It's pretty slick. No one dimension to the game is great, but it's an extremely well realized merger of sandbox and metroid exploration, and there's a lot of stuff you can do. Definitely not my Goty, but whenever I put it down, I can never believe the time I just spent playing it. Four hours feels like ten mintutes.
The story is bananas and makes Batman No Man's Land (comic with the same criminal run city idea) look like a documentary. But I'm enjoying it.
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I've been enjoying it thus far. I'm actually waiting for the Catwoman DLC to finish downloading as I write this.
I'm a big fan of Kevin Conroy's Batman and Mark Hamil's Joker. Toss in Paul Dini's writing and I'm a happy camper. The gameplay has been a little challenging to me in that it really does just kind of throw you in head first. It's been close to a year since I've played Arkham Asylum so to have all my gadgets ready at my disposal was shocking since I couldn't remember many of their functions.
The weirdest bit for me has been Tara Strong as Harley Quinn. I mean, don't get me wrong, she's probably one of the best choices they could get to play Harley in the absence of Arleen Sorkin. But I can hear just enough Tara Strongness to her performance that it's creeping me out. It's like Harley's a royally pissed off Bubbles/Twilight Sparkle/Rikku. Who happens to be from New York.
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quote:Originally posted by Dobbie: You left out Timmy Turner and Ben 10.
She made her voice gruffer for those performances. At least, gruff enough that her Harley performance isn't reminding me of them. Well, not yet anyway.
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I hear Toot from Drawn Together, its a shame that Mark Hamill has announced that he is retired from the Joker role, he and Kevin Conroy ARE Batman and Joker for me.
I cannot wait to play with the Batman Beyond skin, I know there will never be much done with the series ever again but it will be nice to soar around a piece of Gotham and pretend that its Will Freidle instead of Kevin Conroy.
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quote:Originally posted by Dobbie: You left out Timmy Turner and Ben 10.
She made her voice gruffer for those performances. At least, gruff enough that her Harley performance isn't reminding me of them. Well, not yet anyway.
I keep expecting her to say,"I wish I was Humungousar."
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quote:I hear Toot from Drawn Together, its a shame that Mark Hamill has announced that he is retired from the Joker role, he and Kevin Conroy ARE Batman and Joker for me.
Oh wow, I'd forgotten about Drawn Together. Yeah, she's definitely pulling a lot of Toot into her performance. And yeah, there was some speculation that Hamill might do the role again if the circumstances were right--like how he agreed to do the Arkham games--but this tweet brought those hopes down for me. Still, the performance he gives in this game is a great note to end on. I was laughing so hard every time the Joker spoke.
I finished the main story last night. The voice acting was great, the visuals were fantastic, and the story was fun and interesting the whole way through (The final twist did catch me by surprise). It took a while for me to get the hang of the controls again, but toward the end I was moving my way through Arkham with ease as a second nature. The only real complaint I have with the game is the plotholes. Maybe they get answered better through the side-quests, but they're still bugging me.
***SPOILERS*** 1. Bruce Wayne is chucked into Arkham City. They never show how Bruce Wayne is released or tell us his alibi for the events in Arkham City. They also don't really explain the crimes these political prisoners were accused of that put them in there, just that they knew too much about Hugo Strange. I mean, if I were on a city council, and I knew that Bruce Wayne, Jack Ryder, Vicki Vale, and the mayor were all in Arkham City, would I approve Protocol 10, even knowing the inmates had weapons? Probably not.
2. The cure. I'm cool with the construction of the cure. My problem is that the motivating factor for Batman to find the cure wasn't to cure himself and the Joker--he said he'd be fine with them both dying. It was to find a cure that would save the patients that the Joker had infected with his own blood. Freeze said the cure he produced was all there was. And while Alfred called up Batman saying "Fox has created a cure and is distributing it now" I thought that was a part of the illusion created by the Mad Hatter. I mean, Batman gave Robin some of his blood to analyze, but I thought it was pretty clear the "cure" part was the Mad Hatter's doing. In the end, Batman is the only one who was cured leaving the question of the other citizens of Gotham unanswered. ***/SPOILERS***
On the whole, though, I really enjoyed the game. And being a completionist I'll probably delve back in to do more side missions and work on getting the Riddler's trophies today. I tried the Catwoman missions and they were fun--if short.
