It’s a good day to go Batty as gamers anxiously awaiting the upcoming release of Batman: Arkham City have been treated to a few new screens from the game as well as some tidbits surrounding the scope of Arkham City‘s environments.

Basically, Rocksteady Studios’ Game Director Sefton Hill recently went on the record with GameSpot stating that “The footprint of Arkham City is about five times bigger than Arkham Island, but our primary intention was never to create a bigger game world just for the sake of it.” In fact, the decision to vastly increase the size of the environment you’ll traverse played right into the core creative behind the game. As Hill put it, “we created an experience in which gamers will have a huge amount of navigational freedom, but they will also feel the extreme pressure of the challenges that they face”

Of course, there would be no sense in having such a huge environment if players weren’t able to enjoy it, which was why Hill was happy to confirm that Batman will indeed be able to go wherever he so desires and even be able to participate in open-world type missions, secrets, and brawls. The game is no sandbox though, as the critical path will always be made clear, but Arkham City will apparently offer a much greater opportunity to carve out your own unique experience when compared to its corridor-filled predecessor. Hill did issue a warning for those of you thinking about going too crazy with your new-found freedom however – “Gamers will have to think and act like the Dark Knight if they want to survive in a place like Arkham City.””

So, check out the latest screens of the game in action and chime in with your thoughts on how you hope to enjoy your visit to Arkham City in the comments below.

people say that every year.

but anyway, not to sound like too much of a downer, but the only game on that list that sounds interesting to me is rage.

Fuck me, 2011, I seriously don't remember another time where so many quality games were going to hit.

Batman:AC
Rage
Dirt 3
Deus EX; HR
Crysis 2
Prey 2
BF3
Portal 2

" Ginn: "I've always been a console player, but this game makes me want to be a PC gamer. What we play on is the PC build more often in the studio and it just looks amazing ... We try to develop them [360 and PS3] in parity, but the PC build has a life of its own. If you've got a powerful rig and you turn everything up it looks just beautiful."