Overview: So a new shooting games . This shooting games doesn’t care about the movies and instead bases off the comics. This allows for a wide inclusion of classic villains and freedom to create a brand new story. As the name suggests, the game is set in Arkham Asylum, the home for Gotham cities criminally insane.
Story: Well the story starts off with Batman returning the Joker to Arkham. He doesn’t seem fazed by this prospect and actually seems quite cocky. Batman then learns that this was all part of an elaborate trap to trap him inside Arkham. The Joker breaks free and takes control of the Asylum leaving Batman to deal with a few enemies to deal with. The Joker then says to Batman “why don’t you just come find me.” Quite simply, the story is stunningly told throughout the entire game. There are also story telling features which have been taken from other games, such as the way Batman holds his ear when talking to “Oracle” instantly sent my mind back to Gears of War. Also in a nod to BioShock, audio tapes are scattered around Arkham detailing interview sessions with various patients. This is a way to please the fans as it is a thrill to hear Poison Ivy seduce her interviewer to do her bidding and hear Killer Croc threaten to eat his interviewer. However my personal favourites were hearing Harley Quinn interview the Joker. There are 5 tapes for every patient and add significant replay value.
Graphics: In a word, spectacular. Usually there is at least something wrong with the graphics in a game but I was very hard pressed to find anything wrong with these. Once again I was reminded of BioShock with the tremendously detailed surroundings and the brilliant character models. Can’t really say much more than that. Fantastic.
Gameplay: The fighting games uses an experience point system which gives you points for winning fights, solving challenges (more on that later) and completing objectives. These are then used to purchase upgrades via “Waynetech.” These upgrades range from more health, to a remote controlled batarang to finishing moves for the combat system. Ah yes the combat. Once again, brilliant. It is called the “freeflow” combat system and with good reason. You have a basic strike attack and as you keep striking Batman will move between enemies to try and keep them all at bay. After enough hits (three if playing in easy) Batman will give them a harder strike which will knock them to the ground and allow you to perform a ground takedown. While these takedowns stop your enemies getting up again, they do take a few seconds to perform and need to be timed well in order to avoid getting struck. As the last enemy is taken out, the camera slows down and moves in close for the final strike which doesn’t add anything to the gameplay but looks really cool. As each enemy is about to attack you, a lightning bolty thingy appears above their heads. This gives you some time to hit a counter button in order to unleash a brief counter attack on you assailant. It isn’t very powerful on its own but is very useful in a tight situation to build up to a flurry of quick strikes. Also present is a stun button. This causes Bats to swirl his cape around and temporarily stun an enemy. Early in the game this is fairly useless but when enemies with knives start turning up, it becomes invaluable. Also is a dodge feature which allows Batman to flip over his enemies. Once again, useless in early game but invaluable later on. Finally your gadgets also come into play as you can throw batarangs mid combat to put enemies on the ground. All these features are part of the freeflow combat system which has a combo counter going. Every successful hit, counter, batarang etc, causes another point on the meter and the idea is to build up big combos (x5, x10, x20, x40). However that is only half the combat.
The other half is known as invisible predator mode. This mode is used when enemies with guns are present as bullets will hurt you like hell. So invisible predator mode utilises more stealthy play such as creeping up behind people for silent takedowns, glide kicks, and inverted takedowns from gargoyles. If spotted you must quickly grapple up to and between gargoyles in order to lose the enemies. And all this brilliant gameplay is made possible by the game’s biggest feature; detective vision. Detective vision can be switched on at any time and highlights objects of interest in the environment. These objects can be grapple points, vent covers and circuit boxes. To help with invisible predator, detective mode also informs if enemies are armed or unarmed and their heart rate. While detective vision is undoubtedly a great feature there is a downside. I found that you needed to spend too much time in detective vision which detracts from the games amazing graphics.
