Choice Cuts on Batman: Arkham City

I could say I grew up with Batman in different ways. I read the comics and graphic novels, and I watched the tv show as well as the animated series and movies. But don’t get me wrong, I love videogames. In my opinion, a videogame provides what I think is the closest approximation to actually being Batman. So if I could only get one videogame for the year, Batman: Arkham City would be my hands-down choice.

Picking up some time after the events that transpired in Batman: Arkham Asylum, Arkham City thrusts gamers into a closed-off city for criminals run by Dr. Hugo Strange. There’s a whole lot of power struggles going on between criminal gangs, on top of threats carried out by the Joker to neighboring Gotham City and a couple of conspiracies in between. The rogues gallery in this game puts more emphasis on villains who weren’t featured in the first game. Expect appearances from Penguin, Two-Face, Ra’s Al-Ghul and many others. I wouldn’t want to give away too much of the story, but do know that it was written by Paul Dini, a writer for the Batman Animated Series as well as some acclaimed comics and graphic novels.

Gameplay wise, the most obvious gameplay change is the setting itself. Despite the city being closed off, the setting provides gamers with an open world to explore. It’s not as open-world as say, Grand Theft Auto. You can’t enter every building, but the ones you can enter provide pretty intricate maps, each filled with their own challenges. You can choose to shoot your grappling hook and glide through the city, bypassing the chaos on the ground. Or you can choose to dive headfirst into it, exercising the improved freeflow combat system. The tweaks now allow you to counter multiple enemies at once, making for some pretty cool combos. Hotkey-type button combinations make the transition from hand-to-hand combat to gadgets pretty easy, eliminating having to access a menu to disrupt your flow of attack. With these improvements, enemies have now become a tad bit tougher to deal with as well. They aren’t just limited to their fists and firearms anymore. Some enemies have blades, armor and even shields, which prompted me to assess the threat level of each wave of baddies I fought and thereby modify my plan of attack.

Stealth still plays an important factor in the game, and this area too has been tweaked to provide more challenges for gamers. Enemies now have more items at their disposal to quickly respond and seek you out, making it much more of an imperative this time around to creatively think of plans to clear a room of armed thugs. Fortunately, the detective mode is still there and provides a great help not only when it comes to strategizing, but for the side quests as well.

The increased level of difficulty spills over to the Riddler Challenges which make their way back in this game. Aside from the types of riddles that have you scanning the environment for answers and finding the hidden question marks by looking through certain viewpoints, there are also environment and skill challenges in order to pick up certain Riddler trophies. Some involve stepping on a button on top of a building to open a cage that holds the trophy at the bottom, with a time limit to make it down before it closes again. On my first playthrough, the new puzzles frustrated me quite a bit, pushing the replay value of the game a few notches higher than it already is.

My copy of the game came with a download for the Catwoman patch, making her a playable character both in the story and in the challenge maps. I downloaded the patch after finishing the game for the first time. It must be noted that should you opt to not download the patch, playing through the game remains to be a pretty solid experience. But downloading her adds more levels to the story, and allows you to pick up trophies Batman doesn’t have access to, something certainly worth looking into for the hardcore challenge completists out there.

Overall, the game didn’t disappoint me, not even in the least. The gameplay is solid, and never made me feel like an underdog even when faced with a wave of more than 10 men at once. There’s so much to come back to even after finishing the game, in the form of side quests and all the Riddler’s puzzles. The story is great, but leaves a whole lot of loose ends to tie up, possibly setting up a future game in the franchise. I do hope they come around to making one eventually. I don’t know how the good people at Rocksteady will end up topping this game, but I’m certainly looking forward to it.

Dead Island Official Trailer

There’s a part of me that’s excited for the huge, huge long-shot possibility of an actual zombie apocalypse. I could go into detail as to how I’d do my best to survive and possibly keep sane as those events unfold. But for now, here’s a trailer at an upcoming videogame that should excite the maulers of the undead we all would like to think we are, and maybe even tug at some heartstrings too.

