When I was 31, it was a very good year…

2010 has been a very busy and very good year for me; I got married in the summer, flew to the Caribbean on honeymoon and a few weeks later acted as the best man at my brother’s wedding. We moved in to our new house in September and my wife and I got a lovely puppy a few weeks ago, which is conspiring to urinate on my lounge carpet as I type. At work I achieved the advancement I was hoping for within my career and was offered the job I have coveted for a number of years.

I have also been attempting to develop my writing, specifically with regard to video games journalism; this brought me to writing for an online publication, Game Kudos. Writing for GK allowed me to cover my first industry Expo in the form of EuroGamer in London, and gain valuable experience interviewing the lead designer of a top video game developer.

In the gaming world I have invested countless hours saving the Universe in Mass Effect 2, riding the plains of the Wild West in Red Dead Redemption, running and gunning my way through numerous FPS titles, the highlights being Call of Duty: Black Ops and Medal of Honor (American spelling of Honour!). I’ve enjoyed surviving the post apocalyptic wastelands of Fallout: New Vegas and suffered through the worst game I can remember playing in the form of Deadly Premonition. I got sporty too, kicking around with some of the world’s best footballers in FIFA 11 and beating Tiger Woods in the Ryder Cup on Tiger Woods PGA tour 11. There were lots of other games, but those are just some of the highlights. I also laid my old trust Xbox 360 to rest after suffering the dreaded Red Ring of Death, and got a shiny new one in its place.

Next year’s gaming promises much, but in particular I’m looking forward to Dead Space 2 and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (the long awaited sequel to the excellent Oblivion). After such an eventful year I’ll be glad of a rest and a chance for more gaming, but I look forward to 2011 with optimism and anticipation. Happy New Year everyone, see you in the future…

If typewriting monkeys can do it, so can I…

I started this blog exactly one year ago this month. My aim was to portfolio my writing in the hope of making a career of it one day. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing in my spare time and interacting with those who comment here and follow me on Twitter and Facebook. Thanks largely to the existence of this blog I have been writing for other sites (mainly Game Kudos) for over 6 months now. Next week I am to get my first taste of “real” journalism. The good people at Game Kudos have arranged a press pass for me to the Eurogamer Expo taking place in London’s Earl’s Court next weekend.

Eurogamer is one the UK’s largest video games expos and is expected to draw 20,000 visitors over the course of the 3-day event. With big name developers displaying upcoming titles such as Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Dead Space 2, Fifa 11, Fallout: New Vegas and Dragon Age 2 - to name but a few - there will doubtless be plenty for me to cut my teeth on. My Director is in the process of organising appointments and interviews and my Editor-in-Chief has spent some time imparting words of wisdom to help me prepare for my baby-steps into the world of video games journalism.

Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m far from a fully-fledged games journalist, but I see next weekend as a first major step on that road. I still have a lot to prepare and reams of research to read through prior to my first appointments, but I can honestly say that I am excited to be going. I’m aware that it won’t be fun, not in the traditional sense anyway. I’ll be there to work, not play, and despite this I’m certain I’m going to enjoy it. If nothing else, the Eurogamer Expo will serve as an invaluable experience and one I hope I'll look back on fondly.

After the event I’ll write here about my experiences and, of course, link all of the stories I’ll be writing for Game Kudos. For now, I must get back to my research. If the old saying is true and I work hard enough and type for long enough perhaps I’ll produce Shakespeare, or at least a decent game preview.

Red Dead Review

My review of Red Dead Redemption on the Xbox 360 has been published at Game Kudos.

I thoroughly recommend it to any fans of sandbox action adventure games and to anyone who enjoyed the GTA series. For me, the most surprising thing about the game was the very clever way in which the developers used the classic style of story telling, prevalent in the great western movies, to usher the game along. Playing Red Dead Redemption feels as close as possible to being in the toughest parts of the old west without the aid of Doc Emmett Brown.

