The September issue of Gameinformer sports some exceptional art for the sequel to 2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum. Now titled Batman: Arkham City, the game sees a district of Gotham City itself repurposed to house the inmates of Arkham, presumably displaced following the destruction that befell the original facility in the first game, with the gameplay taking place within this walled-off prison district.

Gamesugar didn’t quite exist in the long-ago far-away galaxy of September 2009, so we never weighed in on the matter of Batman’s odyssey through the halls of Arkham. Never fear, though, as I am here in my capacity as Batman Editor to reveal our official position: that it was awesome. It’s possible this is not late-breaking news.

The Batman fan community long pined for an open-world Batman game, perhaps merging the schools of Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed to conjure an adequate Dark Knight simulator. Rocksteady chose a far less obvious route, with Batman exploring a reasonably large gameworld but in a decidedly Metroid fashion. Ultimately, the decision to create a contained and linear game is where much of Arkham’s strength came from.

Isolating players and pushing them deliberately through the halls of Arkham, throwing them against the occupants of the asylum, carefully rolling out the narrative, and the detail of the environment created a world that a gamer would want to explore. Arkham felt alive, like a place where people lived—dangerous frightening people—and the impossibly meticulous detail of the world was always poised to offer more insight into those dark inhabitants. The desire became to scour every nook and cranny, scanning the contents of every desk, reading every newspaper clipping, listening to the ramblings of every caged inmate or frightened guard, seeking to soak up every detail of Arkham Asylum.

It was the long-awaited realization of a Batman gameplay mechanic firing on all cylinders that made the game good, but it was in these details that it became great. Now there exists the prospect of exploring a Gotham—even if only a part of it—crafted with the same careful dedication, and that’s a powerful notion. Really, the only downside to this recent news is that you won’t be able to get your hands on it till the distant fall of 2011.

In the meantime, you can lear at some sharp artwork at Gameinformer.