Batman Arkham Asylum

Batman... where to begin, Adam West? Cartoons? Movies?.... Video Games? I'll be honest I am not a fan of DC comic character video games. but playing Batman Arkham Asylum I'd say my boycott of their video games is lifted. There was just something about the idea of batman revisiting all the villains of his past not only that but all in one game? I picked the game up from best buy for $19.99 and in this review I will tell you why this game is one of DC's best creations.

The game begins with Batman in his rad Batmoblie.. clever name.. racing to Arkham which is Gotham's prison for the criminals. Batman's special cargo this time is none other than the joker. from the dialog it seems that the joker broke out a few weeks ago, but Batman was there to save the day and subdue him... again.. as you get into the prison you hear many of jokers goons chanting his name and there was a supposed fire at their prison so they all went to where the joker is now heading... Holy Ironic, Batman! as you could have guessed the joker breaks free and you have to save the day, once again.

Gameplay

With the Joker in charge of a whole prison it's quite scary, he controls everything, the intercom, the T.V.'s I mean everything. In the game there will be several times that you have to swing over gas filled rooms, save medical staff, blow up walls, pull off grates.. you have no idea how much you do that., and find plenty of different ways around locked doors, as quick as Batman can to stop joker for the ten thousandth time. Looking through the Asylum it's a bit eerie, every criminal batman has ever faced is in there in a small little facility with guards littering the halls and green smiles painted on walls. When playing the game you meet cool villains like The Riddler, Ivy, Zsasz, etc. but after a while I thought is this game suppose to happen all in one night? really? that must be the longest night in Batman's life. Other than that the Gameplay is awesome, it's dark, creepy, and the controls are simple. the concept of the game is to be sneaky and attack your enemies with a flying kick but you can fist fight as well whatever suits your needs. I prefer to just stalk my prey but it the game makes it quite hard when you open a door and they are all just sitting there ready to kill you. While Batman is a very fun game when you're trying not to get caught the mechanics for fist fights are just plain. It's a common smash X type that sometimes you add B but it's an easy to learn hard to master combo system. While it's a bit boring the healthy set of animations of drop kicks, elbows, and even flipping someone over your shoulder is satisfying to see every once and a while. When in combat the higher the combo you get the more powerful attacks you can use like a spinning kick. another incentive to get combo's is after you finish your last move you will receive a bonus depending how high you got on your combo. But another thing to consider is you also get a bonus for taking out enemies silently. I prefer this method because it really makes you feel like Batman and actually badass. unlike Robin. While I enjoy the silent knockouts a lot the henchmen almost feel too stupid, they don't notice that one of their buddies is on the ground I get that but when I plop down from 20 feet up you I feel as though it's a bit hard not to be seen. Anyway the game is great because there are various ways to approach enemies and how to take them out, which adds a little replay value into the game for you to test out other methods on your favorite moments in the game. After completing the campaign the developers decided to add challenge rooms into the game just to make you play a bit longer, I actually enjoyed these more than the original game but that's just my opinion. On another note finding data collectors is also fun because you can unlock character bios that tell you a little bit more about each villain, this was obviously nice for me because I don't play any batman games or watch the shows all that much.

                                                                                 Closing Comments-

While it's a DC comic game and I'm not a huge fan of them this game really opened my eyes a bit. The game feels like a movie within itself and it shows that they really put a lot of time into this game. while the game is a bit ironic and you have to constantly save everyone, it's a fun game and that shouldn't ruin the big picture of the game the developers had in mind. Batman is maybe my favorite superhero now that I've played this game but I still can't understand what he's trying to say. maybe I'll buy him a Darth Vader Mask instead.

L.A. Noire

L.A. Noire takes place in the 1940's, The game is published by Rockstar and surprisingly you're the cop and not the guns blazing rebel in this game. You as a cop are sworn to protect the citizens of L.A. from the already mob infected streets. Being a cop you are the lowest of the low, you need to find all the evidence as quick as you can because detectives are always around to take the glory of reporting your case completed. The first mission starts out with a bang. The cut scene fills you in with everything you need to know up up to where your character was standing. The siren turns on and you answer the radio there's been a case of a shooting, you arive at the scene and your boss tells you to find the evidence but he doesn't expect much because this case isn't very important. You it begins, you can search everywhere and I mean everywhere you can possible imagine. The tip that the game gives you is that it'll make a little bing or a suspenseful sound when you pass an object that you can interact with whetheror not it's just a cup or even a bloody pistol there is a lot that you cna pick up and sometimes it's irrelevent to your case thus making it a true dectective almost mystery like game.

