My Take Radio

Scott Pil­grim is a 6-part graphic novel series that recently con­cluded with the release of the live action film adap­ta­tion and a comic tie-in game. The final vol­ume of the novel series released at the end of July of 2010 while the movie was released in the mid­dle and the game at the end of August (The Playsta­tion 3 ver­sion released first in the mid­dle of the month while the Xbox 360 ver­sion released towards the end). This is a down­load­able game that only costs $10 (or 800 Microsoft Points). This is a great value con­sid­er­ing most down­load­able games release at $15 (1200MSP) or more. Is it so cheap because it’s only worth some pocket scratch, or is it actu­ally a very good deal wor­thy of the price? Read on to find out. (con­tinue reading…)

Peo­ple should not call Bizarre Cre­ations’ Blur “Mario Kart for adults” because it is not giv­ing the game enough credit. Blur is an arcade racer with power ups and an online lev­el­ing sys­tem that reminds me of Call of Duty: Mod­ern Warfare’s pres­tige sys­tem. At its base, Blur is sim­i­lar to Need For Speed: all of the cars are licensed and each vehi­cle has its own attrib­utes. Unlike the open world of Burnout Par­adise, Blur has you zip through city and coun­try­side on closed tracks (there is no traf­fic). There are rivals you must beat in what I call “boss fight races” to unlock their cars for use (race for pinks). Some cars are bal­anced and some spe­cial­ize in areas like grip, drift or off road abil­ity. This is where the Need For Speed sim­i­lar­i­ties end.

(con­tinue reading…)

I had a funny feel­ing about this game when it was first announced. It looked like some­thing that could be fan­tas­tic; it also looked a hell of a lot like a cheap Burnout clone. I said that I would reserve judg­ment. The demo came out and I played it sev­eral times. I per­son­ally love dri­ving games but even I admit that they can be a bit tedious and repet­i­tive. Games like Burnout par­adise have done every­thing they can to keep that tedium to a min­i­mum. This demo did not. The sav­ing grace there was that it was a demo and as we all know a demo may not rep­re­sent the fin­ished prod­uct. Finally I got to play the game and I am going to be hon­est: Split/Second is a real mixed bag. You have some absolutely fan­tas­tic race moments and then you have some unbal­anced game­play and graph­i­cal prob­lems that make you want to scream. Even with this review, I say try it and judge for yourself.

(con­tinue reading…)

Let’s face a very sim­ple fact: you can­not rein­vent the wheel – but you can make that sumbitch run a hell of a lot faster and smoother so that onlook­ers go “ooooooooooooooh.” Ladies and gen­tle­men, pre­pare to start your engines on the super­charged 2010 Street Fighter IV model. I have only had the game for a day and I played until the Grim Reaper was try­ing to take the con­troller from me so I am not going to do a full review—besides, at heart, if you have the orig­i­nal release then you know the basics of this game. I am going to focus on what is new and what’s good and bad. (con­tinue reading…)

Ever had a bad day? I mean a really bad day? Well War, the first Horse­man of the Apoc­a­lypse, doesn’t wanna hear you whine about the day you spilled cof­fee on your brand new, white silk suit. One hun­dred years ago, he had the mother of them all. All he wants now is to right the wrongs he com­mit­ted that day and find out who set him up, and then make them have one final, excru­ci­at­ingly bad day. Dark­siders puts you in con­trol of War and lets you unleash rage the likes of which have never been seen before. Even cer­tain Spar­tans would tell this guy to calm down, Unfor­tu­nately, anger man­age­ment is not in this guy’s vocabulary.

This folks, is your tutorial.

