Batman: Arkham City (Xbox 360)

Batman: Arkham Asylum was one of my favorite games.

I'm multiple hours (but not done) with RockSteady Studios new Batman: Arkham City, and it pretty much surpasses everything I dig about the first game, without losing the stuff that made that first game great.

It could be a little overwhelming if you're not big into games, and/or haven't played Arkham Asylum  -- there's a ton of gadgets; I even find myself having to stop and look at all of the stuff available to me. But that's a good problem to have (teh Bats has teh gadgets, after all).

I do like that the rogues gallery is a lot more complex this time around. Less "muah-hahahaha!" and more "I haz motivashuns. I haz needs. I haz issues."

The "detective" aspect of the Greatest Detective in the World is also way better, and the side missions compelling enough to pull me from the main quest (though I could care less about the AR training opportunities).

All of this makes the game a lot more fun -- beyond the solid stealth-or-brawler-or-gadget-or-investigation gameplay.

I'm mixed on the Catwoman missions, but I think that's just me -- it's somewhere in-between "different"{ and "not-different" gameplay, and I don't seem to be transitioning well. She is fun to watch in motion, though.

And being able to play as 70s Batman, or the Frank Miller's Dark Knight? Awesome. (As a fanboy, seeing that latter bad boy in motion gives me goosebumps). I also dig that it's not just the skin that changes -- there are changes to audio and animations, too.

I'm not done with the game yet (Mainly because I'm jumping between it, Dark Souls, Uncharted, and Skyrim) -- but I'll be joyfully investing in this game for a long, long time.

(And apologies for my brief fall into the pit of can haz cheezeburgers cat-speak. Not sure what happened there.)

X-Men: Destiny (Xbox 360)

I mentioned a while ago I was looking forward to what Silicon Knights was going to to with the X-Men franchise, and picked I picked up X-Men: Destiny yesterday to check it out.

I'm a Marvel fanboy, and a Scott Porter fan. Scott's a good actor, a nice guy in person, and he voices Adrian Luca, one of 3 characters you can choose to play through the single-player only game.

I'm only a a few hours in to the game so far, and to be honest, I'm pretty torn about how I feel about the game. Mainly because even though I'm a multi-fold fan, I'm finding I have to make myself play the game.

First, let me clear that I know nothing about the development of the game (time, budget, external publisher or IP impacts, etc.).

That said, I'm trying to figure out if the game is a great example of a super budget treatment of a high-shelf IP, or it's a cautionary tale of game design that hasn't evolved from 7 years ago.

The game is rough; I mean, really rough. Not just with "maybe-they-ran-out-of-time-and-that's-why-there's-invisible-collision-everywhere", but with "seriously-those-are-really-your-pre-rendered-character-assets-in-the-main-menu?-because-they're-in-your-face-and look-very-very-off".

There's even way too much legacy game design, opportunities to miss triggers and get stuck at a checkpoint, spawning enemies that stand idle-but-visible in the wings, and level layout that maybe is meant to be throwback-simple (driving the Player in a set direction), but is implemented badly. If you do somehow find a way to get off the path (by, y'know, walking around), you'll have to spend a ton of time running to get back to that point. No gameplay - just getting your avatar back to where it's supposed to have been before you fell off the path.

As far as playing the game, after picking my character (Adrian, so I can hear Scott's VO), I've decided to arbitrarily choose each of my upgrade paths. I figure, "If I was a mutant, I wouldn't have control over what powers manifested, so I'll play that way."

That's added a surprising amount of interest for me to the title, because it disorients me a bit, and makes the gameplay feel a bit more "real". I kind of wish Silicon Knights and other comic book devs would roll the dice like this intentionally -- it would possibly give Players more unique play experiences from each other.

That additional interest is needed, because while I'm glad there's a simple skill tree mechanic in the game, it's not as simply implemented as say, what's in Borderlands. And the "mutate" mechanic (think power mix-ins) is interesting, if a bit overwhelming in actuality (it doesn't seem to change gameplay significantly). Honestly, my main beef with the mutate mix-ins mechanic was it didn't work for the fiction -- but get far enough into the game, and it's explained enough to make sense for the game story. Ish.

Overall, if you're an X-Men fan, you might be able to look over the title's rough edges, and get more out of the game. If you're an X-Men fan and either a heavy gamer or a game developer, you might have a rougher time enjoying the title.

Marvel Ulimate Alliance 2

(First Impressions.)

OK, I need to spend more time with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 ("M-UATU", for those who have been paying attention).

I've been looking forward to it for a looong time, and it's ambitious as all get out -- multiple combinations of players and powers; two continuity arcs re-imagined; truly taking advantage of next-gen hardware (the last one was early in the hardware cycle); hitting multiple platforms and control schemes; and the whole "licensing IP that has rabid fanboys" thing.

And it's fun. But it's not as fun (for me) as the original MUA. I'm trying to figure out if that's because it's not new like the first game was (which wasn't new, per se, but was a good franchise evolution over the excellent X-Men Legends titles). Maybe it's that it's competing with too much coming out at the same time that I'm playing (including stellar same-genre (IP, not game) offering Batman: Arkham Asylum).

Maybe it's because all of the stuff that I mention above is too ambitious, and the project struggles a bit under all of that weight.

For whatever reason, out of my current game queue (which also includes Batman, ODST, Bowser's Inside Story, Scribblenauts), MUA2 is last on the priority list. And I don't know if I'll be able to get it cleared out before I move over to Modern Warfare 2, Brütal Legend, L4D2, and New Super Mario Bros.

What I haven't done yet is multiplayer. Since I'm a big co-op fan, the "fusion" gameplay mechanic looks tailor-made for it, and it feels like they've fixed the camera over the original MUA, this may be a serious additive grace for the game.

Hopefully, more detailed thoughts soon.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360)

I'm playing the new Batman: Arkham Asylum game on the Xbox 360, and I've been pretty impressed so far.

This is a solid, dark treatment of the license, the full game is more polished than the demo (which itself was a good concantenation of a few segments of the game to show scope and diversity), the detective mode has been tweaked (and is pretty slick), the art direction is cool (and consistent), fanboy unlockables are solid and slickly implemented, and I like the progression, the open-endedness(ish)ism of the title. And (yay!) the video tweak settings let me brighten the game without washing out the graphics -- very important for playing on a projector.

Mark Hamill (who is the Joker) and Kevin Conroy (who is the Batman, at least until I am), are fantastic -- as is a lot of the primary voice acting (some of the secondary (like the guards) doesn't come close to the caliber, which is unfortunate). Good voice acting makes a game; bad kills it. This is stellar stuff.

And I like that there are subtle things like me being able to move Batman around during an in-engine cutscene, downed enemies are still breathing (they're unconscious, not dead), and the brief (at least one so far) first-person implementation (hey, you get it for free with the tech; might as well play with it; which most licensed fair refuses to do).

It's got a few shortcomings, but nothing that kills the game for me.

First off is I'm not crazy about the muscle-bound nature of ol' Bats -- feels a bit over-done, put - a -space -marine - in - a - batsuit. Also, the skinning of the game is a bit of a weird mix of shiny and muddy, but that's stereotypical of the Unreal Engine (right or wrong). Also, I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I game on a projector, and at that size Rocksteady's particular implementation of the third-person camera causes a bit of a problem with slight queasiness that most other games don't cause.

But overall, the game is solid, I'm enjoying it, kudos to Rocksteady for getting it right, and I'll be tooling through it for a while.