Oh boy, I've been meaning to write about this game for ages. By which I mean, when it came out. Let's get this out of the way then, shall we?
Batman: Arkham Asylum is obviously a license game, and license games tend to have a certain kind of... reputation. Worry not, Batman is actually a good license game. Well, mostly, but we'll get to that later.
So, the story of the game is fairly basic - Joker gets locked in AA, but it was actually his plan all along and chaos ensues. The story is fairly basic, but it works well enough to maintain interest in the game and getting the player to move through the game. Along the way Batman meets some of the more iconic villains of his history - Poison Ivy, Bane, Killer Croc and so forth. Of course, since the game is about Batman, we also have all kinds of gadgets to use, including Batarangs and gliding with the cape.
Most of the gameplay consists of Batman doing sneaky things and moving in the shadows, sneaking and lurking around, constructing plans as to how to take out the many minions and henchmen of Joker. And this is where the game excels, the sneaking is masterfully done and feels just right, and when it comes to fighting hand to hand, the game really shines. The combat is fluid and building combos feels incredibly tight. This is one of the best combat systems in any beat 'em up-games ever, if I may say. The combat is spiced up by different kinds of henchmen - some have no weapons, some have pipes or electric batons and some have firearms, and firearms are something to be wary of. Luckily Batman has "detective mode", through which he can easily find the armed henchmen and find ways to disable them.
So, the combat system is great. How about boss fights? Sporting quite legendary names in the villain repertuary doesn't unfortunately mean the boss fights are good. They are easily the weakest part of the game. Only two boss fights are something I'd say to be actually good, and those would be Scarecrow and Killer Croc, and Croc isn't all that good. Bane-fight is ridiculously stupid and simple, and Poison Ivy is your run-from-the-mill boss fight where you have to hit her thrice in certain spots (don't understand it like that, perv!). But Scarecrow is one of the most memorable parts of the game.
The game has great attention to detail. Many places have hidden Riddler-trophies, and finding all of them unlocks all kinds of cool stuff. Batman's cape gets more rugged as the day progresses on the Arkham Asylum, and so. Returning to old locations is often rewarded since you now have new gadgets giving you access to places you didn't have previously. The game has a good visual style and looks very nice.
All in all, if you happen to stumble upon this game for your platform of preference (PS3, X360, PC), I'd really suggest picking it up. It's one of the biggest games of this generation, and rightly so.
Showing posts with label PS3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PS3. Show all posts
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition (Xbox 360)
So, I think it's about the time I finally sum up my thoughts about Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition, which contains both critically acclaimed Dragon Age: Origins (86 on Metacritic for X360, 91 for PC) and its add-on Dragon Age: Awakening as well as all the DLC released for the games. Made by BioWare, you can pretty much predict which kind of games they are - party-based story-driven RPGs. The PC would've obviously been the much better platform for these games, but due to lack of good PC at the time, I went with X360 version, so let's start our journey to Thedas.
Gameplay
As said above, this being a BioWare-game, it's more than natural that the game is party-based and somewhat tactical RPG. Dragon Age: Origins was touted to be a return to the old-school tactical RPGs, and I'd say it manages to do it rather well, although the character classes could've been balanced far better - it's not too uncommon to have a mage that can tank better than a fighter, takes absolutely no damage and can pretty much one-shot most of the enemies with one well-placed Area of Effect-spell.
There are three character classes (warrior, rogue, mage) in the game, as well as three races (humans, elves, dwarves). Every race can be of any class (except dwarves, who can't be mages), and every class has four specializations from which two can be picked in Origins. Awakening adds two more specializations to each class, and characters get to pick two more specializations by the end of the expansion.
There are lots of nice stuff hidden in the game, which you might not notice at first, such as if you are able to freeze an enemy, there are certain spells that, when casted upon frozen enemy, will kill him instantly. This can also be achieved by warrior and rogue scoring a critical hit on the said enemy. Things like these (known as spell combinations) are very nice depth-adders.