STORY

In the begin­ning there was only Heaven and hell. Mankind came to be amidst this eter­nal strug­gle for power and it is believed that man is the key to it all. A truce was called between the blessed and accursed forces; a pact sealed with seven signs which were not to be bro­ken until the time of the end­war. Quick check…yep, the seals are all still intact, so…why is the first Horse­man on Earth lay­ing waste to well, every­thing? Leave it to Vigil Games to give you a tuto­r­ial in the mid­dle of the actual apoc­a­lypse. You fight your way through human, demon and angel, killing indis­crim­i­nately until you come upon Abbadon, leader of the Angelic forces and Uriel, his lieu­tenant. Abbadon meets a swift end at the hands of Straga, leader of the cho­sen demons and one nasty indi­vid­ual. You face off with Straga and teach him that depth per­cep­tion is not for big nasty demons but before you can kill him you sud­denly lose all of your pow­ers and real­ize that you have bro­ken sacred law. Straga laughs as he takes advan­tage of this and crushes you to death. Here’s the funny part: one hun­dred years later your bosses, known as the Charred Coun­cil, revive you in order to carry out your pun­ish­ment – death. Accord­ing to them the seals were not bro­ken and War was not sum­moned. He swears that he received the call and begs the oppor­tu­nity to prove his loy­alty or die try­ing. They bind this scrag­gly lit­tle turd of a wraith to you called the Watcher to make sure you stay in line and send you back to (now) post-apocalyptic Earth. You have been stripped on roughly ninety-nine per­cent of your true power. Still, you are War and you are deter­mined to show who­ever is behind your betrayal why you are the one true her­ald of the end of all things. (con­tinue reading…)

A few months ago, I had the plea­sure of play­ing Dark­siders at the New York Comic Con. The game got my atten­tion due to the Joe Madureira art. When I apprached the booth, I was sur­prised that not too many peo­ple were play­ing. My first response was “ahh– it prob­a­bly isn’t that good”. When I finally played it, I was proven wrong imme­di­ately and was hooked. I par­tic­u­larly enjoyed the design and the huge bat­tles with mul­ti­ple attack­ers. After meet­ing Joe Madureira at the booth, I asked who could I con­tact to dis­cuss this game on the show. I was imme­di­ately referred to THQ which gladly let me inter­view Haydn Dal­ton & Han Rand­hawa to pro­mote this game.

I have included the inter­view below for those that missed it. Click play to check it out:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

After play­ing and com­plet­ing the game, I will say that to me it was a fun and engaing thrill ride. I am not going to do a typ­i­cal  review where I focus on indi­vid­ual aspects because it really doesn’t do this game jus­tice and I per­son­ally pre­fer a review on the over­all prod­uct. The syn­op­sis is pretty straight­for­ward. The main char­ac­ter War , the sec­ond of the Four Horse­men Of The Apoc­a­lypse, is falsely accused of start­ing the Apoc­olypse and is sen­tenced to death by the Charred Coun­cil, a third group that over­sees the bat­tle between Heaven & Hell. War sug­gests going forth to clear his name and if he dies, the sen­tenced can get car­ried out. The Charred Coun­cil agrees and they send him back to a post-apocalyptic Earth with a Watcher (voiced by the great Mark Hamill), who accom­pa­nies War with the intent of keep­ing him on a short leash. I don’t want to spoil the story for any­one that hasn’t played, so I’ll leave it at that. But I will share some game­play footage:

War begins his quest with the Chaoseater Sword and tho­rugh­out the game receives new weapons and upgrades as he fights the tower guardians. By the mid­dle of the game, War is no longer alone, as he is later accom­pa­nied by his trusty steed Ruin who proves quite use­ful in the com­ing battles.

Many review­ers com­pared this game to God Of War imme­di­ately, but while that is true, I think the puzzle-solving aspects og the game as well as the over­all pre­sen­ta­tion dif­fer­en­ti­ate it quite a bit and move it more towards a grown-up Leg­end Of Zelda. Dark­siders thrives on HD dis­plays with it’s vibrant col­ors and fan­tas­tic sound and should be played as such to fully enjoy it.

