Arkham Asylum

Spoilers 

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a much better game than I thought it would be. I know that’s not exactly the best intro or the most glowing endorsement of the game, but it also happens to be true. I am a snobbish bastard when it comes to video games (and movies for that matter) so not being disappointed by something which could so easy be taken into a negative light is, I think, an accomplishment. Now, in no way is this game perfect. It has many problems. However, I can honestly say from experience that this is the best Batman game and quite possibly the best super hero game ever created.

Arkham opens with a cinematic of the Bat Mobile (not Christian Bale’s Tumbler, but the kind of spiky, jet powered phallus that Joel Schumacher salivates over) skidding through the streets of Gotham. Batman is speeding towards the infamous Arkham Asylum; a repository for Gotham’s criminally insane. Seeing as how everyone in Gotham is criminally insane, you can imagine the place is pretty big. The team at Rocksteady Studios did a fantastic job of designing a dark and creepy environment. Arkham looks like a mash-up of Alcatraz and a gothic castle. It’s a fun place to explore and could be downright scary in the right atmosphere.

The first moment the player has any control is an establishing sequence where they have to follow some guards who pulling the Joker along on a Hannibal Lecter-style dolly to his padded cells. From the beginning, Batman has a baaaaaad feeling about this. Why did Joker come so quietly? What’s his scheme? While anyone with even a cursory knowledge of stories knows that the Joker is going to break out and rain havoc upon the asylum, it is still a very effective introduction. It is eerie listening to the Joker speak. He is an unsettling character and one of the most effective in literary history, including the vast universe of comic books. It is worth noting that Mark Hamill reprises his role from various cartoon series as the Joker and is, for lack of a better phrase, fucking fantastic. It’s easy to see why, when people argued whether Heath Ledger or Jack Nicholson was the better Joker, many said Mark Hamill (though I would still say Ledger. I know he doesn’t play the character exactly right but goddamn it he’s so good. Mark Hamill is a close second.) Many of the people associated with the voices of various characters in the Batman universe return, including Arleen Sorkin as Harley Quinn and Kevin Conroy as Batman. The voice acting is top notch and really helps suck the player into the world they’re building.

Of course, Joker breaks free and starts to let out all of the prisoners/patients and it is up to Batman to save the day. To be honest, the story doesn’t matter. You could put these characters into any situation and, as long as they act like they should, people will love it, and I was no exception. I am not an enormous comic fan, but even with my paltry knowledge I felt a real connection to them. Bane, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, The Riddler…many are present and all are lovingly written (though Bane is reduced to more of a plot device than anything.) Then the omnipresence of Joker runs through the game like a shiver down the spine. If it was a real treat for a n00b like me to see these characters, one can only image how a die-hard fan would feel.

However, while characters and setting are important, there is the issue of game play. This is where I have a few issues. Game play really can be broken into two main categories; beating and stalking. Batman either beats the hell out of every bad guy in the room or beats the hell out of one guy at a time while every other bad guy in the room isn’t looking. The mass beating portion of the game felt a little boring. There were a few cool moves to be employed, but overall the experience felt like just another beat-em-up. A well done beat-em-um, to be sure, but the genre has existed since the birth of the consol and has barely evolved since. Now, the stalking on the other hand, was fantastic. Rocksteady did a fantastic job with both the mechanics of hiding (usually by swinging from gargoyles) and even more importantly, the enemy AI. These sequences would be unbelievably boring if it weren’t for the fact that every time you take a guy down, Joker will come on over a loudspeaker and inform his men that they are missing someone. The enemy NPC’s then search around for their comrade and, once they find him, start to panic. They rove around in packs, looking for Batman with sweaty palms and bated breath. You can take them out any number of ways, including knocking them out with exploding walls, popping out of grates, hanging them from gargoyles, the list is quite long. There is a strange satisfaction to be gained from watching these bad guys wandering around in a daze, trying to find you, and listening to their frantic conversations before you knock them out. That part is important, as well. Batman kills no one in this game. People die, but never by Batman’s hand. What a swell guy.