Challenges: There are two types of challenges present. First is the Riddler’s Challenges. While the Riddler does not actually feature in the game, he has left 240 challenges around Arkham for you to solve. A few of these are just things to collect. However, this is where most of the tributes to the fans of the comics are given. For example, one of the collectables is the interview tapes (mentioned in story). Another tribute to the fans is having Chronicles of Arkham. These are spider prints on the wall which need to be photographed. Once photographed you will hear the voice of Amadeus Arkham speaking to you. Less interesting collectibles include Riddler trophies and Joker teeth. However the real meat of the Riddler challenges come with the actual riddles. When you enter a new area a riddle in green will flash up and you must photograph the solution to the riddle within the environment. Some of these are well thought out and some aren’t and a few of them need some knowledge of batman to solve. However they are more than just a novelty and to add to the overall game. The other form of challenge is in the Challenge rooms. These are rooms that you will recognise from the story which has enemies in them. These can be both combat based and invisible predator based and you get bonuses in your score by clearing out a room particularly fast, staying invisible, performing perfect freeflow combat etc. Overall the challenge rooms are fun and add longevity to the game.
Summary: Batman Arkham Asylum is a rare sort of game. The development team obviously cared very much about this license and it shows. The game is just finished to such a high level of detail such as the way that batman looks more scruffy and dirty as the story progresses. It does have a few downfalls however. It would have been nice to see more villains like Catwoman, Two-face, Mr Freeze, The Penguin or Black Mask. They may have been saved for the sequel. Also boss battles sucked. I was really looking forward to a full on hand to hand battle with Harley Quinn while the leaps about like a hamster, and instead I got to.....watch a cutscene. When you do face a boss they are generally simplistic and unimaginative. But in the end if you consider what it accomplishes instead of what it doesn’t Batman is pretty top-notch. Whatever you thought of previous Batman games this one is miles better, no competition.
Showing posts with label Xbox 360. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Xbox 360. Show all posts
Batman Arkham Asylum - Xbox 360
Viking: Battle For Asgard
I'm pretty disappointed with this game because it had a lot of potential for a hack and slash game. This game is repetitive and lacks many things which hold this game back from being a great game that it could have been. Viking Battle for Asgard is based on Norse mythology as you are a viking by the name of Skarin. Skarin was chosen by the gods to stop Hel which is the Queen of the underworld and is also Loki's ( The evil shapeshifting god) daughter as she tries to bring ragnarok about the world which means total destruction. The game has a great plot which in many ways resembles God of War's plot, but it lacks a story like God of War has. From start to finish you really don't find out much about Skarin's background or why they chose him to help the Gods.
When the game starts Odin's daughter Freya steps in the middle of a battle and saves Skarin as long as he pledges allegiance to her and makes a promise to go after Hel. Finally you are off to roam large lands in search of your fellow vikings which are held captive by Hel's army of the undead. That is what you spend a lot of time doing, but there are certain ways of going about this. Skarin has the ability to sneak around and if you sit and wait to watch the guards patterns then you might be able to sneak in without being noticed and free your fellow vikings. The other way is to just run on in and hack and slash your way through the enemies which can be really fun considering the fact that you dismember their bodies. Sometimes when in battle you can trigger a feature to where Skarin will completely and utterly dismember the enemies with special attacks. Either way you have to kill the guards so you can do it yourself or free the vikings and they will assist you in killing these foes.
One thing that is good about this shooting games is that you can uprgrade attacks and add enchantmens to your weapons which sometimes will enchant the friendly army around you. Though some of these upgrades can be pretty pointless. Well after freeing enough vikings around the enemy camps you will enter a great huge battle between you and your army and Hel's army. This is where the excitement really is as there are literally over a 100 people are on screen at once though it tends to slow down here and there at times. While in the mist of these huge battles you have objectives you have to complete where you have to kill the Shaman's which have the ability to bring back the fallen enemies and cast spells or the champions of the army and those are easily to spot as they are very large enemies that can take a lot of your army out at a time. While trying to kill these champions there are button sequences just like in God of War where you have to hit the correct buttons until you finish off the enemy. During these battles you will see dragons fly overhead that you can sometimes to call on to torch the enemies.
