Batman: Arkham City

Have you heard of Batman? He's mighty popular at current, what with Mr Christian 'Gravel-Voice' Bale giving it all that on the big screen. Thankfully, Rocksteady Games have made two titles to date with a much better sounding protagonist. I've played Arkham Asylum, and loved it, and now I've played Arkham City. Look, here:

In the Batmaniverse, Arkham Asylum is akin to an Alcatraz for the criminally insane, and is the setting for the first game in this series. A stonker of a title, go play it. The name Arkham is taken from the H.P. Lovecraft mythos, a town in Massachusetts which features in 12 of his tales. I figure this information will cause a certain friend of mine to explode with cross-over desires. Onwards with the review.

Plot

How am I supposed to brood without the Bat-Umbrella?

This game, Arkham City, is basically Asylum but bigger. The premise of an asylum for dangerous criminals has been expanded to 'city' size (more on that later), and the number of villains doubled. The plot sees Bruce Wayne imprisoned by Dr Hugo Strange, the overseer of Arkham City, for basically no clear reason other than so he can swoop around a dark, Gothic landscape for a bit and be gruff. Once inside The Caped Crusader immediately sets off trying to...no, wait, he has no motivation at this point. Yes, he's been imprisoned by Strange and would probably like to get out, but the first thing he does is rescue Catwoman from Two-Face, I assume so the game can introduce the second playable character. After this, the three major villains (Two-Face, The Penguin and The Joker) present themselves and territories are carved up across the city. In addition to these three Big Villains and their appropriately garbed henchmen armies, there are also several Small Villains running about being a nuisance. This is present in the form of a few side missions that have multiple parts which become available as you progress through the main plot. These missions provide enjoyable sections of the game where you get a chance to play The Detective and not The Cage Fighter. There are also a few recognisable names from about the mythos, like Commissioner Gordon, Oracle and a few TV celebs that crop up to be liabilities during the game as well. All in all, a ton of names well and truly dropped. Now Batman can get on with the task of....nonono, wait!

When will this happen?!

The Riddler. He's back and all, only this time instead of being a series of disembodied recorded taunts with a graffiti problem he's an actual villain in the city. There are riddles to solve by taking thousands of photos of everything you can with your cowl-cam and over 400 trophies to find which range in difficulty from 'look up, use batclaw' to piloting a batarang through a sewer version of the Boota Eve course. In addition to this, the oddly House-resembling Riddler has captured a few medics who were also trapped in Arkham City. When you have found a enough trophies The Riddler challenges you to solve his puzzle houses and save the hostages, the final puzzle house being where you meet and defeat Edward Nigma himself.

Characters

I think I can safely assume that, even if you've not seen The Dark Knight, you're at least aware of the truly wonderful performance that the late Heath Ledger gave in THE LEADING ROLE as The Joker. He was great because he captured the essence of unpredictability and madness of The Joker that is diametric to Batman's logical and calculating methods of detective work, moral code etc. But that was the Nolan franchise, and is thankfully very different and removed from this game. In the Arkham series, The Joker is voiced by Mark "I used to bulls-eye wamp rats back home in my T-16" Hamill and he does a stunning job. His laugh is spot on, and that's one of the most important parts to the character. In general, each Big Villain is very well done, each playing perfectly to the single trait that was the original inspiration for each character. There is a tier system for importance of villain in this game: The Joker and Hugo Strange are at the top, followed by The Penguin, Ra's al Ghul and Two-Face as major obstacles for Batman, below them Mr Freeze, Poison Ivy, Bane, Deadshot, Azreal, The Riddler and Hush occupying either passing roles as 'hey look, it's that one!' during missions related to other, bigger villains or as side missions in their own right. Next comes the one-appearance only tier, with Clayface, The Mad Hatter and Solomon Grundy. Finally, at the base of the Pyramid of Screen-time, are all the passing references in riddles etc. In total, I counted over 40 named heroes, villains or general characters. In Asylum, most of these characters were mentioned in passing, their names usually being linked to a riddle or mentioned in dialogue, but in City at least 25 are actually in the game. This is ridiculous. Most barely get any screen-time and those that do are developed to the bare minimum. I would've much rather had The Joker, Two-Face and The Penguin, with the potential for each of them to have a secondary villain or two (Ivy, Bane, Deadshot etc) in their employ.

