Batman: Arkham City

Some people didn't seem to be into this game as much as they were into Batman: Arkham Asylum a couple years ago, but I think the only real difference is that this game wasn't a surprise. People were blown away to play a super hero game that actually captured the essence of being that hero and was a fun experience to boot, and despite doing it even better this time around, a lot of Arkham City is more of the same. The biggest change is obviously in the environment. Rather than exploring the grounds of a large prison complex, you're gliding and grappling your way through a larger city area. Most of the time you end up entering various buildings that end up feeling much like the different locations in Asylum, but there's enough to do outside that the game does end up feeling different.

The main gameplay remains essentially intact, though. You will alternate between investigating crime scenes, using your gadgets to traverse obstacles, and taking on groups of thugs. Those thugs will either be armed, which means you have to use the environment to sneak up on them or take them by surprise, or not, which means you can beat the crap out of them with the game's smooth and always-interesting melee combat system. You basically start the game with all of the gear you had last time and then add even more on top of that, so while it's easy to get overwhelmed and even totally ignore certain equipment, it all ends up being pretty useful if you try it out, and it really sells the idea that you are Batman, along with your ability to instill fear in and then cripple your opponents.

While Arkham Asylum featured a wide variety of familiar faces if you're at all a fan of Batman, Arkham City almost goes too far with bringing out all the villains and allies you can think of. Basically everyone is back fro the first game with a small exception or two, and there are plenty of new ones added in. It threatens to become too much and muddle the story, but luckily enough of the characters are limited to cameos or side content that the game never loses sight of its main plot. It's actually kind of a surprisingly short game considering the scope of its world and the number of characters, especially if you don't spend a lot of time fiddling with the endless supply of Riddler challenges. The critical path probably takes less than ten hours, though it's a lot of fun while it lasts, digging deeper into Batman's character, the history of Gotham, and how exactly the people in charge agreed to section off a part of town and hand it over to Hugo Strange in the first place. It's all kind of silly, but it fits in with the game's unique combination of the sillier and grittier sides of the Batman franchise.

Though the boss fights once again often revolve around either large groups of enemies, an unreasonably huge villain, or both, this time they bothered to make each one unique and actually have their own methods to take them out, which is a big improvement. By removing the one significant flaw the original game had, you could say it's a superior product, though I didn't really feel like it was better, just tweaked and a bit more refined. They did add a new annoyance too, with having to download the Catwoman content, and if you don't have a new copy, you'll have to pay for it. You can finish the game without playing as Catwoman, but it will create gaps in the story, and you won't be able to collect certain Riddler trophies or see a couple of the villains. Actually playing as Catwoman is fine, as she has some unique abilities that make up for the other things she can't do, though I can't say I was ever particularly thrilled when one of her missions came up. The game definitely goes a bit too far with making her a sex object, too. You can make a character alluring without having every line out of her mouth be a double entendre.

The world of Arkham City itself is a somewhat interesting one, and it changes over time as things get worse off for the people inside. I can't say I liked the design of the city itself, which due to its central area being locked off except for an underground path through, takes on a horseshoe shape which is a bit annoying to navigate when you just want to get somewhere quickly. I also thought it could have been easier to locate side missions - I only finished about half of them, with no indication anywhere on how to advance the others besides just scouring the whole place. Just flying around as Batman though is fun, and it's a very well polished game for the open world genre. It's maybe a bit limited compared to other games of the same type, but it's a fair enough trade off. It seems mostly like they just wanted to make another Batman game but thought they needed something to point to so they could advertise how much bigger and better it is, and luckily the increased scope doesn't damage the main game, besides maybe cutting it a bit short. The important thing is you get to be Batman again, and that's still a lot of fun.

