Batman Arkham City

2 years after Rocksteady did the unthinkable, create a comic book inspired video game that was not only worth playing, it was an outright game of the year contender in the eyes of many, myself included.

On the surface Arkham City may look like a sandbox style game, and in a way it is, you are free to explore the city turned prison called Arkham City, though plot areas are blocked off until you obtain the required gadgets to get by the obstructions. There are villains scattered through the City, each with their own agenda, which actually creates some scenarios where they are going after each other. It leads to a very compelling story, and I don’t mean in a ‘this is a comic book game’ compelling, I mean compelling by any standards. Honestly, the story here is great.

Perhaps the strongest element of Batman Arkham Asylum was the Free Flow combat system, which really brought the brawler type game play to a whole new level, gone are the button mashing days replaced by a timing/reaction system that is EASILY, by FAR, the most satisfying hand-to-hand combat I’ve seen. It basically amounts building up a combo, until you get a large enough combo to unlock the ability to unleash a special move. The move set in Arkham City has increased substantially, including quick access to various gadgets and new takedowns and other combo moves, so much so that it is hard to remember the buttons to do what you want to do sometimes. At least that was my experience in my first play through. I’m sure the more time you spend with it and the combat challenge modes this would become more natural. There are different enemies and weapons that change the way that you have to fight them, for example you can’t punch a guy with a shield, you have to vault over him and attack from the air, this helps strengthen the fact that you’re not button mashing here, it almost feels like a fast paced puzzle a lot of the time. The most important thing to note here, is that it makes you feel like a bad ass. You are the Batman.

The stealth rooms are back though not a lot has changed, though I did find them quite a bit harder, and the henchmen don’t always naturally path through ambush areas which makes it a little bit more difficult. They’re fun enough for variety, and as a change of pace from time to time.

There are a ton of Riddler collectibles and side missions, most of them are pretty fun, and they all have their own short side story, I loved the mad hatter one, I wish there was more of that. And I surprisingly had a lot of fun with the ‘AR Challenges’, which basically amounts to ring races through Arkham City using Batman’s traversal abilities, they were fun and challenging, just another way to make sure you know that you are batman. This also unlocks an ability that makes traversal much easier, don’t make the same mistake I did and do the first set of these as soon as possible.

I’ve finished the game but I don’t feel like I’m done with Arkham City, I’m hoping there is more DLC then the skins and challenge rooms coming, though the story does wrap up quite neatly, there appears to be lots of arcs that could be developed further. This is the best game I’ve played so far this year (at the time of this writing I have also finished uncharted 3), and a big congratulations and thank you to Rocksteady Games for their efforts on this title. If you like action games do not miss this.

Box Art

As the box art so clearly announces, from the creators of Doom and Quake, this was a no-brainer for me to play. Nevermind the similarities drawn to Borderlands, and Fallout (they took more than they should have), both games that I enjoyed.

First mistake, getting this game on PC, knowing iD’s track record, I figured getting this game on PC was the safest thing in the world to do. I guess not, It’s shaky PC launch has been well documented, me being the new owner of an AMD 6970 was definitely a victim. By the time I beat the game, there were patches, and new drivers that resolved most of the problems, and so the game is certainly playable at this point, but, how often that games launch in a broken state at this point is quite disheartening.

After the patches the “texture pop-in” and “screen tearing” issues have been minimized, and the game does look and sound quite good.

Anyway, onto the game, one of the unfortunate traits this game took from borderlands was the lack of story, but it is even more apparent here, unlike borderlands the characters lack any sort of charm and don’t even bother trying to convince or motivate you to help them, you just have to in order to progress. Story has not be a strength of iD’s anyway, so I wasn’t totally shocked by this, but it terribly disappointing nonetheless. They do provide a little back story to explain that you are the worlds last barrier to extinction but to call it hollow would be an understatement. This game has a worse ending than even borderlands did, not just because the story conclusion was incredibly abrupt, and completely anticlimactic. In fact I kept saving my ammo for the BFG for a big bad guy who never came, this game had no big villain to speak of at all, at least you knew you were fighting the boss in borderlands…