I CAN develop more than
2 characters in a game!

This would've allowed more than a passing show for each villain other  than The Joker, who's the only one I could really tell you anything about  his motives or plans. It would also enable people who are completely  unfamiliar with any of these villains to enjoy their appearances more.  Granted, each character does have a biography in the pause menu but  this is just a flimsy solution to cover the design choice, in my opinion. 

Combat

So there's a lot of stuff going on. In between the things happening plot-wise Batman is usually punching someone. The combat is lifted directly from Asylum, as one would expect, and works just as well. A slight modification including some end of combo finishers just adds to the fun of taking on 50 henchmen at once. All the gadgets (batarang, batclaw, bat-tazer, bat-splosive, bat-birthday cake) and signature moves can be worked into any combo allowing for illegal levels of fun to be had providing you nail the timing. If you've played Arkham Asylum you'll know that early on B-man can't do jack against guns, and the same is true in City. So, not only do you now have a gadget for silently jamming enemy weapons, causing them to panic when you appear and they can't fire, but at the end of a combo you can leap over to the smug bastard with the assault rifle, shotgun or even stun-stick and rip it out of his hands. That not enough? Don't worry, it isn't, you dismantle it in seconds right before his eyes. The henchman genuinely looks upset. And then you throat-punch him.

The best kind of four-way

Fighting anything larger than henchmen is rare. There are The Abramovici Twins (surgically separated conjoined twins with one arm each, one wields a sickle and the other a hammer (Soviet reference shoryuken) and then maybe two Titan henchmen, previously seen in Asylum. Both are dealt with in similar ways, and are not handled badly, it would just have been nice to see more of them as most boss fights are either 'fight hoard, single punch takes out Big Villian' or 'get swamped by Ra's al Ghul and his multiple guises

For the most part making your way around the city involves avoiding henchmen without guns (very simple due to the sexy flight mechanics) or stealthily taking out those with guns. Still very satisfying to clear an entire room of henchman without any of them noticing.

Visuals

Booting this game brought back a wonderful sight to my eyes, a sight that hasn't been seen since the first Dawn of War. A PC Stress Test. I ran it, and it looked fine. I started the game on Ultra High, everything lagged. It rendered fine, but the game was running at half speed. Tweaking a few key settings down to High solved everything. This game is not beautiful, because that wouldn't fit with the Gothic theme. It is as good looking as it needs to be, and then some, but by no means blew my mind. In fact, it was very similar to Asylum. I feel City was just a case of expanding instead of innovating anything new, so this is to be expected and not criticised. 

I'm Batman

Along that theme comes my first criticism. There are a few internal areas, the GCDP morgue and a few rooms in the subway and steelmill, which are pretty much lifted from Asylum and given a quick re-skin. Whilst I don't begrudge the devs doing this, I feel it's a tad sloppy for a triple A game. My second criticism is an expansion on my first, or lack there of. The game is too small. When you climb certain buildings and look out to the East you can clearly see Arkham Asylum in the distance, and due to perspective it does indeed look small in comparison to City. But when you consider the actual playable size of Asylum, I'll wager it was probably about 60-70% the size of City. This is flat out not big enough for this game. If we can have full sandbox worlds in games like InFamous, GTA, Prototype then why didn't Batman get one? An example to further highlight my irritation: at one point there were Two-Face thugs patrolling the steps of a building chatting about The Penguin and how he sucks...whilst not 25m away across the road there were Penguin thugs saying the same things about Two-Face. The game really needed double the space.

On a lesser note, the score is spot on. A brilliant mix of Nolan-esque soundtrack and original themes.

