Harley Quinn's revenge Idea

K, so the new trailer for Harley Quinn's revenge is out, but I won't put it up as it has spoilers for those who haven't beaten Arkham City. Anyway, it involves Batman being shot in the chest. I had an idea. What if they killed off Batman? Not only would it come to the player as a massive shock, but it would open up for the Scarecrow in the next game. The two previous Arkham games have been about Batman and the Joker, but with Mark Hamill saying the Arkham City was the last time he would take the role of the clown prince of crime, the new villain for the next game is most likely Scarecrow (as hinted through Arkham City) So what better way to set up a new story than by killing off Bruce Wayne and making Nightwing the new Batman. The voice actor must be Bruce Greenwood from Batman: Under the Red Hood and the fantastic TV show Young Justice. 

Mass Effect Review

Mass Effect is the first game of the now famous trilogy and boy is it something. It blends some amazing storytelling and cutscenes with fun shooting and RPG elements to create something awesome. Flawed, but awesome.

The story in Mass Effect is amazing. You'll want to keep playing just to find out what happens next. It also helps that the story is one that you create. Choice is a very important aspect of Mass Effect as you can dictate the way the story goes and weather to save or kill certain people. Some of the BIG decisions you make you know will have consequences later in the trilogy, even in the small things. The characters are all wonderfully done with enough back story and emotion behind them to make them feel real. The setting is in the future where humans and aliens live together in peace and harmony across galaxies. Mostly. Humans have not yet fully been accepted by the council and must prove themselves. You play as Commander Shepard of the Galactic alliance. The great thing about this is that he/she is your shepard. You can make him/her heroic or ruthless, and choose how he/she looks. I chose male Shepard, but found his voice acting really dull and boring, so I switched to female Shepard and found she was much better. 
The graphics are strong, even for a game of this age which really speaks about how much effort Bioware's put into this game. The game has this whole feeling of being cinematic and epic, which is one of the few times I actually was truly engaged in cutscenes and felt as though I was watching a movie. The voice acting is generally great, except for the Asari who seem to all have the universal power of sounding WEAK!!


Gameplay wise, Mass Effect is a blend of Third Person Shooting and RPG. You can upgrade and change gear anytime with equipment you buy or find around the world and can spend points on talents on specific trees like the power of a weapons or one of you specific talents. At the beginning of the game you choose between a soldier, a biotic, an engineer, an infiltrator, a sentinel or a vanguard, each has different powers and skills. The cover system is good, but there's no button to go into it, so you have to press yourself agains the wall and that takes you in. This works, but it's clunky. Same with activating your powers and changing weapons. You pause the whole game and activate them. As with before, it's a bit clunky, but it functions. Teammates however are beyond frustrating. They rarely listen to your commands, and take cover in inappropriate places and shoot walls. The enemies do this as well, but not as often.
On top of shooting, upgrading and getting new weapons, there are also driving sections which are fun and an interesting distraction. These involve little of the levelling up skills you've used and put the action mainly into shooting and exploration. Overall, combat's fun, but a little awkward. You also have dialogue trees when talking to people to change the outcome of the story and character relationships. This is really fun, and these talks can influence the whole game. Sometimes, it'll be a small thing such as deciding to be nice or mean to a character, or at others, who lives and who dies. You can tell Bioware put a lot of effort into this game with all the different story branches and lines. Some things won't affect the story now, but you know they will in later games. 


Mass Effect is a great game with some flaws the keep it from being amazing. While combat is a tad clunky, so rarely do we see a game with such a movie like experience in every moment. If you want to start the Mass Effect Trilogy, then start with this and you'll have a great time.

One more try?

As I think about it more, I remember having fun in the Elder Scrolls v Skyrim. I forget my nitpicky complaints and remember the joys of doing other stuff. So, readers...I ask should I try Skyrim Once more? (After I finish Transformers War For Cybertron, Mass Effect 2 and Assassin's Creed 2)

Prototype review

In a world of terrible superhero games, it's rare even consider any game other than Batman as your choice for superhero delight. However; games like Infamous are slowly beginning to turn the trend around. Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions was fun and Infamous 2 was amazing. Another game that folds in with this bunch is Prototype. A game where destruction and power are your toys and New York is truly your playground.


