Saturday, April 20, 2013

Batman: Arkham City

Once again, Rocksteady does an amazing job at making Batman awesome. In this one, you even get to play as Catwoman to change things up a bit. The entire game, including DLC took me about 21 hours to complete.

So instead of my normal review structure, I'm just going to say that it was every bit as good as Arkham Asylum, and then some. I'll now go into the and them some.

What I liked:
Unique gadgets? Yep, they added quite a few, including my all new favorite type of grenade that let's me incapacitate a single enemy in a fight, and take them down last. There are also tons of new enemies. Enemies with body armor you have to focus beat down, or they just keep coming back at you. Enemies with car doors, and you have to knock it out of their hands with a cool move. They also kept all the same ones as before (guns, knives, stun rods, snipers, etc.)

The boss fights step it up to a much better level than the first. There are actually tactics relevant to the boss, and it's not as repetitive. They also look awesome.

What I didn't like:
Zsasz kept calling on a nearby phone whenever I got close to my next objective. Then he'd make me fly across the entire city to answer another phone, just pushing back my progress! Inconsiderate jerk! Well, that's what he's supposed to do, and at least I got my grappling hook speed boost from the VR training. Yes, you should get that as soon as possible, and yes, the VR training are ridiculously hard. Especially VR training #1. If you miss a single target, you fail, they tell you you failed, and you have to run/fly/climb your way back to the start to retry.

The other thing that was a bit annoying was that it wasn't as straight-forward for me to figure out where to go, even with an icon standing over the map. This is probably because the game went from an asylum, with narrow passages, limited pathing to an open city. I'm also really bad at figuring out what a game wants me to do, so there's that. =\

And there were a few fights where it was tight quarters against very tough opponents. Dying a few times, listening to Joker/Strange/etc. tell me I'm dead, and trying again. Still better than just repeatedly fighting 2-3 pseudo-Banes like in the first. =)

The equipment upgrades are good, but after a I got about 1/2 way in, I was just filling out the rest because I had the points.

In summary, if you liked the first one, get on this now. It's amazing and well worth whatever price it's currently listed for.

DLC: Harley's Revenge
2-3 hours of solid story, fights, and trying out a new character. Also much fewer distractions than the main game. Get it.

Monday, April 1, 2013

Journey

I had many people tell me that I should play Journey. I didn't realize what type of game it was until I went to the session on designing Journey by Jenova Chen at GDC13. After I got back home, I bought it and beat it in the same day.


The controls are extremely simple. The left thumbstick moves your character. Tilting the controller or using the right thumbstick turns the camera. Pressing O will put out a small ping with a symbol indicating your name. Holding down O will put out a stronger ping. Pinging is mainly for activating world objects. When powered up you can fly briefly by pressing X. You can get powered up by touching the ribbons in the world, being pinged by another player, or colliding with another player.


The graphics were very good and stylized. There were large deserts with ruins scattered throughout, dark caves, temples, and frozen wastelands. The air physics on the ribbons in the world look really good, also the strong winds that push you back in the cold.

The music and sound affects are very good. The music beautifully sets the tone and the sound affects resonates the mood.

The game also has seamless coop. The way it works is it finds people in your area of the game, and seamlessly joins them into your game so you can see other people on their journey. I ran into a few different people near the start, but then I ran into someone about 10-15 minutes in that seemed to share my way of exploring the world and solving puzzles. Their name was a symbol that looked like two lowercase n's on top, and two vertical lines on the bottom, so that was my only indication that it was the same person.


I played with them to the completion of the game. When monsters were attacking one of us, the other instinctively ran to the other for support. When one of us was being blocked by harsh winds, the other would wait so we could carry on as a team. When we were trudging through the thick snow, forced to walk slower, and slower, the other was right there. There was nothing keeping us tied together except for the desire for us to travel together, and not brave it alone. At the end of the game, it tells you who the other symbols are, this person was SweetCupcake16. If you're out there, thanks.

Normally I would find something to complain about in a game, but I don't really have anything here. The game wasn't too short or too long. I got through it in roughly the time it takes to watch a long movie. On top, I always felt like I was progressing and seeing new things. The controls were concise, the graphics amazing, the sound brilliant.

I highly recommend playing this game. It was a great experience and well worth it. If you have a PS3 and haven't played this game yet, you need to get it right now.