Origins also has a very nice thing, called Origins (*gasp!*), which are determined by your character's race and class. Mages only have a Magi-origin, but otherwise every race has two possible Origins from which you can choose. These serve as an introduction to the world and setting in general, and also as a tutorial. Very nice idea and execution also.
I have to go back to balance, though - if you are playing on Normal, the game will probably become way too easy if you play with two or three mages in your party, because Mages are Thedas-equivalents to heavily armed Panzerkampfwagens. I've heard that the PC version is a bit harder, and as such things might be a bit different, but on consoles Normal is way too often too easy.
On consoles, there is only one camera angle, behind your character, whereas on PC you also have isometric view. It's a shame that it isn't on consoles too, because it would've helped greatly in some fights, when getting an image of what is going on is very hard. Anyway, it's not too bad on Normal difficulty, but it's still a shame.
Plot
The plot, to be honest, isn't really great. It's pretty generic "collect an army and defeat the ancient evil". However, the small details that have been placed in the rather generic setting are what make the game far better than it would otherwise be. The world includes anything you'd expect from a generic fantasy setting - elves live in forests, humans in cities and town, dwarves live in the mountains and underground. Awakening actually has, in my opinion, more interesting story than than Origins, because of sentient Darkspawn, smaller scale of map and interestingly varied locations (you can actually see the sea!).
The story, in it's basis is, that you become a Grey Warden, either by volunteering to them or being recruited. As a Grey Warden, your mission is to protect Thedas from the orc- I mean the Darkspawn, and kill the Archdemon which leads Darkspawn hordes during Blights. During a big battle shit hits a fan, a treason happens and most of the Grey Wardens are killed - except you and Alistair. From this point on the world opens to you (through hubs, there isn't free roaming like in The Elder Scrolls), and you are free to do main and side quests as you see fit. The main quest series is rather boring, but most of the side quests (when they aren't "Kill X enemies of type Y" or "find me X items Y"-type) are very nice and add lots of depth. The main quest series include the two most boring segments I've ever had the displeasure to play through - The Fade and The Deep Roads. Both of them suffer from the same fault - they are far too long, with far too little interesting to do and both have too much combat without any real meaning. At least on PC, you can mod so that you can skip The Fade, I guess you can even skip The Deep Roads.
There are some choices every now and then to make, which should influence the outcome of the story - except they really don't, and even the touted "grey and grey" morality is really lacking, except for a few points where it's actually pretty brilliantly executed, and at few points you can actually lose your party members permanently. In the grander scheme of things, most of your choices bear little to no influence in the story. Still, when it does, it's very nice. And as you finish either the game or the add-on Awakening, there is a recap of what you did and how it influenced the world.
Visuals
Game's visual style drives towards realistic style, and I think it manages to do it pretty nicely, and the game looks good even on X360. The colour scheme, however, could use a bit of brush-up and more colours, as most of the world is pretty brown, which makes most of the game such a boring thing. The forest, however, is green and I actually think it's one of the best parts of the game. Not much else to say.
Overall
So, I've played Origins through three times and Awakening once, as well every DLC. Most of the DLC is rather worthless, around one or two hours of hacking away enemies, though Soldier's Peak and The Stone Prisoner (which comes[came?] for free with new copies of the game) are the best ones, Soldier's Peak including some actual story and Stone Prisoner including the golem-companion Shale.
Dragon Age isn't a game I play for the story, as it is quite boring. It isn't for the effects of your choices either, as they don't come even close to Witcher's effects. It isn't for your companions, who are for the most part quite one-sided and boring. No, I play it for trying different builds and just having a good time smacking enemies around while testing my tactical thinking. If you like RPGs because of story and world instead of tactics, you can get a one fun run through the game, but I doubt you'll come back for another.
