Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City

I kinda feel like the short playtime and great reviews suggest this is gonna be in heavy supply in about a month and a half as a used game for 35 bucks.

I've been using pretty much all of my gaminG time to practice drumming in preparation for the inevitable RB: Beatles party, but aside from the weak Riddler challenges, this is still crazy fun. And there's been another Scarecrow attack! I love those. Still waiting on the imminent Killer Croc (Ron Perlman yay) boss fight; I've been finding his interview tapes and he's been popping up to snarl and yell I CAN SMELL YOUR CUNT or whatever.

the Scarecrow scenes start off awesome but become the worst thing about the game once the "fights" start, just boring stealth platforming with a nonsensical end.

giant Scarecrow with laserbeam eyes and hypodermic fingers: that's just dumb.

giant Scarecrow with laserbeam eyes and hypodermic fingers: that's just dumb AWESOME.

fixed

not just dumb, but totally not fun. even once was too much.

The Killer Cros boss 'fight' was some bullshit. Really like this game in spite of the lame boss fights tho.

Croc. Ugh.

haven't played it yet but I kind of applaud the conceptual idea of making the boss fights terrible so that the regular fights, which make up 90% of the gameplaying experience, come across even better

The more epic boss fights involve fighting waves of minions, and yes, those are the best parts.

I think my major qualm is that on most screens the different gameplay styles aren't mixed together enough. Its very rare that you are climbing around and then suddenly have to fight. And some of the tools feel similarly limited. Like when you first get the claw, you use it on like 2 boxes and then its useless (until quite a bit later.)

Best thing I've done so far:

1. String thug up
2. Spray proximity-triggered explosive gel below thug
3. Wait for thug's buddy to notice and run towards him
4. Cut thug down with batarang onto explosives

A+++

I think the moment I knew I would like this game was when I cut down a goon to drop him right onto one of his fellow mooks and was told I'd earned a trophy called "Rope-a-Dope-a-Dope."

Just got this.

When I leveled up for the first time, I was scrolling through the upgrades and saw INVERTED TAKEDOWN!!!!! I don't care that at this point it's virtually worthless, hanging a goon from a gargoyle entirely justifies this game.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/arts/television/05asylum.html

Yeah I hate A Confederacy of Dunces.

My friend got this. I cannot wait until he's beaten it so I get my turn.

*eyeroll* at that NYT review intro

I wonder if one of the things that makes this game so awesome is that in every other stealth game you get pissed off at how stupid the guys are, and in this game they're the Joker's henchmen, so they like have to be stupid by law and it doesn't bother you.

My spatial awareness is so shit that in stealth games I just get confused and run around in front of the guys with guns, so I'm quite grateful for the stupidity of these ones and the fact that I can see them outlined in red.

It does bug me when I carefully knock a guy out next to some explosives on a challenge map and his friends stand around nearby without noticing, though.

I found the B-Movie shitness of the Croc bit quite funny, like the same inexplicable underground whack-a-mole routine repeated endlessly with daft orchestral stings. Third Scarecrow bit drew laughter, especially the load screen.

I thought the reviews were bullshitting about the lifespan of this given how the story isn't long, but I can see playing it again and I'm not remotely bored of doing the four challenges I've unlocked.

if anything is better than a pleasant surprise, it has to be a pleasant surprise involving Mark Hamill.

I keep forgetting that the Joker is Mark Hamill and when I remember, I'm just like "Is there no end to the delights this man has given me during my life?"

Dropping down to talk to tied-up hostages, telling them not to worry and then swinging back up into the roof area to pick off the bad guys one by one is pretty much Batman distilled to the point of perfection.

Kevin Conroy deserves some love.

Okay, this is great. No idea it was so metroidvania-y.

Am I the only person who goes through most of the game in Detective Mode?

haha, no; I keep catching myself doing that.

I feel like a weenie for Detective Moding my way through the game. o_O

Wow, that part with the three electrified platforms is super-rad!!!! I just wish that the Challenge version of that stage followed the same format, that would've been A++.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8256405.stm

Is new DLC out now?

