Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham Asylum

PUBLISHER: Eidos Interactive/Warner Bros.
DEVELOPER: Rocksteady Studios
Played on: PS3
Initial impression: A superhero game finally worth playing.

Liked:
- Combat
- Environment
- Riddler's Puzzles

Disliked:
- Some Boss Fights
- Length

On The Fence:
- Challenge Modes
- Replay Value

The Batmobile races through the streets of Gotham as a radio blares a news report about the Joker being captured. Leaves fly around, and we see the caped crusader behind the wheel. The Clown Prince of Crime sits bound in the back seat, taunting Batman as they rocket to Arkham Asylum. Once inside the two become separated. Batman is asked to remain outside the processing corridor so as not to disturb the inmates. Joker stumbles, falls, and breaks free. With the help of Harley Quinn he takes over the institution and lets everyone out. It's up to Batman to regain control.

This is where you start, and really it's about all they really tell you from the beginning. It's in your hands to explore the massive complex of buildings and expose not only the Joker's plans but how he managed to set them into motion by duping others. Using a rather ingenious Detective Mode you can more easily spot clues to help you through (some clues you can't find any other way), while just reading or listening to them will also fill in the gaps.

The environment of Arkham is that of a Victorian era mansion for one building, a same-era medical institution for another, then the super sophisticated modern prison for the rest. Some places have seen better days and are in utter decay, while others just look beat up from the escaped inmates. It looks really nice and rich with detail - right down to common things like a cork board with various items pinned to it (that you can actually read).

The combat is simplistic button mashing but varied enough to not be dumb, and you get a bonus for being able to seamlessly link attacks from one enemy to the other. Batarangs are utilized for distance stunning, while explosive gel can be used to set a trap. You can also use stealth tactics - sneak up behind inmates, glide down from the rafters and kick them or hang upside down from a gargoyle and string them up by their feet.

Some point in the game you start receiving radio transmissions from The Riddler, who informs you he's hidden a number of challenges on the island (240 to be exact). If you're truly a master detective you'll find them all. I live his dialog as you discover more and more, especially at the end.

Dislikes
My negatives are as follows: Some boss fights suck. Suck to the point of making me want to throw the controller out the window. Worst part is the final battle is the easiest fight the game.

***START SPOILER ALERT***

Fighting Bane is a pain in the ass, and sets you up with a mechanic for taking out some future bosses, but their terminology in the hint (when you fail) blows. You see, they claim "hit Bane with a batarang while he charges" - now I thought it meant those times he sits still, flexes his muscles and the tubes on him start glowing green. See? He's charging his powers! No -- they meant "running at you" a.k.a. charging, like a bull. Took me about 5 tries to figure that out. I'd say that was the only occurrence but there are other boss fights that are equally as frustrating because of shoddy advice.

***END SPOILER ALERT***

The length of the game is ratty too. I've made a comment to this extent on various gaming sites, but it just seems like $60 is way too much to spend for 10 hours of gameplay. See Ghostbusters: The Video Game for a similar complaint.

On The Fence
The challenge modes are interesting but the scoring is dubious, and the ability to play as the Joker isn't all too great. He's kind of a pain in the ass to control/figure out and since he doesn't have the gear that Batman has he's kind of annoying.

The replay value to me is all about trophies. Yep, the game was fun. Finding the Riddler's various crap items was cool but I'm not sure I'll be firing up Arkham for a replay anytime soon ASIDE from the challenge modes and maybe to try to gain a trophy here or there for things I didn't do the first time through.

Final Verdict: 8/10

The Beatles: Rock Band

The Beatles: Rock Band

PUBLISHER: MTV Games
DEVELOPER: Harmonix
Played on: PS3
Initial impression: Awesome Rhythm Game Finally Made

Liked:
- Songs
- Dreamscapes

Disliked:
- Length of game
- Mash Up Tomorrow Never Knows/Within You Without You
- Hardware issue

On The Fence:
- Pre-order Free DLC

Twist And Shout
What can I really say? It's The Beatles, Rock Band style. Unless you've been living under a rock your whole life, you know who the Beatles are and you know what Rock Band is. This game takes you through their relatively short career from playing gigs to a few dozen people to founding the plans for 'arena rock' to fleshing out the idea of a concept album. You play as the Beatle who played the specific instrument (with notable exception to guitar - lead and rhythm are combined). You cannot create your own character, which some people have pissed and moaned about, but they need to shut it.