Metalocalpyse - Season 3

Metalocalypse's third season definitely felt like a creative shift away from the first two. All of the old characters are still there and there's the same formula from episode to episode: the members of Dethklok are idiots, the Tribunal plots a scheme against them based on what's going on, but they'll probably manage to play a big gig somewhere anyway. But after a couple experiments with it last time, every episode is a half hour now, leading to a different pacing to everything. There's half the number of episodes at double the length, so more time is provided for individual story ideas to breathe and develop the comedy, and there is less of a need for a wave of random violence to resolve everything quickly right at the end. It's still basically the same show, but if you would be disappointed in a drop in the body count and a larger variety of styles in the original music (as in, not all death metal), then you're just going to have to deal with it.

I kind of liked the shift, though. It just seemed like a funnier show without them having to rush through the plots at lightning speed, and just let the band be amusing jackasses for a while before blowing everything up. Not every story was the best, and even if there was some good humor I'm honestly tired of stuff like Rockso the Rock and Roll Clown. Pretty much all the main characters got their own dedicated episode, and it allowed for a reasonable amount of character exploration in a show you might not expect that from, especially after seeing its first two seasons. Apparently a lot of the changes were probably attributable to the departure of one of the two main creative people behind it (he still does his voices, though). It still seems more or less on track for its original vision of an absurd, over the top storyline involving an insanely popular metal band, even if they haven't done enough to develop it in the last four years. Whatever, it's a cartoon.

Darksiders

If you've heard anything at all about Darksiders, it probably involved its similarities to other video games. It's a bit lazy to rely on comparisons to other titles to describe a game, but in Darksiders' case it would be disingenuous not to mention it. So let's just throw it all out there. The overall game structure and use of puzzle-filled enclosed areas are reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda series and its temples. The platforming elements seem most directly taken from God of War, and there are some similarities with the combat but it feels closer to Devil May Cry in that area. There is a segment that more or less matches the standard gameplay of the Panzer Dragoon series, and there is an item later on that borrows heavily from the mechanics of Portal, although you can trip yourself up if you assume certain things about it. And that about covers it.

A game that takes this much from other titles could have easily ended up being derivative trash, but for whatever reason the crassness with which it borrows is almost charming. As shameless as it is, it's well executed for the most part, and in some ways I'm actually glad it does what it does. The God of War games will always have superior production values and a (slightly) deeper combat system, but the adventure elements are what I like most about that series anyway, and Darksiders is sort of the perfect balance. Well, not quite perfect. They still force you into fighting a bit too often, and the game's reliance on enemies doing tons of damage in lieu of adding more strategy to combat is a bit weak. But while I love Zelda, a lot of us have wanted a darker take on it, and this is basically our shot at getting it. Note I didn't say more serious, because this game is pretty far from that.

It was designed by a comic book artist, and there's an unflinching over the top style to everything. The game takes place mostly on a ravaged Earth after humanity was wiped out, and you play one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (War, naturally) as he defends himself against both the forces of heaven and hell. He has few allies, and the story is a quest of redemption as he tries to prove it wasn't his fault everything went bad. The designs of everything from the costumes to the monsters is like a little kid's idea of what's totally awesome, and the comic book comparison really is fitting. It's the sort of thing that I enjoy in a not really ironic but still not totally serious way, but really wouldn't show to anyone who doesn't like games.

But I really do like it, there's a nice thickness to everything that's part of the appeal along with the consistently solid level design and simple honesty of the whole thing. When I was maybe a third through the game my PS3 hard drive crashed and I lost most of my saves, so I had to sit down and marathon my way back to where I was for four hours, and I liked doing it. I don't think I could really say that about a lot of games, so take from that what you will. The game makes mistakes along the way, but it's sort of like an eager to please puppy or something that you can't possibly hate. I also have to mention the voice acting, which really fits the whole thick, over the top thing. Mark Hamill plays a character who accompanies you on your quest that I could take or leave, but pretty much everyone has this deep, guttural voice and is really way too into what they're saying to each other, and I enjoyed every second of it. It really completes the sale on this insane doomsday scenario they're throwing at you. The end promises a sequel, and I'm looking forward to the possibility.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

I normally steer clear of licensed video games because of their general crappiness, but there are three reasons why I gave Arkham Asylum a shot.