That is where the excitement ends and you repeat all of that for the next to large lands, but the battles to become more intense each time. One of the few problems I have with this game is that it lacks sound. You would think that the sound would be great because you could hear swords hit each other, but that is not the case and sometimes you can't hear yourself walking or even the rain drops as they hit the ground. The other problem is that this fighting games has wide large lands, but with nothing to do at all but look for gold and such.
This is a good game and I do like it and all, but it could have had a lot of potential as I previously stated.
So I'll give it a score of...
Bionic Commando
Making sequels to old games hasn’t been the greatest thing I’ve faced. It can be a fun, pleasurable experience (points to Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts) or it can be a rather disastrous **** up (points to NiGHTS: Journey to Dreams). Bionic Commando for the NES came out more than 20 years ago. I’m pretty sure it was forgotten. However it seems Capcom fighting games re always as money-desperate as usual so here’s a new sequel.
Now in this Bionic Commando it’s gone down Hardcore street and made some bad deals down Realism road and everyone says “****“ like it is the newly directed law. It’s been 10 years since the events of last game (which is wrong as it was 20 years ago) and people for some reason hate Bionically enhanced soldiers for, well being there. So they decide to give them all the death sentence. Well that’s a bit harsh. In these times if someone as a fake hand with a wooden spoon attached to it they get executed. Whatever, You play as Nathan Spencer from the previous titles but all that’s different is that he has dreadlocks instead of ginger hair and he has a bit more sympathy for you to feel, as he was never an interesting character. Nathan is about to be given this death sentence when the person he saved in the last game cancels it. Because (get ready for disaster moment like ones you see in most JRPGs) a bomb hit’s a city and kills millions and somehow there is still a resistance/military force left to save absolutely nothing. So the guy gives Spencer his arm back and decides to get he arse into the city, filled with radiation to save his wife, which was the only influence of getting him into the city.
Oh, I love to share the “amazing” plot twist that happens. But that apparently gives far too much away. I know, I’ll put the “epic” twist at the end and hopefully that’ll influence you to buy it, or you can skip through the spoil.
You first task revolves around getting Nathans arm back. So it gives you time to get used to the arm-less controls. There are so many damn controls in this game that every button has at least one function. During every loading screen you can learn all about which button does what in case you forget, which unfortunately appears a bit too much. Loading screens are quite a pain in the arse as they take more than 25 seconds, can you imagine that? Okay stare at this upcoming shape for 25 seconds and see
[] []
[__] (Stare at me ***got.)
In all that time you just wasted, you could have been reading this review. So the first level revolves in an unknown building and you fight with only a pistol at your side There is this evil government group which I forgot their real purpose in this story, I mean, they already blew up a city so what are they still doing here? There are guarding your arm so you must fight your way through a couple of enemies. The minimap below you can show you where to go, which is good but it’s a bit too small. I had to get closer to my screen to see exactly where to go. So after that you finally get the bionic arm back. This causes him to go to sleep and dream of a tutorial stage. Here you get to get the grips of Nathans bionic arm. And the arm works absolutely perfect. You can pretty much grab onto anything and climb on it, the momentum of your swinging always stays the same. You start swinging and you get full speed on the first swing, so you don’t need to waste time gaining full momentum. The arms controls are so perfect you could make a diamond necklace out of it.
Now I need to tell you and very bad point that everyone needs to hear. Sniping is the worst thing about this game. You only use the sniper rifle when facing other snipers. The first time you ever use it is the worst place to put it. It was on a destroyed building and all the other snipers were on bigger building basically staring down upon you. You have to get out of cover and try and shoot them, but sadly they are already shooting the crap out of you. Of course you can get back into cover to regenerate health, but certainly there has to of been a better way of doing this obstacle. And what is the worst of all about this stage is there isn’t enough rounds in the sniper rifle to kill all the snipers you are attacking. It frustrated me so much I broke the controller in half.