Being a huge Beatles fan (the first record I ever purchased with my own money was "Revolver" and my first ever CD was "A Hard Day's Night") I was rather pleased with the selection of songs, though that hinges mostly on the knowledge that more will come out as downloadable content. I probably would have skipped "Boys" but I saw what they were doing - giving each member a song to sing in each era's set list.

For the first half of their careers they were touring. Cavern Club, Shea Stadium and the Budokan are represented rather nicely with actual crowd noise from their real performances at each venue (and in surround sound to boot). Later studio works are shown with the band starting off playing in EMI's Abbey Road Studio #2 but then fade (or at times rather shockingly flash) to modes the developers call "dreamscapes" - fantasy-like representations of the songs they are performing. "Yellow Submarine" and "Octopus's Garden" are both underwater sea-scapes, for example.

The only set of studio era tunes that are not dreamscaped is the final set, which recreates the infamous Abbey Road Rooftop Concert, right down to the appearance of the police at some point.

Yer Blues
The only negatives I can really bring up are the length of the game, a specific track mash up and my personal hardware problem. The game has 45 songs out of a catalog of nearly 250 from the band. Given that their early tunes (From Please Please Me up to the Sgt Pepper album) were, at most, 3 minutes long, that gives you about 2 1/4 hours of playtime - I'll be generous and say 2 1/2 since I know a couple songs are longer. If not fascinated by all the extras as I unlocked them, I could have EASILY knocked this out in one sitting.

The "Tomorrow Never Knows/Within You Without You" has one huge problem with it -- the length. The song is like 1 to 1 1/2 minutes long. Neither song appears independent from the mash up. Frankly I would have loved them being seperate tracks, but I understand. Don't get me wrong though -- I love the sound of those two songs mixed together. I just want more of it.

My drum set will not connect to the PS3. I messed around with it for about an hour and couldn't figure it out. At first I noticed I had the wrong dongle plugged in, so I shut everything down and restarted. No luck. I looked online to see at least I wasn't the ONLY one... I'll have to work on it again. I'm kind of pissed I couldn't get it to work because I finally reserved myself to give it a go. I've played drums in RB before - and I used to be a drummer in a band 15 years ago - so I'm no stranger to how to play. It's the lack of a connection that perplexes and ultimately angers me.

Hello Goodbye
My only on the fence point is the Free DLC for preordering. Yes, it's three free tracks but you can't download them until they come out. "Abbey Road" tracks come out Oct 20th, while "Sgt Pepper" tracks come out in November sometime. "Rubber Soul" comes out in December but you can't choose any tracks from that as part of the preorder freebies. My two biggest problems with this flawed concept are this:

1 - I'm going to order the WHOLE ALBUM for all three when they come out. It's cheaper and I love all the songs anyway. Giving me a few for free SUCKS.

2 - When you get a FREE DOWNLOAD, they should be available IMMEDIATELY.

They should have made it the full versions of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Within You, Without You" and also throw in "All You Need Is Love" -- that third one being DLC for XBOX 360 owners (proceeds to benefit Doctors Without Borders - which is another beef of mine. If you're selling a song as DLC for charity, why limit it to JUST the 360?)

The End
Content aside, overall this is the best rhythm game I've ever played. It shows that a lot of thought and effort went into getting this made, and I appreciate every last detail. I've been playing it a few hours a day nearly every day since it came out. I love it so much I'm even challenging myself to play bass left-handed on Medium and striving for 5 stars (4.75 is my best effort so far, 96% on "Come Together"). On previous similar games (GH3/RB1) I wouldn't even stay focused enough to stray from Easy mode. I've started playing the guitar parts on Medium too, and I've entertained the idea of singing while playing guitar or bass.

I'm looking forward to playing alongside others, though hopefully I'll be on drums. Guitar is starting to wear down my digits -- I've got blisters (forming) on my fingers!

Final Verdict: 9.5/10, docked only for the length of the game.

God of War: Chains Of Olympus

PUBLISHER: SOE
DEVELOPER: Ready At Dawn
Played on: PSP
Initial impression: Hack & Slash & Gods (& Sexy Ladies)!