1) The demo was pretty promising.
2) It had near universal acclaim from critics and friends alike.
3) It's not a rushed product meant to cash in on some movie or something, but a game made as part of the excellent animated series' universe, even written by Paul Dini and starring the voices of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as Batman and the Joker, respectively.

So I played the game, and it did not disappoint. I think an open world game in the vein of Assassin's Creed would be an awesome setting for Batman, but this approach works too. There's sort of a Bioshock vibe to the design, which I'm sure was intentional. The gameplay is obviously different, but being placed in a tightly constructed yet still explorable world, being guided to your next objective but allowed to veer off the rails, frequent attempts to frighten you with scripted sequences and environment details, audio tapes scattered around that fill in the story, a madman pulling all the strings... yeah, this is a lot like Bioshock. And that's good, because Bioshock was a great game. Arkham Asylum still has its own identity of course, making good use of the license with a bunch of classic villains to defeat and one of the more interesting premises in a Batman story - the Joker takes over the entire island, and you have to figure out what he's really up to and thwart his plans, all within the span of a single crazy night.

The gameplay is a mix of stealth, brawling, and mild puzzles. Sometimes you'll enter a room and there will be a number of armed thugs scattered around looking for you. You make your way around the room quietly, hiding in nooks and crannies and swinging between gargoyles perched near the ceiling to give the bad guys the slip as you pick them off one by one. It's a bit easy at first, but by the end it gets genuinely tense as you have to use a lot of cunning to escape unharmed. The combat is very heavily combo based, with maintaining your current bonus as much of the goal as defeating all the enemies. Batman's repertoire of moves is nice, and it feels pretty great to take down a whole room of toughs without getting a scratch on you. Later on the goal is less domination and more just surviving, but that generally works too. The boss fights are generally pretty bad, which is a little disappointing. They rarely deviate from the formula of a big dude charging at you, and almost all of them resign themselves to also throwing a bunch of regular enemies at you to worry about too. Hey guys... that's not a boss. It's just another fight.

A big part of the game is being not just Batman: the super hero but also Batman: the detective. It's not quite as deep as I would have liked, but checking out crime scenes for evidence and following trails with your equipment's myriad applications is pretty cool. This is where the game's collection aspect comes in, as the Riddler has left a ton of things around the island for you to track down. It's all a bit more simplistic than it could have been, but still fun to track down, and the game lets you keep looking after you beat it. A lot of the riddles require more advanced equipment than you have when you first see them to get them, introducing a sort of Metroidvania element to the proceedings. The only real complaint I have about the exploring aspect is that the recordings of interviews with inmates you find attempt to be creepy, but rarely succeed, often coming off as silly. The Scarecrow sequences are more effective in this regard, although they tend towards interesting more often than actually scary.

It's a good looking game, and I like little details like Batman's cape and costume getting more and more tattered over the course of the game. There are a few issues, especially the higher resolution versions of some textures not popping in fast enough, causing some awkwardly ugly moments. I'm not a big fan of the faces, and after playing a lot of this year's games, I'm not sure why the Unreal engine is so popular when these other ones don't have a catchy name but have fewer problems. The sound is solid too, especially the classic voices by returning cast from the series. Hamill's Joker isn't as disturbing as Heath Ledger's, but it's quite entertaining in its own way, and he does a really good job here. I still have things to find in the game, and I haven't even touched the optional challenge modes, although they don't really interest me terribly. Still, it was a very good single player experience in a year full of them.

