispatch his support. Once the last normal thug is down, an Ultra Stun buys me enough time to finish him off safely, making for a perfect single-combo, no damage fight. Grundy isn't a terribly interesting boss, but he does a lot of damage and can kill you fast, especially with base health. The battle is just three rounds of "detonate 3 Explosive Gel in the right spots", the kind of lackluster boss design this series is remembered for. I execute the first two waves perfectly but get hit early during the third wave and try to force it rather than slowing down and playing cautiously. It works out in my favor, but only barely. At 31:30 I pause to catch up on Joker's Missed Voicemails. I decided these were more optional "story dialogue" than bonus content, so I'll be including them in the series from here on out. I wasn't intending to get seen at the beginning of the Predator segment at 39:50. It completely threw my pattern off and I had to improvise the entire encounter. I recovered nicely, though. 0:00 The Museum (Mister Freeze) 9:00 The Museum (Predator) 15:46 The Iceberg Lounge 17:05 Grundy 24:20 Follow the ninja 39:36 Wonder City (Predator)