Liked:
- Environments
- Storyline

Disliked:
- Quick Time Events
- Some Camera Angles

On The Fence:
- Challenge Modes
- Length vs Price

Despite having never played any of the previous installments of GoW, I found this PSP version to be quite an amazing adventure. Thankfully I already knew some backstory, or else certain segments would have made little sense. Kratos, the big, tough, god-hating slave of the Greek pantheon of deities makes another attempt to gain his freedom and seek his revenge. Long story short, Kratos needs to rescue the sun from the underworld and beat the piss out of Persephone for a number of reasons, mostly having to do with the fact that she's an asshole.

You're helped along the way by Athena (and some Persian slave girls early on) and become this very well armed, unstoppable killing machine only to give it all up to see your daughter again. Persephone decides to be a bitch and torment you into doing what she wants. Turns out that's not such a hot idea, but it's your only choice, and the only way to fix the mistake you've just made is to beat down Persephone's alter-demonic form. Yeah - no real spoiler alert needed there. You've played any of these types of games, you know what to expect. The big boss will always have another 'form' to beat down.

On to the meat of the article:

Environments
Man, this game is pretty. The places you end up look awesome, and at times I just couldn't believe the PSP was showing the stuff it was. Hades looks great, with fire and lava all over. The water temple really shows the power of the processor nicely.

Storyline
I may sound like I hate some of it, but really the story is top notch. Knowing little to nothing about the previous games didn't seem to phase me in the least with enjoying how it played out. Yeah, I hate Persephone, but you're SUPPOSED to (by the end at least). The fact that she was a bloody whore through most of it was fitting and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Quick Time Events
These are moments in the action where the game pauses for a second and flashes a button you need to press to perform a finishing move. Imagine you're beating down a large Basilisk and as you're carefully thrashing away the game stops and a large X appears. You have about 1-2 seconds to hit X before it has you fail and you need to essentially start that segment over. It's a pain in the ass because it's never the same key twice (X O [] square /\ triangle) and I'm not SO familiar with the button placement that I can instinctively hit those. I have to take a moment and glance right to see where the O key is (I know where X and /\ are, it's the other two I mix up). I'm a PC gamer first, so PS controls are somewhat alien.

Some camera angles made jumps or knowing where to go next difficult. Overall it was fine, but I found that the only time I was ever lost it was because of bad camera angles.

Challenge Mode
You can unlock alternate costumes by going through Challenge mode. I tried playing the Stage 1 Challenge and failed it probably about a dozen times before I gave up. Despite having a really good grasp of what I was doing and what needed to be done, I kept failing. Most 'challenge' modes will start the difficulty low and build up. This one seems to start somewhere around 60%.... and for what? Costumes? Bleh.

Value
Had I not paid $20 for this I would be crying from the rooftops how it wasn't worth the price versus the content. That said, $20 might still be a tad steep in the Quality v. Quantity fight. Yeah, I got a few days (at about 3-4h a day) worth of entertainment out of it, but had I paid more I'd be pissed.

Final Thoughts
This is a great game that really earns the Mature label for its use of gore and softcore porn. Oh yeah, I didn't mention that, did I? There's only two things you need to really hear in regards to that aspect: Tits and Off-Screen Sex laced with a visual inuendo that may stay with you longer than you want. For part one: This is a Greek Mythology inspired game, so it's expected to see some perfectly sculpted goddesses with their bare torsos waggling in your face. Well ok, maybe not waggling, but there she is - Athena - and her large (yet oddly firm) breasts taking up half the screen. Granted it's supposed to be a statue come to life, but whatever. The artist in me can appreciate the level of detail they decided to attain by staying true to this artform. The giggly teenager in me says 'heh heh... boobies' like Beavis and Butthead, which I'm sure they planned on.

As for the second thing, after pummeling a Persian King, Kratos is pretty uptight. Cue the two slave girls (actually you can skip them altogether if you don't explore a bit). They're both topless, one on her back, the other on all fours (on top of the first one... did I walk in on them making out?) and they want to please you. No, really. I can't make this shit up.

Someone say "tits"?

