Hiatus

Gaming blogging has to take a break. It's not that I'm not playing games - I certainly am. It's just life is too full with my other blogs and the serious business of gaming to afford more time writing about them. . .

When Space-Time Creates Myriad Destinations

I have cracked on with Final Fantasy XIII-2 to the tune of, perhaps, around 15 hours and I have definitely been making leaps and bounds of progress. Although it’s not always been forward progress in terms of the narrative. For example, I opened a gate to a place Oerba, that was familiar from the previous game, and battled through it only to reach the end and found that it all petered away (due to a paradox or something) into a vortex.

Suddenly I was stuck.

So I went back and did various other levels, wandering around figuring that there’d be something I’d missed, or something retroactively unlocked. I know that I’ll have to come back to some levels because there are parts I currently can’t reach, areas that are annoyingly cordoned off, and there’s Fragments to be collected off them.



Anyway, it turned out I had missed activating a warp gate on the very second level I visited. That took some time to realise, and a lot of fights later, so I think my characters had levelled up ahead of the curve because most of what followed was blitzed through rather easily.

There were all kinds of areas visited – from weird excavation sites populated by lots of researchers to a far-flung future on Gran Pulse where life is hard for the hunter people (coolest area so far, for me). The main enemy thus far has been some guy called Caius, who is forever accompanied by some chick called Yeul that appears in the same form but is different each time. I expect this will all be complicated further with the reveal of some bigger badder power working behind the scenes. . . I’ve said it before but Final Fantasy plots do tend to overburden themselves with epic-scale nonsense that generally just leaves me baffled and blindly battling whatever’s put in front of me towards the end.

Some characters from the previous game have made an appearance: Hope and Snow. Hope has come out of it well, maturing and talking sense, and was a long way from the slightly whiney character from the previous game. Snow is still a fucking douche though.



Somehow he’s also been hopping around in time to try and resolve Serah’s problems and find Lightning. Seeing Noel and Serah together only goes to highlight how he’s a far more reasonable and capable guy and, frankly, Serah ought to ditch Snow and hook up with the last human being ever (although I am sure that will get sorted out before the end).

The section with Snow in did have the toughest battle in the game so far, mind, against this giant Flan creature. It was OK taking it down when I had been through the game and taken the necessary steps to weaken it – but that initial battle was a bit of a slog. I expect, as with any Final Fantasy fight that’s a struggle, it was through some fault of my own for not employing the correct technique. Thing is, whilst having a Synergist monster is working out well for me I have to say that techniques that worked well in the previous game (tactical Saboteur action, Ravagers rapidly hammering enemies to a Stagger) don’t seem to pull off as well this time. Half the time I am finding that Synergists and Commandos are all I need to get through the vast majority of fights.

No doubt I’ll encounter sterner tests that will demand better techniques.

After completing a few missions the whole ‘time period selection area’ went bananas, with all kinds of divergent histories and futures opening up (apparently changing the future also changes the past so I’m no longer just time travelling, I’m also travelling into tangent universes) and some crazy gaming area called Serendipity or something, which reminded me of a less fun Golden Saucer from Final Fantasy centred entirely around gambling opened up.

With all those options and opportunities open to me I became overwhelmed with choice and turned the game off for a rest. I actually think I prefer the more linear approach!

FFXIII-2

Ahhh, happiness is a new Final Fantasy game. And although Final Fantasy XIII-2 isn’t strictly a new one, it’s close enough. Taking many of the characters, world and game mechanics from its predecessor (which I thought was far better than much of the criticism inferred) it instantly felt familiar and fresh.

This new instalment doesn’t hang around. The opening minutes involve Lightning in a strange place called Valhalla, battling some guy with cinematic sequences and QTEs all over the place. Honestly, I’m not sure I totally love QTEs in the game, but they’re pretty enough and, so far, have been generous with reaction time so I’m not grumbling too much.



That was all more like a prologue, though, with the game starting properly on ‘New Bodhum’ with Serah and a new character called Noel. At time of writing I have played through the first chapter, which took me about three hours. I am playing it leisurely, thoroughly – I know from experience there is little to be gained by rushing through a Final Fantasy since you’ll only miss key items or not upgrade your skills and powers enough.

After the criticism of the last game being far too constrictive and linear with no sidequests, it’s clear from the off this new one wants to redress that perceived injustice. I have already completed one sidequest (finding a medical kit for some woman) and collected some ‘fragments’ (of which there are 160!). But I have also reached a point where I am able to travel in time which, in effect, kind of serves like a level select albeit sophisticated enough to monitor plot progression in each time frame.

An aspect of the previous game that has returned pretty much similar to how it was before is the battle system. I thought the ATB style mixed with paradigms made for great, engaging fights that sometimes required quick reactions as well as good preparation. FFXIII-2 has brought back random battles, although they do come with an element of physicality in that the enemy appears in your vicinity and then you can either quickly find an attack for a pre-emptive strike or escape if you don’t fancy it.

For the record, I never ran away.



And already there’s been a couple of boss fights that have been challenging but not too difficult. The plot, about time travel and Serah remembering a version of history other people don’t recall, is intriguing but likely to descend into the regular complex mess that usually happens with Final Fantasy plots. They always do. This one has started out with a compelling mystery but with time travel, the end of humanity and all manner of enormous interdimensional beings in the mix already then it won’t take long for things to take a turn for the epic and incomprehensible.

The Crystarium levelling up seemed a bit odd (it appears that it’ll be better to concentrate each character or one or two specific types rather than make generic, all-purpose jacks of all trades, which is fair enough but could have used better explanation) but familiarity with the previous game meant I could quickly adjust. God knows what brand new people would make of some of it since the game spares little concession for noobs. But that’s their problem. For me, so far so great.

Impulse Defender

Now here was a game that went to the brink and back. Indeed, you could argue I tossed it over the side only to later throw it a rope and drag it back again. What am I talking about? I’m talking about how I nearly didn’t get Dungeon Defenders.

What happened was, I had heard about this new tower defence game that had arrived on PSN. I checked it out and saw there was a demo available for it, so that was encouraging stuff. I love a bit of try before you buy. The trouble with PSN demos are that they do tend to get very limited time to impress me. Like, near-instantly I’ll decide if I like the game enough to continue even playing the demo, let alone going for a full purchase. (Joe Danger was a recent game I had a try on and very quickly decided I didn’t like.)

Dungeon Defenders didn’t make a good first impression. I gave it a whirl and, whilst I got through the tutorial reasonably engaged, it then cut to some tavern area where I could buy all kinds of stuff, and that alongside upgrading all manner of stats for my person really rather put me off. It all just seemed like too much hard work and hassle for what should have been a simple game.



The very thing I like about tower defence games are their initial simplicity that gives way to more elaborate challenges. Dungeon Defenders just felt overwhelming right from the start. So I abandoned the demo and deleted the game content and left it at that.

Funny thing was, it nagged at me. I started thinking that maybe I had been too harsh. Maybe I had been a bit too tired when I tried the demo and a little bit of perseverance could yield big rewards. I trusted my own sense of self-doubt enough to just go ahead and buy the thing. I find that once I’ve invested some actual money in a game I am a little more willing to take it on its terms.

Boy was that good move. Dungeon Defenders, for the pretty cheap asking price, is an absolute gem of a game.

Yes, it’s fundamentally a tower defence game. But being in 3D and with the added capacity to go ahead and battle the monsters in hand-to-hand combat alongside the defences make it a more action-oriented game. There’s a sufficient number of levels and, more importantly, difficulties for each level that mean there’s lots to do right from the start. Throw in four different characters to choose from, and all the levelling up for them and the weapons and armour that can be bought and collected and there’s plenty to sink your teeth into. And that's without even mentioning the challenge section of the game, which I haven't even looked at yet!

I particularly like how the game supports local play for co-op, which means I can rope Mrs. Comet in to getting involved with me. Or I can go online and play my own game and have people join me, or join other people’s. . . Better still is that Mrs. Comet and I can both be playing online and have other people join in with us.

At time of writing I have managed, either by playing solo, local co-op or online, to get myself to the end of the game and have it completed, but only on Easy level. There’s a heck of a lot of work to do before I get to the point of completing it all on harder levels, and then there’s all the challenges and things to get stuck into. Dungeon Defenders possibly presents some of the best value for money gaming I’ve seen in a long while.

The only niggle I have about it, in fact, is that I can’t devote a lot more energy and time to it because Final Fantasy XIII-2 is right around the corner! I’m glad I managed to persuade myself I’d been impulsively foolish with my first impressions because this little innocuous title has completely won me over.

Deus Ex Human Platinum (Bronze, Silver, Gold and Plat)

My second playthrough of Deus Ex: Human Revolution came down to this one last session, which resulted in me curiously earning one of every trophy type there is: one bronze, one silver, one gold and one platinum. I can’t imagine that’ll happen ever again!

It’s definitely been more rewarding, working through the game with more abandon to kill enemies. Like the section where I got to the storage dockyard. Previous that was a painstaking exercise in getting to the building unseen, picking off guards where I could. This time around I could just nip into the hut before going through the gate and set all the turrets and gun cameras against the guards and completely clear the area!



My bronze trophy came from finding the hidden room computer that I had to hack. Apparently this is only available when you’ve saved Malik previously, and is also the hardest to hack computer in the entire game. I got through it no problem using an auto unlock device! Easy.