An element which makes this stalking element very easy and palpable is the detective vision. With the push of a button, you can see everyone in a room and identify whether or not they are good or bad. This is also used as something of a deus ex machina used to find people based on their brand of tobacco or their pheromones. The detective vision is a very powerful device in the game, and one which speaks somewhat to the core idea of the game. Batman, while vulnerable, is never in real danger. This game is not meant to be read as a treatise on the frailty of man. You are given every opportunity to succeed. Batman is a powerful character with powerful tools which he uses to get the job done. Why can’t he have a HUD which can be programmed to detect a specific brand of tobacco? He’s Batman. Rocksteady never wants you to feel powerless because you are goddamn Batman. This can even be seen in the death screen; the menu which shows up when you die. In it, whichever supervillian is responsible for killing you, be it Joker or whomever, will appear and taunt you. They’ll make fun of you for actually dying in this game. You aren’t supposed to die. You’re Batman! It’s not that he’s overpowered, the game does offer some resistance, and it’s just that there are no real choke points. There is no time during the game that you think that this is just impossible. If you die, you curse to yourself under your breath for screwing up something so simple. In fact, even if you were stuck, the game helpfully tells you flat out during the death screen what you were supposed to do. There is no mystery whatsoever. I found this a little annoying. I understand making Batman powerful and almost all-knowing, but it seems insulting to assume that the player just didn’t know what to do. That must be the problem. It wasn’t that the flying mechanics were a little clunky which caused them to fall right into a spore-spewing plant (by the way, the flying mechanics are a little clunky.) I’m not saying I didn’t like the ease of the game or the power of the character, because I did. It would be weird to see a weak Batman. I’m just saying that maybe they didn’t need to rub salt into my wounds every time I made one miscalculation bout how much health I had.

On the subject of a weak Batman, the boss battles in this game can be great, specifically Scarecrow. I love Scarecrow. His sequences are the most interesting, both in terms of the visuals and the narrative. Scarecrow scenes always begin with a very subtle dosing of Batman with his patented fear gas (which could use a better name.) The world changes slowly. Little bits of the mise-en-scene starts to be different. The camera tilts ever so slightly until it is canted at a forty-five degree angle. Then, craziness. Morgues come to life. Batman becomes a young Bruce Wayne and finds his dead parents again. All of this while Scarecrow’s whispers fill the world with horror. Then, at some point, Batman enters a scene that is hard to describe. Scarecrow stands in the middle, larger than life, with his needle-hand waving menacingly. Being much smaller, Batman is forced to hide and run to his only weapon, a searchlight. These scenes have a flattened, almost 2D perspective are some of the most effective I’ve encountered. Rocksteady actually uses platforming, which is one of gaming’s oldest conventions, and the camera to create a sense of fear and a false perspective. It is a commendable effort that pays off with really rich scenes and some of the most challenging moments of the game.

The other boss battles are a little more standard, though Killer Croc’s is inspired, forcing you to tread lightly on planks above the water, lest he find you and eat you. All of the others are fun enough but grow old, including the unbelievably easy showdown with the Joker. Also, fighting the Banes (yes Banes) becomes extremely tedious. It gets to the point where you realize that if you see a big enemy, you know that all you have to do is hit it in the face with a Batarang and get out of the way. It becomes dull quickly.

In the end, Arkham Asylum can be a little hit and miss, but is overall a fantastic game. Some of the moments, such as the Scarecrow parts and the stealthy stalking, are truly inspired, but are weighed down by the boring beat-em-up and some lackluster bosses. All in all, it’s certainly a step in the right direction, both for Batman games and video games as a whole. I’m looking forward to Arkham City later this year, but it remains to be seen if it’ll fit in-between hours of Skyrim and Mass Effect 3. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Mass Effect 2

Here's a few spoilers, yo.

