Batman Arkham Asylum/ Arkham City Comparison

Basically, Arkham City is a very different game to Asylum. At first, it might not seem like it, but under the surface, there is a lot more depth and complexity to City than Asylum.


First off: The graphics. In all honesty, I prefer those of Arkham Asylum. I know there isn't much difference, but Asylum has stronger graphics...ever so slightly. Most people with smaller TV's won't notice the difference, but I had the good fortune to get a really large one so I can see the slight difference in quality. The other thing that Asylum had was this sort of comic book style art to things like the character bios and even in the gameplay. I miss the comic style now that's it's been replaced with a more computerized style. But, hardly any difference overall. This is probably because Arkham City is open world, which brings me to my next point. ARKHAM CITY IS OPEN WORLD!!! This changes the style drastically from a slightly claustrophobic game to a free roam one. You can fly about the large map as you choose, picking fights with thugs as you see fit. However, there is always stuff to do. There are loads of side missions and riddler trophies and riddles to conquer. Arkham Asylum has a very narrow path to follow. That's not a bad thing, but I feel that Arkham City truly was Batman's playground. However, I did like the feel of being trapped on island with hundred of people gunning for me. Speaking of riddler stuff, there are some changes this time. Arkham City has over 400 whereas Asylum has over 200. Also, the trophies aren't just collectables, most of them have a tough puzzle about them. This is more engaging and generally more fun. You can also interrogate thugs lit in green to find riddler secrets on the map. This is really handy. Now to the biggest part of the game. The combat. There are a lot more moves that Batman can use in City like the beatdown and the special combo Bat-Swarm which add to the combat even more with strategy and flow. And I don't know how I beat up bad guys without freeflow focus. The stealth has also been improved on with new moves like the double takedown and new gadgets like the disruptor (upgrade it the first chance you get) The enemies have more variety than just knives and tasers and the stealth bad guys have things like thermal sensors and detective mode scramblers. Basically, City is better in almost every aspect except perhaps the story. It's good, but it feels a little jumbled because of how many side missions you do, and sometimes you wonder why somebody like Two-Face is in the game if he only appears twice. Two-Face could be the bad guy for the next Batman game, but instead, one of Batman's biggest enemies is thrust into a small role that doesn't suit him. Aside from that though: ARKHAM CITY IS A MUCH BETTER GAME

Raging

Games are meant to be fun. No question about it. Yet, in most games, we encounter periods of frustration which make us want to stop playing. But, most of the time, it's bearable. We get past it and simply move onto the fun stuff. I find that the true rage is brought out when you play against other people. Because you're playing against someone, you feel more compelled to beat them and you get more competitive, so when you lose or screw up, you feel more annoyed than you would a CPU. I find that this happens most in FPS games. No FPS is absolutely fair to begin with, different weapons are better at different ranges and at time you won't have the right weapon for the right time and get killed because of it. Say you have an assault rifle and you run into someone with a shotgun at close range. He's most likely going to win, not because of skill, but because he came in with the overall advantage. Hard games are what really get people going. The more you die and have to do things again, the less enjoyable it is for us, but if the game is too easy, then you aren't feeling challenged. A game like Dark Souls is very, very hard, but every time you kill something, you feel like you really accomplished something. Beating the enemy wasn't just an inevitability, it was the combination of skill and and tactics. The trouble is, most people get way too frustrated with dying so often to keep playing it. But the worst feeling in games is when you feel as though you've been cheated in some way. When playing Arkham City, I rarely ever get annoyed because every mistake I made was my own, not the game's fault. But in something like Vanquish or Marvel vs Capcom 3, boss battles all have one hit K.O. moves. This is really annoying because you have to start the whole fight again because you got hit by one attack. Not fun. But by now a lot of game devs have worked out what to do and what not to do to make their gamers stop raging. Mostly...








QUICK TIME EVENTS!!!!!!!!!

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

We only just fought off SOPA/ PIPA and now, ACTA has arisen, it's pretty much the same thing, take a look.

SOPA

By now you should have all heard about this, the bill being proposed in the american government that will supposedly stop piracy, but really, 'destroy the internet' is a much better way of describing what this bill will do. The bill allows the government to take down websites that haven't even committed piracy, just ones where they think it will happen. The website megaupload, which we've all used at some point has now been completely destroyed along with mega video. RIP mega video, i watched all of deathnote, fma and fmab on it, and it will be sorely missed. Even Anonymous, the (obviously) anonymous and mysterious groups of hackers temporarily took down some american government sites in response to these actions. If you still think to yourself, this will be good piracy will be stopped and all my favourite bands will be more successful. Firstly, wrong. Piracy while it does loose the artist some money it makes significantly more in the extremely large amounts of advertising piracy gives. Secondly, Youtube. People who post videos on you tube occasionally complain that one of their videos got taken down because of copyrighted music or something like that. Well, with SOPA absolutely everything gaming related would no longer exist, no machinima, no let's plays, Absolutely no footage of games. It won't just be games though huge portions of youtube will be blocked or taken down. The creators of mega upload and megavideo(who are not american citizens) have been arrested in new zealand (how did america possibly get jurisdiction for this?) and are facing extreme jail sentences. Recently Sopa was rejected partly or something like that, it is not gone completely jst put off, im sure there much better explanations other places, so this is just to inform the people who don't know.