The silver trophy was awarded when I finally got the last of the eBooks for the Doctorate trophy. This was definitely one I’d have never achieved without a guide, though I did worry that, despite my keeping track of what I’d collected, I’d have missed one and blown the chance of getting the Platinum. Big relief when that trophy popped.

The last level of the game was fun even when trying to not kill anyone, but being able to wade through the crazed people, gunning them down, blowing them up, made it a heck of a lot more fun. The end boss posed absolutely no threat whatsoever, also. I had both a grenade launcher and a laser rifle at my disposal so fancied my chances. I went with the laser rifle and it was over in seconds. For completing the game on the hardest level, I was awarded my Gold.



And that was it, too. The last of the trophies earned meant the Platinum quickly followed! It’s always a happy day when you get a Platinum trophy award. This one for Deus Ex: Human Revolution added to my tally to take my total Platinum trophies to 14.

Games On The Roster

I’ve got a lot of games on the go at the moment, and in some ways it kind of stresses me out. I rather like being able to concentrate on a game properly rather than divide my time being a Jack of all trades and a master of none. But that’s not the situation I find myself in. . . and all just before Final Fantasy XIII-2 is due to land! I need to start squaring some of these away!

I’ve had Deux Ex: Human Revolution hanging over my head for a while, and it’s been bugging me.



Basically I had set myself up to be on course for a Platinum trophy out of it, having done the hard trophies on my first playthrough. I just needed to complete the game on Hard difficult, collect all the eBooks and complete various side missions along the way. It just felt like a long slog, and the longer I left it the harder returning became.

I found myself with a free afternoon, however, and devoted my time to getting back into it – and so I did. It was a good move. I managed to plough through the long slog of the Medical Facility and the Picus News offices, which certainly did take me a good while (just getting used to the controls took a bit!) since the sheer numbers of armed enemies meant engaging with them, on Hard level, usually meant death. The boss fight was easier this time, though. . .



I used a technique of just lobbing Fragmentation Mines at her, dodging from the start and then throwing them her way intermittently. She died within seconds, never moving from that one spot. It was outrageously easy!

After that I did some mopping uo duties for certain missions (like confronting a guy in a conference centre, stopping someone else from committing suicide whilst assisting the suicide of someone else), all for trophies I missed first time around, and pretty much left it at that point where I know a helicopter crash and attack will occur. This time I need to rescue my pilot and friend, Faridah. On Hard. I anticipate this being the toughest challenge I face before the finish, and the Platinum.

On a less intense note, I actually returned to a long-untouched PSN game I downloaded ages ago. . . Pixeljunk Racers.



Why? Basically because I had had a drink and it was late and I wasn’t in the mood for getting involved in any heavy gaming but still wanted to play something, so browsed my PSN games and spotted this one and had a quick go.

A quick go turned into hour after maddening hour, for it is a truly maddening game. In pursuit of trying to compete the tournament, aiming for Golds, or achieving some of the trophy challenges, the frustrating, hideously difficult game somehow kept dragging me back for one more go, almost like the deceptively simple nature of it was taunting me. Look at how basic it is – how can it beat you!?

I suspect there’s a limit to how successful I will ever be at that game, but as a quick blast diversion I’ve been mining some fun from it.

Long haul slogs for a Platinum trophy don’t come anymore daunting than the one I am attempting to obtain on EA Sports 2.



It’s proven unfeasible to really stick to the training schedules the game demands. It expects me to complete four workouts a week! I work full time, I have a wife and baby, I simply cannot maintain that! So I skimped through the 9-week programme, missing out loads of exercises, just to get the necessary trophies for that.

Unfortunately missing out exercises means I didn’t get a key trophy for doing a programme properly, so now I am doing the 3-week cardio one, properly. It’s a pain, but I’ll make the effort. Beyond that I’ll then be able to just set my own routines at my own pace to complete all of the other necessary trophy requirements. It’ll probably take months. Like I said, long haul.

Dead Island has failed to keep me fully engaged. There’s something a bit too monotonous and frustrating about the combat that prevents me really getting engrossed.



I think part of the problem is having the enemies level up as I do, which fundamentally means that the more time I’ve spent playing online or just going around exploring, battering enemies and getting more experience is actually working against me. Unless I pick up stronger weapons my increased levelling up is actually making the more rudimentary excursions becoming littered with tough, basic zombies!

Stupid.

I still think the online innovation is a good one, and exploring the Island and seeing more characters and plot developments is enticing. I do genuinely like the vibe and the atmosphere of the game. But it’s the core gameplay that lets it down in such obvious ways it’s really kind of infuriating.

Better success has been had on Modern Warfare 3 Special Ops. Mrs. Comet and I have been battling through the Survival missions with steely-determination.

Pic of MW£ Special Ops

I noticed there were trophies available for completing all 16 survival maps up to Wave 10, and Wave 15. The Wave 10 one seemed possible, I thought, even the tough later maps (difficulty labels of ‘Hard’ and then ‘Insane’ certainly suggest a striking degree of brutality in store!). Well, we did them all up to Wave 10. So that set us the challenge of beating them all up to Wave 15.

It was really only the ‘Hard’ and ‘Insane’ levels that presented genuine difficulties, and basically it came down to the two waves featuring attack helicopters and Juggernauts (along with the handful of Bomb Dogs and Infantry!).

The key, we found, was in taking out the attack helicopter, but the trouble was that arrived on the scene shortly after everything else. . . You just had to scope out the best place under cover to take down the chopper, and then start the map away from that point to lure the Juggernauts from it. Once the Juggernauts were on the ground haul ass to the covered area, get a Predator missile on the chopper whilst your partner keeps lookout and takes out bomb dogs. Once the chopper is down we were both then free to run loose, pick off the chasers, and take down the Juggernauts at our leisure.

Easier written down than done, and Mrs. Comet and I had some bitter fallouts and recriminations at each other, but there were met by high fives of success when we beat Wave 15 across the board!

You think that’s all my current gaming slate? Think again. I’ve still got Batman: Arkham City on the go!



Having now completed the game there’s still a plethora of challenges remaining. The challenge maps have been fun. The Combat ones are enjoyable, though I have taken to the Predator ones as well. Managed to get 24 ‘bat symbols’ for a trophy out of them, which ain’t bad going, but leaves much more to do.

Meanwhile on the main game there were side missions and Riddler trophies left undone. I sorted out the Deadshot side mission easily enough, though getting the Zsasz (or however that’s spelled) mission complete required a touch more skill to get to him in his secret room.

The Riddler remains the most confounding. I managed to rescue a couple of his hostages but got to the point where I needed to uncover more trophies before he’d let the mission continue. Due to that, and since there was a Trophy requirement to complete new game plus with all missions done also, I started a New Game + file intent on cleaning up all the missions on there and collecting more trophies along the way. Having been through the game once I figured it’d be a bit of a blast.

It is a blast, mostly, since I’m now familiar with the city and know where to go to get things done, and I also have all my upgrades, too, so getting Trophies along the way is a tad easier. But still, the enemies are souped up here right from the start and aren’t exactly a pushover, so I am expecting the game to be reasonably challenging the more I progress.

I’m sure I can handle it. I’m fucking Batman, for God’s sake!

On A Dead Island, With Friends!

A little more time with Dead Island has allowed me to see more of what kind of game it is and what it’s all about. Something I underestimated was how fundamental the online co-op aspects of the game were, which serve to make the game a little more like an online RPG (a MORPG, rather than a MMORPG, since there’s a maximum of four players allowed). Prior to that realisation I was actually enjoying the game as it was.

Having secured the Lifeguard HQ I was into Chapter 2 and a wealth of sidequest missions that opened up. Setting about these, like getting engine parts, only resulted in meeting more people and setting up more sidequest encounters and it’s just branching out from there. I don’t really have a clear idea about what it is I do to progress the main game! For now I am content to just keep tackling sidequests.

I’ve met and defeated a couple of Brutes, and driven around in vehicles (good fun, that, and a nice way to explore the current sections of the Island I am aware of). I made it to a lighthouse, which serves as a second base to my Lifeguard HQ. All in all the initially inhospitable, lonely and dangerous world of the Island has actually turned into a place where I can explore and walk around reasonably leisurely, merrily dispatching the zombies with ease.



Not so long back zombie fights were something to really panic about – now they’re minor inconveniences most of the time, and worth doing to gain EXP.

However, all the while I had been playing with the online function switched off. With it switched on I realised my game then existed in a kind of parallel universe to other players. I’d get notifications that someone else was near where I was and, as such, I could then ‘hop’ into their universe and their game and play alongside them, whilst still completing my missions if I wanted to. And vice versa.

So whilst I’ve not spent a massive amount of time doing this I have had some time online with other people. Some of them just seemed to enjoy going around battering zombies with their cool weapons, whereas others seemed more interested in completing the same mission as me. I quite liked how it seemed I could hang around with them, or go off and complete a mission on my own. It’s not quite clear how we’re all supposed to know who is doing what mission, and how we all get on the same page and share the same goal, but I like the set-up so far.

Reading one of the loading screen messages that there are some areas of the Island that are too dangerous to try tackling alone seemed like an interesting proposition, too. So in future I expect I’ll play Dead Island with the online mode switched on and see how I feel about joining other games, and if other people want to join me then great!