Gameplay

Team Bondi did an amazing job creating this game with their new technology called MotionScan, what MotionScan does is takee very wrinkle, twitch, downward glance, grimace, and hard swallow is from an actor playing a part, not an animator manipulating things from behind the scenes. Adding this to the game not only adds more depth into the game but adds almost a movie like trait. When playing video games it's easy to fall into your old habits like going to get food or responding to a text message, but when it comes to L.A. Noire you have to pay complete attention to who you're talking to and what their reaction is to the questions asked. As a decective you are at the crime scene quite a bit finding clues and questioning people, there are always 3 choices "truth" where you believe what they are telling you, "doubt" implying they are telling you the right thing but not how they explained it or they were missing some details or "lie" this is just a blunt action that can either go really well or really badly. Chosing the "lie" option normally you are required to show them why you think they are lying upon request of the person. sometimes they will just come out with it or maybe not. The trouble and struggle is if you chose the wrong action several times they can lie to you and send you into loops with your case while other times you might not get anything at all and they might say "get out". The nice thing they included in the game was that there is no abrupt failure if you fail to catch an important clue or accuse wrongly. The only game over screen comes from when you obviously die in a gun fight or fail to catch someone fleeing. the only part that is a little on the downside about the game, after a couple cases solved I felt like it was just a chapter book, solve one case go to the next and it felt a little repetitive but not so much that it's boring. L.A. Noire isn't all about cases though, it's still an open-world game like GTA4, you're free to do what ever you please in this recreated 1947 Los Angeles setting, and every once in a while take on 40 different radio call-in missions that are more action oriented including car chases and shoot outs. L.A. Noire is a bunch of fun filled with many landmarks that are well known as well as hidden cars, and intuition points (which help on interrogating). Finding certain areas and objects like these gain experience and help you level up thus giving you even more intuition points and more clothing options.

Closing Comments:

L.A. Noire is a fun action, mystery, detective game. it's a game that you will talk about for a little bit but it's not really a game to remember. Playing the game I find certain missions really have a certain stature but other times I just feel like it's just a 2nd rate case of just finding the suspect and chasing them down either on foot or in an ally. While L.A. Noire isn't perfect, Rockstar is taking the proper steps into making another great game.

Splinter Cell Conviction

Tom Clancy Renowned author in recent years has been tapping into the video game industry, this time with his game Splinter Cell Conviction. The game has been out for a while now and can be purchased at GameStop for a mere $19.99 new.

In this game Sam Fisher (main character) is back and he is not in a good mood. Every line spoken is a representation of how he feels down to the very word. The way Sam walks could be described as determined, and aggressive, not only does this play into the way you feel about what your doing but how sam progressively wants to kill everything in sight. Tom Clancy took a big step into the unknown by changing the mechanics of the game but in the end and my opinion it was a huge risk that was for the better.

The story itself starts after his previous game "Double Agent" in which Sams daughter was kidnapped and supposedly murdered. also during this time Sam turned rogue and killed his best friend and split apart from a branch of the government in which he has considered home for many years. Sam shell shocked has gotten quite a few leads on those who killed his daughter and later on finds out are planning an attack on the white house, something sounds a bit cliche, anyways like 90% of games it's your job to save the day and stop the terrorists.

What I love about the game play in Splinter Cell most importantly this one is that it's continuous you have non stop action and it's not repetitive partly due to the vast environment changes, and different guns and customization's. Another praise that I will give the game is that there are absolutely no loading screens. that is unless you die, but other than that there is nothing that is holding you back from playing a level that could be an hour long without instant gratification because you don't have to wait to play part 2 of the mission. Ubisoft was genius in this game integrating your objectives on things like flags, sides of buildings and placing them in the direction your next objected is located. Unless previous Splintercells and having to keep glancing at your stealth meter they revamped everything, when you are stealthed all the color bleeds off the screen and everything turns black and white. This concept really helps sell the agent concept that you're shadowing your enemies and waiting for the right time to strike and really helps the gameplay when it's very obvious to tell if you need to find cover quickly and when you're hidden. Convictions took everything they learned from the previous games and added more, Splintercell included a cover system which is very easy by just bumping the left trigger you silde jump dash into immediate cover. Switching between barrier to barrier is also a very simple system and I feel as though it's so flawless no other game compares to their technique used in the game. While in most stealth games once you're found it's incredibly hard to continue the game because you have a little pistol and you have to blast through waves of enemies. Splintercell on the otherhand took a completely different approach to this tactic. They figured you should run away, doing this in the game creates a shadow of where your character was last seen and that causes guards to scramble over to that position, unload their guns, and even through grenades at your last known position. Playing the game after a while I came up with a couple of my own tactics you can decide to flank the enemies and attack them or just avoid them totally. The last outstanding part of this game is the mark and execute feature, what it does is when you decide to get up close and personal and perform a hand to hand combat takedown by pressing B when in range of an enemy, you gain a 'Mark' with a mark you can point your gun on an enemy and press the right bumper. This causes a red arrow on their head and when you decide to shoot your gun it's almost like an automatic kill, with this feature each gun has it's set amount of marks which can be upgraded to 4 marks or 4 easy kills and when you're trying to sneak around it's very handy.

Closing Comments:

While single player even on the hardest difficulty will only last you around 7 hours, it's only a part of the bigger package. There is a Co-op mode that you are allowed to play alone or with a friend and I can safely say it never gets old. Playing with a friend is obviously more fun and requires a bit more communication and percision but when it's all said and done Tom Clancy did a great job with this game doing everything and more that was expected from the gaming community.