If you are a fan of hack & slash adven­ture games I rec­om­mend that you pick this game up and give it a shot. I am sure you’ll enjoy it. After sell­ing over one mil­lion copies, which out­sold it’s release com­peti­tor Bayonetta(which I am now play­ing ), and based on the end­ing, I can guar­an­tee you will be see­ing a lot more of War in the near future.

Great job Vigil & THQ

Rec­om­men­da­tion : Buy

inFA­MOUS box art

inFA­MOUS

                Funny thing about the apoc­a­lypse: it hasn’t hap­pened as of yet, but we all pretty much know what to expect based upon how it would come about. We all say “If soci­ety came crash­ing down I’d do such and such.” We all have pretty much decided whether we will be good or bad once the rules we fol­low no longer apply. The ques­tion is if it really did all come crash­ing down, would things go the way we planned? Enter Empire City, your stan­dard New York City clone and the world of inFA­MOUS, the first PS3 game from the mak­ers of the Sly Cooper series. You are Cole Mac­Grath, your aver­age every­day nobody with an aver­age every­day job that is going nowhere. Sud­denly every­thing changes and you are the cen­ter of atten­tion. One has to ask, “Do I make the best of the sit­u­a­tion or do I just take advan­tage of it and make things bet­ter for myself?” As you play through the game, almost every­thing you do involves a moral choice; choices that cumu­la­tively shape your char­ac­ter and deter­mine how you will progress. Imag­ine GTAIII with a con­science. You might think that sounds like no fun at all – but then you pick up this game and see just how wrong you are.

STORY

                Cole Mac­Grath is a bicy­cle mes­sen­ger. He loves his girl­friend, Trish Dai­ley and his best friend Zeke Jedidiah Dun­bar is like a brother to him. His life is sim­ple: he does his job, hangs out with Zeke get­ting into what­ever trouble/fun they can find and he spends time with the woman he loves, who coin­ci­den­tally is a para­medic. This comes in really handy the day he is told to deliver a pack­age to the His­toric Dis­trict. Turns out this pack­age is a “bomb” and it makes Cole ground zero for the worst dis­as­ter Empire City has ever seen – The His­toric Dis­trict is now quite aptly named as it is marked by a huge crater. The War­ren looked like crap before and now it’s worse with half the pen­i­ten­tiary look­ing like some­thing took a huge bite out of it. Last but not least, the Neon Dis­trict is just not look­ing so col­or­ful these days, and this is still dur­ing the good times. Three days after the explo­sion, you wake up and start dis­play­ing elec­tri­cal abil­i­ties Trish and Zeke are scared at first, but they help you con­trol your pow­ers. The sto­ry­telling is done in comic book form which is very fit­ting for the game and on the morn­ing of the four­teenth day, you are given con­trol of Cole and the story begins – but is it the story of a superhero, or that of a supervil­lain? That’s really up to you now. The con­cept of good Cole vs. bad Cole is pre­sented very well and Cole’s appear­ance changes as he becomes more heroic or evil, a la KOTOR or Fable. The only unfor­tu­nate dip in the sto­ry­telling is that the main mis­sions are exactly the same regard­less of your path. I noticed dur­ing one cutscene on my evil playthrough that Cole’s aura was blue (that of the hero) despite my dis­tinctly evil karma rat­ing. This was not enough to take away from over­all enjoy­ment of the game, espe­cially since the numer­ous side mis­sions do change based upon your karma. Good Cole always has to stand alone against his ene­mies. Con­versely, bad Cole at cer­tain points gets to have min­ions. Your ene­mies also change based upon your karma: good Cole only fights bad guys but evil Cole often has to fight every­one. I can only hope to be wrong about this but right now infa­mous has (for me) the best sto­ry­telling in a 2009 videogame. With­out spoil­ing, I will say that the big reveal was a jaw-dropper for me.