On A Dead Island

I received Dead Island for Christmas, but I’ve spent my time with Batman:Arkham City since then so only just got around to having a go on it. Just over two hours worth of time on it and I think I’ve got a pretty good feel for what it’s all about. It’s not quite the first-person Resident Evil type game I expected; it’s actually more like Fallout 3 fused with Dead Rising 2 (both of which are games I don’t particularly like!).

Dead Island has just about kept my interest, so far. Of course it originally had a lot of hype because of that awesome promo featuring the holidaying family battling zombies that had already attacked their little girl. The game starts after that moment (though very early on there is a reference to it as you can go into the room where it took place and see their bodies lying on the floor).

From the selection of four characters I went with a black guy whose name I can’t remember, mainly because it stated he was good with blunt instruments. I figured there would be a lot of use for using blunt instruments and I was right, so in that respect he was good choice. His voice is really irritating, though.

So from the situation of being on the holiday island of Banoi I’ve basically been roaming around the beach and the pools and the holiday homes, battering zombies with whatever blunt instrument comes to hand. Figuring out that items I’ve picked up get stored in an inventory and can be accessed and armed took a bit of detective work but it’s not exactly in-depth. The levelling up system is in place, with the annoyance that the enemies level up as I level up.



Why? Part of the fun in levelling up is becoming stronger so that enemies are weaker. As I level up I expect to progress through the game and meet tougher enemies in harder areas – not have every enemy I meet evenly matched. Probably that’s a preference thing since I know other games of this ilk operate in the same manner. Personally, I’m not a fan.

Something that did look interesting, that I didn’t get into on this first session, was the co-op element of the game that appeared to take the form of a drop in, drop out aspect. Potentially this makes more sense of pitching the enemies to your particular level, to balance things no matter what level of person you are joining a game with. I don’t know how well the co-op mode will work, or how it will manage in terms of completing missions (I guess if people joined my game they could do my missions and vice versa) but it’s got my interest piqued.

I basically reached the point where I secured a lifeguard headquarters so survivors could rally there with better supplies. The moment that scene ended my mission map lit up with stacks of potential missions to do so, in the face of such overwhelming choice, I switched the game off and went to bed.



Dead Island does a good job in generating some tension from its zombie attacks. The sounds they make are animalistic and unnerving and whilst combat with them sometimes literally feels hit and miss, it’s got a satisfying and bloody quality about it that can surely only get better as I get better weapons.

I did also admire the freedom the game afforded. I went right off the beaten track of my mission and found myself near some power station, and got in a truck and drove it around a bit. I was hopelessly lost, mind, but that only added to that sense of getting into a bad situation and being unsure if I was going to be able to get out of it.

The voice-acting is a bit lame and the graphics are nice without being amazing, but so far Dead Island isn’t quite what I expected but is turning out to be an intriguing proposition.

Batman City Limits

You know, if I’d found the time and energy to write a post or two about Batman: Arkham City whilst I had been playing it I might not have been so kind about it. It’s fair to say there were points during this game that I experienced annoyance. It was stuff like there being stacks of armed guards hanging around in between locations, meaning trying to collect stuff or do the AR challenges meant having to engage in lots of fights with armed people, taking them out in time-consuming fashion.

Fair enough having such encounters in the main game, but having them as re-spawning enemies on the main map is just irritating. Either have them there to be taken out and stay taken out, or don’t have tough villains in great numbers hanging around at all.

That’s my major rant. My other rant was how finding things could be annoying. Like you’d set a waypoint on the map and then get to it, but because there was no sense of depth with the indicator to tell you if you’re above or below your intended destination (just a small up or down arrow would have done) you can spend ages hunting for, say, a dead body, or a door. Again, annoying, and needlessly so. A petty inconvenience that could have been easily remedied.

So, rants over, and them withstanding I can still state that Batman: Arkham City is a wonderful game. It is magnificently-well put together, with maddening attention to detail, faultless characterisations and terrific atmosphere. It’s telling that I’ve finished the game and a number of the sidequests, including Catwoman’s stuff, and there’s still about 45% of the game remaining. You certainly get value for money, and that’s just the main game – there’s the challenge maps and campaigns in the mix, too. It all amounts to a great package that more than makes up for the lack of multiplayer (which I struggle to imagine there’s any need for anyway).

If you haven’t played the latter stages of the game, and in particular if you haven’t finished it and seen the amazing ending (really, it’s quite special) then there are SPOILERS abound that will ruin this game for you. Stop reading. Go away.

So last time I posted I was just about to tackle the Penguin regarding his capturing of Mr. Freeze (whom I needed to make me an antidote to cure the disease I was carrying, phew!). The Penguin fight wasn’t really troublesome, just annoying in trying to get close to him. Indeed, whilst the boss fights have felt like a step up from the previous game they were still more irritating than engaging. Like the fight against Solomon Grundy – dodging the timing of the attacks whilst still being able to inflict damage became quite a precise thing towards the end of the fight, yet when it comes to straight out running and jumping Batman doesn’t fare too well – he’s certainly no Nathan Drake.

The best boss fight was against Mr. Freeze. This one really played to the strengths of the game, requiring a multitude of different techniques from stealth, to gel explosives, to drop attacks as Mr. Freeze stalked about the room evolving and adapting to each attack you made, meaning the same technique couldn’t work twice. I really liked it.



Since the Scarecrow was not present this time around there were other devices used to create some trippy sequences. None of them were as good as, say, the bit in the first game where it appeared that the game had broken and reloaded, but the journey into the weird world of Ra’s Al Ghul was fun. And a meeting with the Mad Hatter cropped up out of nowhere for a strange sort of encounter that the game probably could have done just fine without, really, but it all adds to the package.

The real class act though, and the part you really don’t want to read about if you haven’t finished the game, was the end. It actually felt a tad climactic, at first. Whilst the lair of Hugo Strange was interesting in its totalitarian design leanings I didn’t much of a sense about the character himself, and the reveal that Al Ghul was the mastermind behind it all did little to overwhelm.

That both of these guys were taken down without a significant battle at first made me think the game had rather cheaped out on providing a proper confrontation. Of course, the Joker took to the stage for the finale. I particularly enjoyed the twist about how he had been using a double to disguise his ravaged looks. I didn’t see it coming though it did make sense of all the remarks and hints and clues that had been scattered throughout the game puzzling over as much.



The subsequent fight against Clayface was not really befitting as a grandstanding last game boss battle, to be honest. Lots of games struggle to deliver in this regard, though, so it’s no massive letdown. And the game ultimately packs more of a punch with the final scenes. Some ironic, bittersweet exchanges between Batman and Joker are the last words the two share before the Joker actually dies.

The image of Batman carrying the body of his nemesis and laying it down was really quite moving, and the game closed out on a powerful tone in that regard. Having Joker sing ‘Only You’ over the credits at the end just really added to the emotional impact. There’s been moments in a number of games that have drawn tangible emotions out of me, but the finish to Batman: Arkham City really left me feeling a kind of subdued astonishment – in a very good way.

Of course, finishing the game doesn’t mean the game is over. There’s still sidequests galore (find Nora for Mr. Freeze, discover who the ‘watcher’ is, capture deadshot, a murderer, and not to mention the vast number of Riddler trophies to find and puzzles to resolve to save hostages. Unlike the Joker, there’s life in the game yet!

Batman Goes Citywide

I got Batman: Arkham City for Xmas. And it’s not that it’s taken me ages to play it, it’s just taken me a while to getting around to posting about it. (And, for the record, I wrote this post once already and then it just disappeared, which I certainly haven’t at all found annoying in the slightest!

Breathe.

The first Batman: Arkham Asylum was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t quite get overwhelmed with gushing praise for it like much of the gaming press seemed to. It came out around the same time as Uncharted 2 and, for me, there was no question which was the better game. And curiously, this game has come out around the same time as Uncharted 3. Arguably, it’s Batman: Arkham City that has made more progression than its predecessor between the two, though quite how much more there is I have yet to uncover.



I am up to the point where I am tracking down the Penguin in order to free Mr. Freeze. There’s a fairly convoluted plot but basically Batman has been injected with a poison and needs an antidote. The Joker also needs the same antidote, too. Following the events of the previous game he appears to have been left reeling, weakened, but he still seems to be quite a presence in the game.

I still find it hard to believe that it’s Luke Skywalker doing the voice!

I was a bit confused at the start of the game, to be honest. There was a rapid assault of exposition and there I was as Bruce Wayne, imprisoned! It was a disorientating beginning, for sure, but I kind of liked it. Preferred when I got back in the suit, mind, and began the game properly.

The major difference here is the more open world of Arkham City compared to the closed off corridors of Arkham Asylum. The main narrative is still linear (not a complaint) but there is a constant bombardment of side missions opening up – from ringing telephones to political prisoners being harassed – that certainly keep things busy (and also make journeying across the city littered with incidents to keep it engaging).



The Riddler trophies have become more advanced this time out, too. It’s not just about finding them anymore, it’s also about solving puzzles around them to do with trigger switches and pressure pads and who knows what else. Initial feelings about them were that I wasn’t keen, but maybe that’s because they’re just so many of them it felt like an overwhelming challenge. (It’ll be a nightmare to try and get them all even with youtube or a guide helping since they’re so many and so scattered!)