In short, the game scores 8.2/10 and the single player game far outstrips the multiplayer. Utterly engaging and entertaining, a great buy that offers a bare-bones minimum of about 20 hours of superb gameplay.

Booted and Spurred

As you can see, The Gaming Gentleman is booted and spurred and ready for action on the frontier. I’m currently working my way through the treacherous terrain of the Old West, blasting my way through gangs of bandits and rescuing maidens, and hookers, in distress. It can only mean that I have finally gotten my hands on a copy of Red Dead Redemption on Xbox 360. For the princely sum of £49 I purchased the limited addition version available from GAME stores in the UK, which includes not just the game itself but exclusive downloadable content.

The added extras are Golden Guns, weapons that increase your fame when kills are made with them, War Horse, quite simply the fastest, strongest horse available to you in the game, and the Deadly Assassin outfit, which allows your Dead-Eye metre to refill more rapidly after kills.

I am enjoying progressing the single player game and will shortly be reviewing it here at the blog and at a website that I am working for as a writer. The multiplayer aspect of the game, however, has me a little concerned. Despite being hailed as a new, greater standard of multiplayer experience, one which will allow players to explore the vastness of the Old West and team up with fellow Xbox LIVE players to create posses and take on other gangs, thus far all I have encountered are players more concerned with shooting you as soon as you re-spawn, before you can get together with other players and generally making the multiplayer experience a frustrating and deeply un-entertaining one.

To add to the multiplayer woes, it appears to be full of glitches, like disappearing characters, and the sheer number of people trying to log on to the servers seems to be overloading them and causing problems when connecting to a game. That said, the single player game is impressive and addictive and I hope to have completed it soon. Perhaps in the meantime Rockstar San Diego may have addressed the glitches and server issues on multiplayer, and the obtrusive players may have gotten sick of ruining the fun for everyone else, or fallen off a cliff. I can but hope.

Nobody Does It Better (Splinter Cell: Conviction)

Ubisoft’s stalwart sneaky spy Sam Fisher returns in Splinter Cell: Conviction, the much-anticipated recent instalment in the series that is redefining a genre. The game begins with Sam having left Third Echelon after the death of his daughter in a hit and run incident. Sat in a Mediterranean café, Sam gets a phone call from an old colleague from his shadowy ex-workplace warning him of an imminent threat to his life. This kick-starts the story and Sam’s journey to find his daughter’s killer, which will drag the world’s greatest (non-British) spy back into the world of international espionage and pit him against his former employers.

Although still a 3^rd person stealth action thriller, the tone of the game has shifted from the constant shadow dwelling of its predecessors to a more open, upfront approach to the gameplay. It’s noticeable in Sam’s appearance too; rather than the skin-tight black-ops body suit he once sported his attire is more urban chic, in the Jason Bourne style. The action and story also seem to take influence from the Bourne series, with a gritty atmosphere and flashback storytelling projected onto walls as you progress the quieter sections of the single player mission. The cut-scene animation is breathtaking with very realistic rendering of characters; Sam himself has wrinkles, realistic eyes, individual strands of hair and a split-lip that doesn’t miraculously repair itself. Even his stubble grows as the game progresses giving it almost a “24” feel, and this is backed up by the clever, jerky camera movement during some of the more tense and sinister cut-scenes.

Sneaking is still a large part of the gameplay, but so is timely dashing from one place to another, tactically avoiding enemies or luring them into traps, separating them and taking them down one or two at a time. There are times when all out assault is required and the game utilises a mechanic whereby Sam can disappear into the shadows, leaving enemies shooting at his last known position whilst he flanks them. The “execute” function is also very useful, allowing players to mark and execute two enemies quickly after successfully taking down another by a hand-to-hand quiet kill. During interrogation scenes Sam can use the environment to punish those who won’t talk and convince them, with the use of things like sinks and pianos, to let him know what he wants to know. The weapon outfit is the standard expected; a mix of pistols (silenced or not), sub-machine guns, assault rifles shot guns and an array of devices including grenades, mines, EMP charges and sticky, exploding cameras to assist Sam’s progression.