Score: 9.9/10

comic book-style cutscenes

GRAPHICS/CAMERA

                Empire City is an “ugly yet beau­ti­ful world.” The city was blown up; the hero is pow­ered by elec­tric­ity so his ene­mies black­out the city to try and ren­der him pow­er­less – there sim­ply is not much to look at in Empire City. Regard­less of this, the back­grounds are well drawn, the fram­er­ate is solid and the char­ac­ter mod­els show that there was effort put in by the artists. This is a post-apocalyptic sce­nario, but only within the actual city. The rest of the world is fine and that is part of the dynamic the game is going for. Empire City is falling apart, both fig­u­ra­tively and lit­er­ally and it shows as you progress. If you become a hero, the city gets brighter as you restore power. If you become infa­mous, the city looks bleak and dis­mal; fewer peo­ple walk the streets and the sky even­tu­ally is red dur­ing the day. It’s a shame that this game is so prone to glitches. There are even places where you can inten­tion­ally glitch the game and have Cole walk and fall through solid objects. There is also some slight popup where cars just appear out of nowhere, espe­cially on bridges. Aside from this, the cam­era has no real issues that I can recall. I had no prob­lem dur­ing boss bat­tles or even reg­u­lar fights in tight alley­ways. The draw dis­tance is awe­some – using “pre­ci­sion” which is basi­cally a sniper mode, you can head­shot an enemy through a crack in their shield from a rooftop. In terms of detail, there are not many games on the PS3 to rival this one; I just hope the inevitable sequel deals with the glitches and popup.

Score: 9.0

Cole vs. Trash Golem

MUSIC/SOUND EFFECTS/VOICE ACTING

                I swear I’d pay to be able to hear the con­ver­sa­tions between Sasha and Kessler – that must be some twisted dia­logue. It’s hard to talk about this game with­out giv­ing spoil­ers because the sto­ry­telling was ter­rific. Audio plays a big part in the game because you spend the entire game col­lect­ing “dead drops,” which are encrypted satel­lite trans­mis­sions left by John, an NSA agent, for his han­dlers to find. It’s a very cool touch that when you are near a dead drop satel­lite that you can hear a trans­mis­sion sound since there are other dishes on rooftops . Cole owns a cell phone, and every­body seems to know his num­ber. He gets a call at least before and after every mis­sion and if they don’t have his num­ber, they just hack his fre­quency and then he has to lis­ten. Then we have Sasha, who speaks to Cole tele­path­i­cally – say­ing more than that would give too much away; just play the game. Top all of that chat­ter with a musi­cal score that just fits no mat­ter where you are in the game and we have a win­ner before we even men­tion the voice act­ing (hear it now at http://www.infamousthegame.com/ ). Jason Cot­tle (Cole) is just bad-ass in this lead role. I would stop right there but the char­ac­ter of John is voiced by none other than Phil LaMarr. If you don’t know who Phil LaMarr is, you prob­a­bly still love him. He’s voiced many char­ac­ters on Car­toon Net­work and car­toons from other sta­tions as well. He’s been in mul­ti­ple video games and….who am I kid­ding? All I have to say is that this is the guy that voiced Samu­rai Jack – the rest is his­tory. You want to know about sound effects – in a game about a guy that con­trols elec­tric­ity? Let’s just say my neigh­bors must have hated me because the explo­sions were insane. The final power you obtain, aptly named Thun­der­storm, will prob­a­bly make the pic­ture frames fall off your wall on a good sur­round sys­tem. Sucker Punch is def­i­nitely going for sen­sory over­load in this depart­ment and I wel­comed every moment of it.