The real pleasure of the previous Batman game, for me, was actually delving into the history of the character and the world, and also meeting the characters. The game does a terrific job of depicting these famous, and not so famous, villains. I’ve met Two-Face first up, and Riddler was viewed for the first time (though I’ve not met him in person). Batman really does have a rich mix of characters in its world and since I’m pretty ignorant to all of it besides what’s been put on film then it’s all new and interesting for me.

I downloaded the Catwoman DLC before I started the game, so that her sections would be interspersed throughout my game. She’s not quite as easy to control as Batman, though her ceiling climbing skills add a new dimension to exploration and combat. So far with her I’ve tackled Poison Ivy but not done much else. So far her sections are a nice diversion but not particularly fascinating.



First impressions are certainly that this game pretty much expects players to have experienced the original, not just because the story follows on but also because there’s a lot less of a learning curve. It’s not that you’re totally thrown in at the deep end, but it doesn’t take long before you’re being attacked by multiple foes, or faced with using whatever stealth tactics you can imagine, as well as having a decent set of Bat-equipment at your disposal from the beginning. It definitely looks to be a far superior game, though – and considering the first was pretty awesome then that’s nothing but super fine goodness!

GodHard

Well well, it’s raining Platinum trophies, thanks to God Of War and God Of War 3.

The situation was, on God Of War, I needed to go through the game in under five hours. I had already slogged through the ‘challenge of the Gods’ section to get the Dairy Bastard costume, though, so I knew I had an advantage. And what an advantage it turned out to be. The ability to have infinite magic meant no battle was too tough.

Something I hadn’t realised about the speed run was that the clock reset whenever you got killed and reset at a checkpoint. I didn’t know that. I kind of thought the five hour time limit was like a constantly ticking clock the moment you started the new game and dying was just wasting precious seconds. Once I realised that checkpoints stored your current time the pressure eased right off.



I think I did the game in about four hours, maybe even less. I just tore right through it, on Easy, wearing the Dairy Bastard costume. I can’t remember a single section of it troubling me. I did enjoy it all over again, though, and once finished and a Platinum trophy awarded I actually had a renewed interest in taking another run at God Of War 3 and seeing if I could get the Platinum out of that.

I had to complete the game on Hard, and complete the ‘challenge of the Gods’ section, too. And there were no costumes or perks I could use to help me with either. It was time to role my gamer sleeves up and see if I had what it took.

Funny thing about playing games on Hard is you get better at them. It seems obvious, but you are pushed to improve just to survive. Like when I was fighting Poseidon I was getting nailed time and time again. Previously when playing I had just soaked up damage and battered my way through, but on Hard that just wasn’t possible.



So I had to watch him more. Study his attack patterns, learn how to defend without taking injury in between attacks. That becomes true of the game later on – you watch the enemies more and search for vital weaknesses or better attacking techniques rather than just soaking up damage and dishing out more to compensate. As such I think I enjoyed the Hard playthrough of God Of War 3 more than I did the first time around. Same was true of Dead Space on Impossible mode. There’s an argument that suggests all games might benefit from being tackled on hard levels. . .

Best fight in the game was still the Hades one. Loved it before, loved it this time. It might be the best fight in the entire series, in fact. It goes through so much variation, so many attack patterns you have to learn and adapt to, it’s a satisfying slog of a battle.



The toughest parts of God Of War 3 all come towards the end. In fact I can remember them all very distinctly, because they certainly caused me some hassle. There were 3 of them – just 3 sections in the whole game that really took some effort to get through.

The first was a battle at the end of the Labyrinth, shortly after hooking up with Pandora. It was just one room with lots of sirens and other enemies constantly appearing. It was the length of the fight that proved troublesome.

Wave after wave, constantly whittling down my health. It was important to take down the Sirens as a priority, because the moment they started singing you were in trouble. The importance of grappling attack (L1 and circle) cannot be underestimated. The sigh of relief I breathed upon completing the challenge was shortlived, however, because minutes later I was into the toughest fight of the game: the Hades Cerberus Breeder!



I remembered this being a tough fight on Normal. On Hard it’s no joke. It took me many, many goes. Ostensibly it breaks down into three stages of the fight, and here’s how I did it should you want to know.

First stage is when the fight starts. Forget about grabbing the dogs it spits out and booting them back at it. It takes too long and you’re likely to lose health. No, switch to the Hercules Gloves (hopefully fully-powered up by now!) and concentrate on getting to the side or rear of the dog and batter him. Dodge and roll to ensure you’re at its side or rear and keep hitting and, eventually, the circle will appear above its head and that will be Stage One over.

Stage two sees a Satyr appear. Just roll around and dodge attacks (switch to chain weapons for faster movement) until the two of them are close together and then hammer Poseidon’s Rage. Basically with Stage Two you use all your magic up. With any luck you’ll use up all your magic and have taken out the Satyr and the dog will be ready for a circle finish (otherwise get your gloves back on and repeat the attacking from stage one to see it off – it won’t have much left).

Stage three sees two Satyrs appear. Ignore them, and go into ‘rage of the Gods’ mode and absolutely hammer at the dog. If the Satyrs get close, hammer them. The goal is to see the dog dead before your power runs out. That done, if there’s one or two Satyrs left you can deal with them most easily by just using a straight grab attack. Don’t try and hit them – just press circle when they are fairly close. Two or three of those grab attacks each and they die pretty easily. Fight over!

The last tricky section is the final fight against Zeus, inside Gaia. This close to the end, a brutally tough fight actually frustrated me more than anything else the game had thrown at me.

Turned out there’s a relatively easy way of winning – just spam the hook grab attack (L1 and circle) wearing the Hercules gloves. This should, for the most part, stop him doing most of his magic spells and multiplying parts. You might still have to deal with some of then, and you’ll have to dodge when he flies in the air and slams down, but by far and away spamming L1 and circle should make it a cinch.

So, wow! God Of war 3 done on Hard mode. All that remained was the ‘challenge of the Gods’, which have been the hardest parts of the first two God Of War games so I wasn’t looking forward to them. And you know what? They turned out to be not so bad at all.

Hardest one was probably the ‘turn to stone 10 times and live’ medusa challenge. By the time you’ve been turned to stone around 7 or 8 times it gets silly, with enemies like trolls and soldiers all over the place. I just about scraped through after countless attempts.



There were a couple of other tricky ones. The ‘no weapons’ one was tough – reliant on using soldiers as battering rams against trolls. That took many, many goes. And the one where trolls kept multiplying as I killed them was rock solid, too – another one I just about scraped through. The rest, however, I handled with little fuss or fanfare. And so it was that I was furnished with a Platinum trophy for God Of War 3, and meant I had earned a Platinum for all three games!

Veteran Warfare The Third

Taking on Modern Warfare 3 on Veteran level was something I was always going to take on. I had done Modern Warfare 2 on the same Veteran level and, whilst that had been a nightmare of frustration and rage at times, the regular trophy awards and sense of accomplishment make it worth the effort. And since Modern Warfare 3 was the more spectacular campaign level I was kind of looking forward to going through it all again and this time having to really think about how I tackled the levels and situations to get through.

Weirdly, the first level is one of the most difficult. I found it tricky on Normal, but just getting through the very first part of the street on Veteran was really tough going. It did make me wonder, If the whole game is going to get harder than this then maybe this is not such a good idea.



The submarine level was also tough, but so long as you take your time and make sure you’re ready to duck and take cover when the next enemies are triggered then you can slowly pick your way along.

After the initially difficult stages, however, I actually found the majority of the game rather a lot of fun, and whipped through it a lot faster than I thought I would. I didn't like the mortar bombing part and there were one or two other tiny sections that saw me having to take a few attempts to get it right (taking down the Eiffel Tower was one such part). To add to the hassle, mind, I was also using a guide to locate all of the Intel packs to collect on all the levels as I was going through. So sometimes that meant going out of my way to collect them, meaning I had slightly tougher going on top of what was already tough going.

However, let’s cut a long story short and talk about the last level. The last part of the last level, to be precise. The bit where you’ve stormed the lair of the bad guy and had your Juggernaut suit blown to bits and the elevator doors open and, with the clock ticking, you’ve got to wade through stacks of bad guys, in a hurry, to get your man. That section was, no joke, where I thought I might have hit my skill barrier. Time after time those doors opened and I stepped out and tried to pick out the enemies and press forward only to get absolutely killed in moments. Whatever I tried, whatever tactics I tried to employ, I just could not get through. I began to wonder if I really was never going to be able to manage it.

And then I noticed that the enemies seemed to trigger at a certain point and spill into the room, running around the ledge. Eventually, playing it enough times, I got to learn what guys were killed and how far forward I could move before some speech was uttered which I knew served as a trigger to notify that the men were coming out of their doors. So over on the right, just near the elevators, I was ready with a full clip of a light machine gun and I let those bastards have it.



When you decimate most of your enemies before they even get to fire a shot in return suddenly the impossible became possible. And with that absolutely horrible section completed I pushed on to find the bad guy and kill him off, quick as you like. And that was that, Modern Warfare 3 completed on Veteran with everything collected and every little side trophy award obtained.