Gameplay
As said above, this being a BioWare-game, it's more than natural that the game is party-based and somewhat tactical RPG. Dragon Age: Origins was touted to be a return to the old-school tactical RPGs, and I'd say it manages to do it rather well, although the character classes could've been balanced far better - it's not too uncommon to have a mage that can tank better than a fighter, takes absolutely no damage and can pretty much one-shot most of the enemies with one well-placed Area of Effect-spell.
There are three character classes (warrior, rogue, mage) in the game, as well as three races (humans, elves, dwarves). Every race can be of any class (except dwarves, who can't be mages), and every class has four specializations from which two can be picked in Origins. Awakening adds two more specializations to each class, and characters get to pick two more specializations by the end of the expansion.
There are lots of nice stuff hidden in the game, which you might not notice at first, such as if you are able to freeze an enemy, there are certain spells that, when casted upon frozen enemy, will kill him instantly. This can also be achieved by warrior and rogue scoring a critical hit on the said enemy. Things like these (known as spell combinations) are very nice depth-adders.
Origins also has a very nice thing, called Origins (*gasp!*), which are determined by your character's race and class. Mages only have a Magi-origin, but otherwise every race has two possible Origins from which you can choose. These serve as an introduction to the world and setting in general, and also as a tutorial. Very nice idea and execution also.
I have to go back to balance, though - if you are playing on Normal, the game will probably become way too easy if you play with two or three mages in your party, because Mages are Thedas-equivalents to heavily armed Panzerkampfwagens. I've heard that the PC version is a bit harder, and as such things might be a bit different, but on consoles Normal is way too often too easy.
On consoles, there is only one camera angle, behind your character, whereas on PC you also have isometric view. It's a shame that it isn't on consoles too, because it would've helped greatly in some fights, when getting an image of what is going on is very hard. Anyway, it's not too bad on Normal difficulty, but it's still a shame.
Plot
The plot, to be honest, isn't really great. It's pretty generic "collect an army and defeat the ancient evil". However, the small details that have been placed in the rather generic setting are what make the game far better than it would otherwise be. The world includes anything you'd expect from a generic fantasy setting - elves live in forests, humans in cities and town, dwarves live in the mountains and underground. Awakening actually has, in my opinion, more interesting story than than Origins, because of sentient Darkspawn, smaller scale of map and interestingly varied locations (you can actually see the sea!).
The story, in it's basis is, that you become a Grey Warden, either by volunteering to them or being recruited. As a Grey Warden, your mission is to protect Thedas from the orc- I mean the Darkspawn, and kill the Archdemon which leads Darkspawn hordes during Blights. During a big battle shit hits a fan, a treason happens and most of the Grey Wardens are killed - except you and Alistair. From this point on the world opens to you (through hubs, there isn't free roaming like in The Elder Scrolls), and you are free to do main and side quests as you see fit. The main quest series is rather boring, but most of the side quests (when they aren't "Kill X enemies of type Y" or "find me X items Y"-type) are very nice and add lots of depth. The main quest series include the two most boring segments I've ever had the displeasure to play through - The Fade and The Deep Roads. Both of them suffer from the same fault - they are far too long, with far too little interesting to do and both have too much combat without any real meaning. At least on PC, you can mod so that you can skip The Fade, I guess you can even skip The Deep Roads.
There are some choices every now and then to make, which should influence the outcome of the story - except they really don't, and even the touted "grey and grey" morality is really lacking, except for a few points where it's actually pretty brilliantly executed, and at few points you can actually lose your party members permanently. In the grander scheme of things, most of your choices bear little to no influence in the story. Still, when it does, it's very nice. And as you finish either the game or the add-on Awakening, there is a recap of what you did and how it influenced the world.
Visuals
Game's visual style drives towards realistic style, and I think it manages to do it pretty nicely, and the game looks good even on X360. The colour scheme, however, could use a bit of brush-up and more colours, as most of the world is pretty brown, which makes most of the game such a boring thing. The forest, however, is green and I actually think it's one of the best parts of the game. Not much else to say.