A last thought - there's a bug wherein installing DLC on the PS3 (I don't know if this is the case for the 360) will sometimes result in your save data being corrupted. The way to fix it (that I found) was to go to the "saved games utilities" and copy the Arkham City save file to another profile on the PS3. Then delete the original copy, switch to the user that you saved the profile to, and copy it back to your main profile. Then it should go through with the DLC installed.
1. Bruce Wayne is super rich, so its not hard to spin that after being unjustly imprisoned in a facility that is a violation of human rights a billionaire happened upon the opportunity to buy his way out quick and quietly. Also as you go through and collect the Arkham stories it mentions that Batman convinces Gordon to use Wayne as the front man for the anti Arkham City stuff, so all he has to do is contact Gordon and tell him that the rich political puppet is hiding in this location and get into some prison garb and wait for retrieval.
1B. Another bit of Arkham stories is how Hugo Strange coerced Jervis Tetch (the Mad Hatter) to share his mind control technology, that is how the whole she-bang got approved by those in power.
2. Batman lore has long been filled with poisons and radical new viruses, and every stinking time Batman loses the vial and ends up using his own cured blood to synthesize a cure for everyone else. The guy is a walking alchemy lab by this point.
I've finished and am having fun hunting down sidequests, like the identity killer and Zsaz. It is intensely odd though to hear Kevin Conroy's voice come out of the face of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns version of Batman, its just plain weird.
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quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: Spoilers but only in a kinda way.
1. Bruce Wayne is super rich, so its not hard to spin that after being unjustly imprisoned in a facility that is a violation of human rights a billionaire happened upon the opportunity to buy his way out quick and quietly. Also as you go through and collect the Arkham stories it mentions that Batman convinces Gordon to use Wayne as the front man for the anti Arkham City stuff, so all he has to do is contact Gordon and tell him that the rich political puppet is hiding in this location and get into some prison garb and wait for retrieval.
1B. Another bit of Arkham stories is how Hugo Strange coerced Jervis Tetch (the Mad Hatter) to share his mind control technology, that is how the whole she-bang got approved by those in power.
2. Batman lore has long been filled with poisons and radical new viruses, and every stinking time Batman loses the vial and ends up using his own cured blood to synthesize a cure for everyone else. The guy is a walking alchemy lab by this point.
I've finished and am having fun hunting down sidequests, like the identity killer and Zsaz. It is intensely odd though to hear Kevin Conroy's voice come out of the face of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns version of Batman, its just plain weird.
Oh sure, those are answers I'd have been completely satisfied with. I just would have appreciated those things being in the main story line.
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Paul Dini wrote the main story, he didn't write the whole thing. In fact I just listened to an interview with Dini on Kevin Smith's podcast where Dini describes creating the idea of Wonder City only to never hear back about it, and then to see it built and in the game months later. Just like Deadshot was really built up in dialogue and the background of the character while the fight was ridiculously simple, you shouldn't be able to sneak up one of the worlds most deadly assassins. Different people write different ways and separate things, I guess the solution is to include it in the side bits, which they did.
Podcast in question. Dini and lady magician Misty Lee show up half way through, listen to her stories about working in mansion of magic acts it definitely worth it.
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After playing DC Universe Online and flying around an idyllic Metropolis I don't really see the need for a Superman game. How do you advance in power as Superman? are thugs gonna beat the snot out of you?
I would much rather see a Green Lantern or Wonder Woman game of Arkham caliber. Or maybe even John Constantine, a whole game that takes place in the magical side of DC, you would hardly have to write a single story its already out there and majority of comic book readers haven't even read it yet.
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Nearly done with the game . . . it's outstanding. Rather than a Superman game, I'd pay a lot of money if they'd do a Star Wars game. I can just imagine what they'd do with lightsaber combat!
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I just completed the first three challenge rooms. They're pretty fun. They're not as fun as The Mercenaries, but it's kinda the same idea.
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