Prototype tells the narrative of Alex Mercer, a man who wakes up while being vivisected. He soon discovers he has incredible powers and the ability to consume and learn the memories of living things. Oh, by the way; New York is infected with some evil virus that turns people in to zombies. It's your job to find out who did this to you and do something about that infection. The storytelling isn't fantastic at all. It's not awful, just not very good. You meet a few characters, but care little about them for you to remember them and the story has holes. But all through this; Alex is the one character you really like. You want him to succeed, even though his motives are unclear. So, he wants to save people and stop the infection (I think) but he consumes people for extra health and slashes them for fun. At times, you might use them as weapons... Also, I could never work out if Alex was trying to stop the infection or if he just didn't care. In one mission, I had to destroy this antidote to the virus, but in the next I had to make sure a truck containing the virus wasn't destroyed. Huh?><><><>M<><>MKINBFWONWB!@
On the graphics side of things, they aren't strong or stylistic, which is a shame, but we don't care that much do we?


And now, the moment you've been waiting for...THE OMGFTW gameplay segment. Alex Mercer is everything you want form a super hero. 

Wheee!

Alex can do pretty much anything. He can run up walls with fantastic control, glide, transform his arms into hammerfist, claws, whipfist, blade, muscle mass and a shield. He can wear armour, hijack tanks and helicopters, pick up cars/buses/choppers and unleash devastator attacks which kill pretty much anyone around you. He can pick up a variety of guns and transform his appearance to make himself look like the last person he consumed. All of these offer unique gameplay options and ways to approach missions. The missions themselves...well, they tend to revolve around the same things. Chase this dude, kill enemies, destroy thing, protect x, whatever. Nothing too special, but the amount of gameplay devices you have at your disposal makes everything you do interesting and fun. There are also stealth sections which require you to remain disguised and these are really fun as they offer up a different style of gameplay. But, there are indeed some problems to this game that go beyond just the presentation. First off, if there are a lot of enemies on screen, if begins to lag up a fair bit. The other big issue with the combat is that towards the end of the game, enemies begin to swarm you. This happens so quickly and so often, that you have no chance at all to attack and no chance at all to consume anyone for health.


Besides these issues, Prototype succeeds where so many other games fail. It makes you feel powerful. No matter where you are in the game, you always feel like a super hero. This game is pure fun. Pick it up. 

Batman: Arkham City Lockdown review

In an attempt to cash in on the fantastic Arkham City franchise, Neverrealm studios fashioned the IOS game; Batman Arkham City Lockdown; a game that feels clunky, lazy and downright frustrating. This is a blemish on the otherwise amazing Rocksteady Batman franchise.

What kind of a fighting stance is that Mr. Master of most known Martial Arts?

To begin, the graphics in the game are actually really good. The feel strong and almost match the feel and tone of Rocksteady's games. Batman looks like Batman and the thugs look real. However, that's about it for positives. Levels in a certain area all look the same, so you feel as though you've just returned to a place where you've already been whenever you play. Also, there's only a few new lines, most have just been ripped from the good Arkham games. The story begins with all the inmates escaping Arkham Asylum once more and Batman has to round them up. However, this is not done in an epic cutscene, it's done via radio broadcast. This lowers the scale of how much you feel emerged in the game. Also, there's no backstory behind these super villains. You just; go and beat them up. In the end, you feel as though you're playing a demo rather than an actual game. The story is also littered with continuity errors.


The gameplay is an attempted Batman take on Infinity Blade, but it fails spectacularly. You can swipe the screen to punch, but this feels clunky as the screen rarely picks up what you actually wanted to do. It also takes away Batman's freeflow prowess and replaces it with slow moving, awkward fighting. You can only do a 4 hit combo and that just feels bad. You can dodge moves, or counter them, but this too feels vague and uncontrolled. Also, enemies do more damage to you than you do to them. WHAT THE HELL!?!?!?! SERIOUSLY?!?! YOU'RE BATMAN!!! THAT JUST DOESN'T HAPPEN!!!!!!! Boss fights are no different from regular fights, they just have a few gimmicks here and there like Joker's flower squirting on your screen making you have to wipe it off before you can fight. 
You can buy upgrades, but it takes ages to level up and you can usually only buy one at a time and some require you to level up multiple times. You can buy points with real money, but that's just complete garbage. In short; Batman Arkham City Lockdown is a waste of your time, money and effort. Avoid this at all costs.