Arkham Asylum Demo Screens!

So I just finished playing through the demo for the first time, and I must say it was quite an enjoyable experience.  The learning curve isn’t steep at all, and the combat and maneuverability is top-notch.  Some incredibly stylized and smooth combat keeps the game’s fast-paced action moving throughout the course of the demo, and some sneaky stealth maneuverability makes for some pulse-pounding detective work.  Enough chit-chat, here’s some of my screenshots I took while playing:

Of course, the game starts off with the Joker breaking free from imprisonment.

... and then you get to try out some free-flowing action!

... followed by some sneaky sleuthing.

... stealthily putting some inmates out of commission.

... and here's where the demo ends, right where it starts to get interesting...

Batman: Arkham Asylum launches on September 15 on PC, and August 25 on 360 and PS3.

Better than Remnant…

So I’m taking a break from The Last Remnant (overly powerful bosses get really annoying really fast), and instead I’m going to be covering the new playable demo for Batman: Arkham Asylum, which just recently made it’s way onto PC!  In case you don’t know much about this upcoming title from Eidos, you play as Batman whilst taking on the Joker and other classic comic-book Batman villains in the infamous Arkham Asylum.  It looks to be an action-packed game, so I’m going to spend a while playing through the demo and then get back to whoever reads this blog with some screens and info!

The Last Remnant (Pt. 1)

Whilst playing the “new” RPG from Square Enix, I decided  it would be a nice change of pace to actually write something on my blog, for once!  So I’m going to be conveying my thoughts about this intriguing game on a daily basis as I make my way through it.  Today I’m going to focus on the annoyances that I’ve found to be prominent in the game and why you should nevertheless continue to play the game.

Annoyance #1: Incredibly Overbearing Battle System

For starters, the game begins with a cutscene in which your character blindly thrusts himself into an all-out war in hopes that a girl he just saw could be his long-lost sister, Irina.  They didn’t name this main character “Rush” for nothing.  A few brief instructions attempt to prepare you for what is about to most likely become the most hectic turn-based battle you’ve ever experienced.  Sure, the pop-up messages provide you with a decent overview of the controls you’ll be needing in this onslaught, but that’s just not enough.  Sure, games like Final Fantasy II and such have started with a turn-based battle against unsurmountable odds, but nothing like this.  Here’s a tip: all the fighting going on in the background is just for show.  The only time you’ll lose HP or inflict damage on your opponent is through the highly stylized and intensely fast-paced battle sequences.  When a menu’s on-screen, you’re fine to take your own precious time decided whether to attack, use combat arts, use magic, or just sit back and watch other people attack.  After the crazy opening battle, you’ll spend about an hour or so of the game walking around battling alongside two of the four generals under the Marquis of Athlum’s command.  Eventually you’ll get to set out on your own and recruit your own allies, but it takes a while.  The battles start to calm down and make sense after you choose your own pals, but it’s a long haul before then.

Annoyance #2: Dialogue is LAME LAME LAME

Ever played one of those games where there’s a cutscene and a character attempts to use modern language (slang) and completely fails?  Yeah, I thought so.  Well, this game’s CHOCK-FULL of it!  That’s why I, being the genius that I am, changed the spoken dialogue setting to “Japanese”.  It grates on your ears a little less when you’re only reading the slang that no one’s ever used in real life, and not listening to it, too.  But wait, there’s more!  Not only does the game come with an awful vocabulary, it also comes with a delay between characters’ lines that’s just long enough to drive you insane.  Don’t you love it when people take fifteen seconds just to say “Oh really?”?