On the plus side Achievements aren’t exactly hard to obtain. The shooting games sets you with challenges throughout the story mode. These challenges mainly revolve around learning the controls, swinging techniques and killing enemies. This is all fine and dandy but there are too easy to obtain, into about 10 minutes into this game and got about 7 achievements all worth about 5-10 gamerscore, so I got 50-70 odd gamerscore just for doing the tutorial.
I must say the visuals like fantastic. Ascension City in ruin would usually look quite dull and uninteresting, but somehow that’s how this game gets its overall charm. The sound does help keep an suspenseful tension, but you hardly hear it, nor notice it at that matter, whilst playing.
Read More......
Now in this Bionic Commando it’s gone down Hardcore street and made some bad deals down Realism road and everyone says “****“ like it is the newly directed law. It’s been 10 years since the events of last game (which is wrong as it was 20 years ago) and people for some reason hate Bionically enhanced soldiers for, well being there. So they decide to give them all the death sentence. Well that’s a bit harsh. In these times if someone as a fake hand with a wooden spoon attached to it they get executed. Whatever, You play as Nathan Spencer from the previous titles but all that’s different is that he has dreadlocks instead of ginger hair and he has a bit more sympathy for you to feel, as he was never an interesting character. Nathan is about to be given this death sentence when the person he saved in the last game cancels it. Because (get ready for disaster moment like ones you see in most JRPGs) a bomb hit’s a city and kills millions and somehow there is still a resistance/military force left to save absolutely nothing. So the guy gives Spencer his arm back and decides to get he arse into the city, filled with radiation to save his wife, which was the only influence of getting him into the city.
Oh, I love to share the “amazing” plot twist that happens. But that apparently gives far too much away. I know, I’ll put the “epic” twist at the end and hopefully that’ll influence you to buy it, or you can skip through the spoil.
You first task revolves around getting Nathans arm back. So it gives you time to get used to the arm-less controls. There are so many damn controls in this game that every button has at least one function. During every loading screen you can learn all about which button does what in case you forget, which unfortunately appears a bit too much. Loading screens are quite a pain in the arse as they take more than 25 seconds, can you imagine that? Okay stare at this upcoming shape for 25 seconds and see
[] []
[__] (Stare at me ***got.)
In all that time you just wasted, you could have been reading this review. So the first level revolves in an unknown building and you fight with only a pistol at your side There is this evil government group which I forgot their real purpose in this story, I mean, they already blew up a city so what are they still doing here? There are guarding your arm so you must fight your way through a couple of enemies. The minimap below you can show you where to go, which is good but it’s a bit too small. I had to get closer to my screen to see exactly where to go. So after that you finally get the bionic arm back. This causes him to go to sleep and dream of a tutorial stage. Here you get to get the grips of Nathans bionic arm. And the arm works absolutely perfect. You can pretty much grab onto anything and climb on it, the momentum of your swinging always stays the same. You start swinging and you get full speed on the first swing, so you don’t need to waste time gaining full momentum. The arms controls are so perfect you could make a diamond necklace out of it.
Now I need to tell you and very bad point that everyone needs to hear. Sniping is the worst thing about this game. You only use the sniper rifle when facing other snipers. The first time you ever use it is the worst place to put it. It was on a destroyed building and all the other snipers were on bigger building basically staring down upon you. You have to get out of cover and try and shoot them, but sadly they are already shooting the crap out of you. Of course you can get back into cover to regenerate health, but certainly there has to of been a better way of doing this obstacle. And what is the worst of all about this stage is there isn’t enough rounds in the sniper rifle to kill all the snipers you are attacking. It frustrated me so much I broke the controller in half.
On the plus side Achievements aren’t exactly hard to obtain. The shooting games sets you with challenges throughout the story mode. These challenges mainly revolve around learning the controls, swinging techniques and killing enemies. This is all fine and dandy but there are too easy to obtain, into about 10 minutes into this game and got about 7 achievements all worth about 5-10 gamerscore, so I got 50-70 odd gamerscore just for doing the tutorial.
