Sunday, May 27, 2012

Batman: Arkham Asylum and Dante's Inferno

So lately I've been talking about how I've been trying to go back and finish many of my games that I either haven't finished, or haven't started at all. Last time I talked about this I was nearly done with Dante's Inferno, which I had been slowly working through. Well, not only did I finish Dante's Inferno, I also finished Batman: Arkham Asylum since then as well. Batman was so good that I just couldn't put it down once it had it's hooks in me and so after a few marathon gaming sessions I was done with the game. I thought about writing a blog for each game, but seeing as how I'm writing them at the same time I decided to just lump them together into one blog. So I'll start with Dante's Inferno:
Dante's Inferno
Dante's Inferno is a hard game to describe, on the one hand it's a very well made game that does everything just fine; on the other hand I was never really compelled to finish it (besides the fact that I wanted to......finish it). You'd think that given the source material the game would be a lot more interesting, unfortunately, at least for me, this was not the case.
Graphically the game is pretty ugly to look, but that's completely due to the fact that your in Hell. The character models and textures all look nice from a technical perspective, but again, the fact that your in Hell just makes the game look bad. It's not that it's a bad looking game technically, it's just a bad looking game aesthetically.
Dante's Inferno is pretty solid gameplay wise. I chose to upgrade the scythe and the cross equally hoping that would give me a more rounded gameplay experience, which seems to have worked for the most part. The difficulty seems kind of uneven through out the game with some parts being really hard and the very next being a walk in the park. The monster riding sections were pretty fun and a nice break from the normal combat.
Dante's Inferno doesn't try to hide that fact that it gets it's inspiration from God of War, which is fine by me, I love GoW and would love to see more games done in that style. Dante's a cool enough character in the game, he just needs a better setting. Overall Dante's Inferno is a very good game, just not a very memorable one.
Batman: Arkham Asylum
I don't even know where to begin with Batman: Arkham Asylum. This game completely blew me away; the graphics, the voice acting, the game world, the combat and upgrade system, and especially the Riddler Challenges all kept me from being able to put down the controller. I played this game until 6am last Saturday, I just couldn't put it down.
Arkham Asylum does so many things greatly, but I felt like the Riddler Challenges really tied it all together. I was completely addicted to finding every last one (which I did), and it was very satisfying. The pace at which you get new gadgets and upgrades was perfect, I loved going back to areas to access new areas when I got the appropriate gadget. The combat was extremely fun, chaining attacks and counters and finishing with a takedown or throw never got old.
I was floored when I learned that Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker fom the original Star Wars films) was the voice for Joker. Most of the voice acting was superb, but Joker was on a whole other level. I loved the way he would mess with his henchmen after you entered a room and started taking them out one by one, priceless.
The "Spirit of Akham" meta mystery was really fun to uncover and I enjoyed listening to all of the interview tapes as well, especially the ones with Harley Quinn and Joker. I absolutely loved all of the artwork used in the character bios and the character trophies were really cool as well. I love how the game is more comic book and less movie based Batman.
This game is so well made from top to bottom that it's easily one of the best games I've played this year, if not the best. There really isn't anything I don't like about the game. The only real disappointment I have is that I didn't get the "Party Pooper" achievement when I had the chance. I highly recommend this game to anyone who hasn't tried it, you can't go wrong.

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