Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham Asylum was a great game when it came out. But I'm looking through a lens on a scope with "hindsight is 20/20" written down the side. Not to say I'm going to say it sucks now, and really, has a whole lot changed for video games since 2009? Probably not, but these are things I've thought about playing through this again, on hard, which I guess I didn't really notice before.

Well, the first thing I'll say is that if you're playing this game for the first time that you shouldn't play through on hard, start with normal, or, if you're not good at action games, easy.

Notice that picture up near the top, that's Batman with all the bosses in the game. The "bosses" however, suck ass. Here they are in order: Bane: actually, this one's not so bad, teaches you how to take down titans (tougher enemies you encounter later on), though that's mostly just dodging out of the way at the right time, and Bane was mostly about punching stuff anyway. Zsasz: hit him in the head with a Batarang (seriously, that's it). Harley Quinn: She stands in a box and sends guys at you while electrifying the floor at different times. Killer Croc: Avoid him by moving between fast and slow on some planks (lamest fight in the game, not  even an encounter, not fun in any way, why didn't they take this section out?) Poison Ivy: okay, this one's actually really good, she has powers to throw at you, it's really challenging (especially on hard) it almost feels like this should have been the end boss fight... Joker: Throws two titans at you, then, after a cutscene, takes titan formula himself, but when he's giant, all he does is throw more guys at you. LAME LAME ULTRA LAME! This is the final boss, and all it does is leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Other than the boss fights, I feel everything else is pretty good. The fighting is fluid and really fun (especially after you get the timing down). The sneaking around parts are good too, taking out thugs one by one as they search for you, using a whole array of gadgets to confuse and terrify. Makes it feel like the opposite of a survival horror game. Like you're the monster that everyone is trying to get away from or kill before it gets you. Also the scarecrow bits (not really a boss, more an element all his own) are really cool.

I suppose I should mention a couple of other things I had a problem with, the first thing is the extra, extra long opening cut-sequence, which is also entirely unskippable because you have to walk closely behind Joker and you can't pass him. I hate it when games do this, really takes down on the replayability, and really, I think every game should put us straight into the action, do we really need backstory before we start another game? Is that why we're playing? I don't think games really need a rich deep story to begin with, and when they do, it should be something that's incorporated into the gameplay, or side bits, like all those books you could read in The Elder Scrolls series, or everyone's quirks in State of Decay. Not really necessary to experience, but a nice touch. I mean, I'm a fan of good storytelling in videogames, but I also think that unskippable, long opening sequences is BAD storytelling.

One more thing that pissed me off, and that's the detective sequences. This would happen every once in a while where Batman needed to figure something out, like Commissioner Gordon gets kidnapped (again) and Batman needs to find him. So what do you do? You go into detective mode, find some object (in this case, Gordon's pipe), and then follow some trail that you can only see in detective mode to the next location. It's not fun or interesting, just tedious busywork.

Overall: B. It's a great game, don't get me wrong. But the shitty boss battles really bring it down. Challenge modes are cool, but the game could have more to it than that. The story is too linear, the ending is disappointing, it's too short. There's too many problems with it for me to give a higher grade.

Poker Night 2

I argued with myself about doing this one or not, but I really haven't beaten anything since Injusice. I suppose unlocking everything in a Poker game counts as beating it.

Poker Night 2 is the latest game coming from Telltale Games, the same studio that brought The Walking Dead and Sam and Max. If you like poker, I highly recommend it. You play against a table full of fictional celebrities, Claptrap from the Borderlands series, Brock Samson from The Venture Bros. TV show, Sam from Sam and Max, and Ash Williams from The Evil Dead and Army of Darkness. Oh, also GlaDOS from the Portal series is the dealer.

It's a pretty solid poker game. Everyone has there own tells, and best of all, conversations occur between characters as your playing through the hands. These conversations are hilarious and they kept me coming back for more. Even if you don't like poker that much, situations like Claptrap Breaking while trying to say the word "Boobies" or finding out a little more about the relationship between Ash and Brock make losing hands worth it.

If you do actually win hands, or at least get in third or better, you'll win Unlock Chips which can be used to either unlock different themes for your decks, chips and table felts, or buy drinks for the people at the table. When you do this, they are more likely to show tells when betting.

Overall: C+, I had a great time playing this game, but it's not really anything special, the conversations made it all worth it, but otherwise, it's just like any other poker game. If your not a big fan of poker, you can probably skip this one.

Injustice: Gods Among Us

Injustice is a fighting fame developed by Nether Realms, the same company that brought us Mortal Kombat. Also, Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe. Which kept making me wonder why they made this game, but I digress. 