Supposed to come out today, yeah.

Bought this nonsense.

It sucks that the first level of this game is the same as the demo. I really had to drag myself to get through it again last night.

Isn't the demo nearly always the first level? What else would it be?

True but I like complaining about stuff.

ok some game designer really ought to mindfuck us w/ a demo that is the end of the game

Batman would be that game! But it isn't that game. Poly, you have some MGS-level mindfucks waiting for you

Another problem with the first level is that I watched my friend play it and I watched another friend play the demo AND I played the demo, so I got to see it four times.

So yeah, very excited to be moving on to something new.

This is one of the best things I've played this year. I don't know if that's high praise for the game, tho, or just a good indication of how disappointing 2009 has been for gaming (esp compared to last year, which was one of the greatest years of gaming of my life).

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/rebecca-mayes-muses/1052-Batman-Arkham-Asylum

cheesy in so many ways, i know, but i was amused enough

just rented this

this game has been pretty good so far but i wasn't prepared for the awesomeness of the corridor -> alleyway flashback scene. i was seriously blown away by that, competes with anything in the batman movies.

the way it uses videogame mechanics to tell this super-familiar story was so smart and inventive. like the way (after you cough, which alerts you something is up) that the location description pops up as "wayne manor" when you think you're just going through arkham mansion on your way to the next quest... it's a part of the game that you expect to be just a mundane retracing your steps to get back to the main area thing... not prepared at all for something big...

sorry im super hungover right now and i don't think i really articulated that well.

Oh, you've seen nothing yet. There's one Scarecrow scene (the next and final one, if I remember correctly) that's one of my favorite video game sequences in years.

I really should rent this if it's going to persist in not coming down in price

Multiple places have it for $40 on Black Friday.

i think im on that scarecrow scene (if it's the one right after)

lolbritain doesn't do black friday : /

USA! USA! USA!

s1ocki- did you catch the game last night?

the hockey game?

Agreed on hand to hand fighting, it's just not as fluent as other games. I think I posted ages ago that in City or Origins I felt that any time I failed in combat it was entirely my own fault, that I couldn't blame the controls because they were so good. Not so much in this game. Although, I also played the other games on Xbox and this on PS4 - I still occasionally end up calling the batmobile when I'm trying to use detective mode.

And on that matter, the batmobile is used way too much in this, and aside from some of the more reasonable mine-clearing side quests (i.e. the ones not involving 40 drones) it's not really enjoyable for me. I reached the tank boss fight tonight and I'm so traumatised by its poor checkpointing and general awfulness that it's almost put me off this game altogether, but I'll try it again tomorrow on easy to see if that gets me through. I have zero shame about playing on easy.

I think I'm also a bit disappointed at the lack of storyline sub-bosses, but I do like the range of side quests which I guess replace sub-bosses in this.

Team ups are good fun and I like the storyline.

On the PC, there was a sharp difference between the two - in City it felt as you described, but in Origins it was much harder to tell whether, if you went to punch a criminal, one of his other friends might slide in from 10 feet away and knock you out of it.

This game does feel very finicky and demanding compared to the previous ones. Batmobile tank fights OK, Batmobile puzzle bits pretty good, "vehicle stealth" = ahahaha, how was the first guy who said this phrase in development not just fired on the spot? We've all fantasised about being the Batman, haven't we, in a tank, sneaking up painstakingly behind an army of drone tanks so you can shoot rockets up their arses

Also the Lord of the Rings fanfiction game from last year had the plagiarised Arkham combat style locked down extremely well and it's weird returning to the Original and Best and having it actually just be Annoying

(sometimes)

We've all fantasised about being the Batman, haven't we, in a tank, sneaking up painstakingly behind an army of drone tanks so you can shoot rockets up their arses

if you went to punch a criminal, one of his other friends might slide in from 10 feet away and knock you out of it.

Oh yeah, those were fun - it's generic mooks I'm thinking of.

picked up Arkham Knight after having only played Arkham Asylum/Arkham City previously

I'm iffy on all the batmobile stuff, but the Riddler being really into creating racetracks is just o_O