I must say the visuals like fantastic. Ascension City in ruin would usually look quite dull and uninteresting, but somehow that’s how this game gets its overall charm. The sound does help keep an suspenseful tension, but you hardly hear it, nor notice it at that matter, whilst playing.
Bionic Commando
Making sequels to old games hasn’t been the greatest thing I’ve faced. It can be a fun, pleasurable experience (points to Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts) or it can be a rather disastrous **** up (points to NiGHTS: Journey to Dreams). Bionic Commando for the NES came out more than 20 years ago. I’m pretty sure it was forgotten. However it seems Capcom are always as money-desperate as usual so here’s a new sequel.
Now in this Bionic Commando it’s gone down Hardcore street and made some bad deals down Realism road and everyone says “****“ like it is the newly directed law. It’s been 10 years since the events of last game (which is wrong as it was 20 years ago) and people for some reason hate Bionically enhanced soldiers for, well being there. So they decide to give them all the death sentence. Well that’s a bit harsh. In these times if someone as a fake hand with a wooden spoon attached to it they get executed. Whatever, You play as Nathan Spencer from the previous titles but all that’s different is that he has dreadlocks instead of ginger hair and he has a bit more sympathy for you to feel, as he was never an interesting character. Nathan is about to be given this death sentence when the person he saved in the last game cancels it. Because (get ready for disaster moment like ones you see in most JRPGs) a bomb hit’s a city and kills millions and somehow there is still a resistance/military force left to save absolutely nothing. So the guy gives Spencer his arm back and decides to get he arse into the city, filled with radiation to save his wife, which was the only influence of getting him into the city.
Oh, I love to share the “amazing” plot twist that happens. But that apparently gives far too much away. I know, I’ll put the “epic” twist at the end and hopefully that’ll influence you to buy it, or you can skip through the spoil.
You first task revolves around getting Nathans arm back. So it gives you time to get used to the arm-less controls. There are so many damn controls in this game that every button has at least one function. During every loading screen you can learn all about which button does what in case you forget, which unfortunately appears a bit too much. Loading screens are quite a pain in the arse as they take more than 25 seconds, can you imagine that? Okay stare at this upcoming shape for 25 seconds and see
[] []
[__] (Stare at me ***got.)
In all that time you just wasted, you could have been reading this review. So the first level revolves in an unknown building and you fight with only a pistol at your side There is this evil government group which I forgot their real purpose in this story, I mean, they already blew up a city so what are they still doing here? There are guarding your arm so you must fight your way through a couple of enemies. The minimap below you can show you where to go, which is good but it’s a bit too small. I had to get closer to my screen to see exactly where to go. So after that you finally get the bionic arm back. This causes him to go to sleep and dream of a tutorial stage. Here you get to get the grips of Nathans bionic arm. And the arm works absolutely perfect. You can pretty much grab onto anything and climb on it, the momentum of your swinging always stays the same. You start swinging and you get full speed on the first swing, so you don’t need to waste time gaining full momentum. The arms controls are so perfect you could make a diamond necklace out of it.
Now I need to tell you and very bad point that everyone needs to hear. Sniping is the worst thing about this game. You only use the sniper rifle when facing other snipers. The first time you ever use it is the worst place to put it. It was on a destroyed building and all the other snipers were on bigger building basically staring down upon you. You have to get out of cover and try and shoot them, but sadly they are already shooting the crap out of you. Of course you can get back into cover to regenerate health, but certainly there has to of been a better way of doing this obstacle. And what is the worst of all about this stage is there isn’t enough rounds in the sniper rifle to kill all the snipers you are attacking. It frustrated me so much I broke the controller in half.
On the plus side Achievements aren’t exactly hard to obtain. The game sets you with challenges throughout the story mode. These challenges mainly revolve around learning the controls, swinging techniques and killing enemies. This is all fine and dandy but there are too easy to obtain, into about 10 minutes into this game and got about 7 achievements all worth about 5-10 gamerscore, so I got 50-70 odd gamerscore just for doing the tutorial.