Unlike Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe, this game is taking a full 2D-control style, like classic MK, pushing up makes you jump, pushing down makes you duck and there's no other ways about it. I think this is a good thing overall, I was getting tired of every fighting game trying to be Soul Calibur anyway, and now Soul Calibur is trying to be Street Fighter for some stupid reason, but, once again, I digress.

I just played through the Story Mode, but I plan to go back and do all the other stuff too. There's a challenge mode with over 200 missions, plus classic and online play. But I haven't done too much of any of those yet, so I'm just going to stick to the Story for this one.

In the story, The Flash and Batman are chasing The Joker, only to suddenly be pulled into some kind of inter-dimensional vortex and taken to another universe. In this parallel Earth, The Joker killed Lois Lane, which drove Superman insane and turned him evil. So, the Justice League is now more a league of Superman's minions, because if anyone doesn't do what he says, he's going to kill you.

The thing I didn't like about the story though, is it was more like watching a movie, and every once in a while you fight somebody. Really, there were points when I'd put the controller down and just be watching the story develop, only to be taken by surprise when they through a battle at me. I liked the story, though much more in depth than you'd expect from a fighting game. Usually I'm fine with the whole "you're here to fight in a tournament," one-player mode style. I mean, that worked for Mortal Kombat 1-3, and every Street Fighter and Tekken. I don't know, it just seems like a little much for a fighting game.

Overall: B-. Once again, I'm only grading the story mode. I like the combat style and how free-flowing combos are, plus the easy to learn special moves for every character is pretty cool. The story's just kind of tedious though, too much story, not enough gameplay. I'm glad there's other modes, because if this was it I would be very disappointed.

The Walking Dead

Zombie video-games and zombie movies/books are two completely separate entities. In a typical zombie game, such as Dead Rising, Resident Evil, or Dead Island, chances are that if you get bit by a zombie your not going to die. Just eat some food, smoke some green  herb (at least, that's how I assume you consume it) or use a med-kit and you'll be right as rain.

Now, zombie movies and books, you get bit by a zombie you die and become a zombie.

The Walking Dead, Telltales latest interactive adventure game, is a zombie game that plays like a movie. Like any typical adventure game, the object is to solve puzzles in order to unlock the next part of the story. This one is a little more unique. Yes you still have to solve the puzzles to unlock the next parts, but in this one, the next parts usually come with choices, most of which usually dictate if somebody lives or dies.

In this game, you play as Lee, a man being transported from Macon, Georgia to an upstate prison. This is when the man transporting you hits a zombie on the road and crashes. And so your story begins, coming out of that you meet up with different survivor's of varying ages and go through the world trying to survive.

The Walking Dead does a great deal to impress me. The choices in throughout the episodes are exciting and tough, there was many points where I really wanted to go back and try it all again, just to see what my other choices would have done. I've read online though, that most people make the same choices and found, at the end of each episode when they showed you statics from other players, that many choices seemed to be favored in one direction and the other. I kept thinking about giving it another go, but now I feel it's meant only for a single playthrough. So my advice is to make all the decisions you would make and see how it turns out.

Overall: A+. I think this is the best game TellTale Games has ever made. As a long time fan of adventure gaming I'm really glad that it's finally making a comeback. Maybe TellTale could make another Gabriel Knight game now, wink wink, nudge nudge.

Banjo-Kazooie

Banjo-Kazooie is the story of a bear named Banjo and the somewhat annoying but infinitely useful bird that lives in his backpack Kazooie. The game starts when the evil witch Gruntilda comes down from her lair blows up Banjo's house and steal his sister Tootie. Why? Because she wants to extract all the cuteness out of Tootie and put it into her.

Banjo-Kazooie came out in 1998 for the N64. I played it on X-Box Live Arcade though, controls have been updated to fit the new format (if you remember, N64 had some pretty funky looking controllers). It's still a pretty solid platformer. It still has the same problems though that many games from that era do, mostly concerning camera controls. But this is only a slight annoyance at times. Mostly it's cool.

The goal of the game is to collect puzzle pieces, called Jiggies in the game. There is a variety of ways at doing this. Collect five Jingos in every level, beat a boss or sometimes use the abilities you gain as you progress through the game in a fun and interesting way. With ten levels and an awesome board-style game-show at the end, just before the final boss of course, this is definitely a fun experience for all ages.