Score: 10

GAMEPLAY

                Cole has a good deal of abil­i­ties at his dis­posal and map­ping them to the PS3 con­troller seemed like this game would be dif­fi­cult to con­trol; for­tu­nately the pac­ing of the game makes move­ment, com­bat and item hunt­ing really sim­ple to pick up if you sit and play the game for five to ten min­utes. It’s really com­fort­ing to have a game with a plat­form­ing ele­ment in it where some­one said “I’m tired of falling to my death.” Now there is the fact that Cole will not die from a fall of any height (unless he lands in water), but no one wants to fall into a group of armed bad guys either. This was fixed by what has been described as “AI jump­ing.” You have to lit­er­ally try to miss a jump off of a rooftop and even then you will prob­a­bly grab onto some­thing. Stay­ing above ground level is a very impor­tant part of com­bat. Cole is extremely durable, but he is not at all bul­let­proof.  You have about a 100% chance of dying if you try to go up against a group of Reapers/Dust Men/First Sons with­out hav­ing any­where to hide and/or recharge. Recharg­ing is the heal­ing dynamic in the game and you can do it any­where there is power (hint: when there is no power, make some by zap­ping things and pow­er­ing them up). Find­ing your way around is never a prob­lem between the mini-map and the L3 but­ton. L3 is prob­a­bly the most impor­tant but­ton in this game, even though it is not an attack. It makes Cole release an EMP wave that makes all pow­ered objects in range of it glow. When you are try­ing to find your last 10 blast shards, this tool will make you drop to your knees like Jerry Fal­well and have you thank­ing Jesus. The com­bat is noth­ing to write home about but I just had so much fun play­ing it. You can chal­lenge your­self by see­ing how long you can stay alive on ground level using just your stan­dard attack. If you can last more than a good two min­utes on hard then you should pat your­self on the back. Once you start get­ting some of the more destruc­tive abil­i­ties you just want to get some pay­back. That ran­dom guy on the rooftop with a rocket launcher needs to pay; so do the garbage golems and trash scor­pi­ons.  Prac­tice hit­ting mov­ing tar­gets at long range; you aren’t using a mouse here and the ene­mies can move really well when they want to. The major dif­fer­ence between good and evil pow­ers is that the good pow­ers are more pre­cise and the evil pow­ers are lit­er­ally for blow­ing stuff up and caus­ing ram­pant car­nage. There is the famous “Cole can­not shoot through a chain link fence” com­plaint, but this was never an issue for me. There is almost always a safe way to get rid of your ene­mies; in the later areas where that becomes less and less pos­si­ble, you should be good enough to impro­vise. You’re a guy who got his pow­ers like two weeks ago; impro­vi­sa­tion is the name of the game – but explain­ing that fur­ther would be a spoiler as well.

Score: 10

REPLAY VALUE/TROPHY & ACHIEVEMENT HUNTING

                For the tro­phy hunters, know up front that it takes min­i­mum two playthroughs for the plat­inum tro­phy. The good news about that is that this game is fun as hell to play and if you get all the col­lectibles on the first playthrough, you only really have to worry about play­ing through the main story. This may sound like I am chump­ing out but I highly rec­om­mend play­ing the game on nor­mal first and on hard the sec­ond time around. The rea­son I say this is to keep some kind of chal­lenge in the game. I got beat into the ground at some points the first time I played and that was the heroic story on nor­mal. My sec­ond time around, I played the infa­mous track on hard and mopped the floor with every­one includ­ing the final boss. When you get good at this game, you just start rag­ing all over the bad guys. The stunts are a bitch to com­plete and you really want to get those out of the way as soon as you can. Unlock­ing all of the abil­i­ties and the upgrades is really just a mat­ter of patience. Until you clear an area, there are always plenty of ene­mies to fight for expe­ri­ence points. There are one or two tro­phies that may seem really dif­fi­cult like Hot­foot and AC/DC, but even those are easy once you deter­mine how you will accom­plish them. Since there is no online com­po­nent to this game, there is no way to tro­phy boost for those look­ing for an easy road. There is not much to do on a third or greater playthrough if you have your plat­inum tro­phy other than just hav­ing some fun, which is easy because the game is not that long. Still, when you are done with this game, you are done – all you really want to know is when the sequel will come out.