On the other hand, iD’s strength has always been creating a satisfying shooter, and boy is that obvious here. There is definitely a fast paced shooter with a bunch of weapons and good shooting mechanics that is incredibly fun to play. In fact I’m comfortable saying that the shooting in this game has been the most fun I’ve played in a while. Lots of weapons to choose from, and to bolster those numbers, most weapons have alternate ammo that give different effects. For example, your shotgun has “pulse” ammo, and “pop rock”(?). The pulse ammo provides an electric shock and is particularly helpful against enemies with shields, while the pop ammo explodes and is just straight up fun. They did a great job at limited the amount of ammo you find, which sort of creates an artificial challenge since you may not have the right bullets to handle a particular scenario cleanly.

The world constucts itself much like an RPG, there is an open world where you can drive around and explore though besides a few ‘jump challenges’ where you have to launch your vehicle into some floating thing for the reward of an item, there isn’t much reason to go off the beaten path here. And quest hubs where you can meet the locals (but there isn’t much reason too, they lack charm). You get some quests and you can shop for ammo, and upgrades, participate in races, and minigames that are mostly around winning extra money, and a quite fun ‘collectable card game’, where you use cards that you find out in the world to build a small deck and play. The quests always lead you to dungeons where you actually get to fight things. Most of the dungeons are reused in job board side quests, but it’s handled in a way that it doesn’t feel so much like recycled content. Though they are quite linear, often times ‘things happen’ while you’re in there to change the landscape, or you run through the backwards and the enemies are different when you return. It doesn’t necessarily feel recycled like it does in say Dragons Age 2.

There is looting in this game, but you rarely find anything other than money or ammo on enemies. There is a crafting system, but most of the elements you need to craft things is found in the environment so exploring is encouraged and I found myself doing a lot of it, and it is rewarding when you’re in a ‘dungeon’ and you run out of EMP grenades or ammo that you can make as you need it. But it does feel like you are limited in what you can make but they often provide you with the things you need in an given dungeon if you’re looking.

Getting around the world of RAGE is easy and sort of fun thanks to some rather clean driving mechanics, which is reflected in the racing side quests, which ultimately reward you with upgrades for your cars, or in some cases new cars for required races for progression. Thought I didn’t play through all of the race challenges, I didn’t find the ones I did challenging at all, which is a shame because the vehicles and racing mechanics aren’t bad, in fact they are good despite the WASD controls for driving which felt archaic to me. If they were more challenging I think I may have been motivated to complete them.

This game definitely falls into the more fun than good category, the mechanics are great and it’s fun to play. I just wish that they had taken more care in fleshing out the world, and the characters to give the game some depth. I’d say if you can get this at budget pricing via steam sale or used bin or something, definitely do it, there is enough fun to be had here, but it is missing motivation here to pay full price in my opinion.

Fight Night Champion really snuck up on me, I was literally scrambling the day it came it out to go get it. I absolutely loved Fight Night 4 despite its flaws, and sadly my review of this game will be very comparative to it’s predecessor.

First and foremost, holy crap this game has a story mode… or “Champion Mode” as they call it. Here’s the thing, the story is really good, and interesting. It’s told through cut scenes and by way of the play by play guys during the fights, and is chalk full of adversity. It’s done in such a way that creates variety of gameplay that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. For example, early on there is a match where you take a punch early on (unavoidable) that creates a cut. Through the course of the fight you need to protect that cut otherwise the ref calls the fight. Sure, that sounds like boxing, but for someone like me who hadn’t entirely figured out the best way to counter in this version of the game, it was really teaching me the mechanics, and forcing me down a road I likely wouldn’t have bothered with, without the incentive.  The Legacy Mode returns, and is pretty much unchanged, schedule your fights, become the champion, defend your title. I found the training games to be a little more fun this time around

The fighting in this game is much faster compared to round 4, and the increase in speed makes it significantly less counter punching focused. In round 4 I constantly found myself waiting for the counter punch, and that was effective. It also feels a little more balanced, when you hit with a counter, you still need to follow it up with at least a decent combo if you want to get anywhere, especially early on in a fight. This also means, players who choose to walk forward and throw you can win, if you want to play defensively you can win, very cool.

Everything about this game was a surprise to me, and it was all great.