For all of it’s impressive features, graphics and gameplay there are a few flaws. The camera angles, as with most 3^rd person games, often become obtrusive and cause difficulty for the player to see an area that would be clearly viewed through the character’s eyes. The sound track is largely in keeping with the game but sometimes descends into irritating techno-punk at inappropriate times, usually during intense action, probably intended to add to the atmosphere, but it seems only to annoy and detract. Strangely, Sam appears to have forgotten how to drag a body away from where it falls and to a convenient hiding place, rather remiss of a veteran black-ops agent. This means that players need to be extra careful when felling a foe in case their lifeless body should serve to alert other enemies to Sam’s presence.

However, despite the downsides, the game is overwhelmingly impressive, addictive and fun. The change of pace is refreshing and the lean toward a more beaten, gritty and weatherworn Sam Fisher is a welcome change from the previous formula. It’s cinematic, engaging and entertaining. Fans of the series will love it and new comers will find it easily accessible without the need to have played the previous games. A multiplayer option extends the life of the game beyond the completion of the single player campaign, the content of which will be covered in a future post.

Video Game Time Machine: Rick Dangerous 1989

After a random Google browsing section I found myself being dragged in a figurative Delorean past 88mph and back in time to the land of gaming nostalgia. Thanks to a great website, I have rediscovered one of my childhood favourite video games: Rick Dangerous.

Rick Dangerous was a platform action puzzle game originally released in 1989, which not only toyed with plagiarism, but openly flouted it. Undoubtedly based largely on Raiders of the Lost Ark, even the Front cover of Rick Dangerous looked suspiciously like Indiana Jones. If the game had been made now Lucas Arts would be suing for copyright infringement, however, as it was made before the fiscal power of the games industry had been discovered, it passed by unscathed.

Much more cartoonish than Dr Jones, Rick Dangerous was a British agent who travels to the Amazon to find the lost Goolu tribe. His plane crashes and he parachutes into the jungle. The beginning of the game sees the fedora-sporting Rick running away from a giant boulder (just like the opening sequence of Raiders) and negotiating a maze of traps, triggers and Amazon warriors. The game was very clever too; although armed with 6 bullets, 6 explosive charges and a stick for stunning opponents, players would need to pick their battles, decide who to shoot and who to avoid in order to conserve the valuable arsenal, as reloads were few and far between.

A thinking kid’s game, Rick Dangerous played out over 4 levels; the Amazon, Egypt, Castle Schwarzendumpf (a Nazi stronghold) and a Nazi missile base, where Rick must stop a deadly missile attack on London. Some of the traps had no visible warning so the only way to progress the game in many areas was through trial and error, something that would annoy many but which I found to be one of the great draws of the game. The graphics and gameplay were in keeping with other games of its time, 2-dimentional and comic with individual screens that needed to be negotiated one at a time in order to progress the game. The music (midi files of course) was comic and, bizarrely, very appropriate to the gameplay and the setting.

I was ten years old when Rick Dangerous came out on the Amiga 500 and it was addictive. Like Super Mario Bros mixed with my all time hero Indiana Jones (was then, is now), it’s clear to see why it had such appeal at a time when video games were becoming a much larger part of our lives. Anyone who is interested and has some spare time should visit the website where a full version of the game is playable on your web browser for free.

War!!!…What is it good for?

Modern Warfare 2, Xbox 360

Activision have done it again. Their incredibly popular Call of Duty series has had another big release in the form of Modern Warfare 2; quite simply the best first person shooter I have ever played. With stunning and immersive graphics, cinema quality sound and all encompassing game-play, it is quite obvious why the game broke all sales records in entertainment media history in its first week of release.