Annoyance #3: Menu’s are Confusing

It seems to me that this game can get pretty deep, so the menus were based around this profound depth that clearly doesn’t come until you’ve got a HUGE party of characters and enough equipment to break an elephant’s back.  There are so many aspects of the menu that the game designers forgot to explain, like the Union menu, for instance.  You have to figure out on your own that the game developers came up with the worst possible control scheme for allowing you to customize the formation that your different unions of characters use in battle!  You do get used to it after a while, but it’s still a lot more confusing than it needs to be, and a lack of mouse support when navigating menus really makes me think that the developers were just trying to port it from XBox 360 to PC just to make a few extra bucks, not to present a PC-gamer with the enriching fantasy RPG he/she was looking for.

Having listed the three major annoyances I’ve found so far in the game, tomorrow I’m going to be talking about the pro’s (it might take me a few days to list them all).  Just so you know, despite having a few major flaws, they are all technical, and the game as a whole is still a very enriching experience that makes me keep coming back for more.  So, until tomorrow, here’s a screenshot of a fairly intense enemy doing something fairly intense (Click for full resolution… it’s widescreen).

At the beach…

Whilst at the beach, I was taking some pictures with my good ol’ Kodak point-and-shoot.  I was messing around with the resolutions and stumbled upon a widescreen (16:9) setting, so I decided to use it for a bit.  After a tiny bit of time on Picasa, here’s a result:

Got a camera! Not too shabby for a point-and-shoot…

It’s a Kodak EasyShare M1033 (10 megapixels).  Since I’m departing tomorrow for Honduras for a week, I’ll be taking a lot of pictures.  So I figured I’d try out the settings now.

random plant in my backyard

gardenia from backyard

another gardenia

Wow… it’s been quite a while…

Ok so I’m not dead (in case any of you were wondering).  I just haven’t had a reason to write in a while.  But I DO tweet,  in case you were wondering.  So follow me on Twitter if you’re viewing this right now! http://twitter.com/jbw3991

Also: Top 10 of the first half of 2009 COMING SOON!

Thrice – The Artist In The Ambulance (2003)

Well, I’ve been busy for a while with school (final exams and such), but I’m back writing now, and I’m looking for more topics to write about!  So, if you read this, feel free to leave a comment about what you’d like me to write about and I’d be more than willing to see what I can do about it!  That having been said, I’m going to move onto today’s music review, which happens to be one of the best post-hardcore/progressive albums I’ve ever heard: The Artist In The Ambulance (the 2003 album by Thrice).  This album has it all: melodies, interesting rhythms, breakdowns, fluctuating time signatures, very nice vocals and instrumental work, and, above all, a great sense of unity and atmosphere that leaves the listener feeling like they just listened to something amazing.

At first, it sounds like you’re just listening to you’re average loud metal cd, but then it changes it up with a very soft section towards the middle of the opening track, “Cold Cash and Colder Hearts”.  Soon after experiencing the opener, you come to realize that these guys really know what they’re doing and how to make a great album.  After a few tracks go by, you think you understand how the rest of the cd is going to go, and then it changes up with my favorite song off the cd, “Stare at the Sun”, a very melodic song that could almost be classified as a “ballad” by Thrice standards.  That song will stay with you for a while.  It’s got a very nice moving bassline which transfers over to guitar during the melody and the vocals, in my opinion, are spot-on.

Soon after “Stare at the Sun”, you’re slapped in the face by “Paper Tigers”, the most aggressive song on the cd.  Just because it’s so much more aggressive than any of the previous songs doesn’t mean it’s any less musically astounding.  On the contrary, “Paper Tigers” shows off the versatility of all the members of Thrice by completely changing the musical formula that they had set at the beginning of the cd.  After “Paper Tigers” is over and you realize how great Thrice is as a whole, the epic progressive metal song known as “Hoods on Peregrine” pops up, and you’re in for a ride with this one.  It starts off with a very nice drum/bass intro that gradually adds guitars and then it gets softer when the vocals come in, which makes you wonder what’s going to happen next.  Then you realize it’s the calm before the storm, and boom!  You’re hit with one of the most diverse yet unified songs I’ve ever heard.