Score: 8.9  

OVERALL

                infa­mous was the first big exclu­sive for the PS3 in 2009. Due to tim­ing and early game info, it was heav­ily com­pared to [PROTOTYPE], but hav­ing played both, let me assure you the games are noth­ing alike (and you should expe­ri­ence both for what they are worth). The story in this game was fresh com­pared to what I have been see­ing in games lately and it made room for an inevitable sequel that I for one am dying to play. The audio and video were sim­ply beau­ti­ful and make my mouth water with antic­i­pa­tion of what the sec­ond game could look like (can we please have it in 1080p instead of 720?). The game­play was very good, not great and I def­i­nitely want to see a bit more vari­a­tion in pow­ers in the next iter­a­tion, but sticky grenades and thun­der­storms are oh so sat­is­fy­ing; things like that need no fix­ing. A game that begs to be played twice is def­i­nitely worth the price tag for a pure single-player expe­ri­ence, and this is a gem all PS3 own­ers should have in their library.

Final Score: 9.6

Decide the fate of Empire City.

 A game like this has been long awaited by gamers and comic fans alike. I can only hope to see even bet­ter titles in the future but right now Bat­man: Arkham Asy­lum is the shin­ing gem in what is oth­er­wise mostly a fum­ing pile of feces. In AA, you really get to be Bat­man, not just play as him, which is some­thing I per­son­ally have felt was lack­ing from pre­vi­ous comic titles. This guy gets beaten both phys­i­cally and men­tally and it shows in his face, in his behav­ior and even in his cos­tume.  Unlike most games which have you start and end a mis­sion, fol­lowed by a cut scene where the hero gets some sort of rest time,  AA has you expe­ri­ence a sin­gle, hor­ri­ble night in Batman’s life. Will you have what it takes to deal with The Joker and Harley Quinn, The Rid­dler, Bane, Killer Croc, Mr. Zsasz, Poi­son Ivy and the com­bined insan­ity of both Black­gate and Arkham Pen­i­ten­tiaries back to back? You really need to pick this game up and find out.

STORY

                The game loosely fol­lows the clas­sic Arkham Asy­lum sto­ry­line. The Joker had escaped Arkham Asy­lum some weeks before the start of the game and we open to a speed­ing Bat­mo­bile fer­ry­ing the Clown Prince back to his padded cell. Bat­man remarks to the Com­mis­sioner how the Joker really just gave up and he doesn’t like it – seems his detec­tive sense was on point as at that same moment the Joker breaks free and announces that he is in con­trol of Arkham. He proves this by lock­ing down the island with the help of Harley. Bat­man is going to have to play the Joker’s lat­est game if he wants to keep the sur­viv­ing employ­ees, the Com­mis­sioner and him­self alive long enough to get out of Arkham. It’s a good thing The Dark Knight is always ready for just about any­thing. Best described by a remark the Joker makes to his goons, “He just ONE MAN – one man dressed like a lunatic and armed to the teeth…GO GET HIM!”  With writ­ers from “Bat­man – The Ani­mated Series” and a top notch story to sam­ple from, this was one aspect of the game that pretty much could not have come up short.        