Longevity

Picture funny, but
not relevant

The game took me 32 hours to finish; that's the main quest, all the side missions and all The Riddler trophies/challenges. Then there's the ton of challenge maps available to be played as Batman or Catwomen, (Nightwing and Robin if you shell out for the DLC) but all they consist of is internal maps used in the main game filled with either a hoard to fight or some guards to takedown. These challenge maps were also present in Asylum, and I ignored them then as well. There is also New Game Plus, which restarts the story but you keep all your upgrades and gadgets, plus change Batman's suit to one of 7 available as DLC. The villains are also leveled to match, to keep the challenge up. This mode is best for trophy hunting as, with all the gadgets unlocked, any Riddler trophy you come across can be claimed then and there (idiocy dependent). There is also a single achievement for finishing the game twice. I HATE this, for two reasons; 1) because it's the cheapest way to extend a game, 'just do it again for a shiny thing,' and 2) because I'm probably going to do it.

Conclusion

A very good game, well worth what I paid for it and certainly an enjoyable way to spend 30+ hours. It is by no means perfect, nothing ever is, but what flaws it has are mostly down to my personal experience and expectations. Recommended to anyone who enjoyed Asylum, fans of comic book characters and stealth games.

Those of you wanting batnips can take a hike.

Surrender to them

Some Stuff What I've Played: A Compilation of Words etc.

It's that low point of the month again, when I've splurged nearly all of my last pay cheque on food and shelter and I'm only left with a pittance to spend on the important things, like games and cinema tickets. To that end, there hasn't been a proper game title that I want to review for a good few months now, and so instead I present to you a few words on a few things.

Bastion

I'd heard a lot about this, Indie Game of The Year 2011, Best Art/OST of 2011 etc. and thought I could shell out a few quid for it.

Turns out, not a bad game. The plot is a bit thin, there's very little in the way of explanation for anything which I suspect is in an attempt to add "mystique" to the game. The combat and upgrade system are fairly mundane, but sufficient to keep the player interested.

Hit with hammer. Repeat.

The big draw is the presentation. There's a smooth talking narrator who guides you through not only the plot but also describes each level, upgrade, item etc. completely removing all need for dialogue. Essentially think of POP:Sands of Time; the entire game is The Prince attempting to convince Farah he is who he says he is and occasionally if you fall to your death he'll chime in with "No no, that's not how it happened..." Bastion's narrator is like that, but slowly moving from interesting to invasive and irritating. Prime example, there's an arena map that can be replayed (by getting high) to earn resources by fighting 20 waves of enemies. Each time you attempt it you have to listen to him drone on about The Kid and his hard life. The art style and visual presentation have been most praised, with the world creating itself piece by piece as you walk around. Seems like a nice idea, keeps the scenery active and interesting....but was probably introduced to save on memory usage, this being an XBLA port.

Arbitrary number score: 6/10. For fans of Indie/artsy/casual gaming.

Killzone 3

Let me first start by stating that I was a massive fan of the original PS2 game, and somewhat enjoyed the PS3 sequel. THIS, however, does not belong anywhere near those other two games. Generic and bland from start to finish, with an abhorrent colour pallet of brown, other brown, slightly shiny brown, grey and poorly rendered green lighting.

The shooting bits seem to have gotten worse since Killzone 2, and there are god awful rail-shooter vehicle sections, but apart from that it appears to just be most of the second game copy pasted with some slightly different art styles and tweaks to the interface. Most notable being an ammo crate every five yards, meaning all the special weapons like the flamethrower, bolt gun and the man-exploding flubber cannon (yeah, you heard me) can pretty much be used constantly. Level design suffers heavily from the chest-high wall plague meaning you can spot an "ambush" a mile off. Even worse is the cover system that uses those chest-high walls doesn't even protect you from the hideous amount of incoming enemy fire you'll be under most of the time. I think somewhere along the road the development team decided that including the ability to have your allies revive you meant that the difficultly curve could be abandoned all together. What they failed to do was path the AI properly so over half of the time I'd Rambo my way into the enemy forces, kill half of them and sacrifice myself relying on The Mouth to resurrect me, only to have the shot list to the side framing him sprinting towards me....stuck on a single brick. URGH.

Nobody Cares

The game says it comes with PS Move enabled, but that's only for single player, doesn't work on co-op and barely works at all. The fine control accuracy and fluidity of movement needed for a non-rail shooter is far too high for motion controls that have trouble navigating a simple menu. Oh, it can be played in 3D, which I strongly advise against as the saturation of awful colours nearly drove me mad, and I was only playing it in 2D.

