Damage Control

Prior to the release of the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning demo, I was worried about the game’s potential success. It is, after all, an EA Partners game; the same program that failed in marketing Alice: Madness Returns and Shadows of the Damned at any significant capacity. Fans of western RPGs are also coming off playing through Skyrim, so expectations for other games in the genre are going to be through the roof, which may not be a good thing for Amalur’s perception despite having the designer of Morrowind on board.

 

Now that the demo’s available, I’m even more worried. It’s a known fact that RPGs don’t tend to demo very well, and Amalur’s represents the pitfalls some of them can have. And more.

 

Were amidst an interesting time where there’s a backlash against long, drawn out tutorials, which contain the feeling of making the player feel like a moron. While that’s not an accurate description of Amalur’s, it takes a while to pick up the pace. Apparently the developers felt it incredibly necessary to explain in detail that this game’s combat is very different from any other WRPG. It has its similarities to other action games like God of War, down to implementing QTEs. Combat in many other WRPGs can be pretty clumsy, this is comparatively a breath of fresh air.

 

It will take about 25 to 40 minutes to finish the tutorial dungeon, depending on how much you want to learn about the game’s back story from the characters, or how much you want to explore. After finishing it, you’ll be granted access to explore the world of Amalur for 45 minutes (which you can check via a timer in the menu). This gives the player time to experience a little of everything the game has to offer. For instance, you’re free to run into the first river you see and swim to a hidden cave to find special treasures. It’s the kind of exploration that makes RPGs of this type a joy to meander around in.

 

When you arrive in the first village in the demo, you can purchase items and weapons -- which you won’t need if you’ve done some extensive exploration before reaching there. You can also go on some quests for the townspeople, though a good deal of them are impossible to complete in the demo (the game tells you which). The quests are when the demo starts getting very addictive, leading to the “just one more” syndrome until time runs out. The main concern, of course, is whether everyone curious about the game will be able to tolerate the tutorial long enough to get to this material.

 

And if they’re not put off by the tutorial dungeon, they might be dissuaded by the plethora of glitches present. It’s loaded with usually-intermittent graphical and sound errors that, while not severe, can be pretty annoying. I was lucky enough not to encounter most of them (I played on PS3, by the way). But there were times where the ground wouldn’t load upon leaving a house in the first village, making it look like I was walking on a giant mirror. Some players have reported that their sound goes in and out, while others claim they lost it completely minutes into the demo. The demo was made on an earlier code, so it shouldn’t be a problem in the final game. But will everyone who played the demo know this?

 

Reckoning has the potential to be an excellent game, but it was already going to have a tough time on the market due to a glut of good-looking titles releasing along with it. But there’s the chance that they’ve gained new purchasers in anyone who was curious about the game, or decided to play through all of it for the Mass Effect 3 DLC gear and found an interesting RPG buried within. The game hits retail shelves on February 7th.

When the nominees for the 84th Academy Awards were announced earlier this week, I (along with most of the entertainment world) was excited to see what was nominated.  I like seeing if there's something I may have overlooked or forgotten about or even missed entirely.  I'm unusual, though: I only really pay attention to two categories.  Animation and music.

I have no problem with the Best Animated Feature category this year, it looks like they actually made an effort to nominate some well deserving films.  Well, at least I got the impression they tried.  The problem with 2011 is that it was a year where nearly every animated film in theatres in North America was a sequel or in the case of Winnie the Pooh, partially a remake.  I'm surprised Rio wasn't nominated, but then at least the Academy saw fit to look beyond the borders of the United States and Japan this year and included two European films, and for that I applaud them.

The Best Original Song category let me down this year in a big way.  In most years, the Academy was able to find five good songs and nominate them.  At their worst, they still managed to nominate three songs.  This year, they decided that the total number of songs deserving nomination was... two.  Wait, what?


I see you driving 'round town
With the muppet I love and I'm like
Cluck you!

The list (and I use the term in the loosest way possible this year) of nominations reads more like the bottom of a rain barrel to me.  It's like the Academy didn't like any of the songs this year and just pulled two out of a hat.  They nominated the song I liked the least from The Muppets, and that's the one I think is going to win this year.

Rio managed to land the other nomination, but I don't think they stand a chance with "Real in Rio".  Maybe if "Hot Wings (I Wanna Party)" was nominated instead, they'd be much more likely to pick up the small statue.

And where was Winnie the Pooh?  Sure, nothing the movie did was particularly epic, but "The Backson Song" at least deserves a mention for its clever lyrics.


Then there's Cars 2.  "Collision of Worlds" is just as clever as "The Backson Song".  It plays up the 007-style spy theme of the movie with a simple guitar riff and the vocals of Robbie Williams while also staying true to the humble country roots of the first movie by bringing back Brad Paisley.

And finally, from Disneynature's African Cats, I would nominate Jordin Sparks' amazing song "The World I Knew".  I've liked her ever since she won American Idol (in fact, she's one of the few American Idol participants, winner or not, that I actually liked), and I think she should've picked up at least a nomination this year.  The lack of overall nominations for anyone just screams "mass Oscar snub".

Not too long after the last plethora of reveals, Capcom just revealed two more characters for Street Fighter x Tekken. These qualify as guest characters, as neither of them are from the Street Fighter or Tekken universe.

 

Also, if you’re a Mega Man fan, you might want to inhale and exhale a few times before proceeding. Make sure you’re completely calm when you read the contents below, because what you see might…no, it’s guaranteed to make you lose your cool.

 

You might have seen the tease at the end of the last trailer, but Capcom confirmed that Pac-Man and Mega Man are both in this game. Apparently Pac-Man was a little too small to fight with his limbs, despite Toro and Kuro managing fine with their similarly small (or smaller) frames. He uses a machine modeled after Tekken’s mimic character Mokujin to fight with, though it won’t be changing fighting styles after each round. He does shoot beams from his eyes, though. The way he uses a robot machine is strangely reminiscent of Mega Man Legends’ Tron Bonne. Uh oh.

 

OK, that should have been enough time for you MM fans to take a deep breath, because oh my lord is this the king of all trolls. Here you have “Mega Man,” which is actually some dude who’s clearly let himself go dressed up as Mega Man, complete with using a gun as a “Mega Buster.” His design is based off the iteration of Mega Man that appeared on the NES cover of the first game, which was to be known as “Bad Box Art Mega Man” in Mega Man Universe before that game was cancelled.

 

And if you haven’t rammed your fist through your screen in sheer rage just yet, there’s a chance you might think it’s just Capcom having some fun. This is definitely not the case, and the proof of this is contained in “Mega Man’s" bio on the official website. Read it in its entirety. Does it remind you of anyone else? His background is eerily similar to Mega Man Volnutt’s from MML. There’s no way this isn’t a complete troll, and I sure hope none of Mega Man’s fans are the violently rebellious type for Capcom’s sake.

 

(Though if you are, you could probably get this game and take your frustrations out on this particular character. Maybe it’s not a troll! They might be just giving you a punching bag.)

 

But if you’re an MM fan, this probably isn’t a surprise at this point. Hell, you almost have to admire the lengths they’re going through to troll them. But really, the biggest surprise here is that both of these are exclusive to the Playstation 3 and Vita versions, meaning they now have five exclusive characters (the aforementioned ones along with Cole from Infamous). It’s interesting to see Sony is springing for all of these exclusive characters, but who knows why they’re doing it.

 

It appears Capcom wasn’t content with leaving Mega Man behind just yet, and wanted just one more opportunity to give them the finger. So now that “Mega Man” has made his way into Street Fighter x Tekken, they’ll probably have to cancel this game too. Aww.

I doubt I'm going to win many friends with this, not unless you the reader have worked in retail, because I know what you're thinking.  If someone's trying to sell you something, they're no better than Satan himself, trying to cheat you out of your hard earned money the first chance they get.  Well, I hate to burst your bubble, but retail workers are people too.

I think what the biggest problem is, is that very few people who work in retail are allowed to really communicate with the customer.  It's like you're not allowed to educate them on how business is supposed to work.  Well, no, I guess you are allowed.  It would be more accurate to say that most people just don't listen.  They think that you're only in it for yourselves and anything you say to explain why you charge the prices you do is just your flimsy way of justifying charging the moon for a cheap Made In China trinket you can get at the dollar store for three bucks.

Come to think of it, there is something a retail worker isn't allowed to do, and that is to stand up for themselves and their rights.  I know, it's a big shock, right?  A retail worker with rights?  What's next, a cat and dog wanting to marry?

It's sad to say, but if you want to work a job in a retail environment, you have to give up the right to be treated like a human being.  Sure, you can treat your customers well and hope that they'll do the same to you in return, but you're not allowed to point out when they're being awful.  You're not even allowed to complain to anyone about it or try to correct the customer's behaviour.  That's up to the boss or manager to do, but even still, if you work for the wrong person, it's you who gets canned if you don't kiss the customer's ass when they act up.

Customers know they have all the power.  I've caught them in a lie at the store I work at when they're trying to rip us off over a return and the first thing they threaten when it looks like they're not going to get their way is that they'll never buy anything from us ever again.  In other words, they punish us for not letting them rip us off.  They could also threaten to being in their attorney and sue us out of existence; I've never been threatened with an imaginary lawyer before, but it can happen.

The customers that I really hate are the clueless ones.  I can't tell whether they're just acting clueless or if they really are a few bricks short of a load.  Is that a shit-eating grin they're hiding behind their eyes as they pass a phone they've dipped liberally in beer towards an unsuspecting me?  Are they trying to fight back laughter as they watch me react as I predictably would to a phone that feels wet and smells disgustingly yeasty?  How long did they practice keeping a snicker out of their voice as they continue to ask me to check if the battery is any good while ignoring my repeated questions about the alcohol content of their device?

I really wish that I could confront customers like this, slap them on the face with a two by four and tell them to stop being disgusting assholes.  I would also lose my job because for some reason, pointing out how bad a customer acts reflects bad on a company.  Oh yeah, and it also reflects bad on a company if someone complains about a customer's bad behaviour to others.  Even though others can see the customer if they're in the store at the same time, if you, the retail worker, so much as breathes a word about it to someone else, that's against your store rules and you could get fired for that, too.  So where does one go to complain about bad customers?  How does one vent if you can't do it to the customer's face or behind the customer's back, so to speak?

Sure, the Internet has a few solutions.  Customers Suck is a community on LiveJournal dedicated to workers' dealings with bad customers.  (Well, actually, there are two of them, one of them containing over a hundred thousand entries, the other only seven thousand or so.)  Something like this is needed because at least on LJ, if you want to hide your entry from the prying eyes of an employer looking for an excuse to fire you, you can do so.  Then again, they can always join the community as well, but they'd have to know about it, first.  And at least the smaller one requires memberships to be approved by a moderator.  So if your employer doesn't already have an LJ, it'd probably look suspicious if they showed up at the community with either no friends listed in their profile, or lots of friends but no "friend of"s, as if they added random LJ users to try to pretend they've been around for a while.  Oh yeah, and being newly registered would be a tip-off, too.

There's also Not Always Right, a site that also collects bad customer experiences.  Not Always Right uses a script format to tell their stories while Customers Suck lets the user decide how best to tell their story.  You can't hide submissions on Not Always Right from the eyes of your boss, but the site allows for greater anonymity by not revealing anything personal about whoever submitted.  Unlike Customers Suck, Not Always Right also includes funny anecdotes about customers, whether they were bad or not.

Although I applaud the Internet for these much-needed services, in the end neither of them are really combating the problem of awful customers.  Someone is not going to let their children zoom around a store where they break perfectly good bottles of alcohol, get away without paying for them, then sit down at the computer later to read LJ and have a three ghost epiphany.  Someone is not going to look at Not Always Right after trying to scam a free pizza from their local restaurant, then call back and apologize and promise to include a large gratuity with their next order.  It's disappointing that neither scenario is likely to happen.  Unless someone like the Gord were in charge of a business, you probably won't get to see very many instances of employees giving bad customers their just desserts and getting away with it.  I don't like to end on a bad note, but let's face it.  Bad customers will always be a fact of life unless there were more retail workers allowed to stand up for themselves, armed with a witty comeback and a nail gun.

Video of the Week

Honestly, retail workers have to deal with a lot of scary shit.


Currently Playing: Radiant Historia (DS)

I don't really feel like talking about this game much tonight, mostly because a lot has already been said on the blog.  I just want to say that everything Angela and Geoff say about this game, so far, is 100% correct.  Am I being lazy?  Absolutely.  But it's always good when other people have already done the work for you.

The idea of a handheld remake of Metal Gear Solid 3 for 3DS left me ecstatic upon hearing its announcement at E3 2010, the same event where the system was unveiled. The game is my favorite game from the last generation of consoles, and effortlessly makes my list as one of the best games I’ve ever crafted. So here we had a version whose overall presentation quality would be enhanced to take advantage of the 3DS’ more powerful hardware. The assumption was that the demo shown then, which allowed for the camera to be manipulated, was an accurate representation of what the final product would look like.

 

Then something peculiar happened. In the months following its announcement, we saw absolutely nothing new. For the rest of 2010, all we received was a direct feed version of the aforementioned demo, called “The Naked Sample” -- which looked good, but needed to be seen in actual 3D to gauge is intended effects. But as far as new information went, there was a long and dreary silence as none of Nintendo’s shows gave us anything. The demonstration at Nintendo’s show just before the system’s launch consisted of showing cut scenes from the PS2 version.  The game itself finally surfaced at E3 2011, and it turns out that cut scene demonstration was more accurate than we thought.

 

Despite the initial promises of a remake, Metal Gear Solid 3D: Snake Eater is really just a port based on the original PS2 version. And “based on” should be taken literally there, because it doesn’t even look as good as the original in some places. That’s partly because of the reduced aspect and pixel ratio the 3DS has, which is even lower than the PSP, which could mean its graphical fidelity won’t be on par with even Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. We knew that some of the models in that demo weren’t completely accurate, though, due to Snake’s outfit looking nothing like any of the outfits he wears through the duration of MGS3 -- it actually resembles his PW outfit in some ways. But there’s no denying that the real game was far below expectations.

 

There are few changes in the port, too. Being able to walk while in a crouched position is a nice new feature, but not when coupled with the 3DSs default controls, which have you manipulating the camera with the face buttons a la PW. Fortunately, the Circle Pad Pro was introduced, and this game takes advantage of it. Also nice are the changes to the Close Quarters Combat (CQC) moves that Naked Snake can perform, with each action being marked to the d-pad. That’s far better than the original’s setup, in which the player performed moves based the circle button’s pressure sensitivity -- which made it easy to accidentally kill a soldier if you wanted to incapacitate them because you held the circle button too long. This was very frustrating, and this new method is far better. Also, being able to select weapons, items, and having the ability to patch Snake up after a serious injury by using the touch screen is also nice, especially for the last one.

 

But those extras still don’t make this a substantial package, especially one that’s selling for $40. MGS3D will be selling for the same price as the recently released Metal Gear Solid HD Collection (it released for $50, but has since dropped to $40). It’s priced the same way in other territories, which means there aren’t going to be a lot of gamers who will choose this rather than playing the game in HD on PS3 or 360 (which also includes Metal Gear Solid 2 and Peace Walker HD), or Vita if they want a handheld version (though that one doesn’t include PWHD). Speculation suggests that Konami didn’t have much faith in the 3DS during the period leading up to and following the system’s launch, and decided to reduce the budget to this.

 

It’s a shame this had to happen, because the current team at Kojima Productions was definitely capable of making a good MGS3 remake. The game deserves better than this, but this was probably to be expected from Konami these days. So, what's the point?

After playing through Resident Evil 5 nearly three years late to the party, I realized that the benefactors of playing a game well after everyone else has. Sure there are some downsides -- good luck finding someone to play with after most people you know refer to it as “old news,” if they were interested in it at all -- but there’s one swell aspect of it: the ability to adjust expectations accordingly. I consider its predecessor, Resident Evil 4, one of the best games I’ve ever played, and my second favorite game from the last generation of consoles (behind Metal Gear Solid 3), but I knew that I should lower my expectations for its sequel.

 

And it worked! Probably. It’s definitely not as consistently good as RE4, but RE5 is an enjoyable game despite having some sections that could have been designed better. I also began realizing that anyone who said it was a legitimately bad game inherited the internet’s ability to only deal in extreme absolutes. There are much worse games than RE5, but its reaction from some fans represents the pitfall of being way too psyched for a game after glancing at too much media disseminated from the developers and glowing previews.

They're undoubtedly looking down at some of that body horror.

One of the biggest complaints about the game was its protagonist, Chris Redfield, having a partner always tagging along with him throughout Africa, Sheva Alomar. Her story-based reasons for travelling with him are fine, a quest to find out what’s happening to the people on the continent, and stop the T-Virus from spreading any further. Her existence, though, was considered a problem for the game’s flow, regardless of whether she was being controlled by the AI or a human. The AI, admittedly, sometimes doesn’t do things as well as a human would -- attacking the enemy with melee attacks in lieu of wasting bullets is a lost concept to them -- but they have some benefits too. There were times where I didn’t know enemies were present in the vicinity of certain areas, but AI Sheva knew to shoot them. They’re also capable of hitting targets from long distances with regular weaponry, ones a human would struggle with, especially early on.

 

The problem with having a partner tagging along for gamers, human or not, was that it ruined an atmosphere that could have been particularly horrifying while venturing through solo. While this is true, the environment not being as harrowing as it could be is entirely because they just weren’t designed that way. The disappointment had to do with Capcom making this a survival/action title rather than the survival/horror experience some wanted. There’s plenty of body horror present, which looks all the more realistic because of its HD graphic sheen. But there are plenty of daytime areas, which don’t invoke as much fear as they could if they were enshrouded in darkness.

Though things can get a little creepy within more claustrophobic areas.

RE4 definitely took more of an action-esque approach than the older games, and RE5 is the logical extension to that. The focus is less on fearfully keeping the enemy back while conserving ammo and more on shooting bad dudes. The problem is that the tank-style controls don’t really lend themselves to an action game well at all times, which can lead to some unfortunate mistakes from the player. This isn’t a very common problem, though, since most of the game is designed around not being able to run and gun.

 

But this can be especially jarring when you’re fighting someone like Wesker, who’s definitely fast enough to zoom up and break the necks of both of your characters before they could make a move. This is a problem Capcom realized too; it’s the reason why they added the ability to move and shoot simultaneously starting with the more recent crop of titles. It’s slightly less jarring when characters are capable of techniques you can’t do on your own in cut scenes, but that’s a typical video game issue.

 

If you even the least bit familiar with RE5, you probably remember all of the racial connotations the game supposedly had, along with the back and forth arguments between two parties that never came to a real conclusion. That cooled down significantly shortly after the game’s release, but it’s risen again in the wake of Resident Evil 6’s announcement…for some unknown reason. As an African American, I don’t see this game as racist, but there are stacks upon stacks of unfortunate implications in a few areas. The idea of a beefy (perhaps from steroid abuse, considering Chris’ appearance in previous RE games) Caucasian shooting up a bunch of Africans does not look good, but it’s not racist.

When things get action packed, they push it up to eleven.

But some of the enemies later in the game generated some legitimate tension, and not the kind that’s usually expected from an RE game. They’re dressed in wild African garb, and seemingly shout gibberish and assorted noises while attacking the protagonists. They’re reminiscent of enemies seen out of an episode from an old Hanna-Barbera cartoon, the kind that may have been conspicuously absent from syndication because it might be seen as a little insensitive. Some of those enemies were not good choices.

 

But this didn’t get me too upset, honestly. It was nowhere near as infuriating as the inventory system, which remained limited for the entirety of the game. Upon starting it, my assumption was that it would begin with not having much room for a plethora of items, which is adequate when starting the game. However, there are no options to expand it a la RE4, meaning it was eventually tough to store all the items I need for a given chapters. The fact that every weapon and item couldn’t be mapped to the quick select functions is also a problem.

See? Who said this game doesn't have any horrifying parts!?

Some of the side modes are also very enjoyable, especially The Mercenaries. I didn’t think it would be that appealing initially, but playing each level more to unlock more characters, stages, and obtain a higher grade became addictive very quickly. Playing some obviously broken characters like any Wesker iteration and some of Sheva’s was also fun, along with playing characters that aren’t playable in any of the single-player modes.  Unfortunately, Capcom realized how much people enjoyed it when they decided to release The Mercenaries 3D for 3DS, a standalone package for full price.

 

While RE5 isn’t quite as good as RE4, it’s still a well done game. Hopefully the areas the development team didn’t get quite right will be polished for RE6, a game that’s definitely going further in the survival/action direction for some parts. Of course, if you don’t like that, there’s a classic-style survival/horror experience in Resident Evil: Revelations for 3DS.

I haven’t written a feature for Recommended Soundtracks in a while, so it must take a really special soundtrack to revive a dormant feature, right?

 

That’s possibly what you were thinking upon seeing the title, if you’re a regular of the site. But no, Virtua Fighter 3’s soundtrack isn’t exactly a mind-blowing experience. I would describe it as spiffy listening material, especially if you have a sense of nostalgia for 90s video game soundtracks -- especially from Sega.  And really, that was all I needed for incentive to revive a feature that I killed of because I thought each entry was becoming tepid. It’s the little things that matter, is what I’m saying.

 

I came up with the idea for this post after watching an excellent Japanese player match between an Aoi and Pai from Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, a game that includes tracks from previous Virtua Fighter games. I hate to use the word “epic” because it’s so criminally abused these days, but this is one of the rare instances where it’s perfectly applicable. I actually watched that match back in November, meaning while I had the idea of reviving the feature with this particular soundtrack, I decided to shelve it because, well, I didn’t feel like writing it -- primarily because of the aforementioned “they’re boring” problem.

 

After listening to the entire soundtrack again for the first time in about a decade, I decided to go through with it. The composers for Virtua Fighter 3 Sound Tracks are Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, Takayuki Nakamura (using the pseudonym “Sega Sound Team”), and Fumio Ito. It wouldn’t be a good feature if there was only one track that stood out, of course. As before, I’ll only feature three tracks here.

It’s fitting that we should start with Pai’s theme, whose full name is “Open the Deadgate ‘Pai on the Roof’” by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi. (They all have names like that, some of which venture into Engrish territory.) This theme was always the first you heard when starting the Arcade mode in the Dreamcast version, because you fought every opponent in the same order every time you played. It’s not the most fitting theme for a stage whose arena consists of a rooftop in China, but when it’s one that so expertly wavers between a slow and fast tempo without sounding bizarre in any sense, it doesn’t matter.

 

Just the same, “Underground ‘Sarah in the Subway’” doesn’t sound like something that’s most appropriate for a subway theme, but it manages to get away with it because it’s such a good track. Notice the use of 8-bit style music mixed in with the then-modern sound (the mid-90s, specifically). Takayuki Nakamura used it to good effect. The only problem with the track is that it’s short, which was a problem with many of VF3’s.

 

Not to say there aren’t any lengthy tracks in the game, though. Take “Gostroptosis ‘In the Cave’” from Fumio Ito, for instance, which is nearly three minutes in length. Though it’s admittedly yet another example of a track that doesn’t quite fit the stage it’s used for, but can be excused because it’s that good. It is, in fact, my favorite track on the entire soundtrack. When I listen to it, I like to close my eyes and think of a busy-yet-peaceful metropolitan environment that’s either well lit by nighttime lights or amidst sunset. But you’re more likely to have your own nostalgic associations upon listening to it. It honestly sounds like the kind of mellow track you’d find in an Outrun game, but it fits VF too.

 

Sega’s soundtracks, like many, are a product of the time they were produced in. They have a distinct sound where anyone who’s been playing games for a good amount of time -- and spent a good portion of their free time doing so -- is capable of pinpointing what era a particular piece of video game music is from by simply listening to it. VF3 released in arcades in 1996, a time where Sega was in their prime -- especially in Japan, since the Saturn wasn’t very successful outside of that territory. Its soundtrack was yet another sign of their uniformity in terms of the music their internal composers created, in that it was uniformly excellent material.

Sometimes, the worst kinds of sequels are ones that expose flaws in the original iteration; the kind fans never realized or criticized before. It happens when the developers found faults in their work. Uncharted 2 is a good example of this, but in this particular case, Rocksteady Studios can be forgiven. Batman: Arkham Asylum was the team’s first project, one that successfully established them as a viable development house. It was a licensed game in a series with very few good adaptations and plenty of bad ones. Somehow, they managed to churn out the best Batman game ever, and one of the best licensed games around.

 

After AA’s success, Rocksteady started development on the sequel: Batman: Arkham City. We already knew they already had plans for the game, the premise of which was given via Easter Eggs in the previous game. After finishing AA, it didn’t really seem like it showed evidence of wasted potential after playing it, but this game proves that Rocksteady wanted to dip a little further into the Batman universe to create a more, well, Batman-like authentic experience. The result is an open world game that has you, as Batman, travelling around the city to thwart the plans of anyone with nefarious purposes.

This part is authentic too!

The Easter Egg hidden within AA was a secret room within Warden Quincy Sharp’s office. Sharp was amidst of a mayoral run, and within the room contained blueprints to turn Arkham Asylum into a full-blown city for criminals to inhabit, with Sharp claiming the island of Blackgate Penitentiary wasn’t enough to confine a high volume of criminals. Needless to say, Sharp was successful with his campaign. His popularity skyrocketed after he took all the credit for stopping the inmate uprising in AA, even though he was powerless to stop it. A shame Batman isn’t the type to show off his victories.

 

You’ll begin the game as…Catwoman!? One of the game’s biggest new features involves players going through parts of the storyline as Catwoman; well, if you redeemed the Online Pass included with new copies of the game, which quickly became a fetish for big publishers after they saw how much money EA made from them. The theory went that Catwoman’s gameplay sections were stripped from the main game and made DLC by Warner during the game’s development, but that only feels true for the first section. The rest of Catwoman’s quests are almost entirely unrelated to Batman’s aside from a few short scenes. That’s not defending the inanity of this practice, of course.

Fanservice? Absolutely.

You could likely predict the differences between Catwoman and Batman’s maneuverability. Catwoman’s quicker on her feet and can attach to certain ceilings to make navigating around tighter rooms stealthily easier. That’s especially useful if they’re full of armed enemies. However, she doesn’t come equipped with a utility belt, meaning she doesn’t have as many options at her disposal. Her whip isn’t as useful as Batman’s grappling hook, so she’ll take longer to travel around Arkham City. She also has lower defense; if she’s spotted by numerous armed guards, you’d better hope you can get away from them quick, because they can take her down quickly. All of those flaws relegate her to the status of a good secondary character, but she’s no replacement for Batman.

 

Though the previous game featured the guest appearances of a few villains, the game’s big focus was on The Joker. The second game has a mostly similar approach, but it uses its collection of villains more effectively. The Joker is, again, the overarching villain of this tale, but both Batman and Catwoman will contend with the likes of The Penguin, Two-Face, and many others. It’s as if they tried to shove everyone they could into this game, as long as they fit in. This game, like AA, also features cameo appearances from other heroes and villains from the Batman universe.

 

One of the most commonly stated problems players have had with AC is that it’s not as tightly knit as AA because of its open world structure. If you’re the type that likes to wander from one path to the other quickly as the game designers have planned, then it’s a legitimate complaint. AC is similar to AA in the sense that you don’t have to pursue the plot immediately and can busy yourself with side quests, but saying this in that context really undermines how many side quests AC has. It almost feels like there are too many. They range from saving random people (which are sometimes seemingly random) to encountering villains Rocksteady couldn’t fit into the story but wanted to insert into the world in some semi-significant manner. It may not feel as “tightly knit,” but it sure does a better job in making you feel like Batman. And that’s OK.

You'll run into plenty of instances like these.

Every playable character in the game (that’s including the challenge maps) have to contend with bigger crowds of enemies in AC, a design decision to balance the a plethora of new melee attacks AC has given to them. For instance, if three enemies begin to attack simultaneously, they can all be taken down by hitting the counter button three times. It’s a better alternative to countering one and hoping the punches coming from the other guys just happen to miss, or trying to dodge the attack to narrowly miss it -- the latter of which is much easier for Catwoman to perform. Batman also has an arsenal of tools to deal with enemies, much more than any other playable character. Not that you should be surprised to hear that.

 

The music is a big step up from the last game. It’s tough to measure up to the work of someone whose compositions were as great as the late Shirley Walker’s, but both Nick Arundel and Ron Fish -- returning from the first game -- composed music that sounds like a fusion between the material from Batman: The Animated Series and the Christopher Nolan-directed Batman films. That’s fitting considering what the game’s tone is inspired by, especially in the case of the former with mainstay comic book writer Paul Dini wrote the stories for both games.

Yikes! Someone doesn't look too good.

AC features a number of well known voice actors. The twist, however, is that they’re featured in roles where most players won’t know them. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamil return as Bruce Wayne/Batman and The Joker (despite the latter’s initial reluctance to reprise the role), though Arleen Sorkin apparently wasn’t available to reprise the role of Harley Quinn. But that’s OK since the venerable Tara Strong does a great job mimicking her tone. Meanwhile, would you have known that Nolan North -- aka Nathan Drake or Desmond Miles or plenty of others -- was the voice of The Penguin unless someone told you? Probably not. To a lesser extent, there’s also Troy Baker’s performance as Two-Face, though you can still tell it’s him if you listen very closely.

 

Arkham City might seem more drawn out because of each objective being further from the other, but getting to them is part of the fun. It’s not quite as authentic as having Batman go around Gotham City and saving a number of innocent civilians who tend to populate most areas, but it’s not as if Rocksteady would have had time to develop that. What the dev team did was make their best attempt at crafting an authentic experience, one very evidently made with love for the franchise. They already made the best Batman game around with Arkham Asylum, and they somehow managed to top themselves. Hopefully, they can do this again with Arkham World.

 

 Nah, just kidding. That doesn’t exist. Not to say there won’t be a sequel, of course.

With one episode left before the character leaves the television show for good, Catherine Willows finds herself struggling to stay alive!  A fatal conspiracy seems out to get her, to kill her in order to keep what she knows about them a secret!  As the tension mounts and the body count rises, will she survive her final episode or will she leave the way Warrick Brown did, shot to death in her final moments?  I can’t help you with that question, I’m just here to review the games.

Fatal Conspiracy was the last of three Xbox 360 games based on the CSI franchise, so I suppose this was the end of the trilogy, if you could consider it one.

Unlike the complete upgrade Deadly Intent received, not a lot changed between it and Fatal Conspiracy.  In fact, the only real upgrades that Fatal Conspiracy received were in the writing of the game and the functionality of the graphics.  Remember last week, when I mentioned that Deadly Intent seemed broken?  Evidence was supposed to do a floaty, spinny thing on the screen but it didn’t?  They fixed that when they made Fatal Conspiracy.  Everything worked the way it’s supposed to, so although Fatal Conspiracy recycled a lot of what was developed for Deadly Intent, it felt much more polished.


I think what I got a kick out of the most in Fatal Conspiracy was the voice acting.  While playing, I had developed a habit of interacting with the characters.  If they said something, I said something out loud in response that roughly corresponded to the dialogue I was about to select next during a witness interview or a suspect interrogation, then the character responded.  Anyone listening to me play must’ve thought that I was having a conversation with the characters.  Sure, voice acting is nothing new in a video game, but it’s something that I liked about this one.

It helped that in Fatal Conspiracy (and the previous two games as well), the actual actors from the show (with few exceptions) reprised their roles.  They didn’t sound wooden either, as can sometimes happen when lines are read into a microphone rather than acted out in person with other actors.  But that was not surprising, they’d had years of portraying their characters and they knew exactly how they would say their lines on the show.  I’ve heard of video games based on movies whose voice acting sounds forced despite the same actors having portrayed their characters in front of a camera, and I wonder if it’s caused by a lack of direction or a lack of familiarity with the character.  In the case of the CSI games, most of the actors already spent years with their characters and it showed.

Not only did I feel like I was working with the characters from the show to solve each crime, I felt like I was actually in CSI’s version of Las Vegas.  Each crime scene was rendered well and shown in all its glory.  From the cabin in the wilderness (where I could see for miles) to the burned out day spa, no matter where I went, I could easily have been on an actual set piece from the show.


It also felt like I was playing something with an actual plot to it.  Fatal Conspiracy was written by some of the same people who contribute to the television show.  As a result, the writing was a marked improvement over the previous two games.  Rather than retain the “crime of the week” format where each crime could’ve been filmed for the show and used as filler to fulfill the network’s order, each case in Fatal Conspiracy was specifically designed to be played in a proper order.  An ongoing storyline weaved its way through the first four cases and then took the spotlight for the fifth and final case of the game.  Also, unusual for a game like this, it ended in a cliffhanger.  I know that not all cases were solved neatly and tightly on the show, but they eventually got their perps.  If a villain was featured in more than one episode on the show, he or she eventually got caught and paid for their crime.  So with that in mind, I fully expect another Xbox 360 CSI game to come out.  I just don’t know when.

You see, Laurence Fishburne, who played Dr. Raymond Langston, decided not to renew his contract on the show and so this year he was replaced by a new character played by Ted Danson.  I already mentioned that Marg Helgenberger’s character, Catherine Willows, is also leaving the show as of this coming Wednesday.  She is being replaced in February by a new character played by Elisabeth Shue.  If Ubisoft were developing another CSI game for the Xbox 360 right after Fatal Conspiracy, they’d have to completely rewrite their scripts now, create two new character models (three if they want to include the other new girl, played by Elisabeth Harnois), all the while trying to complete the game and publish it before any more actors leave the show.  I don’t think that’s really going to be a problem, since the actors love what they do and they seem to have become quite a family.

Still, the past year has seen two major departures from the show and I’m beginning to wonder if the series is going to continue or not.  I suppose they could go the Law & Order route and just keep creating new characters for the series as necessity requires.  As long as the actors enjoy it and the audience is there, it shouldn’t be a problem.

But still, how will Ubisoft make more CSI games if the cast keeps changing?


All images borrowed from xbox.com