Enter the Quick Time Event sex. The camera pans left to show a lit white candle on a crate that gets bumped as you 'utilize' the girls. The finale of this little side-quest has you bump the crate so hard that white-hot wax spurts all over and extiguishes the candle -- oh and you get a large boost to your XP (used to upgrade weapons). Again, I can't make this shit up. I'll try to find a YouTube video on it. (No luck, though the goddess Athena is topless too in the whole game.)

All in all, decent game. Replay value? Very little. I beat it, and don't see a point in doing the challenge missions for some goofy costumes. 7/10

Hype Machine

A co-worker brought up a very good point today. These days, when a game is coming out, you know about it for weeks, months - hell even years - beforehand. The hype builds and the masses pore over every last tidbit of detail until the day finally arrives. The game rarely lives up to all that fanfare.

His point was that it wasn't always like that, and he kind of misses being in the dark, so to speak. He said "it used to be that you never heard much, if anything at all, about a game until it hit the shelves. Usually any prerelease info was a gaming magazine reviewing the completed game about a week before it came out."

He's right. When something's on its way out, you know. You get 50% complete build playtests from magazine writers and complete websites updating every couple hours with new screenshots, concept art, soundtrack snippets, wallpaper, buddy icons and news. I've been frothing at the mouth for nearly a year now over Beatles: Rock Band and I have this new style of coverage to blame.

Sure, we can just ignore it by not seeking out the specialized websites, reading the articles detailing every last minute item, or just not looking at gaming sites or magazines altogether but let's get real. Half the problem here is the coverage. Half the reason there is hype is because companies PUT that much crap out there and most of it is unavoidable.

Beatles: Rock Band will succeed, even without the visceral advertising flowing out of every orifice of the interwebs. Other games may not be so lucky.

Two come to mind that share different sides of the spectrum.

Brutal Legend's advertising may be its own worst enemy. Jack Black's over-the-top "RAWK AN ROHL" shtick is only tolerable for so long. Unfortunately he's been out there in full force since the announcement of the development of this game. Tim Schafer *is* a great game designer, but to idolize him like he's a god on earth is just asinine and the display at the VGA's was too much. To a point - Schafer's work has never been akin to a blockbuster-style money maker. Being a critical success doesn't pay the bills, but games like Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle are awesome - hell they're some of the best games in existence. I just don't think that translates into "Brutal Legend = Instant Success" alone.

Wet is a game that banks on the Tarantino style. Mix 70's exploitation film with Grindhouse and Kill Bill and you're coming closer to what it's about. The main character, Rubi, is an assassin who chooses guns and a katana as her main implements of disposal. This game looks like it has a lot of potential, but who has heard of it? Unless you have your fingers on the pulse of the game-o-sphere, no one. Thing is, the game was announced, and then cancelled. Then quietly picked up again. It's due out in September and aside from an article I read back when it was under development the first time, the only advertising I've seen for Wet is a countertop card at EB. Oh yeah - and it comes out September 15th.

Hopefully they both live up to the expectations.

UPDATE: inFAMOUS, The Path of Evil

I decided to run through inFAMOUS again, this time taking the path of being a self-serving, uncaring bastard, which honestly comes rather naturally in these games. My first truly evil act was to scare people away from food dropped to supply the city so I could keep ot all for myself (and 2 friends). It takes a while for you to see the effects of being a tyrant, but when they show themselves these effects are interesting. He shoots red electricity, starts to turn monochrome and has a weird head tattoo thing going on. The environment gets gloomy, with the end sky being red and cloudy. People begin to hate you, and will gang up to throw rocks at you anytime you're on the street.

None of the story missions or side quests changed except for the cinematics. Instead of doing "Good" based side quests, I went for "Evil" - of which there are 15 (just like the other side). These dealt mostly with Sasha, a boss you take out between islands 1 and 2. She talks to you telepathically, and sends 5 Reaper Conduits to help you along. These missions were mostly 'kill everything in sight' type, with the occasional 'moral decision' items in there.

Overall, playing as evil really didn't do much differently except in a few cutscenes and one specific mission involving the Ray Sphere near the end. Other than that I unlocked a handful of trophies that were Evil side specific.