Arbitrary score: 3/10. For people who require another reason to champion this series but are unaware what makes a good game.

WHY AM I IN THIS GAME?!? - Ray Winstone

Driver San Francisco

You'd be forgiven for thinking that a game called Driver, with a big yellow car on the front and in a series of games all to do with....driving that Driver SF would be a pure racing/driving game. And you're....well, right and wrong.

Just kill them all, Tanner...

So, yes, it does present itself as a driving game. Notice I said GAME, not simulator. For a driving sim you can fuck off back to GT5 with all its neck-beardy P-2-WR accurate cars that handle like drunk cats. This game's got power slides, and even when you don't ask for them it's still got them. But the more important part of this particular fairly generic Burnout-esque title is the interesting and frankly just good use of a single game mechanic. Early on in the story, about 20mins in so I don't consider this a spoiler, Tanner (you) has a car accident and ends up in a coma. Because of this you can astrally project (go with it) yourself into the body of any driver across the entire city at any time. During races you can drive oncoming traffic into your fellow racers, you can use trucks and tankers to block the paths of escaping criminals or just fling mini-van driving "soccer moms" at them til they crash into the nearest lamp post. Totally consequence free, but thankfully not in the "it's OK because you're Russian/evil/12 and trying to piss off your parents" way GTA handles consequence free collateral damage. Oh no, Driver just flat out ignores it.

Aside from that one brilliantly constructed and implemented mechanic, the rest of the game is fairly standard. Story, voice acting, visuals and physics are "enough" to carry the game forward whilst you dick about making two petrol tankers jump each other over and over.

Arbitrary score: 7/10. For people who enjoy Burnout and want a side order of story to go with that big juice car-burger.

Transformers: War For Cybertron

What can I say, it was on sale for £3.50 and I like Transformers so I thought I'd risk it.

All the worst things from...just so many games, I imagine the development team would've had to go out of their way to make this game so bad.

I've played, at time of writing, 30minutes of this. And I intend to give it at least another hour, just to be sure. But I'm fairly certain it is indeed the utter, UTTER shite that it appears to be. Shocking controls, an out-dated engine, offensively original art style (to me at least), repetitive missions and voice acting that is literally unbelievable. As in, how were the publishers happy with A) the script written for the VA's and B) the delivery of nearly every single word. Mind officially boggled. Not to mention the entire game seems to be built around coaxing you to play online, setting up another third part account (last count, I have 12) just to access those parts of the game. Oddly, my main two problems are not unlike those in my last Transformers game review (here), a mostly copy pasted single player and pushing you into playing online mp. I can only hope that, should I ever play it, the tie-in for Dark of The Moon doesn't follow this seemingly compulsory game structure.

Arbitrary score: 2/10. For people with too much time/money/Hasbro fanboyism.

Beat Hazard 

Ending on a high note, thankfully. Beat Hazard is the latest in the music-game genre, previously championed by titles such as Audiosurf. The premise being that you can choose any audio file on your hard drive and the game will map a level around it, with changes in tempo, volume and rhythm all affecting the difficulty, visual style and pace of the game. Whereas Audiosurf managed to take a simple idea and try and complicate it by ramming in different characters and an odd Connect 4-esque in-game mini-game (far too many hyphens) Beat Hazard has literally gone back to basics, by emulating the classic title Asteroids.

An XBLA/PC title with simple controls and a potentially infinite lifespan means that I will be playing this game regularly and perpetually, as it has now taken up residence as my go-to casual game, filling time between all my important business meetings and fundraiser events with the Duke etc.

Here, look at this, click on it to enlarge if you like.

I struggle to see anything there that's not to like, assuming you like A) music, B) space ships with lots of guns, C) asteroids or D) all of the above and are not epileptic. That's a serious point, this shit causes seizures.

Arbitrary score: 8/10. For anyone who likes casual games, music and bleeding eyeballs.

N.B.

Depending on feedback, I might start doing this sort of things more often, a few short reviews in one post instead of a longer article on a single topic.