Split into 3 sections, the game has a level of longevity that will make its rivals green with envy. The first is the story mode, which sees you taking on the roll of various characters as you are swept along the twisting rollercoaster of a plot. The story itself is a well-woven tale of international intrigue and political upheaval to rival even the most complex Tom Clancy novel. There are moments of sheer genius and twists that will leave you gasping. And all of this is simply to guide you from one level of gaming glory to another. The missions vary from all out assault against an enemy army to small two man special forces teams stealthily stalking mountainous bases in driving blizzards. From fighting drug gangs in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to raiding SAM sites on oilrigs off Russia, the game is truly global in scope and infuses gamers with a real sense of the dire importance of successfully achieving the aims of your missions. Not to reveal too much about the story before you play it, I would go as far as to say that it continues from where the last game left off and raises the bar in all areas of the gaming experience.

The second section is special ops; a series of challenges based around the main game, which become available to play once you have successfully completed the main story on any difficulty setting. Hours of extra game-play is to be had here, with achievements galore available for the competitive warrior-at-heart. Some of the missions require two players and can be done co-operatively online or split-screen with friends, a nice little touch to break up the army-of-one mentality that first person shooters often engender.

The final section is the backbone of the series and has kept the previous titles selling for years due to the online community supporting their continued use: multiplayer. Playing against another human in place of computer AI is often a much greater experience and this is definitely the case with Modern Warfare 2. As with Modern Warfare and World at War before it, MW2 has an online army of players and games can be found at any time of the day or night, with often more than 150,000 players online at any one time. Missions vary from old school free-for-all to team death match and ground war, each with their own unique playing styles, aims and objectives. The only thing limiting the life of this game is the life of the platform it’s played on. The earlier games in the series still have a massive online following.

Weapons and tactics have been upgraded with beautifully rendered modern arsenals and the addition of such abilities as throwing knives and even Unmanned Air Vehicles available to the players to unleash hell upon their opponents. In all aspects MW2 is a step up from the already excellent titles preceding it. However, there are some downsides. Those with slower broadband connections will find it difficult to locate a multiplayer game to join, despite seeing 50 plus available games on your screen the system’s tendency to try and match download speeds (no doubt for the good of the gaming experience) can often mean that those players find themselves watching in vain as their system fails time and time again to match them to a game server. My only other major issue with the game is corners. Being a first person shooter, when trying to see or shoot around a corner the player is forced to move their entire body our to get a shot off and will often receive a bullet for their trouble. Games such as Quantum of Solace managed to incorporate effective use of cover and move into its otherwise first person shooter mould and perhaps Activision can look at doing this in future titles to further enhance the realism of the game-play.

Overall Modern Warfare 2 is outstanding, and despite having completed the game I know that its multiplayer and special ops sections will continue to entertain for the foreseeable future. If you own an Xbox then buy this game.

Dungeons and Dragon Age

Bioware, the new masters of the RPG, have released their latest enthralling, engaging, story driven, action packed delve into the genre: Dragon Age: Origins. Like many RPGs, Dragon Age follows the route of the fantasy epic but with a focus on the background, or Origin, of the character that you play. Players are offered to start the game from one of six very different backgrounds, covering a variety of races, social backdrops, and genders. The player’s start position in the game very much effects how the game will unfold as you are ferried along the storyline, and your choices and moral decisions effect the game world and how characters interact with you. The initial part of the game is unique to each character type and, unless you choose to play the game through six times, players will experience only one Origin story before the game proper begins.

It doesn’t take long before the depth of the storyline is hinted at, with a rich back-story unfolding that includes suggestions of deep class and racial divides throughout the land of Ferelden. This complex background is the canvas upon which the main plot is painted. A dark threat to all living creatures, in the form of the demonic Darkspawn, is unleashing a Blight upon the land. Not long into the game we see humanity’s big stand against the monsters, and it goes horribly wrong. Unsurprisingly, despite the player character’s age and inexperience, we soon discover that you are the only person who can unite the divided lands and people to make a final heroic stand against the Arch-demon (a Dragon). Made a member of the Grey Wardens, an elite group of warriors sworn to destroy the Darkspawn, you and your band of warriors, mages, war dogs, elfs, dwarfs and Golems are sent off to finish what the armies of men could not.

