Monthly Archives: April 2014

Review: Batman: Arkham Origins (PC)

by

By all accounts, this game had some big shoes to fill. Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are widely regarded as bona fide classics, and are considered to be some of the best — if not the best — comic book games ever created. I played both in March, and I have to agree that they are two spectacularly fun games.

Prior to playing Origins, I didn’t know much about its history, and only recently found out that it was developed by WB Games Montreal and not Rocksteady. The reviews I perused painted it as a so-so game that didn’t live up to its predecessors.

I finished Origins last night, and completed all the side quests this morning. I have to say that I really enjoyed playing this and think it’s worthy of the Arkham series pedigree.

What the game does right is provide a solid story and vibrant writing, bringing to life the colorful inhabitants of Gotham City. Bane in particular is one of the game’s standouts, brimming with an intellectual terror that far exceeds what Christopher Nolan was able to achieve in The Dark Knight Rises. The Joker comes across as even more sadistic and evil in this installment, with Troy Baker holding his own in the massive wake of Mark Hamill’s iconic villain. Roger Craig Smith also delivers a spot-on reading of Kevin Conroy’s Batman. Origins certainly provides no lack of quality in making its characters memorable.

If you played Arkham City, a large portion of Origin’s world will feel familiar, along with new districts to explore. Traversal is fun, and there is no shortage of secrets and collectibles to find. One disappointment I had was the absence of riddles. In the previous games, I found those to be addicting to find and solve, they broke up the flow of the game (in a good way), and provided natural segues into Gotham’s history. As a result, the collectibles and unlockables here don’t feel as integrated, whereas they were done in virtuoso fashion in Arkham Asylum. It’s still fun here, but you do feel more than ever that you’re going through the same familiar motions.

Gameplay is classic Arkham, with buttery smooth combat, lots of gadgets, tons of puzzles to solve, and big environments to explore. Interiors don’t feel as tightly or ingeniously designed as they were in the previous games, though. The new gadgets are also OK at best, and some are just retooled versions of what we got in Asylum and City.

One of the bigger additions to Origins are the crime scene investigations, which are fun. They are more or less linear exercises, but they add a nice forensic detective layer to the story and sidequests instead of just scanning things in. They do a good job showcasing Batman as a person with very high intelligence vs. someone just relying on fancy gadgets and Alfred to do most of his thinking.

Due to the inherent nature of the storyline, there’s a healthy dose of boss fights throughout. They can be quick, but some of them are excruciatingly long and frustrating. They are also not as memorable as the ones from City, so it’s unfortunate that this part of the game wasn’t as good as it could have been. It’s not to say that they aren’t fun; they just aren’t as well-designed and often rely on old patterns and tactics we’re used to.

That being said, I still had a very good time playing this game. I’m not a Batman aficionado, so my take on these games are from a person whose exposure to the Caped Crusader came mainly from the films of Tim Burton and growing up with the ’60s TV show. However, now that I’ve gone through all 3 games, I want to learn more and I absolutely can’t wait for Rocksteady’s Arkham Knight.

Graphics: B+
Audio: A-
Gameplay & Controls: B+
Presentation: A-
Value: A
Overall: A-

PC Notes: Reviewed using an Intel i7-920 CPU (4GHz overclock) and Gigabyte GTX-670 Windforce OC video card (GPU: +126MHz, RAM: +775MHz overclock). Resolution: 2560×1440 @ 60Hz. Graphic settings: Anti-aliasing and DX11 features turned off to maintain 60fps.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

Progress Report: Persona 4 Golden

by

I loved Persona 3 Portable (P3P) on the PSP. It was my first Persona game, and its great mix of dungeon crawling and traditional Japanese simulation gameplay was a breath of fresh air. I also really enjoyed the exceptional art style and music, making me an instant fan of Shigenori Soejima and Shoji Meguro. It remains one of my favorite RPGs.

I finished P3P in early 2012. By that time, Persona 4 Golden (P4G) had already been announced for the Vita. Playing P3P on the PSP was such a positive experience that I decided to wait and play its follow-up on the Vita. Thanks to my thoughtful wife, I received both the system and game on Christmas Day 2013. I tore in and got started immediately.

