Why do you seem to hate me, Batman? Or is it you, Rocksteady, that dislikes me so? *cues tragedy music and rain whilst doing dramatic hand on forehead gesture* Ok, ok, so I can be a bit dramatic. But when you think you’re almost going to finish something that you’ve invested many many hours in, and then discover that it’s impossible and you’ll have to start again, you would be too.

I’m a huge fan of Batman Arkham Asylum, and thought Rocksteady did an amazing job with it. And when they announced Batman Arkham City, I swooned and my heart raced with excitement. I wondered how they could top such an awesome game. And when it released, I was thrilled that they somehow managed to do so. I spent many hours on my first run through just enjoying it all, soaking in the scenery and the delivering some satisfying brutal justice to criminals. I had stopped playing back in May, all I had left to do was to find the Riddler and beat him (which was very anti-climactic by the way). Or so I thought.

Well a couple weeks ago I decided it was time to finally finish Batman AC and work on fully achieving it. I beat the Riddler, and I was struggling with a couple of the remaining trophies I had left. I just couldn’t figure them out. After talking to a friend, he mentions I need the grapnel boost upgrade to get this particularly frustrating trophy. I had never heard of this. Turns out there was AR Training that should have triggered near my first encounter with the Joker, and it would have given me the upgrade upon completion. Yeah… Didn’t happen. Seems that its quite a common glitch with the game. I was a little peeved about this, but was also somewhat impressed with myself because I had a few people ask how I managed to complete the game without it. It was frustrating at times (pay phone missions anyone?) but I did it.

Yeah! Give him the grapnel boost already!

So I looked into this glitch a little and found that starting my New Game + would work to make the AR Trainings unlock in that game, thus giving me the upgrade in both my original game and the New Game+. Awesome. So I start my second play through on my New Game +. What they didn’t say is that even though I will get the AR Training in NG+, I will still be missing out on that side mission in my original game. I’ll forever be stuck at 91% completion! I was shattered. There goes my Perfect Knight achievement. So now this means I have to do two more play throughs and find all of the Riddler Trophies again!

I know I’ll end up doing it anyway, but it’s almost enough to make me not want to play Arkham City ever again. Almost. I feel so let down by one of my favorite games. You’d think that there would be a patch for this or something. Many of the forums I read into believed that this glitch is caused by entering the Catwoman dlc before you start the game. Which is ridiculous since the game asks you to put it in at the beginning anyway. And the first part of the game is played with Catwoman. Not to mention I feel like I’m being punished for buying the dlc at launch. Oh well, guess I better run to the store for some redbull, I’ll be putting in some hours with Batman very soon. And not in the way that I’d prefer. Happy gaming!