Wednesday 21 August 2013

Origins Schmorigins

While I'm far more Marvel than DC, Batman has always been one of my favourite superheroes. He's miserable and kinda messed up and reacts to the death of his parents by playing weird vigilante dress up. And he's not even really a superhero, he's just rich and smart and angry.

I enjoyed the old campy TV show, and the stylised Tim Burton movies and the gritty Christopher Nolan movies. I even enjoyed Arnie as Mr Freeze and George Clooney having a batsuit with nipples. I've only read a couple of the comics (I generally stick with non-superhero comics like Hellblazer and Preacher. All right, they're kind of superheroes, but not in the traditional sense.) but I liked those too. So it's no real surprise, that while I wasn't desperate to own Arkham Asylum, I got it eventually.

And it blew me away. I loved everything about it. Punching bad guys in the face, or creeping around in the shadows, sniggering as they lose their shit in fear. Scanning for the solution to riddles and finally managing to line up that elusive dot with the familiar question mark. Running into old favourite enemies and getting to know new ones. (I'd never encountered Zsasz before, but thoroughly enjoyed being creeped out by his increasingly deranged voicemail messages.)

So when Arkham City came around and it was billed as bigger and better AND YOU GOT TO PLAY AS CATWOMAN!!! I was mega-excited. I built it up in my mind to be the best thing evar in all the world. So it was kinda obvious I was heading for disappointment. I found the story somewhat below par (although I was impressed by the ending) as it appeared overstuffed with bad guys (within the first couple of hours, it's possible to encounter Penguin, Joker, Harley Quinn, Mr Freeze, Two Face, Black Mask, Hugo Strange and Ra's al Ghul) and the lack of sympathetic characters to speak to left me wondering what I was fighting for. Arkham Asylum managed to convey a sense of putting things to rights, whereas Arkham City felt too far gone for redemption.

However, on a second playthrough, there was more to appreciate. Catwoman's sections really are great, and playing someone more morally ambiguous brings a much-needed change in tone to the relentless bad guy encounters. (I tried to find a bad Catwoman cosplay to illustrate this point, but all Catwoman cosplayers are total badasses. There really were no bad ones. So look at Anne Hathaway instead.)

The sidequests and the stories they tell are actually far more compelling than the main storyline. The softer side of Mr Freeze conveyed in his side mission leaves you feeling like Batman's actually been kind of a shit to that guy all along. The Identity Theft killer is about as dark as Batman gets, and the desire to give Ellis what's coming to him (a desire that is denied) is overwhelming. Following Azrael around the city, at first intensely irritating, gradually becomes more and more intriguing, until his final enigmatic words. It was these stories that left me really wanting more. The Joker's demise had really opened things up, Crane's bits and bobs lying around indicated that the Scarecrow was going to be the next big baddie, and although I was hugely infuriated by some of his segments in Asylum, I also found them to be some of the best in the game. And that's before you even get on to finding out what Azrael was on about and giving Ellis a good kicking for being a weird face-slicing little nutbag.

Lion-o hasn't aged well
But then, it happens. First, the news Rocksteady won't be taking the reins with the third Arkham installment, instead offering advice to WB Montreal as they assume creative control. They don't seem very experienced, having only made a Scooby Doo game and Lego Legends of Chima, which seems to me to be a blatant Thundercats ripoff, but Rocksteady were unknown when they got Arkham Asylum, so it's not a big deal. Okay, okay, I can get over that.

But then it all comes out. Arkham 3 is going to be an Origin story. Another bloody origin story. I'm sick of origin stories. I don't want to see heroes all weak and bumbling and pre-heroic, I want to see them kicking ass and taking names. I'm fed up of the Joker. We get a reprieve from Mark Hamill this time around (I am not a fan of his work) but he'll still be wisecracking and doing that laugh that sounds like he needs to clear his throat and being overly familiar. Oh, Bats again, is it? How do you like Jokes? How's that for a nickname? How about I call you Clowny JJ? Jo Jo the Clownface Boy? Little Joey Jokepants? Don't like that do you? No. So shut up.

There's also the stuff that doesn't make sense. Like how come, when he first started out, Batman's level of crime scene analysis was far more sophisticated than it is now? Did he just get jaded and think; "Yeah, this utilising hologramatic projections of crimes is too much like hard work. I'll just stick with plain ol' detective vision. What's a few people's lives and escaped criminals when compared to the effort of  having to use technology that takes seconds and improves my chances?"

Hopefully Arkham Origins will prove me wrong and be something so amazing I'll overlook that annoying inconsistency and be waiting desperately for part four. As long as it's not another FFXIII, we're good.

Acknowedgementy bit

Thursday 15 August 2013

Why Do You Hate Me, EA Sports Active 2 Personal Trainer, WHY?!

Mario, you smug prick.
It's no big secret that I don't like exercise. I was picked last for everything in PE at school and rightly so. I was more likely to score an own goal or incapacitate a member of my own team, due to a mixture of extreme inadequacy combined with a pathologically short attention span and a determined lack of enthusiasm for any sport that didn't involve a horse.

