Batman Begins (Xbox version)

I've had this game on the Xbox for some time. I gave it another run through last week since Amy has re-kindled my interest in Batman, and here's what I think of the game:

For a bit of context, I've got all the Batman films since the Tim Burton movie back in the 80s, and I've enjoyed all of them up to a point. However, the Batman Begins film really did put some extra strength into the franchise. The acting was (generally) far stronger; Christian Bale makes a far more believable character out of Bruce Wayne for not having to be nice to absolutely everybody, and for having character flaws that don't necessarily involve his alter-ego. Michael Caine was wonderful as Alfred for his sense of humour and also for the fact that he's not as passive as the versions of him I've seen in the past. The villains were beyond excellent; not much masks and make-up going on in favour of more intricate, urbanised bad guys in the shape of the Ra's Al Ghul and Carmine Falcone. An idea that the film explores briefly at the end is that people like The Joker, The Riddler, The Penguin and Catwoman came about less as an intentional antagonist to The Batman, but rather as a reaction to a vigilante in a costume. Scarecrow is, of course, a law unto himself: He creates his costume and persona for his own reasons. But the overall theme of the film was dark, gritty - and the added element of Batman causing fear came far closer, in my opinion, to what Batman was supposed to be. He might be athletic, but so is Spiderman, any of the X-Men, Green Lantern or anyone you care to mention. He might have gadgets but so does James Bond. But rather than fearing his enemies, he gives his enemies something to fear, and that's what makes Batman unique.

This was going to have to play a huge part in the game in order to pull it off, and as a system, it works quite well. Try rushing in to a fight and you are reminded that Batman is, after all, just a man, as you get your proverbials handed to you by five very angry thugs, probably with guns. Take the time to look around the area, however, and you'll soon come up with different ways of tipping the odds in your favour; dodgy scaffolding you can collapse with a batarang, a pipe you can hang from to pick off your enemies without them knowing, or setting off some explosive barrels. Once they're suitably terrified, drop a Flashbang on them, and you can take the vast majority of the enemies out without having to resort to fighting. It's satisfying to do, especially if you like things with a little more depth than 'Let's find something and kill it,' but don't want such a challenge that it is hard to work out what to do. It is a little simplistic, and the auto-target tool means it will rarely take you long to work out what to do, but you have to remember that the only game before this that came even close to having fear as its main mechanic was The Thing. It was a brave move, and really did push the PS2 version of the game to the limits of it's machine.

Get up from that one and you're a braver man than me...

The game has sometimes been criticised for its length (it's not long by comparison of some other games,) but actually it's as long as it needs to be. The 'Fear' mechanic would probably get old if the game were to last any longer; it's just about the right length so that you can do pretty much everything there is to do in the game without getting bored before you reach the end. And there is a lot of fun to be had from what the game gets you to do; it's never taxing to work out what you have to do to beat the level, but the look on the bad guy's faces when they know you're there but can't see you is worth it. When the time finally comes where you have to have a straight fight and kick ass, there are combos for the avid gamers, but button-mashing works just as well. The targeting system is a bit clunky - you'll be tearing one guy a new one, and suddenly start running across to his mate on the other side of the room, and you won't be able to help but blame it for some untimely deaths.

The graphics and settings are brilliant and compliment the film setting; it has the dirty, gritty vibe that makes Gotham City so special and it is suitably bleak; far from Adam West running around in broad daylight carrying bombs. The music is tied in with the film and works well, and the voice acting is for the most part good. One very careless blunder of using the same sound patch for different types of enemy spoiled it a little - Ninjas from the League of Shadows have their own voices, but scaring them with a dropped scaffolding triggers the same fear reaction you heard from Dr Crane's thugs earlier on in the game. But for the most part, the game is presented very well indeed; exactly the level of detail you'd expect from a film tie-in.

So, a game that looks and feels great, if not executed terribly well. It's worth a look though, and 5 years after buying the game I still went back for another go, so it's not without staying power.

I'm a bit busy for games at the moment but I've had a go with Buffy the Vampire Slayer so you might be hearing from that quite soon...