Overall
So, I've played Origins through three times and Awakening once, as well every DLC. Most of the DLC is rather worthless, around one or two hours of hacking away enemies, though Soldier's Peak and The Stone Prisoner (which comes[came?] for free with new copies of the game) are the best ones, Soldier's Peak including some actual story and Stone Prisoner including the golem-companion Shale.
Dragon Age isn't a game I play for the story, as it is quite boring. It isn't for the effects of your choices either, as they don't come even close to Witcher's effects. It isn't for your companions, who are for the most part quite one-sided and boring. No, I play it for trying different builds and just having a good time smacking enemies around while testing my tactical thinking. If you like RPGs because of story and world instead of tactics, you can get a one fun run through the game, but I doubt you'll come back for another.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Portal 2 (PC) (single-player)
So, Portal 2 came out a little while ago, preceded by Valve's promotional ARG, in which 13 indie games were on sale on Steam and received extra content and crypted messages and all that mumbo jumbo and whoop-de-doo and promises that the game could be released earlier (well, it did, if I remember about 7 hours earlier than destined release time). But all this aside, what was this anticipated game like?
Please do note, that all following is written solely on the basis of single-player campaign
Gameplay
Portal 2 is a sequel (GASP!) to a little 2-4 hour puzzle game, that was released alongside Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2 and its two episodes in a nice gamepack known as The Orange Box. The gameplay mainly consisted on playing with portals, through which player could go. Say, you place one portal on your living room's wall and the other to your bedroom's wall, you could walk through the living room's portal and you'd be in your bedroom. And you can take stuff with you through the portal, which makes things a bit more curious. And, even further to make things more interesting, your inertia would be conserved when you go through portal. What does it mean? What goes in fast, comes out of the other one fast. So, the original game was played pretty much through these concepts, plus lasers, of course. And robots, that try to shoot you, but since they can't move, they could be easily knocked down and so on.
The sequel, of course extends on these principals, so everything that was in the original game is still in and a lot is added. These include such things as springboards (they send stuff flying), different gels/paints (blue paints make stuff go bouncing, orange lets you move really fast, and if you paint wall white, you can place portals there) and pull/push streams and solid light bridges(!). These offer a very large repertoire to create mind-bending puzzles.
Well, as in puzzle games things usually go, you start with a few basic things and start to build up to them to create harder and harder puzzles, and so is in Portal 2 also. The thing is, usually you should go with this ever-increasing difficulty/tricks to keep things fresh, but Portal 2 stumbles in this from time to time, not too often though. Sometmies I just went mad when I couldn't find a way to progress, and it was something as simple as "jump pretty high from here", as if difficulty was suddenly reversed.
Visuals
The game has a really, really good visual style and runs great on older machines even though it looks rather good. Animations remind me often of Pixar-movies, and that is a compliment. The game is nice to look at and most of the time, visuals give you a good clue what is your target.
Level design
The game (still) takes place in Aperture Science's research facilities. A lot of time has passed since original Portal, and vines and other plants have grown all around the facility. The first third or half takes place in these areas, and is pretty much the best areas of the game, so when you play the game, do take your time and look around to find all kinds of neat hidden stuff.
Then comes the chapters 6-8. Oh boy. Somebody dropped the ball here, and hard. What was a leisurely puzzle game, becomes a frustrating pixel hunt with repetive puzzles. I could've tolerated this, but it was absolutely horrendous and I spent about half of my playing time stuck on those chapters. To make things worse, the environment is really, really bland and boring ruins with pretty much nothing to see.
Writing
Portal 2 isn't really heavy on the story, but it has more of it than original Portal, which introduced us GlaDOS, the murderous and testing-obsessed AI with sarcastic comments. In Portal 2, GlaDOS has somehow lost most of her/its charm and turned just really hateful with very little (good) sarcasm. Luckily, around midpoint of the game her/its writing gets better and it's actually nice to listen to her/it.