Dead Island is a video game that basically has zombies attack an island. From what I know, it’s an open-world game that really dials in the survival factor. There’s an emphasis on melee weapons (although guns and the like can still be found), and unlike in the team-based zombie shoot-em-up franchise “Left 4 Dead” (L4D), melee weapons gradually become ineffective with constant use, which considerably playing up the survival and pick-what-you-need aspects of the zombie/survival horror genres that franchises like Resident Evil and L4D have set the bar with.

Although expectations may not mesh quite well with reality, it has to be said that this is a beautiful trailer. Great visuals, great concept, and a great musical score too. Enjoy!

Batman: Arkham City

Yesterday, I downloaded the demo of Batman: Arkham Asylum for the Playstation 3 (PS3). And after playing through the demo level, I was again reminded that my library of games needs some updating on real good titles.

Owning a PS3, I know that games aren’t exactly the 3-for-100 bootleg bargain bin deals of years past. Saving money to get them takes a while, so it’s an imperative for me to get my money’s worth. And unless it comes from a game franchise I grew up playing, buying a new game comes after a process of scouring reviews online and hearing feedback from friends, with a bit of comparing and contrasting the two sources of information somewhere in between.

Another issue I keep in mind when buying games is technical support. There were a few titles I really wanted but couldn’t get due to resolution issues playing them on a pre-HD era TV. But now with some new tech, I don’t have a reason to force myself to pass on games, potentially adding another sinkhole in my cashflow.

Batman’s one of my favorite superheroes. And the game was hailed as one of, if not the best game of the year when it dropped in ’09. Now, about two years after its release, I can now get the game to prep myself for the forthcoming sequel, Batman: Arkham City.

The game’s storyline is supposed to take place about a year after the events that transpired in the first game. Arkham City was created when Quincy Sharp, former warden of Arkham Asylum bought out a portion of Gotham’s slums, barricades it, and allows prisoners to roam the streets, provided they don’t esacape. The real storyline is set in motion when Two-Face devises a plan to gain some rep from within the city’s residents, which prompts Batman to enter and foil his plans.

I wish I could talk more about what cool features the game has, but I don’t even have a copy of the first game at the moment. So here’s the trailer to check out, and expect the game to drop in the fourth quarter of 2011, which gives me more than enough time to get a copy and finish the first game.

Stripped Defenses: Sony Playstation 3 Root Code Made Public

While I have little to no prior knowledge regarding what goes on in hacker culture, this particular piece of news caught my interest.

Word has surfaced that George “GeoHot” Hotz, a hacker who along with other people, was responsible for unlocking the Apple iPhone, claims to have cracked the “root code” of the Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) and has posted it online.

This “root code” served as the machine’s fail-safe measure for preventing the use of pirated or illegitimate software , as well as being able to install another OS on the console. And according to other reports, it seems that there isn’t a way for Sony to modify or change the code without taking the risk making a crop of legit software unusable.

GeoHot’s intent upon releasing the root code wasn’t to promote playing pirated games, although the code’s availability makes it a remote possibility. In a rather smug, yet somehow amusing quote, he makes it clear that releasing the code was a means of seeking employing in developing security for either Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo’s future hardware.

“If you want your next console to be secure, get in touch with me. Any of you 3. It’d be fun to be on the other side”

A pretty big and elaborate display of self-hype, much like Frank Abagnale Jr. in the movie “Catch Me If You Can”.

I had both a sense of wonder and marvel for the longest time as to why the PS3 couldn’t be cracked. Pirated games for the Microsoft X-Box platforms, as well as the Nintendo Wii could be found in a whole lot of places for these shores, from Tiangge stalls even in more “legitimate” mall locations, with available titles arranged in clearbooks. Now with this last defense seemingly stripped, it could only be a matter of time before bootleg discs and possibly other things for the PS3 join their ranks as well.