Other than the weak camera controls, I really can't complain much about anything else. It's a fun, exciting game that was made before the days of things like level grinding games or free roaming sandbox games were everywhere. It's a fun game and it makes for a pretty good time, even in the frustrating Rusty Bucket Bay level, and especially in the awesome, Halloween-themed Mad Monster Mansion. Also, it's only ten bucks, so just buy it already.

Overall: A. Pretty damn good actually. It's like Mario 64 meets the crazy people who used to work at Rareware. Too bad their games suck now-a-days though, huh? Just reselling their games on XBL or PSN to try and recapture their former glory. Either that or its the only way they can make money anymore, sad.

X-Men Legends

X-Men Legends is a Gauntlet style beat-em-up RPG. It's quite fun, but there are a lot of things I'm going to bitch about. First off, this game is definitely geared towards multi-player, but there are these areas in between chapters where you only have one character, Magma a New Mutant coming into this game as the person who doesn't know anything about the X-Men. So for fans of the X-Men, you get to learn a bunch of stuff you already knew again, if your not a fan of the X-Men THEN WHY ARE YOU PLAYING THIS GAME!?

Along those same multiplayer-with-constantly-having-to-be-one-player bullshit, there are Danger Room modes where you can unlock  the best equpment for each X-Man but, once again, you can only be one character for these moments. Forcing this game to suddenly become one-player mode.


I suppose I shouldn't be complaining so much about that. I mean, I played the whole thing by myself, and it is pretty fun changing out the X-Men constantly, something I'm sure my friends would totally berate me for, but I wanted to get the full experience and use every character. Oh, and speaking of which. Another problem with this game is so many characters are being held back by having one move that totally sucks (or, in the case of Emma Frost, two moves) this is a real drawback since you only ever get 4 moves in total for each character. Jubilee has one shitty move, So does Nightcrawler, I mean, I like Nightcrawler and Jubilee but as the game wore on I used them less and less just because YOU CAN"T EVER SWITCH YOUR FUCKING MOVES!

Another thing, this game runs about 20 hour gameplay, 30 if your doing all the one-player and danger room stuff, but you don't get some characters until right before the end of the game. I mean, as previously mentioned, Emma Frost isn't very good (and it's really annoying when she and Jean Grey are stuck in the Astral Plane BY THEMSELVES, I mean Jean is awesome, but Emma only has one good offensive move and its her Power Move, oh and speaking of Power Moves, you get them level 15 but You can never ever put any skill points into them, meaning that they start out being awesome but never ever get any better, so by the last level they are all mediocre at best) But Psylocke you get right before the final two or three levels, so you hardly ever get to use her.

This would all be forgiven, I think, if there was a new game+ mode. I mean, isn't that the point of these games, level up your characters and beat the game, then level them up some more on a slightly harder difficulty level FOREVER. That's what I always thought anyway, start a new game, not having to go through all the story to get all those characters that took forever to unlock. I don't know, I guess it just totally eliminates any replay value at all for me.

Overall: C, I suppose this was probably a pretty good game when it first came out. Now-a-days, I'd save a game like this for when you have a free weekend and three friends who are all pretty big X-Men fans. Fast to beat, I'm sure you'd get a kick out of it, as long as you and/or your friends can stand watching as someone else plays through the one-player parts.

Critical Failure: "Goldeneye: Rogue Agent"

This is a new thing I'm going to do, whenever there's a game that, for whatever, I just give up playing the whole way through, then I'm going to say they failed.

This is my first failure. Goldeneye: Rogue Agent. And what a piece of garbage this one is.

The story and gameplay is nothing like the original Goldeneye, Rare's N64 game that allowed players to live through the movie in a whole new way, doing missions over and over again on different difficulty levels in order to unlock more objectives, and the multiplayer was pretty tight too.

Anyway, this game sucked. You're an agent, NOT James Bond but some other agent. During the very first mission of the game, you watch as James Bond (Pierce Brosnan version) gets killed by Dr. No, and then a war starts between Dr. No and Goldfinger. Then, you get disavowed by MI6 for some stupid reason but really it's all a ploy to get you working with Dr. No or Goldfinger.

Really, I could forgive the dumb storyline if this game had any redeeming qualities at all. This game is nothing more and nothing less than a straight FPS game. It still gives you missions, like in the first Goldeneye game, but they're always solved on a straight path through the game. No longer do you have interesting missions that you have to figure out on your own how to occomplish. Instead, it's just: go here, shoot some guys, or go here, blow this up, or NO OTHER OPTIONS.

I suppose there's one cool thing, you get special "eye powers." I only unlocked one before I gave up on this game, but it let me see enemies through walls. But really, one decent power isn't enough to save this poorly-crafted
first person shooter.