Score: 10/10

GRAPHICS/CAMERA

                To put it bluntly, the graph­ics are stun­ning. The graph­ics are so nice that while this game was in devel­op­ment, I thought it was going to be crap. I said to peo­ple “They are putting a huge focus on graph­ics; the game­play is going to be ter­ri­ble;” I am so proud to report that I was wrong, but I will touch on that later. At the open­ing menu, you get an up close view of our hero and his cos­tume and you can also access unlock­able tro­phies – all of which show the beau­ti­fully ren­dered cast of char­ac­ters (you can stop star­ing at Harley and Ivy now). Tra­vers­ing the island is seam­less and the clos­est thing to a load screen is wait­ing for the doors to open. The only actual load screens are when you start the game and when you restart after dying. When you reach high points in the game, you can­not help but look around at the scenery some­times (and you should be look­ing for land­marks like Wayne Tower, hint hint). Rock­steady Stu­dios has a bright future ahead of them if this is the worst they can do. Bink Video did their usual bang-up job on the cutscenes with the only gripe peo­ple can make being the ter­ri­ble lip sync­ing dur­ing in-game or cutscene speech. While the game is extremely pretty to look at, there are some ugly points. Get­ting the snot beaten out of me in the com­bat chal­lenge rooms I became very famil­iar with both the start and game over screens for the fights. Hav­ing to watch the screen ren­der itself made for some nasty images. See­ing an oth­er­wise amaz­ing back shot of Ivy in Arkham attire is nearly ruined hav­ing to watch that rear end de-pixel and anti-alias. Graph­i­cal flaws in the game are only momen­tary, but they are sadly appar­ent through­out the adven­ture. I thought it was the fact that I was play­ing a con­sole ver­sion, but I have seen the same issues on the PC (which is with­out sur­prise the most beau­ti­ful of the ver­sions). We also have to look at the cam­era in this game which was good for the most part, but far from per­fect. Dur­ing the main game I have to say the cam­era did not bother me. At times it did have some trou­ble with per­sonal space for a third per­son game. The few times the game goes into first per­son mode the cam­era is excel­lent. How­ever, the prob­lems once again pop up when we go to the chal­lenge mode. The preda­tor chal­lenges were fine with the cam­era, but even when you fin­ish those quickly they play much slower than the com­bat chal­lenges. Dur­ing said chal­lenges the cam­era can be tougher to beat than all of the ene­mies put together. Hav­ing to make angle cor­rec­tions is nei­ther fun nor easy when a guy with a bat or gun is right of screen and about to clob­ber you. Let’s not even talk about the times it decides spin around you like the Flash. I am ready for the groans, but I have got to say that it some­times drove me batty.                                                                                                                                 

 Score: 8.9/10

MUSIC/SOUND EFFECTS/VOICE ACTING

                Either I fin­ished this game too quickly or I waited too long to pur­chase sur­round sound; either way I am kick­ing myself for hav­ing to hear this game through only two speak­ers. The sound effects were spec­tac­u­lar, espe­cially in the com­bat rooms where you get to hear each and every punch, kick, gun­shot and espe­cially every bone break­ing.  The more vicious and defen­sive you are, the more you will appre­ci­ate the sound effects and the voice work. Speak­ing of voices, all I have to say are Mark Hamill, Kevin Con­roy and Arleen Sorkin, bet­ter known as The Joker, Bat­man and Harley Quinn, respec­tively. Once again, tal­ents from the incred­i­ble Bat­man car­toon from the 90s lend their voices to their ani­mated roles. The for­mer Jedi Knight sold more than half the copies the moment you heard that trade­mark laugh.  Kevin Con­roy is arguably the best Bat­man ever and he’s never even worn the cos­tume on screen. Same goes for Hamill and the Joker.  The orig­i­nal music for the game was com­posed by Ron Fish, who maybe none of you rec­og­nize, but if you enjoyed the score of god of war II, the PSP Chains of Olym­pus title or you are look­ing for­ward to god of war III, then you’ll want to give this man a freakin’ cookie for the work he put into this game. I could not say any­thing bad about this part of the audio of the game if you paid me.                                                                                                                                                                         