The game is very long and engaging. Expect to lose tens of hours to the intricacies of the storyline, combat and character customisation. The combat itself seems to breach the gap between the needs of the hardcore RPG fan and those of the part-time gamer, with real time fighting that can be paused to choose and customise attacks and other actions from any of your player characters in order to achieve a victory. Moving away from the usual turn based combat that RPGs traditionally use, this form of combat interface allows gamers who are new to the genre to enjoy the game without loosing interest due to the intricacies of the character profile and the effects of attack, defence and chance upon the successful outcome of any action. It is all there for gamers who want it and can be ignored by those who don’t.

The game suffers slightly from long loading periods and on the Xbox 360 version some of the graphics and background textures can detract from an otherwise excellent gaming experience. On occasion some of the cut scenes suffer from glitches or missing segments of dialogue but these are very few and far between. Re-playing the section concerned often fixes the problem. Dragon Age: Origins is, overall, an RPG fan’s dream and Bioware’s efforts to make the genre more accessible to gamers not usually drawn to such titles is remarkable. With downloadable content available and more planned for the Christmas market the games longevity could well increase like other titles such as Mass Effect and Fallout 3.

The Ballad of Gay Tony: Making golfing fun (First impressions of GTA4’s new DLC)

On Friday night I paid the princely sum of 1600 Microsoft points on my Xbox LIVE account to download the latest episode from Rockstar’s GTA brand: The Ballad of Gay Tony (TBoGT). My broadband connection is not the fastest in the world, but is sufficient for my usual online gaming and downloading requirements. TBoGT, however, measures a whopping 1.8 gigabytes and my Feudal age connection simply couldn’t download it as quickly as I would have liked. I sulked a little and then resigned to leave the system switched on and downloading overnight.

On Saturday morning I woke up earlier than usual, without the aid of an alarm clock and bounded into the front room, hoping that TBoGT had completed its journey across the Internet to my Xbox’s hard drive. Success; with the download complete my latest gaming adventure could begin.

TBoGT is just as visually stunning as it’s parent game and from the opening sequence, weaved cleverly into a cut scene from GTA4, the old familiar GTA style is evident. It appears that the player character is, once again, smart and resourceful (let’s be honest, Rockstar aren’t going to insult their customers by making them take on the guise of a moron) and, once again, has a shady past which he seems keen on putting behind him. The game-play is familiar but with the promise of new tweaks such as the much-touted base jumping and parachuting as well as the ability to get behind the controls of an agile attack helicopter.

The story line, so far, has been filled with clever and witty dialog, a fair spattering of toilet humour and the obligatorily offensive content for which we all really buy these games. The addition of an underground cage-fighting aspect to this DLC gives the player another distraction to elongate the gaming experience and after every mission you get a percentage complete screen with targets which will allow you to compare your progress and skills against others around the world over Xbox LIVE (but only if you complete the mission without any replays).

So far TBoGT is living up to the hype. I am only a couple of hours in but I have already hit golf balls at a hapless goon tied to the front of a golf cart, engaged in a drive-by shooting and a car chase in the afore mentioned sporting vehicle, blown up a super-yacht with a prototype attack helicopter and killed a loan shark who had been harassing my dear-old mum. There are a few passing references and crossovers to GTA4 and The Lost and The Damned and this looks set to continue. More to follow…

Lost in the crowd (Left 4 Dead on Xbox 360)

The idea of the undead masses mindlessly swarming the globe and forcing ordinary people to take extraordinary measures just to survive is one which has been at the heart of popular culture, film, TV, books, comics and games since at least the 1960s-1970s. There are many theories as to why zombies are our “favourite” monsters and why so many writers, directors and game producers continue to return to the macabre theme. People like to be scared, so of course horror movies and books are always popular. We like to be frightened in the relative security of the cinema, knowing full-well that all is well outside. Zombies play on our fear of what we could become. They are a comment on the mindlessness of the crowd and the surrender of identity. They are slow, lumbering and relentless, driven by instinct and not rational thought or reason. Becoming them is one of our greatest fears.