There is a mission that jumps to mind when I think of Mass Effect 2. It is a side mission in which you are tasked with finding out why a giant spaceship crash-landed onto a backwater planet many years ago with no one around for possibly light-years. The catch is that the only way to recover this data is to go onto the ship. The ship that crashed and has been decaying for years. The ship that crashed and has been decaying for years on the edge of a cliff thousands of feet above the ground. As your version of Commander Shepard of the Normandy walks around on this ancient, decrepit ship, it starts to tilt. There is no music, only the creaking sound of precariously placed metal. Tiles and other piece of the ship break and fall to the ground. A staircase collapses while you are walking on it. If you move too far to the end of the ship, it’s going to collapse. Unfortunately, that is precisely where you need to go.

This is an expertly paced mission, an exercise in excruciation and terror which is indicative of the greatness of this game. Everything that was done well in Mass Effect is done better in its sequel. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s calm down and look at this game critically, shall we? Breathing…breathing…ok.

To start, the story is just as big and breath-taking as the last one. The game starts off with Shepard dying and Cerberus, the shadow group bent on making humans the dominant species in the galaxy, spends tons of money to rebuild him. The Normandy was also destroyed in the attack, but never fear, she is rebuilt as well. The fate of the galaxy is still in Shepard’s hands as a new threat called the Collectors (though they are intimately tied to the Reapers) is attacking human colonies but leaving no trace. The dialogue is well-written; at the very least better than in the last game. Most video games suffer from stilted dialogue, and this game is no different. However, the characters are enjoyable enough and the voice acting done well enough that it’s easy to overlook. Also and possibly more importantly, Bioware decided to delve more deeply into the universe they created, focusing in on the lesser races from the first game, especially the Quarians. Few teammates are actually back for this game. If they are, they generally play small supporting roles. The exception to this (thankfully, as she’s my favorite) is Tali. Tali’s character has been rounded out substantially since the last game, due in no small part to the expansion of character-specific missions. To gain the loyalty of all of your crew members, you will have to take part in missions designed specifically to bring out their back story. It’s a useful tool within the gameplay to develop who these people are that have your back on this mission.

I mentioned that you will need to gain the loyalty of your crew, but what I mean was that you will need to gain the loyalty of your crew if you want them to live. Yes, everyone up to an including Shepard can and will die during the last mission if you are stingy with upgrading your ship or too lazy to go on loyalty-building missions with your crew. Once on the mission, it is also necessary to make decisions which could kill crew if done incorrectly. This adds a lot of weight to the mission, making it just as terrifying as standing on that rocking ship.

Again, Bioware knocked the game’s world design out of the park. This time around, both indoor and outdoor sets are beautifully constructed with variety abound. Gone are the days of drab corridors. Now, though the corridors remain, they’ve been given a bright shiny polishing and the inclusion of many nooks and crannies to explore. The Citadel was also revamped. After it was nearly destroyed in the first one, vast remodeling projects have been undertaken by the Council. Well, that’s assuming that you saved the Council in the last game. If you import a character from the first Mass Effect then the decisions you made will have repercussions in Mass Effect 2. One quibble I have with the game is how little of an effect that is, but I understand that you can’t have everything in life.

Many changes were made to the gameplay as well. For instance, gone are the days of the weapons cooldown. Now, we have the thermal clip. Acting just like ammo in a real gun, thermal clips absorb the heat created by the energy weapons of the game’s universe and ejects itself once it takes all of the heat it can get. The ammo is universal, so you can use any thermal clip in any gun. Though a seemingly minor change, it makes gunplay and gameplay much faster and fresher, setting a quick pace for the game. AI has been revamped as well, making all of the enemies just a little bit harder to kill than before. The RPG elements of the game have been streamlined, which can be good or bad depending on how much you like putting individual points into powers in a menu screen. They also included quicktime paragon-renegade actions. During a cutscene, a right trigger or left trigger will appear on the screen, allowing you to change the course of the scene towards something undoubtedly badass. For instance, you can punch a reporter like you’re a celebrity! Or you can push a guy out of a window and use your best one liner! The whole thing is somewhat of a gimmick, but it is a fun one that breaks up the litany of cutscenes and sometimes boring dialogue that comes with a game like this.