Afro Samurai: Resurrection

I really haven't been sure about how to categorize televised feature-length productions, especially when they're connected to existing series. The "television" label is really used for episodic products, even if they aren't actually broadcast originally. Other series like 24 and Battlestar Galactica have had TV movies recently that I decided to include as part of the season they were produced with, instead of reviewing them separately. Resurrection is a strange case, a televised movie sequel to a miniseries with no other episodes accompanying it. I'll just call it a movie and move along. If you saw the series, you pretty much know what to expect. Some stylish, bloody action scenes, silly titillation that goes nowhere, and a bleak tone of hopeless, constant violence. Several characters thought dead disappear, and in some ways it feels more like a remix of the series than a true sequel. Hey, there's a lot of remixes in rap, and the RZA did the music for this! There's rap in it! And it actually kind of works in the same way as Samurai Champloo.

They lean pretty heavily on the widespread weight of Afro's deeds in his previous quests, as the crux of the plot was caused and seemingly everyone he runs into was affected by all the people he hurt attempting to avenge his father. He goes on a fairly unoriginal journey filled with fighting and further annoying dialogue from his white-haired alter-ego, before the fairly brutal climax that redeems a number of characters. I'm going to reference Mark Hamill again here, who plays a couple characters, and wonder how long it will be before I just give him a label. He has the perfect gravelly voice and will do anything. It's pretty sweet. Jackson and Liu fulfill the required big name quota, and they're decent enough I guess. I didn't enjoy Resurrection as much as the original series, but it's worth checking out if you like any of the component elements enough.

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

Return of the Jedi is what made me like Star Wars and will always be special to me, even if I can see how the predecessor was superior as a film. I like stories with good endings, and Jedi puts a nice bow on the series, with the destruction of the bad guys and redemption of the most important character. A lot of people hated the Ewoks, and I can see why, but at least they had the balls to show them getting killed. From the opening on Tatooine to the speeder bike chase to the final battle in three locations, Jedi is packed with some of the series' best action scenes, which are better than a lot of the vastly more technically complex and visually busy ones in the prequels. The emperor's also a much more effective villain when he's sitting in a chair and pressing every button the good guy has than when he's cackling and spinning around with a lightsaber. He really knows how to twist the knife.

To be honest, I'm about tapped out on things to say about the Star Wars movies. Marquand seems like an okay director, but he never really did much else. Seeing all the hanging threads get resolved was good. I really hope the children of the future don't watch all the movies in chronological order, because the prequels really just ruin all the great moments from the sequels, including one of the best twists ever. Will people even really want to show them to their kids, after so many claimed that the new ones raped their childhoods? Maybe not. That catfish guy who flies in the Millenium Falcon with Lando is pretty weird. I now find it weird that Mon Mothma and Admiral Ackbar just show up and act all important in this one. Why haven't we seen or heard of them before? Carrie Fisher used to look really good in a bikini. The redone musical number in Jabba's palace for the special edition is completely moronic. I checked out the original ending on Youtube, and I'm not bothered that they replaced the Yub Nub song. I think I did a pretty good job of padding this out. I'm done now.

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Is it a coincidence that what is generally regarded as the best Star Wars film was not directed by George Lucas, and that he doesn't even have a screenplay credit? It does make you think a bit. I'm not a huge fan of cliffhangers myself, but Empire is a good film that improves on the first one in a lot of ways. Without an obvious goal to shoot for, the movie is more about developing the characters than moving them all towards a big climax, and it really succeeds at doing that. Han and Leia's love story is not only 100 times better executed than Anakin and Amidala's, it's one of the best I've seen on film, period. Their bickering is comedy gold, and things like "I know" cement Han as the series' greatest personality. Harrison Ford's the quintessential hero, the perfect balance of blazing his own path and always managing to do what's right, and the sense of humor just adds to his likability. Carrie Fisher brings a respectability to the role that you might not expect from a princess, and holds her own against him quite well. They really have a great chemistry.

Luke's journey gets more interesting too as he begins training as a Jedi. In the first movie he was an idealistic, somewhat naive kid going on an adventure in space. The whole movie is somewhat a coming of age tale, with a nice, happy ending. Empire really shows the darker side of the war, and Luke facing his demons with Yoda, abandoning his training, facing off with Vader and finally learning the horrible truth is the best example of this. Yoda seems like a silly joke of a character at first like Jar Jar or something, but before long he's telling Luke how afraid he's going to be. It's all good stuff. It's not as action-packed as the sequel, but as a piece of film making it really is superior.