I’ll almost certainly never get the Platinum because that depends too much on the Special Ops stuff, but I’ve got a major percentage return now and that sense of achievement. I did it. That’s all the reward I needed.

Challenge Of The Gods

I have a friend who is perhaps what you’d consider a trophy rival. We’ve been competing for ages to see who can get the highest trophy score level, the most platinums. . . It was a relatively even contest until recently when he got to sit on his backside all day, not going to work, playing games constantly.

Oh sure, he went into hospital and had an operation and so was at home recuperating. Whatever. He’s still gaming like a beast, tearing through games and racking up trophies to make it no longer a contest. I’ve got a full-time job and a wife and kid! Times are hard enough to get gaming as is!

Anyway, one thing did pique my interest. I noticed in his recent gaming exploits that he had got a Platinum trophy on the first God Of War. Now I played this game ages ago and basically dipped out on the Platinum because of two gold trophy challenges. One was for completing the Challenge of the Gods, the other for completing the game in under five hours. Since I thought completing the game in under five hours would be near-impossible I skipped it and moved on.

Seeing my friend had got the Platinum, and had achieved these things, forced me to reconsider. I learned that completing the Challenge of the Gods would unlock a costume that would allow infinite magic power and make a speedrun altogether more viable.

Right then, I thought. Let’s get this Challenge of the Gods thing done. . . No mean feat.

The trial challenges in God Of War are tougher than in the sequel because your progress does not get saved. You have to complete all 10 challenges in one sitting. That worked out around 3 hours for me – slightly more investment time than I had anticipated, but perseverance reaps rewards.

It was tough at first just to get used to the controls again, remembering what buttons and button combos produced what moves. Yet for the most part the challenges were varied and, indeed, challenging, but it was really just three of them that really tested me. Challenge Number 2, Number 8 and Number 10.



Challenge Number 2 basically saw you leaping round a circuit of floating platforms and killing all the enemies there, as well as being dogged by harpies, and it had to be done in a tight time limit. For some reason I really struggled with this. Time just constantly ran out on me. In the end I worked out a point to use my magic power and fell back on my ‘rage of the gods’ – a power that probably was better off being saved for a later challenge, but oh well. . .



Challenge Number 8 was one that featured lots of medusas and soldiers, and all had to be defeated. There was no time limit, it was just such a long slog that if you didn’t get turned to stone and killed in one hit you eventually got your health worn down and were killed off. It was gruelling, until I discovered that using the jumping slam (when medusas weren’t hitting me with their gaze) near the edges propelled the enemies over the side rather than having to batter them all to death. Using that method I got through it reasonably quickly.



The final challenge. By this point I was entering the small hours of the morning on a work night, and I was damned if I was quitting for bed without succeeding! This one basically involved killing endless satyrs and small cerberus’ to raise the small platform I was fighting on high enough to reach the goal. It was tough, and after various strategies failed I finished up using a lot of air attacks to muddle through. As much luck as skill saw me make it to the top and make the terrifying leap to the finish.

Gold trophy awarded! Now the only thing between me and a Platinum was the matter of completing the main game in under five hours. I had the ‘Dairy Bastard’ costume available to me now, though. . . I was all set to unleash infinite magic death and destruction!

Completing The MW3 Campaign

I’ve been to Prague in real life. Amazing city. Probably the best city I’ve ever been to, actually. I only mention it because, during Modern Warfare 3, there are a couple of levels set in that city. And there was just a moment, when I was in the water getting through enemy territory and I looked to the left and saw the famous old bridge recreated there in the game and it quietly blew me away.

It was like how I remembered it; how the bridge looked from the water (I took a boat trip in real life, and can thus verify that perspective!). I’ve really enjoyed how the game has taken the trouble to make the game feel more vivid by recreating these real world places. Albeit with some artistic licence.



I’ve been to Paris, too. Though when I was there it wasn’t courtesy of zipping between a helicopter pilot raining bombs and machine gun fire on choppers and tanks and infantry with merry abandon before I was then thrust into the shoes of my man on the ground and battling at the foot of the Eiffel Tower when the thing was brought down in a toppling inferno.

The Paris level was amazing in how it switched between chopper and soldier, giving me the bird’s eye view and then thrusting me into the thick of the action on the ground. Again, another example of Modern Warfare 3 just pushing tried and tested tropes to unique effect. Maybe the latter half of the campaign doesn’t possess quite the same wow moments as the first half, but if there is a dip in that sense it’s not by much. Between sniping around Prague’s castle walls to battling through Paris catacombs (I’ve been there, too!) to emerge into a frantic car chase shootout (intense and exhilarating), it’s been relentlessly entertaining.

The demise of Soap was moving, too, mainly because of Price’s anguished reaction. He didn’t completely lose his senses – he still had the guile to trick my guy Yuri into getting knocked into the cellar so he could learn about how he knew Makarov. And the small backstory of Yuri and Makarov furnished previous games with contextual details that were nicely handled.

Perhaps my only complaint is that the ending, the last level, felt a little tacked on from the main narrative thrust. Like the whole mission got resolved, the president and his daughter were rescued, and the war was ended and diplomacy was back on the table and. . . Oops, forgot to get the bad guy! Never mind, Price and Yuri can suit up and charge into Makarov HQ all guns blazing and finish the matter off.

It was a fairly spectacular and satisfying end, of course. I particularly liked the brutality of Makarov’s demise and the comforting feel of Price lighting up a cigar to himself after another victory – it just felt, as I said, tacked on. It has for me been the most enjoyable of the Modern Warfare campaigns, though – perhaps purely from a scale and spectacle point of view.



I suspect back to basics purists will lament the lack of straight shooting battles with every level always feeling like it needs to have some extra hook – be it firing mortars, vehicle chases, setting out done targets. It was the variety and swift changes from regular battling, however, that I liked most of all. An FPS game gets a bit monotonous for me otherwise.

So it seems this Modern Warfare trilogy has come to an end. I don’t know if this is the end for all the characters that have become familiar this far (most of them are dead, to be fair) but I have no doubt that the Modern Warfare series will continue. It’s too successful not to and, if they only better the campaign next time out, I’ve got no problem with that.

Doubling Up For MW3

I suspect there’s a good number of people that bought Modern Warfare 3 on the day it was released and didn’t touch the Campaign mode. I am one of these people. I bought the game on the day of release (I must admit, I can’t say I intended this but reasonable price (I recall Modern Warfare 2 was in the £50+ region when it was first released) and a deal with PSN vouchers made it an attractive offer).

So when I first sat down with the game I didn’t go into the Campaign. However, unlike the majority of players, I didn’t go into the Multiplayer either. Nope. For Mrs. Comet and I, it was all about Special Ops!



We loved Special Ops in Modern Warfare 2 and it’s no mistake to say that learning they were back, and with even more depth, was key to me buying the game on day one. There is the Mission Mode and the Survival Mode and, already, Mrs. Comet and I have sunk a fair few hours into both.

The Missions section was very much like the original Special Ops. Even the first mission was a training target run (which I still find near-impossible to get three stars on!). The rest of the missions were varied and challenging, and for my money a lot more impressive than the ones from the previous game.

They seemed bigger and more comprehensive. Like ones where you’d be in a helicopter or jeep, shooting like crazy, before then moving back on foot to complete the task and then get back to the vehicle. These felt as involved as entire levels from the campaign, but of course they were just one-shot, solitary missions to complete.

Really good stuff. We went through the lot on Regular level, one-star standard (Tactician trophy!) but no doubt Mrs. Comet and I will return to the more challenging levels and see how we fare then!

Meanwhile there’s the Survival mode, which Mrs. Comet and I have spent way more time with and yet found far more difficult and made a lot less progress! Oh, there’s been progress but for a long time we got stuck on Wave 15, where two Juggernauts show up. (I’m blaming Mrs. Comet, really. The notion of running away to survive just didn’t seem to work out for her.)



We eventually did manage to complete it, and survived a few more waves after that, but I am unclear about how many waves there are. Does it just keep going indefinitely? Surely not. There has to be a limit. Doubt I’ll ever see it, mind. All in all the Special Ops section is far superior to the Modern Warfare 2 one, and that wasn’t exactly a slouch either. I can see many more an hour being sunk into it.

Eventually I did get to turn my attention on the Campaign. So far I have got up to what I presume is the ‘controversial’ sequence of the game that I could have skipped had I selected that option: the home video being taken of a little girl in London unwittingly standing beside a van with a bomb in it that exploded. It was nowhere near as ‘shocking’ (I use that term loosely) as the airport massacre sequence from the last game (I could argue the artistic merits of that, but as a gamer it was actually a rather dull level to play through) yet I liked the style of it – short but carrying impact.

I have been very impressed with the Campaign so far. It’s been utterly spectacular. Sure the graphics aren’t on the same level of sophistication as Uncharted 3 but they still contain the capacity to wow. And the scale and sense of being epic has been well-realised. I think of the dazzling chaos of the speedboat chase away from the sub, or the riotous gobsmack of the London underground sequence, tearing past screaming commuters on the platform before watching a train carriage barrel rolling in front of me. . . I was playing whilst being happily amazed.