It must also be said that Bioware brings up interesting twists on certain concepts. For the most part, the game is a straightforward, if exceedingly well done, morality-based RPG-shooter hybrid. There aren’t necessarily a lot of surprises, such as the morally ambiguous corporation at the heart of the storyline. However, every once in a while there is a brilliant nugget of originality. For instance, on Illium, a NAFTA wet dream of a planet where nearly everything is legal to buy and sell, you are asked to help a slave find a master. Normally, this would be the bad choice in a game. Slavery is generally viewed as a bad thing by everyone who doesn’t wear a sheet on their head. On Illium, however, slavery is legal. It’s often used as a way to get rid of debts, like indentured servitude. In fact, it’s the only way that this slave, a Quarian, can get out of her current predicament. Slavery is, strangely enough, her way out. This is a welcome, if very uncomfortable, point of view. It’s not often you see a situation in which slavery is actually beneficial to the slave and, given our nation’s history, it creates a very weird predicament. Do we support slavery, which is abhorrent in our society and reality in general or do we stand against it when it would be so clearly beneficial to this individual in an imagined space. Outside of the narrative, too, there are interesting sequences such as one where you are forced to use a biotic to create a bubble which will keep out a swarm of bee-like insects. If you leave the bubble, bad things happen. This reduction of space is very well done and creates a very heavy tension during an already tense final mission.

So Mass Effect 2 is a very smart, very well-executed third-person RPG-Shooter hybrid hyphen-palooza which deserves every award it got. At times challenging both from a gameplay perspective and a narrative one, it succeeds in every way. I can’t wait for the third one to come out so I can waste another thirty hours of my life in this beautifully realized space.

RIn & Gumi Inc.

Time for some new vocaloid action.

By now everyone has probably had there fill of Hatsune miku tracks so today i'll be focusing on two of my favorite Gals Gumi(megipod) and  Rin(rin and len vocaloid).
I guess lets start with two of the newest Rin tracks out for the J-tards
Daybreak:
This is a typical rin track, fast pasted and happy with a decent rock track behind it (tho not cutesy). I find the art style in this PV particularly good

and
 Yutamu stone:
This song has a much more hardcore sound to it, the song even contains a few drops which I found pretty interesting... Its not every day that you have a vocaloid track drop its beat on you :P

Both of the above tracks where released within the last three days (just to give you a sense of how new these are)

Next lets move on to one of my favorite characters to draw(and listen to) GUMI
now gumi is not a vocaloid per-say... shes a megipod (still a vocalist in a box but they tried to make her sound as realistic as possible) this means that she has a lot of lower registers and tends to be used in harder rock situations where a little cutesy robot girl(miku or luka or rin) would never dare to tread.
First up we have
Satan's school:
This video is great as its not animated just the lyrics written down on a note o

ALL THAT being said gumi does do lots of really good megi cutesy songs :3
 like in
Ah, life is wonderful Nyan :3
I can only say that I adore this song  and would love to share it with you :3


*sigh*  hope you all have a "nyan nyan nyan" day
This is dom saying I'll see you at your next dose MAGGOT !!

ps. may the council watch over you

Harry Potter for Grown-Ups?: "The Magicians"

Hey there everyone! Time for another book review, and in light of the recent premiere of the last Harry Potter movie, I thought I'd do a review on a book that was often hailed as a grown-up's Harry Potter book: Lev Grossman's The Magicians.

I was incredibly torn when it came to reading this book. I loved it in parts, in others it felt very lukewarm. The basic storyline isn't exactly original: boy feels out of place in his world, world of magic appears and takes him in, magical hijinks ensue. In this case, the main character is Quentin Plover, who loves a series of magical books that take place in a land called Fillory. Despite being children's books, Quentin can't let them go, which makes him somewhat of an outcast in the real world. Luckily for him, magic turns out to be real and he is invited to attend Brakebills, a Hogwarts-esque school of magic. He graduates, and more things happen to him.