 Score: 10/10

GAMEPLAY

                Right here, right now, give AA the irony award of the year. The game man­ages to give you an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence, with a good deal of inno­va­tion for a Bat­man game, but with absolutely no orig­i­nal­ity to speak of. I will say that you can­not call this game a but­ton masher in terms of  com­bat because if you just but­ton mash, you will die often. The com­bat plays sim­i­lar to games like Crouch­ing Tiger Hid­den Dragon for the Xbox, where you have to fight, dodge and counter ad nau­seam. You sort of have to play a lit­tle rock/paper/scissors with your ene­mies when you have to fight a bunch at once. Maybe I got so much sat­is­fac­tion out of it because this is how Bat­man really fights. Even in the recent Dark Knight movie, you see a lot of block­ing and coun­ter­ing, but you see this in a ton of other games also.  Bat­man hides in the shad­ows to silently pick off armed ene­mies one by one and he uses his detec­tive vision, a very cool fea­ture he’s built into his cowl to see way past his nor­mal field of vision. Both of these have been used in recent Spider-Man games.  Even the remote con­trol batarang is rem­i­nis­cent of shoot­ing arrows and bombs in Heav­enly Sword. The thing is that Rock­steady took all of these ele­ments from mediocre games and com­bined them to make some­thing great. Mak­ing inmates freak out in the preda­tor rooms is truly fun as is putting the extreme hurt on the bums in the com­bat chal­lenge rooms. One rec­om­men­da­tion I have for peo­ple play­ing this for the first time is to try the silent preda­tor chal­lenges before play­ing the story mode. The rea­son I say this is because the chal­lenges offer very lit­tle notice­able spoiler mate­r­ial and the preda­tor chal­lenges teach you very cre­ative take­down meth­ods that you will not learn dur­ing story mode. The biggest beef that I have with the game is that the boss bat­tles could have been much more chal­leng­ing, but I do not think any­one was too mad at the lack of orig­i­nal game­play in AA. As the say­ing goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.                                                   

Score: 9/10

REPLAY VALUE/TROPHY & ACHIEVEMENT HUNTING

                Story mode is a solid, sin­gle player adven­ture that you will want to go all the way through in one sit­ting. You will find your­self play­ing for hours and say­ing “I played for that long?” just because the game does not feel stale as you progress. Ten hours should have you wrap­ping things up and there will be very lit­tle rea­son to play through again unless you chose to not play on hard. For the achieve­ment and tro­phy whores, set the game to hard on your first play through and there will only be two awards that you can pos­si­bly miss. I don’t like post­ing spoil­ers so all I will say is that if you do every­thing that Bat­man would do, you will not miss any­thing. Chal­lenge mode is the evil arch neme­sis of the tro­phy hunter. None of the lev­els are espe­cially dif­fi­cult to beat, but get­ting all three of those bat medals on each stage will drive you to drink and mis­treat small chil­dren. The chal­lenge rooms have leader­boards and the com­pet­i­tive will go try to climb the ranks by tooth and claw. Preda­tor rooms are all about achiev­ing three spe­cific goals while tak­ing out the armed guards faster than the other guy. The com­bat rooms are about being cre­ative as you mash an inmates’ face in. The larger and more var­ied your combo, the more points you get and the higher your rank. The cur­rent 48 achieve­ments apply only to the con­tent on the actual disc. The pre-order “Dem Bones” Scare­crow map, the cur­rently PS3 exclu­sive Joker chal­lenge maps and the “Insane Night”  and “Prey In The Dark­ness” free DLC chal­lenge maps are not needed to get 1000pts/Platinum tro­phy. They are worth your time and def­i­nitely add-ons that make the $60 price tag more accept­able. Free con­tent is free con­tent, but it is espe­cially appre­ci­ated when it is good con­tent and it adds to the “off the shelf” life of your game. One should not that like the “Play as the Joker” con­tent, the Prey In The Dark­ness DLC is also cur­rently PS3 exclu­sive if you live in North Amer­ica (avail­able for 360 out­side of N.A.). Right now the PS3 is the sys­tem to own this game on if you have the option.                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Score: 10/10

OVERALL

                Unless you absolutely hate Bat­man in gen­eral, you should own this game and even if you do you should still at least be play­ing this game. There is very lit­tle to say about it that is neg­a­tive. Solid graph­ics and a solid fram­er­ate with game­play that was prop­erly put together like a Franken­stein mon­ster from other games. It does have the occa­sional graph­i­cal faux pas and the cam­era can be frus­trat­ing at times, but it is noth­ing that is going to make you stop play­ing. Con­sid­er­ing the lack of orig­i­nal­ity in games in gen­eral, more games should fol­low this formula.                                                                                                  

Final Score: 9.6/10