Each level has packed in some element of innovation that mark it out from just being a treadmill FPS, and that’s what’s kept me engaged. Like the Russian plane level – moving from zero gravity shootouts, surviving a crash (back end of plane tearing off, just like in Lost!) and then having Makarov make a fatal surprise appearance – it just packed in idea after idea. Whipping around the globe, generally in what I can only assume are relatively faithful recreations of actual places, it’s like the game can’t bear the idea of letting itself settle on any one thing or any one place for too long. It’s not a sedate experience, and it’s far from subtle – but as a straight blast of fun there’s little to top it.

It’s also strangely good to be back in the company of Soap and Price as well, Price especially. Over the course of these games he’s cemented himself as an iconic character, with an unmistakeable voice and a legendary moustache. World War 3 is breaking out but if one man can win it, it’s him.

And me, of course!

Crushing Uncharted

No sooner had I completed Uncharted 3 on Normal I was back into it again, tackling the toughest difficulty of Crushing. I rather fancied my chances of success. Whilst I was playing through the game for the first time I was taking mental note of the trickier sections that I figured would be challenging at the hardest level and, whilst I figured there would be some tough times, I didn’t see anything that I thought I wouldn’t be able to handle.

Truth of the matter was I sailed through the game on Crushing far easier than I thought I would. There were one or two sticking points but, really, the parts I envisaged would be total nightmares actually weren’t that bad.

Trickiest part? For me it was in the cargo hold of the ship, just after I discovered the fake Sully. (An utterly nonsense thing for the bad guys to have put there, to be honest.) There was just a really hard moment where a guy was on a balcony, another two guys were walking towards where I was taking cover in the corner, and an enemy with a shield was lurking in the background. I died over and over, refining my actions down to taking out balcony guy, man on crate, then making a run for it to pick off the shield guy and, hopefully, still have a grenade, bullets and health to bring down the armoured guy as the next wave of attack came in.



The ship level also contained a pretty tough situation in a stage room that I knew would be tough, but mostly it was challenging due to a lack of ammo. That aside, the start of the very final level had a tough part with grenade launching guys and snipers to tackle alongside approaching enemies that basically required some fast, accurate takedowns, but it was easily manageable.

The part I thought would be hardest was the part with the flamehead enemies, particularly at the fountain area with about five or six of them to deal with. That had been horrendous on Normal, and I was dreading it on Crushing. However, first time around I hadn’t been aware of the RPG over to the left, or the Grenade Launcher, and with a TAU and T-Bolt sniper combo taking potshots I handled it like a pro!

I found the fight sections annoying on Crushing mode, since it generally didn’t show button prompts to display what you should be pressing. (OK, it basically boiled down to hitting Triangle or Circle, but still!) The last fight became a bit irritating in that regard, when I’d get hurt and then killed off in two moves despite feeling like I had countered correctly. Glad to see the back of it.

The physical fights never really did grow on me, but they were the worst part. Otherwise I actually really enjoyed playing in Crushing mode! Far from being a soul-destroying slog it just made the game more exciting, and made the shootouts more intense, tactical affairs where you felt like picking the right spot for cover was important and every shot had to count.

My impression of the game changed during this second playthrough. Things that had blown me away first time didn’t quite amaze (like the walk through Yemen market town) and parts that hadn’t initially dazzled this time had a better effect (in particular the entire ship sequence which, end to end, is a remarkable technical feat and probably the game’s tentpole highpoint, as well as the astounding-looking part hanging out the back of the plane).



I still can’t really call it on which one is best, Uncharted 2 or Uncharted 3. I’d say the third one is the most impressive, and more like the interactive blockbuster the game strives to be. It’s also the most enjoyable and exciting due to the higher frequency of set piece moments. However, it’s because of all those set-piece moments I think the gameplay doesn’t feel quite as meaty as the second one, which was more of a shootout blast and felt like a bigger game (even though they both have the same number of levels).

In short, Uncharted 3 was the more spectacular, set piece action game, whereas Uncharted 2 probably had a higher body count and is slightly more hardcore. (Neither of them are as hardcore as the first one, though, but that’s also the weakest of the series.)

The Platinum trophy was soon awarded. Once the Crushing game was done I could go back, pick a chapter, and collect missing trophies or pick the best parts to, say, throw back grenades at enemies or kill enough of them with a handgun or alternate shooting and fighting. . . Pretty easy with a bit of concerted effort. I rather wish it had more online-based trophies to encourage me on there. One for completing all of the co-op missions would have been a good one. Oh well. No doubt I’ll play them anyway - Uncharted’s online game has for a long time been my favourite multiplayer so I won’t be missing out just because there isn’t a trophy in it.

Shutting Down On A High

I was right and I was wrong, and the stuff I was right about was good and the stuff I was wrong about worked out good. What am I jabbering on about? The end of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, that’s what. SPOILERS about the end of the game from here!

So upon leaving Megan Reed and seeing to it that she and the rest of the scientist people got away from wherever I was on the helicopter, I then had to make my own escape via some kind of rocket, which was pretty cool. It was there I had my first encounter with the near-rabid, messed up augmented people; a mad bunch I’d be dealing with a whole lot more before I was done. . .

So my big concern was that I was going to be faced with another slog of stealth and hacking to progress through. . . and it is on this that I was wrong. And oh what a joy! The base I landed at had suffered the ravages of augmented people going mental and attacking everyone else and so the place was rather deserted once I got there, save for the odd rabid person hanging around. But a quick smack about the head soon put them down.

Otherwise I was free to roam the corridors and halls, only having to essentially hack a computer to turn a turret off. Otherwise I just had freedom! It felt good. Even though I did spend half the time being cautious round corners and wary of making too much noise – mainly because old habits die hard.



The confrontation with Hugh Darrow, as a ‘boss’ encounter, took the shape of a conversation that I think I failed at. It didn’t prevent me continuing though it probably denied me a trophy. After that the real fun began, with a supposed rescue mission of Sarif and Taggart and a fight through a horde of mad augments!

I say it was a ‘supposed’ rescue mission because I managed to completely miss both Sarif and Taggart and got to the exit lift without them. (I since went back from a save point and completed the end of the game fully – winning the conversations, finding Sarif and Taggart, and seeing all the endings.) The last boss was reasonably easy, but also fun in the sense that it was both a fight and a puzzle. Again, my grenade launcher came in good use here when it came to blasting the shield.

The end of the game offered options on how it was set to end, though on this I thought the game felt a little bit ponderous and naval-gazing. The arguments of the merits of technology for mankind all felt too extreme for me to really be able to side with any one of them. In all honesty I thought the game reckoned itself more profound than it really was, and was rather didactic in its approach.

Far more gratifying as a gamer was the trophies that pinged at the end. My toiling efforts had been worthwhile when the ‘Foxiest of the Hounds’ and ‘The Pacifist’ trophies were awarded for never alerting hostiles to my presence and never killing anyone. As I understood it those were the most demanding trophies to obtain in the whole game and, for a second playthrough on Hard, there’s not too much standing in the way of me getting a Platinum for it. And, hey, on this second playthrough I can now be a little more carefree about being seen and killing people! Fun times!

System Crash

You know, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is sort of winning me round. Oh a lot of the niggles and moans I have remain; the frustrating repetition of sneaking around, the laborious chore of hacking, a main character that’s less than engaging. And yet for all that the atmosphere and style of the thing has kept me interested, and when I think back to all the things I’ve done in the game the memories feel vivid and varied.

Where am I up to? Well, I feel like I must be closing in on the final stages of the game. I defeated a third boss and found Megan, which ushered in a seismic plot twist and another really dramatic event.

SPOILERS abound here on in.

I am glad I left Hengsha. The place was even more of a chore to get around due to the alerted security presence all over the place. It meant just getting from one place to the other presented its own challenges, and involved various forays into the sewers. When the moment came for my character David Jenson to climb into a pod and see where he ended up I was pleased to be putting China behind me even though I was surely going to be headed someplace worse.

I’m not entirely sure where I ended up, actually. It appeared to be some kind of base where the kidnapped scientists were all being kept. I spent a lot of time wandering around that base, I can tell you! At first I’d managed to speak to a couple of the scientists and get a plan going for a major distraction without alerting many guards but, by the time I was trying to leave I had pretty much been around the whole place and knocked every guard unconscious.

It just makes travelling around easier!

I liked the part where I inserted a virus into a machine and then had to quickly find somewhere to hide before all the alerts sent guards and bots on the loose. (First time I was left utterly stuck – second time I got wise to it!) And so I found myself confronted with the third boss encounter.



With my augmentations all going fuzzy and him throwing flash grenades and stuff at me, it wasn’t proving easy to pick him off with my machine gun. So after a few deaths I took a different strategy, whipped out my grenade launcher and let him have it. I only had to dodge a couple of attacks because three direct hits later he was down.

I’d be lying if I said that didn’t feel good.

And so I finally caught up with Megan, though it was hardly the romantic or even emotional reunion I would have imagined. Turned out she was quite happy continuing her research, until she realised she was being played and there on screen I witnessed Hugh Darrow flick a switch that sent people with augmentations absolutely wild.

I don’t know how widespread that attack was – whether it was just people in the room or populations worldwide have all started going crazy. I saved my game there and ended my session. I am figuring there’s at least one more boss fight with the female terrorist, and surely a confrontation with Darrow yet to come. The game’s definitely got my interest in its plot twists and potential conclusions now – the only dampener to proceedings is the thought that I’ve got more hours skulking around behind things and hacking doors before I get there. . .

