Archive for the ‘Games’ Category

Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009)

Kalle

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Games

29 Mar 10

There's no tool in the crime-fighter's arsenal as important as a good iconic pose.

There is a truism in video game fandom and criticism that games based on movie and comic book licenses tend to be bad. Some a little bit bad and some mind-bogglingly bad (ET and Superman 64 being the classic examples). Trying to disprove this theory, Rocksteady teamed up with Batman: The Animated Series (among others) writer Paul Dini to create Batman: Arkham Asylum. According to Guinness, who certified Arkham Asylum “the most critically acclaimed super hero game ever”, they succeeded.  [...]

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Mass Effect 2 (2010)

Kalle

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Games

05 Mar 10

Mordin Solus

Mordin Solus: The very model of a scientist Salarian.

Note: this review contains spoilers. Proceed at your own risk. It also assumes you’re familiar with the Mass Effect universe.

Shortly after defeating rogue spectre Saren, his Reaper master Sovereign, and their Geth army, our hero, Commander Shepard, is killed in an attack by the mysterious Collectors. This being science fiction, even death won’t keep Shepard down, and she (or hei) is brought back by the pseudo-terrorist human-first group Cerberus (whom you might remember from Mass Effect, where they were involved in all manner of disreputable business). With her old crew having moved on and with a brand-new Normandy, Shepard must now gather a new team (but with a couple of familiar faces) to join her on a suicide mission through the uncharted Omega 4 relay to stop the Collectors and their masters — the Reapers.  [...]

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Skate 2 (2009)

Kalle

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Games

23 Oct 09

Safety first, that's my motto.

Safety first, that's my motto.

The first Skate, released in 2007, was a revelation — it turned the skateboarding game on its head, reinvigorating a genre that seemed doomed to consist of nothing more than increasingly tired Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater sequels. The analogue controls of Skate were fluid and intuitive and, combined with the open game-world, helped propel the game to the top of both sales charts and critics’ year-end lists.

Here, then, is its sequel. And, let’s get it out of the way early: it is a good game. But it’s also basically the same game. There are new features, of course, which range from the good — footplants — to the atrocious — walking. This latter surprised me, since you’d think Black Box would have learned from THPS‘s continually poor off-the-board controls that an engine designed for skating will never be good at walking.  [...]

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Watchmen: The End Is Nigh (2009)

Kalle

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Games

04 Sep 09

Rorschach works out some of his issues with women.

Rorschach works out some of his issues with women.

Released in two parts — March and July 2009, respectively — The End is Nigh is something of a prequel to the Watchmen film and comic book series, set in 1972, before the passing of the Keane Act that outlawed masked vigilantes.

In the first part, Rorschach (voiced by Jackie Earle Haley) and Daniel “Nite Owl” Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson) set out to quell a prison riot at Sing Sing. The riot turns out to be a diversion for the escape of crime lord The Underboss, and our caped crusaders end up fighting their way through criminals and cops alike trying to find him, and possibly stop the plot to kill two reporters at The Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The second part concerns the kidnapping of a girl named Violet Greene, and finds Nite Owl and Rorscach chasing Twilight Lady through strip clubs and brothels, fighting gangs, gimps, and dominatrices. (The voice acting of the gimps and doms is quite funny, especially the ball-gagged ones.)  [...]

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The Secret of Monkey Island SE (2009)

Kalle

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Games

10 Aug 09

Monkey Island's classic interface.
The new Special Edition interface

A comparison of the new and the classic interfaces.

It’s hard to believe now, when they’re known mostly for rushing out one half-finished Star Wars game after another (for one Christmas season after another), but in the late eighties and early nineties, LucasArtsi were, along with Sierra On-Line, the première adventure game company in the businessii. For a period of some fifteen years, beginning with Maniac Mansioniii, they released some of the best-regarded point-and-click adventures of the era. In 1990, at the peak of their powers, they released The Secret of Monkey Island. For a generation of gamers, Monkey Island‘s combination of fourth-wall-breaking comedy and clever puzzles became the standard against which all later adventure games were measurediv.  [...]

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