George A Romano’s zombie films rank above their peers as the blueprint for the genre. His work is not, however, simply a splatter fest of gore and violence, although gore and violence have their place within the films. His Dawn Of The Dead (1978) set in a shopping mall in the US saw a band of survivors struggling to make a life while ever-more walking dead congregate outside of the mall patiently waiting for a route in. It was a clear comment on the mindlessness of consumerism. The theme of the survivor is ever-present. Groups of unlikely friends from different walks of life and backgrounds are almost always forced to work together to overcome the unbelievably poor odds of survival. They need to rely on each other. Against these adversaries the individual would never survive.

I have never seen the execution of the survival, reliance and group synergy themes in zombie genre games so closely aligned with the fears and considerations described above than in Valve’s Xbox masterpiece, Left 4 Dead. Unlike it’s predecessors such as Dead Rising, where the aim of the game was to have as much fun killing zombies as you could, Left 4 Dead is a breathtaking experience which pits you against swarms of the undead in varying locations with one overall aim: for you and your friends to survive and escape.

The game is a triumph. It is primarily aimed at being played online over Xbox LIVE. This is so that you can play alongside other humans in your attempt to escape from the terror of the rotting corpses stumbling around and trying to eat you. This is a particularly clever device that makes you rely other gamers, despite their strengths and flaws, who you probably don’t know, to help you as you help them to survive your ordeal. Just like in the movies, you are dependant on a rag tag group of strangers for your very survival. There is a single player option for those without internet access and the other player characters are taken over by the computer AI to assist you, but it’s not quite the same.

The game starts after the four main characters, Francis (biker type), Louis (office worker), Bill (crazy old veteran) and zoey (until-recently-college-girl type), are attacked by a group of zombies and a “Tank”, a mutated zombie that looks like, well, a tank. The cut scene follows the survivors in their escape to a rooftop, where your adventure begins. Taking on the role of one of the survivors you must now try and make your way through the over-run city to an area of safety held by the army. The onus is on teamwork. Spit up and you’ll die. Work for yourself only and you’ll die. You really do have to watch each other’s backs.

The graphics are outstanding and immerse you in a dark and sinister world. The control systems are intuitive and the gimmick of teamwork really does add a whole new dimension to the game play. You are going to get into an un-winnable situation and you are going to have to hope one of your fellow survivors sees you and comes to help out. The action is fast-paced and frantic and there is a jump around every corner. It is intelligent too; set off a car alarm, you’ll attract the dead; use loud weapons, you’ll attract the dead; try moving more carefully and quietly, you might get away with it. But it won’t always work. You will have to hold off the hoard, you will have to deal with tanks, smokers, hunters and witches, the slightly more scary and difficult foes. The whole time you are on edge and you always have that unreachable goal of safety to chase. This game is awesome and is easily one of the best games on the Xbox. There is more good news; as Left 4 Dead has been around for a while now the good people at Valve have had time to develop a sequel. Left 4 Dead 2 will be hitting the shelves in the near future.

Nazis…I hate those guys

What better way to spend a rainy afternoon than running around the fictional German town of Eisenstadt (real one is in Austria) gunning down Nazis as they try to go about their insidious business of enslaving Europe? Well, what if you had mystical powers derived from crystals that harness the energy of an unseen fourth dimension? Doesn’t that sound better? Wolfenstein, for the Xbox 360, throws the player into the role of BJ Blazkowicz, serial spoiler of the naughty Nazis’ plots throughout the Wolfenstein universe. His gun-totting romp through war-torn 1943 Germany is visually impressive and immerses you in an atmosphere of oppression and fear. It gives the player a feel of the WW2 call of duty type games with a supernatural twist.