Back To The City

Some spoilers for Deus Ex: Human Revolution coming up. I think I am perhaps past the midway point of the game, two-thirds complete, maybe. Hard to say. I’ve really no idea how long the thing is. But the most recent event to occur was my return to Hengsha, and the death of Faridah!



Easily this has been the game’s most brutal and effective moment, genuinely provoking an emotional response from me. After the helicopter crashed and she was left stranded but demanded I make my escape quick whilst the enemy approached her was valiant and heartwarming. But then to watch her execution as I travelled away in an elevator, dragged out onto her knees and shot in the head whilst spitting defiance, that was properly tough, cold, dramatic stuff.

I at first assumed there was nothing I could have done to save her, but now I am thinking there probably was and maybe that would have informed one of the game’s different endings. Ah well. There’s always another go.

It didn’t even occur to me to try and save her because I am still sticking to playing the game for both the Foxiest of Hounds trophy (never alert hostiles to my presence) and Pacifist trophy (never kill anyone). And I’ll be very disappointed if or when I get to the end to discover I haven’t fulfilled these achievements because it’s not been easy.

Having left Hengsha for the first time, I was went to the Picus offices, which became more of a pain than it initially appeared when the place was flooded with soldiers. The revelation that Eliza, the newsreader, was a hologram AI was a nice reveal though.



The following boss fight took me a few goes to get right. I got the impression there was probably a specific tactic I should have been employing that perhaps would have made the fight go easier. I had the general tactic of chasing the woman around, following her movements in the water, and stunning her, and then whilst she was stunned switching weapons and hitting her with some Revolver fire. That seemed to do the trick but probably there was a better way of handling it.

It was back to Chicago after that. I must confess that whilst I am just about following the plot it’s not particularly engaged me – in general I am on the lookout for my girlfriend again (tellingly I can’t even remember her name) whilst trying to work out whether or not this David Sarif fella is trustworthy whilst tracking this terrorist organisation. I kind of follow it, but the subtle nuances have been left by the wayside.

So it was that the helicopter crash on returning to China, and the subsequent slaughter of Faridah, has been the ‘highpoint’ purely because it was a more immediate event rather than the muted, talk-heavy exposition the game otherwise expects me to keep track with. I still can’t say it’s really grown on me, but it’s not a pain to play either. It is all starting to feel somewhat repetitive so I am hoping the end comes sooner rather than later since I’m not overly-keen on continuing with it for, say, another 10 hours or something.

Uncharted 3 Fully Charted

Please be advised that the below post details the entirety of all that occurs during the single player campaign of Uncharted 3. As such, it’s absolutely SPOILER territory!

As Uncharted 3 is probably my most looked forward to game in a long time, and I seem to have engineered lengthy sessions to play it, I can hardly see myself breaking off to write up about it every now and then. So instead I’m just going to document my time with the game as I am playing it – getting my instant reaction at regular intervals throughout the process, which should be fun.

04/11/2011

11:45 am: Game finally arrived. Within minutes inserted into PS3 and the adventure begins!

11:55 am: Cool bar fight. Took me a few seconds to get used to the mechanics of it but, basically, so long as you’re vigilant for pressing triangle then you can’t seem to go far wrong. Picked up my first treasure behind the bar, too! Trophy!



12:00 pm: Nate and Sully shot and left for dead! Shock horror! (I’m sure they’ll be fine.)

1225: pm: Young Drake in a museum! Cool touch, and seeing how Sully and Nate first met was a nice touch. Loved the chase sequence out of the museum – best part of the game so far. Got caught a few times, though – the chase very much came down to a memory test of where to go next. Will be more fun when I know what to do!



12:30 pm: So it was all a ruse. . . although I don’t overly-trust Charlie won’t turn out to be a wrong ‘un further down the line. But nice to see Chloe is back in the mix, already, and with so little fuss. Been a lot of movies so far. . . and only just got my hands on a gun!

12:40 pm: Cool car-key related puzzle. Impressions of the game so far are favouring towards the ‘wow I’m impressed by how it looks and sounds’ but still feeling like I am not really getting into the game. Still haven’t fired a bullet! It’ll come. . .

14:00 pm: Session resumed after various domestic interruptions (honestly, can’t the real world leave me and Nate in peace!?) so time to get back in to it. Have shot some guys, finally. We are up and running!

14:35 pm: First big shootout section, blasting through the London underground. Brought back a lot of memories of Uncharted fights of old, and it felt good. The only gripe I do have is that the new circle button to get in a grapple proved problematic when I just wanted to roll away after doing some running and gunning. Grabbing hold of one guy whilst his mates shoot me to death is certainly something I am going to have to be wary of! I did get a trophy for brawling here, it should be noted!



14:40 om: In Eastern France with Sully. A jungle environment. Looks gorgeous, although so far I am getting the sense that this is very similar to Uncharted 2. Our hero shot at the beginning, a museum heist, shootout in a dark place after climbing around and now wisecracking in the woods with Sully – it’s practically the same!

15:11 pm: Made it through chateau and landed in some kind of cave. I am expecting spiders. Enjoyed the banter between Sully and Nate throughout this. And, also, if it seems like I am going slow here it’s because I’ve been poking around looking for treasures. And stopping to write this. And, also, I took a shit.

15:36 pm: Wasn’t in the cave for long, but it had some cool water effects. Instead I got involved in a couple of major shootouts. No problem for me playing on Normal level, but I suspect they could be a pain in Crushing mode! Just completed a tile puzzle thing which, for some reason, took me a lot longer than it should have to figure out.

15:40 pm: Back in the spider caves again, this time with torchlight . . . I expect my stay won’t be as brief this time!

16:00 pm: Wall tile puzzle. Took forever for penny to drop. . . and there being two spots on the board where the lion could go left me stumped for a bit. Annoying! The crypt having half of the possible location goal is skirting very close to the events of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade too!

16:05 pm: Spider chase! Was fun, but at the same time I felt like I was getting bitten and nearly killed and there really wasn’t any way I could have gone any faster. . . I am presuming the game was doing that for dramatic effect.



16:25 pm: Just got out of the burning chateau sequence. It’s now the new high point of the game. Some of the dizzying camera angles, and the amount of falling through crumbling, burning wood, dangling over inferno-like abysses below. . . Dazzling stuff. Two points to note, though. 1, I got my Run and Gun trophy during the flaming firefights. And secondly, some of Sully’s remarks during the cutscene afterwards made me worry that he might not make it through to the end of the game. Given the focus on his character here, I am wondering if this might be his swansong. . .

16:33 pm: Just a word to say how damn amazing Syria town looks from the viewpoint of me scaling a castle wall. . .

16:45 pm: Cutter (who I thought was called Charlie!) is definitely marking himself out as being the traitor in our midst for me. He and Chloe have been left unattended and surely he told the bad guys about Sully and I at the chateau. I’ve got my eye on that Jason Statham wannabe!



16:49 pm: Trophy! Just got the one for shooting people with grenades and making them drop them.

17:00 pm: Another trophy! Brute beater. Finally killed one without taking a hit. Enjoyed the previous fight, dangling outside a tower before climbing back in and shooting up the place.

17:20 pm: Just completed stealth section. My brain is still rather wrapped up a lot in Deus Ex: Human Revolution at the moment and my stealth tactic skills from that aren’t quite working the same here. . . I notice that Charlie/Cutter keeps pressing ahead and quite happy to leave Chloe and Sully behind. He’s definitely not a team player!

17:30 pm: Interesting. Charlie got hit by a dart that’s made him go crazy and no longer trust Drake, but before that moment it seemed like he was perfectly loyal. Perhaps I was wrong about him? Which also means there still could be a traitor in my midst? Although that villain guy does seem to have some kind of magical powers so I’m not going to be too presumptuous. Now into another cave, carrying a flaming torch. Surely not more spiders?

17:35 pm: Fight with Charlie. . . So far I am not a huge fan of the fight mechanics in this game. They’re a bit of a pain, really. They’re almost like QTEs. Anyway, Charlie got stopped from killing me and he seems back to his old self but I still don’t trust him. I’ve also noticed spider webs dotted around. . . Those fucking spiders are going to be back, aren’t they? Fuck’s sake. . .

18:00 pm: Wow. Right. Well. There were spiders. But it seems I really was wrong about Charlie after a rather moving cutscene saw him save the gang almost at the cost of his own life. He’s now got a broken leg which means escape is going to be tricky – but I quite liked the introduction of the playing card about his person. These villains have some strange sorcery. But I must escape!

18:01 pm: Trophy! Bare knuckle slugger!

18:13 pm: I was wondering where Elena was. Seems her and Nate got married, and then got unmarried, in the time since the previous game. Good to see her again, anyway. And it sounds like she’ll be along for the ride. Though once again there’s remarks about Sully not making this one because he’d do anything for Nate and Nate ought to let it go. . . I am sensing tragedy (but then I’ve been wrong about a lot so far so let’s hope I am about this, too).



18:16 pm: Trophy. Apprentice Fortune Hunter. I suspect I’ve missed quite a few, and there was one in the spider-dam cave I could see but couldn’t get! I should say at this point that Yemen looks astonishing – the sun effects and atmosphere are great.