The cd continues in this fashion until you get to the title song, “The Artist in the Ambulance”, another “soft” song like “Stare at the Sun”, but with a different atmosphere to it.  In my opinion, it’s a very good song, but not as good as it could have been.  Don’t get me wrong, I still like the song a lot, it just didn’t seem as full of energy and passion as the other songs on the cd.  The cd finishes up with another slap in the face (“The Abolition of Man”), and a very nice, very progressive closer, entitled “Don’t Tell and We Won’t Ask”.

All in all, if you like anything along the lines of Haste the Day, Thursday, or maybe even Chiodos, this is a must-have addition to your music collection.

i’m thinkin’ Against Me!

ok, so i’ve been in a weird music mood for a while, so i’m just gonna write about one of my favorite bands, “Against Me!”!!!  they are a folk/punk band from gainesville, florida, and they have a very interesting sound which has changed from album to album.  personally, i think their first, second, and fourth albums are the best, and the third just seemed to have a lack of energy.  Their first 2 albums, Reinventing Axl Rose and As The Eternal Cowboy, are your more standard folk/punk albums, with short songs that tend to get stuck in your head and make you want to start a riot (or just a garage punk band, whichever more suits your personality).  The fourth release, New Wave, is indeed a new wave.  It seems that they tried to go “mainstream” and it definitely worked.  Every single song is catchy in it’s own way and it still has that definite punk feel to it, just more refined.  So, go listen to them!

where to begin…

So I’ll start by saying that we had my entire family over for the holidays and it was crazy.  People everywhere, TVs on at all times blaring football games… and a very exciting game of Risk (I won’t go into detail, but it was intense, let me tell you).  But one great part of the holidays was that I was introduced to one of the most atmospheric and melodic albums I have ever heard: Ghost, by Radical Face.  It’s a concept album about houses and the memories they leave.  Some of the songs are even told from the house’s perspective (kudos for creativity!).  At first, when my super-awesome cousin showed me the cd, I thought it was alright, but not one of my favorites.  Then, a couple days ago, I decided I’d give it another go, and let me tell you, it was amazing.  I’ve listened to the cd quite a few times again since then, and it keeps getting better.  The vocals are very soft and sometimes near inaudible, but that just makes you want to listen to the music that much more carefully.  Each time you listen to it, you notice something about at least one of the songs that you didn’t notice during your previous listen.  So this is essentially just my way of getting it out there that THIS CD IS AMAZING!  Quiet, loud, atmospheric, thoughtful, and dramatic, Ghost is a must-have for anyone interested in the acoustic/folk/indie scene.

wishful thinking…

As of late, I’ve decided that, out of all the career possibilities ahead of me, I would LOVE to be a critic/writer for a magazine… I’m not entirely sure what I have to do to qualify me for this position, but I love this whole blog thing, and I’m a very critical person.  I think it would be the coolest job ever to go to work and research and write for a living (lame, right?)!  I really don’t know why, but here I am writing and completely enjoying myself!  I could go at it for hours on end if push came to shove!  But, alas, there’s school (which starts back up again tomorrow…) and all the painstaking work that goes with it just to get a bunch of useless letters on a piece of paper at the end of each quarter…  I really wish that I could just go to some place like the Game Informer headquarters or some other magazine that has reviews in it and just say “Hey!  I really really love reviewing stuff!  Can you try me out for an issue and see if you like what I write?”… wow, that would be so perfect… but guess what!  Life’s not like that!  Of course it’s not that easy!  You have to get good grades in stupid classes like AP Statistics (am I ever going to use the math I’m learning in that class?  I highly doubt it…), Fundamentals of Technology (easiest class in the history of the world), and stuff like that!  Are those really my interests?  Not at all.  Do they affect ANY of the future career paths I’d like to take?  Don’t think so!  Do I still have to take them AND get good grades?  Of course!  It’s not logical, but apparently it’s how school works, constantly “preparing you for your future”… psh.  What a joke.  Well that’s my rant for now…