19/9/2011: Thunderstone

I got the original Thunderstone game for my Birthday, and we gave it a go tonight. Actually it was a dice roll between that, Resident Evil, or talking about a novel that Dave wants to write about Tau and Orks. But I'm glad we gave this one a go. It's been far too long...

OK so there are some differences between this and Thunderstone Dragonspire that I played with Dave a few months ago, but they're mostly aesthetic differences and the general flow of the game remains the same. It's been a while, though, so for the uninitiated: You take a party of heroes into a dungeon to take out as many monsters as you can. You need to find the Thunderstone - shuffled into the last few cards - which stops the game immediately, and you gain a number of points based on the amount of monsters you kill and how many points they are worth; the one with the most points at the end of the game is the winner. Instead of going in to the dungeon you can spend some time in 'the village,' where you buy upgrades and more powerful heroes to aid you in your quest, and is literally the only way to deal with some of the game's tougher monsters.

I should mention that we started off with the basic starter set of cards. Normally they would be randomised but the starter set gives you a fairly balanced set of heroes with enough nasties to provide enough of a challenge. We started off with a basic party which would, as ever, needed to be added to. My tactics centred around building up my magic abilities, so I bought a lot of Elf Wizard and Clerics. Neither of their effects are all that much good until they get levelled up; the Cleric's effect of swapping a Disease card for another card is useful but a bit of a gamble because you don't know what the next card will be, and by the time you work it out your already committed into walking into the dungeon; you have to fight something, regardless of whether or not you can win. The attack power of the magic cards are fairly low at first and there are no magic cards in your starting hand, so it was a long time before I could venture into the dungeon to kill any monsters. The upshot of all of this is by the time I finally did, Dave had already got a lot of kills and levelled his heroes up quite a bit.

I began to pull it back when it transpired that because I was so dependent on magic, I no longer needed my militia or any of their associated effects; dropping those cards gave me a more efficient deck and there were a lot more options open to me for attack. I maxed out one Elf Archmage, which certainly helped but I can't quite figure out their effect; you get to put a monster from your hand back in to the dungeon. You don't get to fight it again because the Thunderstone will come up long before you see it, so all you're doing is throwing away victory points. The only reason I can think of for doing it is removing some low-reward monsters to speed up your deck, and in a game with more people that might be a reasonable tactic but it wasn't really going to help against Dave; if I didn't kill something, he would. So, I kept blasting the monsters with magic and whittling down the dungeon, until the Thunderstone was revealed...

Between the Thunderstone and the two of us there were two Nixies, who considering how proficient our decks were by then were very easy to kill. I killed one, and then Dave drew a bad hand so I killed the other, claiming the Thunderstone and ending the game. But did I win? We counted up the victory points, Dave had 39, I had 36. It was a close run, but in the end the game went to Dave.

So what went wrong? Well, Dave spent the earlier part of the game building up an attack force of Squires and Knights, even managed to get a Lord at one point. However, their effects relate to Militia and he'd thrown most of those cards away, making their effects next to useless. He was building up some magic in order to tackle some of the better monsters in the game I was nonetheless making a meal of, he did get an Archmage in the end and it was helping. His fighters, however, were of far more use when it came to dealing with the only monster in the game that halved the magic damage and couldn't be hit by weapons. Worth a whopping 6 victory points, the game was going to go to whoever had that one, and it was only really Dave who could have done it.

So, tactics for next time? Well if I play with that particular combination of cards again I'll think about building up some fighting skill as well as magic. It might be an idea to start off collecting some fighting cards and build up the magic power later in the game. It all depends on what gets drawn in the next go... but it will be interesting to find out.

Well done Dave, it was a close one but you won fair and square.

4/9/2011: Pool

Just a quick one...

This one was at Ye Olde Foundry in Dudley, where I was doing a gig on the same night. I was there with Dave, and though he always insisted he plays his best pool when he's drunk, he still gave it a good go...

I almost feel compelled, when there are blue balls, to try and go for them given my football team. Tonight was no exception but my good fortune ended there. I wasn't exactly concentrating very hard but I could not hit a ball accurately from then on, and ended up losing to Dave still having the majority of the balls left on the table. Not one of my better efforts. But then again, I never said I was any good at this...