I'm still 5 stunts, about 40 blast shards and a handful of train-riding kills away from having the Platinum for the game. My only suggestion from playing this now a second time is to try to get the train-riding 25 kills done as soon as you get shock grenades and start up the first train in the Neon District. These enemies are the weakest, and it's much harder to find enemies to kill while riding the train after you've cleared a certain percentage of the island(s).

Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead


PUBLISHER: Valve
DEVELOPER: Valve
Played on: PC
Initial impression: Co-Op Zombie Shooter Goodness!

Liked:
- Characters
- Environments
- Movie-like approach

Disliked:
- Repetition
- Lack of SP in some modes

On The Fence:
- Versus mode
- Survival mode

The only story you get and need to know is this - Something has infected people, turning them into hideous zombie-like creatures that want to tear you apart. You choose one of four characters and off you go. Initially you only have access to a pistol, a shot gun and an uzi. Yep, that's it. The point? Get from where you start to a designated 'rescue' area, determined by which campaign you are playing.

The four characters you can choose from are:
- Bill, a grizzled Vietnam Vet who has been itching for a fight since he was discharged.
- Francis, a pessimistic biker looking to cause chaos now that the cops aren't around.
- Louis, a disgruntled IT expert who was on the verge of quitting his day job out of frustration.
- Zoey, a college co-ed whose love of horror films kept her from studying.

All four are exactly the same insofar as skill - that is to say, they are only as good as you are. There's no advantage to choosing one over the other. The banter between them all is priceless. Francis hates everything, and he'll remind you of that every chance he gets. Bill's familiarity with military protocol will guive you insight on how to procede. He's also hilarious, and conversations during scripted break points are awesome. While riding an elevator the following took place one time:

Z: Think we'll ever see an end to this?
B: There'll be peace on Earth if I have to kill every last one of these fuckers!
F: Hell yeah!
L: That's what I'm talkin' about!

While approaching an abandoned cabin in the woods, Zoey lets out "A lone cabin in the woods... I know how this movie ends."

Speaking of movies, each of the four campaigns play like films. "No Mercy" involves getting to the roof of Mercy Hospital for extraction by helicopter. "Dead Air" brings you through an airport. The finale of "Death Toll" has you waiting for a boat while fighting off a never-ending stream of undead. "Blood Harvest" has you run through a cornfield in its conclusion.
The zombies are not your run of the mill "Night of the Living Dead" variety. They are fast and agile, and peppered with "special" infected. Those consist of Boomers (fat, bloated zombies whose vomit attracts waves of common zombies), Smokers (tall zombies with long tongues they use to lasso you), hunters (crawlers who leap on you, knock you to the ground and rip out your guts), tanks (near-unstoppable hulking beasts) and witches (crying girls who go psycho when disturbed).

The only thing that really bugs me is repetition. The mission environments don't change. The enemies do, thanks to something called the AI Director, which senses how well you're doing and throws more (or less) zombies, ammo or health kits your way depending on whether you need it. Still, as I said the locales and situations are never really altered, so after you've played a campaign a few times you know what to expect. I can get through No Mercy almost flawlessly because I know exactly where to go. It was a lot more exciting when I didn't have a clue where I was going.

There are a few other modes, though I'll only touch on the ones I've actually seen in action. Versus mode pits our four 'survivors' against four players controlling the special zombies. You can take control of a Boomer, Hunter, Smoker or Tank to hunt down the four uninfected humans. Overall this sounds cool - but what I didn't like was that I can't even attempt it outside of the online play. It has no solo option. None. Otherwise it's a cool concept.

The other mode is Survivor mode, and it's about as crazy as it sounds. You hole up in a location and try to fight the oncoming waves of enemies. Tossed in there are the specials too, and they tend to come 2-3 at a time. I've played this a number of times and never really made it past the 5 minute mark (which is actually more impressive than I realized). My only complaint is that there isn't enough of a break between waves, and the difficulty starts on HARD. I guess I'm just spoiled by UT's survival mode where you have a lot of time between waves and it starts out shamefully simple, slowly ramping up difficulty as you go.

This game is a SOLID FPS, though there's nearly NO story and somewhat pointless to play alone. The key to this game is playing Co-Op. Seriously. Don't play it solo. Find three friends and get together.

A good thing is that Valve is looking to throw more DLC out there.
8/10

Bioshock

Bioshock

PUBLISHER: 2k Games
DEVELOPER: 2K Games (Marin)
Played on: PS3
Initial impression: Art Deco FPS.

