One Night in Arkham…

Back in March I mentioned that I was playing through Batman: Arkham Asylum. I think I said before I was looking forward to the sequel, Batman: Arkham City. And wouldn’t you know, it came out about 3 weeks ago for console. In fact the Nightwing DLC was released earlier this month.

If you enjoyed Arkham Asylum, then Arkham City is a must. Arkham City uses the same wonderful mechanics as Arkham Asylum. Only difference here is Arkham City is in more of a sandbox (open world) environment than its predecessor; and this is a good thing. And remember those Riddler Challenges? In Arkham Asylum, they were pretty easy to spot if you just looked around the corner… Arkham City incorporates the Riddler Challenges in a much more natural way, where you could easily pass them without even knowing.

Rocksteady, yet again, tells another amazing tale of one night that the Dark Knight has… and it again feels much more than just one night. I think the greatest thing about Arkham City is that incorporation of the Batman characters…. to name a “few”: Catwoman, Clayface, Azrael, Hush, Solomon Grundy, the immortal Ra’s al Ghul… there are more 🙂 (And yes this is a spoiler… did you expect this to be spoiler free?) This game was truly developed with one thing in mind: story. From the first moments of the game to chasing down a Riddler Trophy to the post-game land, no detail was too small to be added without purpose. I should really get a video capture card so I can record my gaming on my PS3. It would be great if the PS3 has its own video recording feature. So for now I got no pictures/videos of my own to show T_T

There are a lot of great games that have been/are going to be released lately (Dark Souls, Sykrim, Uncharted 3, Zelda: Skyward Sword). It’s a good time to be a gamer ^_^.

In other news, I’l be travelling to Japan at the latter half of December. Yay!! Booked plane flights in September so it was pretty much set in stone months ago. We don’t have hard plans or anything, just a basic outline that we would be visiting areas in Tokyo and Kyoto. This will be my first trip outside of the country without parentals, so this will be fun. We’ll see if the group planning pays off or not for this trip. Japan madness will all be in roughly a month… so plenty of time until then to get anxious 😉

Manifesto Declaration Number…

Life has been busy… well namely work. As a developer, main job is to create new features and fix bugs. But when things break in the live product, customer expect the problem to be fixed… of course ASAP. We try our best ^_^.
We run a very big operation under startup-like conditions… its fairly interesting. The chaos that ensues when things break is rather nice from the day-in-day-out tasks.

In my spare time, recently I’ve been playing Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten on PS3. This one is pretty awesome and definitely meets my expectations for the series… it trolls me at every turn. If you have played any of the other 3 Disgaea games, you know what I’m talking about. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look at this trailer… it speaks for itself…. dood o.0



I’ll admit, the Disgaea genre isn’t for everyone, it is a “tactical RPG”… meaning it is turn-based and you move across grids like in chess (ie. Final Fantasty Tactics). There are a lot of intricacies to the game that makes it difficult to master, but very rewarding. I won’t go into details… but they don’t call a place the “Land of Carnage” for nothing…

I’ve already played through the game once and did most of the post-game tasks. Even in post-game I kept getting trolled… damn you Pringer X!
I’m on my many other storyline playthroughs to get the other endings… must get as many as I can before I start Batman: Arkham City…! I have it pre-ordered, so I’m excited to pick it up 🙂

Also I’m running Ubuntu 11.10: Oneiric Ocelot now on my DV6 Laptop (the one I got a while back). I tried upgrading from Natty, but that didn’t work out that well… So I did a clean install over it. My laptop hasn’t crashed/locked-up or anything yet, so I guess that’s a good thing. Only downside thus far is that there’s still no hybrid graphics support… so my cooling fan is constantly on. And also, still can’t dim brightness… my poor laptop battery life T_T.

I’m waiting for the Galaxy Nexus to be released… I’m thinking about getting a new phone. My current phone is the Nexus One. It has served me well for ~2 years… except I’ve ran out of internal space. Nexus One’s internal capacity is about 300MB… that’s nothing!! I had to cut back on some apps since current apps are just growing in size due to updates. We’ll see if I get the Galaxy Nexus… it feels too soon to get a new phone. We shall see…

There’s a Bat in my Belfry

So recently I bought Batman: Arkham Asylum for PC, about a week ago. I just finished playing it on the Hard difficulty. And I’m simply amazed and impressed by the game. It’s not a really new game, it was released in Fall 2009, but it’s definitely a great game a play. I got interested in playing it when I saw the trailer for Batman: Arkham City

My biggest complaint about the game is that you can’t take screenshots easily (can’t use the PrtScr button). So I got no screenshots to post. D: I don’t have an Xbox controller so I had to play with my mouse and keyboard. I can tell you, the game is made to be played with a controller. I spent a good afternoon configuring my keyboard/mouse so that it would optimal for playing. Since the mouse movement is already set to rotate the camera, I put 3 of my attack buttons also on the mouse. I used the commonly used WASD for movement and the keys around them for the rest.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is an adventure game, it plays very much like Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. And also I feel it’s on the same awesomeness level as it too. I grew up watching the animated Batman series (1992-1995ish) so it was very nice to hear Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as Batman and the Joker respectively. I think because they were already familiar with their characters, it made the experience all the better. Grappling up to rooftops and gliding down as the Cape Crusader is really fun.

Like Ocarina of Time, Arkham Asylum has an overworld that changes over time as the story progresses. There are upgrades that allow further access in old areas, unique puzzles that keep the game fresh, and freeflow combat that never gets old. Although Arkham Asylum is definitely no Hyrule, a tiny island can’t compare to the expansiveness of a whole land. And Arkham Asylum is lacking in sidequests… which isn’t too bad for a game like this. Most of the fun parts of the game are fighting the infamous Batman villians and doing the Predator Combat (basically ninja Batman mode).

The one thing I wish I had during the game (other than an Xbox controller for PC) is a on-screen map. Sure I can goto the menu and look at the map, but adventure games can get really disorienting after a fight. Also, there was no button that centered the camera to where Batman was directly looking at.

Hopefully one, if not both, of those things get improved in Batman: Arkham City. Even if neither of those things improve, the game will be great; more Batman villians will join the fray, a whole new underworld to serve justice to… I’m thinking of pre-ordering the game as it is scheduled to be released this fall. And if I do, it’ll probably be for PC (I’m too cheap to buy a PS3 or Xbox 360) so I’ll have to consider buying an Xbox controller for PC. We’ll see.

Overall I’d recommend this game to anyone, and in my opinion, its a must-play game for Batman lovers. I look forward to Arkham City when it comes out.