18:22 pm: The walk through the Yemen market ranks as the most quietly gobsmacking section of the game so far. The chateau fire had all the dazzle and flash but for sheer ‘wow’ this innocuous stroll is superb.

18:35 pm: Brief break just before I drop down a well after having a fight in a fish market (quite liked it, actually, because of the possibilities of interacting with stuff around the place – maybe the fighting thing will grow on me more) as I need to eat. Scoff a pizza and then get back to it. . .

18:55 pm: Getting back to it.

19:15 pm: Just solved two puzzles, both quite fun, with some interesting optical illusion effects thrown in just to make them seem that little bit better. Sure, it basically just involved sticking cogs into one thing and sticking a stick in the right hole for the other, but they were classy presentations of that old style puzzling!



19:23 pm: More spiders! The most exciting encounter yet, though they’re still not all that convincing. More intriguing was Nate asking Sully to just remember the constellation stuff he saw. I fear that not writing it down will be costly if Sully doesn’t make it. . . Should also mention at this point that Elena looks fantastic; they’ve really done good work on her facial expressions that make her seem more realistic than she ever did before.



19:40 pm: Interesting trippy sequence after Nate got darted (would it have gone on forever or was there specifically only one route out as I realised my journey through the market was looping around?). But the cutscene afterwards was better, with Marlowe talking about how Nathan Drake wasn’t even Drake’s real name and how Sully might just be in it for himself. I was actually engaged in the drama there – totally forgot I was watching a videogame. That doesn’t happen often.

19:49 pm: Whoa Just finished an exhilarating extended footchase through the Yemen streets. It was amazing, full of well-choreographed incidents and near-catches before the usual fighting kind of put a dampener on it. Possibly this might have been my favourite set piece of the game so far. The chateau fire was more spectacular, but the footchase was more intense.



20:22 pm: Phew. Just ploughed through a seriously tough battle against some pirates set against a whole load of boats in a kind of dock junkyard. Shooting from the water, whipping up to boats to grab a rocket launcher to take out the machine guns. . . And guys just kept coming from every angle. Sheesh! Great fun!

20:43 pm: Experiencing great irritation. There’s a treasure on a girder of a ship. I can see it. The game knows I’m supposed to go there to get it. But someone didn’t tell the coding people because you can’t climb or grip properly on the girders and so keep falling to your death. Fair enough if this was because the game didn’t want you to go down that route – but there’s a fucking treasure on it! Annoying. First actual genuine annoyance of the game.

20:46 pm: Got the treasure. Now not as annoyed.

20:50 pm: Trophy! Hangman! Earned on one of those really cool vertical shootouts that Uncharted 3 has brought to the party.

21:10 pm: Oh now we’ve just hit all kinds of awesome. A boatyard shootout, a chase and leap onto a boat, and then a leap on another boat because the one I was on caught fire. And that resulted in me rocket launching another attacking boat. Brilliant. The waves and the ocean look staggering and the whole thing is really taking the game up a notch in the action stakes.

21:30 pm: Charging around onboard a big ship. Earned all kinds of trophies for killings with certain guns, and for getting over a hundred headshots. Weirdly, the fight in the ballroom with the chandelier felt like a crucial fight scene during the first Uncharted game, with the way the attacks came from various sides. Those snipers are pains in the arses. This part on Crushing will be a fucker.

21:45 pm: Wife came home in the middle of me trying to escape the sinking, capsizing ship. I thought she might sit there, impressed, but she didn’t. And so I had to turn it off, mid-escape, which was a bit of an atmosphere breaker. Maybe when she goes to sleep I can pick it up again.



23:15 pm: Wife in bed, the adventure continues. Back into the heart of a sinking ship!

23:20 pm: Now washed up on a beach. That all worked out. It was a spectacular set piece, overall, though given I had heard about it beforehand I can’t say the sinking ship level blew me away as much as I thought it would.

23:25 pm: Trophy. Skilled Fortune Hunter, for some treasure I found on a crate in a hangar of the airport I am sneaking around in.

23:34 pm: Another trophy for a set number of kills with a grenade!

23:50 pm: Just boarded an aeroplane courtesy of Elena, a jeep and the landing gear. Really cool moment. But given that Uncharted 3 has artwork all over the place that shows a crashed plane in the desert I suspect the coming down part is going to be a lot more spectacular than the taking off!



23:59 pm: Ha ha! Gloriously dumb. The crash landing plane happened sooner than I thought, with a bit of hanging out of the back of a plane action (like in The Living Daylights) before everyone got sucked out of a big hole. What was gloriously dumb was how Nate managed to grab a hold of a crate with a parachute attached in mid-air and drop to safety. Although ‘safety’ is a loose term considering I am now in the middle of the desert. . . Oh but it does look beautiful!

00:34 am: A little bit of desert fatigue; playing this bit has made me thirsty! Stumbling through the desert (really well done, totally sold the desperation of the situation) and then into an extended shooting fight, which just about felt like it was going on too long and then the cavalry showed up. Another section to dread for Crushing level. . . Glad the riding around on horseback seemed shortlived, though – I wasn’t a fan of that!

00:44 am: Spoke too soon, I’m back in the saddle!



00:57 am: I take it all back. The horseback sequence was exhilarating stuff; fast-paced, lots of shooting, and it seems I am reunited with Sully! Yay! Definitely a high point of the game, though probably the footchase through Yemen was still the bit that I thought was the best so far.

01:17am: Time to call it a night. I’ve just made it through a really quite difficult section in a sandstorm with snipers and bullets flying everywhere, and have now found shelter in some huge building. It feels like I might be drawing towards the end of the game, too, so I’d rather come to that fresh.

05/11/2011

12:18 pm: Back on it for a bit, whilst I have a pie in the oven for lunch!

12:25 pm: Nice reveal behind the massive doors of the ancient forgotten city. Now I just have to work out how the hell I get down there!



12:28 pm: Me looky at Atlantis in the Sands with me eyes widey open in absolute amazement.

12:31 pm: OMG. Wonderful cutscene with dramatic consequences. . . Sully was shot. Is this permanent? I can’t help but hope that somehow, some way, there’ll be a way to bring him back from the dead – maybe a form of immortality power that the baddies are after? Either way I’m now angry but got pasted by some strange bad guys that can teleport in flames. Oh man, talk about a bad day.

12:40 pm: Heck of a fight, but there was something quite exhilarating about fighting the flaming heads. There was a sense of balance and challenge about it all that really worked well – with a good environment to run around in.

12:57 pm: Excellent surprise hallucination, calling back the beginning part of the game very nicely. The fight with the flameheads I just had was tough going, though. The trick is to keep moving, I feel. And use the TAU Sniper or the T-Bone. Anything sniper. That tends to work pretty sweet.



13:05 pm: Break for lunch!

13:19 pm: Back into the fray.

13: 22 pm: Sully is alive. . .? It was the water, not the gas? Well, I’m willing to believe Sully for the moment but I am still keeping back a little bit of reservation that there isn’t some kind of rug pull headed my way.

13:31 pm: Just got a trophy for being a headshot expert for killing five enemies in a row in the head. Which is nice.

13:40 pm: Trophy for kills with the SAS Shotgun. They just keep racking up.

13:55 pm: Well, so far it seems like I am at the climax of the game and it all does feel very much like Uncharted 2. Still, Marlowe appears to be dead so that just leaves one very angry Talbot remaining. I suspect he’s going to be the final boss, but then he always was going to be. I wonder what form of fight it will take. The game could do with a really spectacular finish to cap it off, though for now I have a run across a crumbling ruin to traverse.

14:05 pm: Well, that all ended sooner than I expected. Firstly, it did bring the spectacular. The running and jumping across the platforms looked utterly amazing. No question. Shame that the final battle basically came down to another brawling thing, though – and whilst on harder levels it may be a pain in how fast you get killed it does basically come down to how fast you react to pressing triangle. Ah well. That’s really the only negative I have.

I do have a criticism of the narrative. I have no idea really what the big plan was for the baddies, nor what they were and why some of them seemed to have magical powers. That was all rather glossed over as far as I could tell. . . unless the magical powers were all based around the hallucinogenic properties they had? That’s my best guess (it does explain the flaming head warriors, which is a cool touch).

What was Marlowe talking about, Nate not using his real name? What was with the playing card left on Cutter? The first question, potentially, is just something they've seeded here to discuss in future instalments of the game so I can kind of live with that, though I wish they'd just answered questions they'd raised here rather than sow the seeds for future revelations.

End sequence was nice. Kind of moving, in a way. I did like how they’d handled the break up of Nate and Elena – leaving aside the details and just allowing us to make our own ideas up about what went on. Good stuff. And I am pleased that Sully did make it to the end – it would have absolutely been too sad to have him killed!

So, game finished on Normal run through with 34% trophies obtained. There’s certainly a lot more to go at, but maybe whilst I have some time I might go and check out the online stuff. . .

Great game. Need more time with it to fully digest and appreciate and decide if it’s better than the 2nd. It’s certainly better-looking and with bigger wow moments, but was there a level better than, say, the train one from Uncharted 2? Not sure. But either way it’s close – both of them are truly excellent games and it’s been a blast to play from start to finish. I mean, look at how intensely I’ve been playing this one! Few games can hold me like that.