Of course, Portal 2 introduces two other characters - Wheatley, the well meaning joke-cracker AI and Cave Johnson, the long since passed away founder of Aperture Science. Though Wheatley tolds jokes constantly, it is unfortunate that they rarely really hit the spot. On the plus side, the worst jokes aren't all that bad, but aren't really great either.
Cave Johnson is introduced around the midpoint of game (chapter 5 or 6 if I remember correctly) and he simply has the best writing in the game, cracking really good jokes and being just a manly man. He is never seen beyond some paintings and portraits, and his voice comes from old recordings that play as the player makes his way through old rooms of Aperture Science facility.
Main gripes
Portal 2 is a good game, without doubt, but I'd like to address some of my main annoyances.
1. Loading screens
There are loading screens between every room, and they aren't those barely noticable loading screens from Half-Life 2. No, these take the whole screen, and really break your immersion. And it is really bad at the first third of the game, when rooms are small and simple, and you spend about 1/3 of your time watching the loading screen and 2/3 of the time playing. Luckily, later on, the loading screens get rarer and rarer. But still, I can't wrap around my mind, who thought that it was a good idea to put a loading screen in the middle of an intense chase. Really.
2. The middle part of the game
It has the best writing (thanks to Cave Johnson), but on the other hand, the level design is the worst found in the game. If it were merely ok, I'd just shrug my shoulders and move on, but no. It is absolutely horrendous. Old gray walls everywhere and very, very little indication where to go. A game that has held you from hand to that point and then just throws you out with no point to go is rather bad thing, in my opinion. Your mileage may vary, but I didn't find pixel hunting and repetive puzzles good.
3. The length
It took me about 6 or 7 hours to complete the single player campaign. Not really long, when you think about it, and I spent about 2,5-3,5 hours on chapters 6-8. If you don't get stuck there, 5-6 hours will probably be rather close to how long the game is. And by saying game, I mean single-player campaign, there is also co-op campaign. When I get the time, I'll give it a shot.
4. The menus
The menus are for some reason really unintuitive to navigate with mouse, and I found myself cursing when I clicked the third time off and got an explanation what anti-aliasing does instead of setting it. Luckily I didn't need to spend a lot of time there, so the menus are a very small offender.
Overall
It's a good game that has some noticable flaws - okayish writing, loading screens bloody everywhere, the absolutely horrendous middle part and short length of single-player campaign. If I'd have to give it a 'score', it would be probably a solid 8 out of 10.
No screenshots because I can't find where they were saved. But I believe Google can help you to find videos and pictures of the game if you're interested to see more.
Please do note, that all following is written solely on the basis of single-player campaign
Gameplay
Portal 2 is a sequel (GASP!) to a little 2-4 hour puzzle game, that was released alongside Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2 and its two episodes in a nice gamepack known as The Orange Box. The gameplay mainly consisted on playing with portals, through which player could go. Say, you place one portal on your living room's wall and the other to your bedroom's wall, you could walk through the living room's portal and you'd be in your bedroom. And you can take stuff with you through the portal, which makes things a bit more curious. And, even further to make things more interesting, your inertia would be conserved when you go through portal. What does it mean? What goes in fast, comes out of the other one fast. So, the original game was played pretty much through these concepts, plus lasers, of course. And robots, that try to shoot you, but since they can't move, they could be easily knocked down and so on.
The sequel, of course extends on these principals, so everything that was in the original game is still in and a lot is added. These include such things as springboards (they send stuff flying), different gels/paints (blue paints make stuff go bouncing, orange lets you move really fast, and if you paint wall white, you can place portals there) and pull/push streams and solid light bridges(!). These offer a very large repertoire to create mind-bending puzzles.
Well, as in puzzle games things usually go, you start with a few basic things and start to build up to them to create harder and harder puzzles, and so is in Portal 2 also. The thing is, usually you should go with this ever-increasing difficulty/tricks to keep things fresh, but Portal 2 stumbles in this from time to time, not too often though. Sometmies I just went mad when I couldn't find a way to progress, and it was something as simple as "jump pretty high from here", as if difficulty was suddenly reversed.