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

I'm not sure I ever saw Han shoot Greedo first before I looked it up on Youtube today. The decision to reverse that might be when fans realized that something had gone wrong since 1983, causing George Lucas to forget what made his world interesting in the first place. I didn't know any better, since the last one is the only one I'm sure I saw in its entirety before the Special Editions were released in 1997. But the fact remains that it encapsulates Lucas' weakness, the inability to let the series go. He has to keep tweaking and updating, and constant technological improvements are making it worse. And the fans are the ones paying for it. First the movies were released on video, then the special editions were. Then the DVD boxset, then "limited" edition DVDs with both versions of the movie. The problem with this was the original version really was original, with all of the errors and degradation intact, not even anamorphic widescreen. The best thing would have been to keep the cleaned up versions and remove the silly content changes, but instead, they decided to release another boxset with the only new feature being a box to hold the "limited" DVDs, and in the future you know they're going to rerelease in every new format and never stop adding new scenes and computer effects.

Beyond that business though, the original film is still a good, but not great adventure. The core cast is pretty darn good, even though only one of the main three went on to a big career. They rush through their lines once in a while ("Faster and more intense!"), but generally make the world feel believable. And Harrison Ford illustrates one of the many things the prequel trilogy lacks: a counterbalance to all the force mumbo jumbo. Han Solo is the series' best character, and they could have used him in the past to slap Anakin in the face and tell him to stop being such a wanker. Not everything has aged that well, but the final space battle remains one of the most thrilling sequences in film and it just feels like a genuine, entertaining movie. Its legacy has slipped, but it still brought joy to millions of kids.

Metalocalypse - Season 2

Metalocalypse's second season features the same sort of humor as the first, but steps up the complexity of the plot and brutality of its frequent violence quite a bit. I guess you need to be in a certain mindset to enjoy the show, as some people certainly don't "get" it. There's a certain disconnect between the humor, which is subtle conversational stuff, frequently relying on just the goofy way all the band members talk, and the horribly graphic deaths that frequently happen, usually near the end of the episode to conveniently get rid of a threat to the band's success. It certainly makes for a different kind of series, but it's one I've grown to like quite a lot.

The team definitely did some experimenting in the second run, and it took them a while to wrap it up, as thanks to breaks in the airing schedule the finale was shown almost a year after the premiere. I usually prefer to just know the show's going to be on every week until the season's over, but with Adult Swim I usually watch every week anyway so it's not as much of a problem. It's just a bit harder to remember everything when it comes time to reflect on what happened. A lot of the episodes are still one-shots, but it's not uncommon to get a hint at what's coming up with the sinister characters plotting against Dethklok operating in the background. The third to last and last episodes were half an hour in length, and proved to me the show could survive in that format if they wanted to do it. They were among the better shows in the season, although the climax got a little boring around the umpteenth time a character was saved at the last minute by a friend hitting the bad guy from behind. Still, it was a solid conclusion, although it leaves you hanging about what really happened to certain people.

Metalocalypse - Season 1

Comparing this show to Brendon Small's first one, Home Movies, you wonder how the same guy could have created such wildly different things. But get past the surface, and they have a little more in common. The subject matter is completely different and Metalocalypse is much more violent, but they have similar styles of humor focusing on conversational dialogue, and Home Movies did have a heavy metal band that appeared once in a while. Metalocalypse is an interesting show because it never tries too hard to be funny, which can't be said for most comedies. It's often content to just tell a weird story about this band filled with idiots that still manages to control the thoughts of most of the world. Not to say it isn't usually humorous, because it is, they're just not constantly throwing out jokes hoping some will stick.