Nearly 4 months later, I’m still playing it. According to one of the FAQs I looked through today, I’m nearing its halfway point, having put in about 37 hours so far. Like P3P, this is a long game. I put about 80 hours into that one, and I’m assuming I’ll be putting in at least that many hours into this.

What do I think of it? I’m enjoying it, but unlike P3P, I wouldn’t say I’m loving it. I like the town of Inaba and the more intimate feel of the storyline, but I preferred P3P’s SEES/Dark Hour narrative better. P4G has a more relaxed and upbeat atmosphere, but it could be that general lack of urgency that’s translating into me going through it at a snail’s pace.

The characters are another area where I feel P3P excelled, although I’m still at the point where my key social links are only around 7 out of 10, so my opinion could change as things progress and those relationships grow. I’ll comment more on this in my final review.

I really like that I am so at home in P4G, though. Everything feels the same as it did in its predecessor, just bigger and more varied. It’s immediately comfortable. Like P3P, the art and soundtrack are of the highest quality, and the graphics pop so vibrantly from the Vita’s terrific screen. Games likes these fuel my opinion that RPGs are best consumed in portable form.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

The Backlog Blitz

by

A few years ago, I realized that I was buying way too many games. Actually, this has been true for at least the past two decades, and well, I’ve known it all along. I mean, it’s very easy to amass a large collection of games than you have yet to play. With so many weekly deals, holiday specials, and peer pressure from your friends, it’s not hard to give in. Even if you make a cutoff for yourself — say, nothing older than the 16-bit generation or nothing more than $20 — you still end up with dozens (if not hundreds!) of titles in your queue.

Enter the Backlog Blitz. Originally conceived on my favorite gaming forum NeoGAF as a way for members to focus on playing games they own, this has become my preferred way to track what I’m buying, playing, and finishing.

How does it work? It’s simple: Each purchase counts as a -1, and each game played or completed counts as a +1. The goal is to stay in positive territory as much as possible. I don’t include gifts or freebies, and bundles count as single purchases. You also don’t have to finish a game to get a +1, especially if you’re not enjoying it.

+12 for the year so farThis is the third year tracking my progress. The first year (2012) wasn’t pretty. I ended up with an overall score of -36. Those Steam, GoG, and Humble Bundle holiday sales destroyed me! That was also the year I bought a Nexus 7, so I went a little overboard on Google Play.

In 2013, I did much better and finished the year with a +3. That’s cutting it close, but I was pretty happy with the results, and was thankful that the Steam holiday sale offerings were more or less a repeat of 2012’s.

2014 has been a good year so far, and I’m at +12 right now. I’m slipping a little bit in April, but that should be remedied soon as I wrap up Batman: Arkham Origins on PC and Persona 4 Golden on Vita.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

I turn 40 in May

by

Four decades. That’s a long time. That’s a lot of gaming, too.

When I was younger, I believed I’d lose interest in videogames eventually. I remember being told that they were just a fad, and that other hobbies and technologies would render them obsolete. What’s happened, however, is that my interest and love for them has grown, not waned.

What is it about them that makes them so appealing? Part of it is that they aren’t a passive form of entertainment, and require close attention and skill. The other part of it is the craft itself. As someone who is not by any stretch of the imagination a good artist, musician, programmer, or designer, playing the end result of a year or years worth of work is admirable, and when the game is great, what you get are lasting memories and a lifetime’s worth of discussion topics. Best Final Fantasy anyone?

Right now, I’m playing Batman: Arkham Origins on the PC. 15 hours in, 58% through Story, 24% overall.

It’s quite good so far, and I certainly think it’s better than a lot of reviews would have me believe. However, I do agree with most that it’s to WB Games Montreal’s detriment that they put this out in the wake of the previous two Arkham games from Rocksteady, which were both spectacular games. In any case, I was very happy to run into Barbara Gordon earlier in the game. Oracle is a fascinating character to me, and hope she returns in Arkham Knight.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail