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Here's why I won't be getting it:
- I abhor around-the-shoulder perspective. Not over, around. As in: The camera is just off Batman's elbow and, worse, you can't change it. As it is, it's like I'm only playing with half the screen. I'd much rather have over the shoulder or overhead or first person or anything really.
- It's on rails. So is Bioshock but where B:AA fails is that you're strictly restricted to single corridors with no avenue of exploration. Worse, there's backtracking. I came upon a guard and next to him, a door that the UI told me was locked. Ah. So I'm going the opposite way to do something that will ultimately result in merely unlocking this door I'm right in front of. And I have master-level skills at getting past obstacles exactly like this and I have my utility belt chock full of tools precisely engineered for this specific task. No, no, that's fine, I'll leave you alone and defenseless like the entirety of the rest of the staff so I can go on rails to the other end of the asylum just so I can come back on the same rails.
- Anachronisms. Having gargoyles inside rooms just for Batman to batarang onto is retarded. Just retarded. There are any number of other quasi-plausible objects, like say girders, that Batman could potentially use. Human-sized decorative non-functional gargoyles near the ceiling of a closed room with no skylights? That's ... just dumb.
- Boss battles. The demo ends with the beginning of a boss battle. I don't mind boss battles but this one seemed tacked on and there just for the sake of having a boss battle. It pulled me right out of the setting. Now, maybe that particular boss is a character from the comic that I'm wholly unaware of, and that would be cool. It's not the type of boss that I'm complaining about, it's that it was there in the first place and, in this case, was literally dropped right in front of the hero for seemingly no reason.
- Combat that promises to be tiring. There are super slo-mo finishing moves for mere thugs. Considering that Arkham Asylum is chock-a-block full of thugs, by design, then I could easily envision being utterly put out by seeing the 1,000th repeat of the same finishing move to the 1,000th thug. Blah.
- Nonsensical gear restriction. Batman starts at full power with all his gadgets, which is good. However, the game implies that I in fact will only get to use them when the game calls for it, and not a moment before. There's a bit of the UI that allows me to switch gadgets. Alas, only one of four slots is filled in. Instead of allowing me access to my own belt—and giving me a training area or similar to familiarize myself with them—the game chooses instead to eke out which ones I'll be using and under what circumstances. Blah. I would instead prefer for me to choose when I use what gadget based on the circumstance and the strategy I want to employ. I see four thugs. Do I want to batarang them? Tear gas them? Stealth behind them? Rig an ultrasonic noisemaker to disable them? Nope. I will use my fists and super-slo mo and that's that. Maybe later I'll be able to use the tear gas pellets, if I get past the first boss battle.
All 'n' all, not a positive demo.
Give the full game a rental, at least.
(Anonymous)
2009-08-28 05:20 pm (UTC)
I won't argue with you about the default perspective. Batman does fill the screen. However, when it matters the most--when you're moving stealthily or running--the camera pulls back to give you a better view of your perspective.
The gargoyles bothered me at first, but keep in mind that Arkham Asylum was built by an insane man, and has seen several face lifts over the years. Also, Batman does indeed use many objects--including girders and ledges--as staging areas for his attacks. In fact, there is one especially challenging segment where you are in a room full of gargoyles, but you cannot use them because the Joker's henchmen have rigged them with motion-sensitive bombs.
It's an uncomfortable complication with any game featuring an epic hero: your full powers are unleashed progressively throughout the game, despite the awesomeness that the fiction surrounding the game bestows upon you as a character. If Batman (or Wolverine, or Kratos) started out as the hero of legend they are supposed to be, then there would be no sense of progression and the game would only last a couple of hours. At least in B: AA, there is no "power-down" moment: you start out strong and get stronger, as opposed to starting out weak and getting strong.
The boss battle at the end of the demo works much better and feels much more logical in the full game; in fact, the demo is a severely clipped representation of the first hour or so of the full game.
You're talking to the guy who was ultimately unimpressed with Modern Warfare, didn't find much to write home about concerning Gears of War 2 (when you removed the multiplayer, anyway), and got bored--real quick-like--with Grand Theft Auto 4; so, to each their own, and if you don't like B: AA that's cool. I will say, though, gamer-to-gamer, that you are robbing yourself of a (potentially) great experience by not even giving the full game a spin.
--level250geek
Re: Give the full game a rental, at least.
2009-08-28 07:52 pm (UTC)
however, to address the question of the boss battle in the demo, if it's the one I've heard about with "Mr. Zsasz", then he is indeed a character in the comics, albiet one that many people are unfamiliar with. More info on the serial killer, Mr. Zsasz in regards to Batman can be found here via Wikipedia.
Re: Give the full game a rental, at least.
2009-08-28 08:08 pm (UTC)
Re: Give the full game a rental, at least.
(Anonymous)
2009-08-28 08:23 pm (UTC)
Re: Give the full game a rental, at least.
2009-08-28 08:03 pm (UTC)
So why not have the better view all the time, I says.
>The gargoyles bothered me at first
At least I'm not wholly alone in the universe...
>If Batman (or Wolverine, or Kratos) started out as the hero of legend they are supposed to be, then there would be no sense of progression and the game would only last a couple of hours.
That's a false premise, that you need to have power progression to show actual progression. (It's also a bad example, since Kratos is someone no one knows about, so it makes sense to have powers added him as play progresses.) But Batman is a different case. His powers and history are well known and expectations are already set.
Progress is freeing hostages, getting closer to the Joker, re-capturing escaped inmates, finding clues and solving mysteries—the IP and the setting have a full wealth of potential to show progression that have nothing at all to do with powers.
Instead, better design would have dictated that he face challenges that are appropriate to his power set.
It's rather like D&D. Being in an environment that takes away your powers is not fun, it's boring and frustrating. It's boring because you want to do cool things and can't, and frustrating because you can't do the things you've been building your character to do so there's no point to having built your character in the first place. For example, if it becomes easy for everyone in the party to fly, then it's appropriate to design challenges where you have to fly to overcome them, not fuck the players over by preventing them from flying.
>At least in B: AA, there is no "power-down" moment: you start out strong and get stronger, as opposed to starting out weak and getting strong.
That's wrong, Batman absolutely starts out weak. In my above example, Batman should virtually never be stopped by a locked door. Are you kidding? It's like saying he can be defeated 1-1 by a child with a slingshot. No. He has many resources at his disposal to get past a locked door. By not being able to use any of them, he's starting out weak. What makes it more frustrating is that you have to backtrack on rails to solve the problem that shouldn't have been a real "problem" to begin with. Ugh.
Re: Give the full game a rental, at least.
(Anonymous)
2009-08-28 08:29 pm (UTC)
I think a great deal of the gushing over this game comes from the fact that rarely is a licensed game so well-designed (and when you get over the liberties they take with Batman, is a well-designed game). It would be interesting to see how well-received this game would be were it not a Batman game. I would wager it would be received even better, because it would be a new character that would grow as the game progressed.
2009-08-28 05:21 pm (UTC)
2009-08-28 07:38 pm (UTC)
OUT OF THE LOOP!!!!!
2009-08-28 07:41 pm (UTC)
2009-08-28 09:24 pm (UTC)
I'm on the fence on this one. I think a lot of reviewers are giving this title a break, since licensed property games seem to have a very low bar to live up to. I really want to check this one out, but the demo didn't fully sell me on it. I'm thinking of waiting until it drops down to the $40 price range. $60 a game is just too hefty.