The five members of the band really are morons, with over half of them unable to even speak English properly. I have to admit a lot of the appeal comes from just listening to them talk and interact. Music is a heavy element of the show, as might be assumed. It's mostly metal, and actually pretty entertaining most of the time. Enjoyable riffs and funny lyrics if you can make out Nathan's growl. But besides that, one thing you can always count on is over-the-top violence. It seems like every episode ends with a bunch of people having their faces melted or getting blown up or something. It's actually a comfort that you can usually expect something bad to happen. The violence culminates in the surprisingly dramatic season finale, when the world leaders who have been trying to sabotage the band really get serious about it. The second season started late last year and took a break, but should be returning some time soon.

Yakuza

Yakuza isn't an amazing, huge game. It's a solid, somewhat quirky one. But we need those too. It's a strange mix of beat-em-up and RPGs. What I might like most about it is its charm, not from a content sense, since it's a crime story filled with violence and sometimes gratuitous swearing, but just a gameplay sense. The button-mashing combat, the leveling up, the text boxes, the loading between fighting and normal play, the little shops full of items; they're all almost nostalgic in this modern world of minimalist interfaces and streamlined menus. It's a throwback to the old days.

It's a pretty enjoyable throwback too, most of the time. Besides the storyline, there are dozens of sidequests and other activities everywhere in the little area of Tokyo they lit you run around in, and you can ignore the main game for long stretched if you don't feel like dealing with it. The combat has some interesting wrinkles to it, especially if you seek out training to learn some new moves. It's usually pretty straightforward, but there are lots of items sprinkled about and techniques that are useful in various situations. It starts getting pretty frustrating near the end, when you start getting attacked by a certain type of enemy that tends to dodge everything and hit you with ridiculous spinning kicks and you get ganged up on, all culminating with an annoying boss who actually has bodyguards that revive themselves shortly after being beaten. But as long as you don't do what I did once and accidentally get into an unwinnable (almost no health against 4 guys with knives, one of whom can't be forced to drop his) fight that forced me to quit and lose an hour's progress, it shouldn't be too bad.

The story itself is pretty interesting. I wish they included the original voice track, because as fun as it is to hear Michael Madsen and Mark Hamill try to play Japanese characters, I was annoyed by the common overacting and inconsistent pronunciation. But it's still a good mob story, with plenty of twists, mysteries, and likable characters. The gameplay throughout is a constant repeat of running to the next fight besides a diversion or too, but wanting to know what was up kept me going. It got a little silly at the end, with some clichés, pointless extending of the climax, and a nearly interminable ending, but overall it encapsulated a pretty fun game well.

Futurama: Bender's Big Score

After a long absence that never really felt like it was because of DVD sets and reruns, Futurama finally returns with some new content. Bender's Big Score is the first of four full movies that will follow each other (At least the second appears to be a direct continuation of this one) and be shown on Comedy Central as a total of 16 episodes. Watching the movie, you can easily see where the breaks will be, as about every 22 minute block seems to have its own repeated ideas and climax. The movie is rarely as funny as the best episodes of the series, but it's still quite enjoyable throughout. Lots of old characters and gags return, and it's nice to see some of them, although I hope they got all of that out of their systems so the rest of the movies can be pure, original entertainment.

The plot of the movie is really quite intricate. They've generally avoided time travel in the past because of the problems it can cause, but they dive right into the topic this time around. It didn't take long to find some problems, because while they make it clear from certain things that Futurama allows travelers to the past to influence events, yet there are some inconsistencies with how Fry interacts with his family and what we've seen before. In general they handle it fairly well though, and it's quite a fun story. It's cool to just have the characters back and also see some new ones, like the first appearance of the Channukah Zombie, played by Mark Hamill. It was odd how the two musical numbers were crammed into the same quarter of the movie, but they were both pretty nice, and the animation and computer effects are as pretty as ever. The DVD also has some good special features, including the ever popular commentary by the creators and actors. If you're a fan, you have to get this, to ensure the show's continuation.