I'm one of those trick thin people, where I don't actually have any muscle and all the muscle I appear to have is actually cunningly constructed out of fat. Because of this, and my love for all chocolate and cheese-based foodstuffs, my beloved frequently worries for my health. He knows that while I'll consider 8 hours of tactically sniping aliens time well spent, I begrudge spending even 20 minutes doing exercise. (Unless a horse is involved, obv.) So he got smart, that wiley Northerner, and bought EA Sports Active 2.

Shut up.
At first glance, this is just one step up from a workout DVD. A chirpy fuckwit orders you around,
cheerily giving pointers to help you be the you you know you can be, or some other barely coherent motivational bullshit. You sweat, and you strain, and you get out of breath and at the end of it nothing's different except you hate the instructor even more than you hate yourself.

But then it throws in gamey stuff. There's trophies for things like burning more calories, or completing 2 hours of exercise, or trying one of each exercise type. The leg and arm bands it makes you wear monitor your heart rate and how well you recover compared to last time and plots it into a little chart, encouraging you to beat your last score. You can construct your own workouts with the handy tools and then get rewards for completing them.

And EA have done something really clever, though possibly unintentional, with their trainer. Rather than being comforting and encouraging, she's actually a patronising cow. Her praise ("I know you worked hard for that!") is just as infuriating as her taunts ("C'mon, you're going to have to run faster than that to keep up with me.") Even as I find myself in a sweaty heap on the floor, illogically waving the leg monitor in front of the TV so she can see it and screaming "I DID COMPLETE THE REP!!! I COMPLETED THE REP YOU BITCH!!!" I know I'll still do another workout on my next training day, because I don't want to give that pissy little cow the satisfaction of being able to say; "It seems like you missed a few workouts... never mind, I'm sure you'll catch up."

I might've known.
Acknowledgements

Friday 2 August 2013

Freeze and Burn - Just Cause 2

I'm not sure how I feel about demos. Jesse Schell recently suggested that demos negatively affect sales. In my experience, they have had close to zero effect on my purchasing choices. I hated the Mass Effect 2 demo so vehemently, I vowed never to buy the game. Bioware inexplicably chose a mission in which pretty much nothing happens, and it also froze my PS3 several times before I managed a complete playthrough. Fortunately, my dear husband forgot [zoned out] my moaning and bought it for me anyway, and it's now one of my favourite games of all time.
The Heavy Rain demo took 12 hours to download on my shitty internet connection and confirmed what I already knew to be the case - that it felt like a playable movie, wouldn't be for everyone and that David Cage could probably make a game where you shoot puppies in the face for nine hours and I'd buy it because I'm a pathetic slave to Quantic Dream.
Enslaved was a great demo and I WILL buy it some day, and probably would have with or without the demo anyway as it's beautiful and story driven. In fact, the only reason I say close to zero rather than zero is Just Cause 2. This demo froze my PS3 repeatedly too, but there was no way I was gonna let that put me off buying it...

I never played the original, and I'm guessing it doesn't matter. Here is a game that really doesn't look like something I'd usually play. The story's a thin excuse for blowing shit up. The main character is a sleazy South American stereotype who swaggers around in a leather vest with a scorpion on it. The women look tough, but they all need Scorpio (Oh didn't I mention that? Yeah, his nickname's Scorpio. So he wears a scorpion jacket. Or maybe it's because of the scorpion jacket. As I say, didn't play the first one where this vital plot point will obviously have been explained...) to blow shit up for them, and call him their hero when he does. His main ally is an irritating Texan gasbag who likes anagrams, because the developers have mistakenly thought including this only mildly relevant fact would inject him with some much needed personality. The game is so packed full of stereotypes, it's like a Conservative Party handbook on racial profiling. The 'Panauans' (The game takes place on the fictional island of Panau) manage to be offensive to Koreans, Russians, Indians, French and Malaysians via an assortment of awful voice acting, terrible accents and cliched wardrobe decisions. In fact, some accents were so bad, I couldn't even identify the intended country of origin. I *think* there may have been an English guy and a German bloke in there, but I really have no idea. I expect the final showdown with Kim Jong Il... I mean... Pandak Panay will involve trying to kick him over a balcony while he sings 'I'm So Ronery.'

BUT

The game is so fun! It's a simple thing that a lot of developers (and yes, my hero Cage is also guilty of this) sometimes allow to fall by the wayside in favour of being emotionally affecting or demonstrating groundbreaking new development techniques.
Just Cause 2's determined ignorance of physics becomes endearing (although also dizzying) as you zing around with your grappling hook, pulling down statues of Panay and blowing up state owned petrol stations because reasons. Hearing the guards yell "Catch him laaaaaaaaaa!" is as funny as it is embarrassingly crass and stupid. Just Cause 2 allows you to be a spy in the most ludicrous, bombastic manner, racing speedboats, riding motorbikes off cliffs and then parachuting to safety, hijacking helicopters in midair and setting charges in munitions factory chimneys before basejumping clear as it detonates. I could literally do all that all day long.

Yep, that pretty much covers it

Acknowledgements and Stuff