Visuals
The game has a really, really good visual style and runs great on older machines even though it looks rather good. Animations remind me often of Pixar-movies, and that is a compliment. The game is nice to look at and most of the time, visuals give you a good clue what is your target.
Level design
The game (still) takes place in Aperture Science's research facilities. A lot of time has passed since original Portal, and vines and other plants have grown all around the facility. The first third or half takes place in these areas, and is pretty much the best areas of the game, so when you play the game, do take your time and look around to find all kinds of neat hidden stuff.
Then comes the chapters 6-8. Oh boy. Somebody dropped the ball here, and hard. What was a leisurely puzzle game, becomes a frustrating pixel hunt with repetive puzzles. I could've tolerated this, but it was absolutely horrendous and I spent about half of my playing time stuck on those chapters. To make things worse, the environment is really, really bland and boring ruins with pretty much nothing to see.
Writing
Portal 2 isn't really heavy on the story, but it has more of it than original Portal, which introduced us GlaDOS, the murderous and testing-obsessed AI with sarcastic comments. In Portal 2, GlaDOS has somehow lost most of her/its charm and turned just really hateful with very little (good) sarcasm. Luckily, around midpoint of the game her/its writing gets better and it's actually nice to listen to her/it.
Of course, Portal 2 introduces two other characters - Wheatley, the well meaning joke-cracker AI and Cave Johnson, the long since passed away founder of Aperture Science. Though Wheatley tolds jokes constantly, it is unfortunate that they rarely really hit the spot. On the plus side, the worst jokes aren't all that bad, but aren't really great either.
Cave Johnson is introduced around the midpoint of game (chapter 5 or 6 if I remember correctly) and he simply has the best writing in the game, cracking really good jokes and being just a manly man. He is never seen beyond some paintings and portraits, and his voice comes from old recordings that play as the player makes his way through old rooms of Aperture Science facility.
Main gripes
Portal 2 is a good game, without doubt, but I'd like to address some of my main annoyances.
1. Loading screens
There are loading screens between every room, and they aren't those barely noticable loading screens from Half-Life 2. No, these take the whole screen, and really break your immersion. And it is really bad at the first third of the game, when rooms are small and simple, and you spend about 1/3 of your time watching the loading screen and 2/3 of the time playing. Luckily, later on, the loading screens get rarer and rarer. But still, I can't wrap around my mind, who thought that it was a good idea to put a loading screen in the middle of an intense chase. Really.
2. The middle part of the game
It has the best writing (thanks to Cave Johnson), but on the other hand, the level design is the worst found in the game. If it were merely ok, I'd just shrug my shoulders and move on, but no. It is absolutely horrendous. Old gray walls everywhere and very, very little indication where to go. A game that has held you from hand to that point and then just throws you out with no point to go is rather bad thing, in my opinion. Your mileage may vary, but I didn't find pixel hunting and repetive puzzles good.
3. The length
It took me about 6 or 7 hours to complete the single player campaign. Not really long, when you think about it, and I spent about 2,5-3,5 hours on chapters 6-8. If you don't get stuck there, 5-6 hours will probably be rather close to how long the game is. And by saying game, I mean single-player campaign, there is also co-op campaign. When I get the time, I'll give it a shot.
4. The menus
The menus are for some reason really unintuitive to navigate with mouse, and I found myself cursing when I clicked the third time off and got an explanation what anti-aliasing does instead of setting it. Luckily I didn't need to spend a lot of time there, so the menus are a very small offender.
Overall
It's a good game that has some noticable flaws - okayish writing, loading screens bloody everywhere, the absolutely horrendous middle part and short length of single-player campaign. If I'd have to give it a 'score', it would be probably a solid 8 out of 10.
No screenshots because I can't find where they were saved. But I believe Google can help you to find videos and pictures of the game if you're interested to see more.
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