The weapons are fun and customisable; although you will not be able to afford all upgrades so your choices need to be tactical and considered. The single player game will take about 7 hours to shoot through on normal difficulty setting and multiplayer will make the game last a lot longer. The addition of Veil powers adds another layer and is, in fact, quite necessary to overcome some of the more difficult puzzles and opponents. The cinematic cut scenes are a triumph and greatly increase the gaming experience.

Unfortunately the WW2 theme is in danger of being overdone in first person shooters, with titles like Call of Duty: World at War leading the charge in the genre, and other worthy attempts such as Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway already marking out the territory as their own. Wolfenstein survives looking too same-old, same-old with the supernatural element coupled with not just a little nostalgia from the older games in the series for those of us who played them. But without that element I think Wolfenstein would slip into the average category and I fear the replay value won’t be that great. That said however, Raven’s latest instalment to one of gaming’s oldest institutes is largely appealing and will fill more than a few hours of your life with glorious Nazi shootin’ fun.

I have created a monster!

We all have dark little secrets that we would rather no one knew about, and mine is this: I own a Wii. Yes I, a serious gaming fan, own a gimmicky toy which, despite its childish mechanism for game-play, is a lot of fun. This is not a problem as it doesn’t often tempt me away from my Xbox, but today this devilish device interrupted my more serious gaming. More worryingly is the reason behind it. You see after a brief walk along the local beach in the brisk wind I returned home fully intent on delving into my latest gaming melee on the Xbox, Left 4 Dead.

However, I have been thwarted in my attempts as, while my back was turned, my wonderful fiancée decided that this afternoon was the perfect time to get interested in gaming. Worse still she decided that the Wii was the better option and I have been forced to endure Wii sports and Wii fit in place of my preferred splatter fest amongst the rotting corpses of the walking dead. So, for now, I will have to wait a little longer to play through the so-far-amazing Left 4 Dead and post the subsequent review here. The only alternative is to try and wrestle the controller from my dearest, but the phrase “cold dead hands” springs to mind. Better leave her to it for now. Oh well, there’s always the internet…

Going mad for Arkham Asylum

Batman is back and, this time, he’s not made of yellow plastic bricks. The world’s no.1 detective returns to the Xbox in a dark and serious mood more akin to the recent Christian Bale incarnation than the camp Adam West version of the 1960s. Arkham Asylum sees you assuming the role of the Caped Crusader in what is, so far, the game of the year. It’s visually stunning with an immersive plot and a format which switches game-play modes just often enough to prevent a feeling of staleness from creeping into the gaming experience. Most of the characters are true to the Batman universe, deep and believable and, as most are psychotic, more than just a little bit scary.

Rocksteady Games have managed to develop a great superhero game that anyone who has ever pulled a towel around their neck and wished they could fly will love. You can use an array of tools to help you negotiate the Asylum and find your way through the puzzles laid before you. The combat takes many forms from stealth to all out 15-on-one melee and when jumping from great heights you can utilise the glide function of your cape. In the stealth take-down sections the gameplay takes on a new level forcing you to think carefully about your moves before launching into your attacks. One of the game’s little gems is suspending a hapless goon upside down below a gargoyle before slicing the rope with a baterang and startling his equally goonish allies below. They obviously know their audience too as Rocksteady’s team have ensured that Poison Ivy bulges in all the right places with just enough leafage to spare her blushes while she seductively chats up the Bat, just before trying to batter him. Those in the know will enjoy the hidden references to other characters unseen in the game and the back-stories, which can be collected to fill out the plot as you progress.

The game does have some flaws however, not least of which are the combat controls. It is possible to win almost any fight by battering the X and Y buttons mercilessly until your fingers bleed, and this detracts a little from the sense of immersion in the game. Players really have to try and make it interesting for themselves by throwing in the odd baterang and batclaw just to spice it up. Without giving too much away the boss fights can be somewhat repetitive and formulaic, although this can be said about a lot of games. With all that aside though, Arkham Asylum is, overall, a shining achievement for Rocksteady and glorious fun to play. Put your pants on outside your trousers, start talking in a gruff voice and settle in for some gratuitous cartoon violence.