The Elder Scrolls

Many of you will stone me for this and regard me as a menace to society, but I have (in my many years of gaming) barely ever heard of the Elder Scrolls games. Sure, I caught the occasional Oblivion conversation, but I hadn't even heard of the game. now, you're probably thinking that I don't deserve to be a gamer: how dare I not know of these games. But you see, you don't know what you don't know. I never heard it and I was never told about it, so forgive me for being so clueless. From what I hear, the Elder Scrolls is a great series because each game is big and very deep. There's so much stuff you can do and almost all of it is fun...apparently. Don't get me wrong, I've seen the reviews and I'm really excited about getting it (after I clean up my current games and two from my pile of shame) but I don't really see the hype. When I saw the stuff for Skyrim at E3 I was like: Yeah, okay, dragons yadda yadda, pretty graphics yes yes. But the fan reaction was massive. I was actually stunned at how many people were viewing the trailer. All this for something which demonstrated absolutely no gameplay of graphics? Why? I later found out the the previous games: Oblivion and Morrowind had both one GOTY status. Including Skyrim, that's three out of five of Bethesda's RPG games that won awards. They must be doing something right. I was actually really annoyed at how much reception it got and devastated when it beat Skyward Sword in the GOTY running. So, I dived into some research as to why this was so popular and found many interesting pieces of gameplay. Gameplay that intrigued me. So, fairly soon, I'll buy The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and see what all the fuss is about. But, this is a request: TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW OF SKYRIM IN THE COMMENTS! 

How we as gamers evolve:

Back in the days, we played GoldenEye 'till our fingers bled. We traversed the land of Hyrule on a horse. We were awestruck when Halo brought us regenerating health in FPS, let us use grenades and melee attacks without forcing us to holster our weapons and delivered some of the best action available at the time. A while back, I did a mini review of Halo: Combat Evolved for Mac and if you saw it, you would have known that it was fairly critical. But with the Anniversary Edition, something's changed. I love it! Maybe it's the fact that I'm playing on a console (instead of a computer) maybe it's the awesome new graphics and sound, but I don't know. This time feels...different. Don't know why, don't care because I LOVE THIS GAME! But anyway, I'd better continue. Instead of GoldenEye, we play Call of Duty. Instead of Ocarina of Time, we play Dragon Age. Many of the older gamers argue that the classics will always be the best and nothing will ever be better, but to put it simply, we are gamers. We evolve with the games. Some gamers evolve without knowing. You might be playing Pokemon Black or White and not notice the differences between Red and Blue, but they are there. Playing them both feels very different, even if you are using the same mechanics. Some games evolve so radically we are scared of them. Take the reaction to the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. Many people hated it at first sight, but after playing it, it became one of the most loved Zelda's of all time. Skyward Sword made people scared with the motion controls, but turns out it's the best game ever. Often people think that their games evolve,  but series like Assassin's Creed don't make enough changes to the formula for it to remain interesting. We often see: "Our game has this great new feature! It's so amazing! You can now use bombs!" Unfortunately, the bombs weren't enough to make the game different. 
I'm going to talk about the evolution from Halo: Combat Evolved to Halo: Reach for a bit.
While the main idea is the same (kill the aliens) there are a lot of differences between them. There are more enemies and more enemy types to the A.I. baddies, more weapons and more maps in Reach, but that isn't really evolution, it's just something we expect from a sequel. What evolutions are present from Combat Evolved to Reach are the Skulls, the armour abilities, the new modes, firefight, forge and theater mode. Trippy post I know, but still, I hope I've raised discussion. 

For the doc

A video about a glitch in skyrim, by doing this, you technically block the npc's line of sight so you could steal all their stuff, though it's suprisingly hard to do.

A post, not really

I am leaving until next friday, and after that i will make posts, but before i leave, here is something that i found that i really like, it's a website made by a guy who posts gaming related comics, which are usually quite good, the main character is called Ethan, and is severely addicted to gaming. The website has been going for years, 6 or 7 i think, you should really start at the beginning though, that way you see all the characters introduced and it would just generally make more sense, it's also pretty interesting to see the guy (Tim Buckley) who made it's art skill improve as you go through the comics, there are heaps there and so it will definitely keep you occupied for quite a while, enjoy.

http://www.cad-comic.com/

Batman and the Joker in Arkham Asylum

Back in Asylum, there were only two playable characters. Batman and his srchenemy: The Joker (but only for PS3) Unlike Altiar end Ezio, these two were radically different. Take a look: 

All I can say is: well done!