Batman: Arkham City is shaping up to be one of the year’s biggest and best singleplayer experiences. Many of us who played Batman: Arkham Asylum recognise it as one of the brightest stars this generation, despite repetitive combat mechanics and some squandered potential here and there.

Rocksteady’s latest project just received some added impetus with the announcement that supervillain The Penguin will be starring in Arkham City, alongside the rest of Gotham’s uber-degenerates.

The British developer’s Dax Ginn had this to say about the nose-chomping fiend:

“The way that Penguin has always been portrayed is as quite an aristocratic, well-spoken gentleman who’s got these twisted delusions of grandeur. So we’ve made him a really horrible, nasty piece of work – but still with the delusion of grandeur.

“He dresses well, but in a poor taste, and we’ve made him this brutish, brutal guy, but also key in to [the] collection fascination that he’s had throughout the years[…] One of those things he collects is heavily artillery. So when you come up against his thugs in the street they are all going to have seriously heavy weapons and that develops throughout the game as well.”

Besides heinous villains aplenty, Batman: Arkham City will also boast a lengthy campaign according to the game’s director Sefton Hill. In an interview with The Guardian he said it will feature a 25-hour campaign with an additional 15 hours of optional side-missions.

25 hours seems like a bit of an overestimation for a plot-heavy, narrative-driven title like Arkham City, but if this figure holds up to scrutiny when the game releases then I’ll be mightily impressed (provided those 25 hours are well-spent of course).

Batman: Arkham City will be out on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in October, at which point the streets will again be safe as the caped crusader swoops in to ferret out both large and small fry from the criminal underworld.

Source: EpicBattleAxe.com and The Escapist