I must say the visuals like fantastic. Ascension City in ruin would usually look quite dull and uninteresting, but somehow that’s how this game gets its overall charm. The sound does help keep an suspenseful tension, but you hardly hear it, nor notice it at that matter, whilst playing.
Read More......
Now in this Bionic Commando it’s gone down Hardcore street and made some bad deals down Realism road and everyone says “****“ like it is the newly directed law. It’s been 10 years since the events of last game (which is wrong as it was 20 years ago) and people for some reason hate Bionically enhanced soldiers for, well being there. So they decide to give them all the death sentence. Well that’s a bit harsh. In these times if someone as a fake hand with a wooden spoon attached to it they get executed. Whatever, You play as Nathan Spencer from the previous titles but all that’s different is that he has dreadlocks instead of ginger hair and he has a bit more sympathy for you to feel, as he was never an interesting character. Nathan is about to be given this death sentence when the person he saved in the last game cancels it. Because (get ready for disaster moment like ones you see in most JRPGs) a bomb hit’s a city and kills millions and somehow there is still a resistance/military force left to save absolutely nothing. So the guy gives Spencer his arm back and decides to get he arse into the city, filled with radiation to save his wife, which was the only influence of getting him into the city.
Oh, I love to share the “amazing” plot twist that happens. But that apparently gives far too much away. I know, I’ll put the “epic” twist at the end and hopefully that’ll influence you to buy it, or you can skip through the spoil.
You first task revolves around getting Nathans arm back. So it gives you time to get used to the arm-less controls. There are so many damn controls in this game that every button has at least one function. During every loading screen you can learn all about which button does what in case you forget, which unfortunately appears a bit too much. Loading screens are quite a pain in the arse as they take more than 25 seconds, can you imagine that? Okay stare at this upcoming shape for 25 seconds and see
[] []
[__] (Stare at me ***got.)
In all that time you just wasted, you could have been reading this review. So the first level revolves in an unknown building and you fight with only a pistol at your side There is this evil government group which I forgot their real purpose in this story, I mean, they already blew up a city so what are they still doing here? There are guarding your arm so you must fight your way through a couple of enemies. The minimap below you can show you where to go, which is good but it’s a bit too small. I had to get closer to my screen to see exactly where to go. So after that you finally get the bionic arm back. This causes him to go to sleep and dream of a tutorial stage. Here you get to get the grips of Nathans bionic arm. And the arm works absolutely perfect. You can pretty much grab onto anything and climb on it, the momentum of your swinging always stays the same. You start swinging and you get full speed on the first swing, so you don’t need to waste time gaining full momentum. The arms controls are so perfect you could make a diamond necklace out of it.
Now I need to tell you and very bad point that everyone needs to hear. Sniping is the worst thing about this game. You only use the sniper rifle when facing other snipers. The first time you ever use it is the worst place to put it. It was on a destroyed building and all the other snipers were on bigger building basically staring down upon you. You have to get out of cover and try and shoot them, but sadly they are already shooting the crap out of you. Of course you can get back into cover to regenerate health, but certainly there has to of been a better way of doing this obstacle. And what is the worst of all about this stage is there isn’t enough rounds in the sniper rifle to kill all the snipers you are attacking. It frustrated me so much I broke the controller in half.
On the plus side Achievements aren’t exactly hard to obtain. The game sets you with challenges throughout the story mode. These challenges mainly revolve around learning the controls, swinging techniques and killing enemies. This is all fine and dandy but there are too easy to obtain, into about 10 minutes into this game and got about 7 achievements all worth about 5-10 gamerscore, so I got 50-70 odd gamerscore just for doing the tutorial.
I must say the visuals like fantastic. Ascension City in ruin would usually look quite dull and uninteresting, but somehow that’s how this game gets its overall charm. The sound does help keep an suspenseful tension, but you hardly hear it, nor notice it at that matter, whilst playing.
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