Liked:
- The plot
- Plasmids
- Environments
- Hacking

Disliked:
- Research Camera
- The "puppy" audio

On The Fence:
- Challenge Modes

It's somewhere in early 1960 of an alternate universe and this game starts with a plane crash near a mysterious lighthouse in the middle of the ocean. It tells you nothing about who you are, the where or why of anything you're doing for quite a while. In fact, like most good psychological thrillers, it slowly reveals these details over the course of many hours... and when you realize what is going on, it's nearly too late. The first thing you do after crashing is decend in a bathysphere (like a cable-controlled submersible) to the underwater utopia known as Rapture.

This place has seen better days, indeed. Glass walls are cracking, water is streaming lazily around the tunnels... oh, and most of the inhabitants are bat-shit crazy. A radio in the sphere supplies the disembodied voice of a helpful survivor who wants you to help him get out of here.

Atlas guides you around, supplying numerous hints on how to survive in this hellhole while filling you in on what the hell happened. And of course -- there's a twist. This game's story had me glued to the seat. I couldn't wait to play more. The characters seemed genuine and even likable (yes, even the one who end up being off their rocker... like Sander Cohen).

The common enemies are called Splicers, named so to reflect how they've hacked their genetic code with plasmids.

To the main aspect involving he name, you are able to 'upgrade' yourself by injecting plasmids - some sort of genetic mutation that allows you to do various near-superhuman feats like shoot fire or ice from your fingertips. Among the more interesting ones are strategic skills like casting a holographic decoy to help sneak by enemies. Plasmids are powered by a substance called Eve, and are purchased by obtaining a substance called Adam. Adam can only be acquired by hunting down zombie-like girls called Little Sisters who have been programmed to collect it from dead Splicers. They are protected by large, altered men named Big Daddies. To get the Adam yourself, you must take out the Big Daddy, then face the moral choice - release the Little Sister from her zombie trance, or kill her and harvest the Adam-producing slug in her belly. The difference in Adam is not all too great, but killing them brings in more. Obviously, your choice determines the ending.

The environments are crazy. Imagine an art deco civilization built underwater, and you'd be about half way there. The sea blue-green out every window is eerie, especially when combined with flickering or non-functioning lighting and the sounds of water dripping or enemies grumbling to themselves.

There are killer turrets and search cameras that summon flying machine gun weilding sentries all over, but you can 'hack' them. This opens up a puzzle mini-game that resembles Pipe Dream. Connect pipes from point A to point B before the liquid flows. If successful, the turret or camera works for you, shooting enemies whenever they come near. You can also hack various vending machines found all around the city. This lowers the prices significantly, which is very helpful early on.

One thing I really didn't like was the research camera. You get this thing kind of early on, and as you go through the game you can take pictures of enemies to learn their weaknesses. Thing is - I totally forgot to use it through about 75% of the game. The benefits on doing the research didn't seem significant to really matter. Even after getting 100% research on Big Daddies, they didn't go down any easier. In fact, it was more a combination of experience and certain weapon/plasmid combos that gave me more of an advantage than the Research Camera.

Without spoiling too much, there is a point where you find a certain audio diary I did not like. You find dozens of these all over Rapture, but this one is significantly disturbing. It involves harming an animal - a puppy, actually. Now aside from my ASPCA membership and views, I had just lost one of my own dogs about the time I found this in-game. The pain of losing my dog combined with this... ech... well I can see WHY it was put in there, but honestly if it were something that didn't make noise (like a frog) then I probably would accept it a bit more. It's a sensitive subject for me on a personal level, so I can't hold it against the game, really. I just wish there was another way they could have presented that.

All that aside, for the PS3 you can download (not for free) three Challenge Maps. The two I've tried so far are a lot of fun, though a bit vague. I had no idea what I needed to do in one of them until I looked up a hint online. These are what they say they are -- challenging, though part of me thinks there just isn't enough to them. I kind of wish they were a little easier and there were about 5 more.

This game mixes FPS with some pseudo-RPG elements and the occasional Puzzle game.
The Biblical and Philosophical overtones are insane.

Great game, though main story replay isn't all too enticing. 9/10