Think it's weird that I had to have that last sentence that vague? That's because it's part of my issue with this book: it skips around. There's a plot...? But it keeps changing, with little to no reason. It seemed like a few chapters were built around developing the rules and a tournament regarding a wizarding sport that is some weird mix of chess and capture the flag, and suddenly their team is in the championships...and then it's a new chapter, everything that just happened was dropped completely. A huge chunk of the book was about Quentin's time at Brakebills...and then suddenly he's graduated and the book takes a completely different turn. It feels like this book was supposed to be more than one book, and for some reason it was forced to become just one. It truly feels random parts were cut out, and the reader is forced to switch gears and adjust to something new.

One thing I did enjoy about this book was the "grown-up" aspect of it. Quentin, upon finding out he's been accepted into Brakebills, says something along the lines of "I'm going to be a motherfucking magician!" I can tell you with all honesty, that is EXACTLY what I'd say if I'd been accepted into a school of magic. This book also has sex in it, which is one thing that Harry Potter seemed to be missing. It's not something I missed when I was reading the HP books, but looking back on it, there was a lot of drama in those books, despite there being no sex at all. The Magicians has a fairly appropriate amount of sex given the age-group of the main characters, and then does a fairly good job of the resulting complications that come from having it.

The thread of main plot that seems to appear and disappear throughout the books is ultimately very well thought out, my biggest issue came with a lot of what surrounded it. Even the ending felt like it had suddenly changed gears, and not in a good way. Apparently there's supposed to be a sequel coming out this year, so I'll see how that is and if that remedies my issues with this book, but I'm not really sure if it can. My verdict is to borrow this book if you have the time and you have nothing else to read. It has it's moments, with a great villain and a fairly genius main plot, but Grossman seemed to get in his own way when it came to developing the world that Quentin lives in, and I hope he remedies it in his sequel. This has great potential...he just needs to take some Adderall or something when he writes so he can make sure everything he says actually goes somewhere, rather than just be somewhat distracting.  

Viva Brother

Music monday

   Holy shit do I have a treat for you guys today,
 Ive got a hold of a pre-release of viva brothers first album "famous first words"(Release date august 2nd I think) these guys are gonna be huge.
   
Not since plastic beach have I sat down the night I got the album and listened to every track and then go back to replay a few songs three or four times.
Its funny that I should compare it to a gorillaz album as Viva brother has a producer from blur (that makes two things the blur has made awesome?!)
A quick fun fact about viva brother the bands original name was just brother but they ended up in a lawsuit situation cause some band already uses the name  brother , so then they felt brother UK would work but for reasons unknown  to me they dropped that also and have now settled on the title of Viva brother.
 
   Ok down to the nitty gritty my analysis if you will, lets just say this band Is far from the most skilled band ive heard... I mean its a UK alternative rock band( Sorry England but most bands you produce are kinda crap in the skill department at least )  but my god can they write some catchy hooks that stay in your head [see darling buds of may below]  The band sometimes suffers from its own genre's image, a few of the tracks have the same tone, but its not noticeable enough to disturbs a listen through the album. The band has received a lot of criticism for sounding a lot like 'other' bands but I find it to be one more reason to listen. For instance  "High str**t low fiv*s" sounds like a lost rock and roll soldiers track now seeing how the band will never make another track again its almost a treat to hear another band channel the soldiers. All around the album has enough variation that it doesn't feel  like a waste of time.

But now this is an odd position that im in, because do to copy right laws im not even sure If I can tell you guys all the track names without ending up in a courtroom but what I can say Is that The big hit off the album is almost certianly gonna be the single thats already out so I can at least show you that. so sorry  you guys will have to wait til august second for all of the tracks but lemmy just say that the sleeper hit off this album is F*lse *l*rm.

Theres really not much more I can tell you guys without risking some  kind of copy right fuck up so for the time being i'll leave you with the single "darling buds of may"


I hope you'll all rape the replay button as much as I do, I really think these guys could become huge, I'll be going (fingers crossed) to a private show down at the hard rock of these guys!!
Be sure to check out the album on august 2nd
At this point I'll leave you to it ,
This dom saying I'll see you at your next dose and may the council take good care of you till next we meet.