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Tag: batman

Arkham City

7 November 2011 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

Two years ago developer Rocksteady released its critically acclaimed breakout game Batman: Arkham Asylum, eschewing the typical cash-grab film tie-in for a meticulously constructed licensed game that owes more to the animated series and Batman’s comicbook roots. Its strength lay in its premise: placing Batman inside Gotham City’s asylum for the criminally insane allowed the team to roll out a rogue’s gallery of famous and lesser-known villains. The problem was that while Arkham Island was fully explorable, movement was constrained by the way in which it was broken up into contained areas.

I had concerns about the sequel‘s proposed open world approach, but again Rocksteady found the ideal conceit: a controversial response to crime has led to a section of Gotham City being closed off and all Arkham’s undesirables dumped inside. Batman can grapple, glide and swoop across large areas making traversal now as much fun as the brawling combat. Interludes as Catwoman intersperse proceedings (controversially requiring extra payment unless you buy the game new) providing a lithe new way to move and fight. Meanwhile a plethora of side-missions are available throughout, and after completing the main story. Its careful construction (traverse, explore, sneak, assess, fight, repeat, well-choreographed boss fight) means it never feels like anything but a game, yet it is one of the finest, most distilled gaming experiences of this generation.

Mark Hamill returns for his final outing as The Joker,  having announced his retirement from the character which he has also voiced in countless animated productions. But what a high to go out on! Great as Heath Ledger’s performance may have been, The Joker is a role that Mark Hamill owns. Without spoiling the story itself, Arkham City‘s central plot focuses on my favourite aspect of the Batman mythos: not the rivalry between The Dark Knight and The Clown Prince of Crime but rather their co-dependence. While Batman donned his cowl in response to Gotham’s criminal element, Arkham City mastermind Hugo Strange reprimands Batman, arguing these criminals now exist because of him. Whilst there are other heroes and villains in Gotham, ultimately, bitterly fought as their battles may be, the lives of Batman and Joker would be emptier — almost meaningless — without one another. Approaching this in a videogame format marks another notch in the move towards conceptually mature narratives.


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Tragic Divisions

23 July 2011 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

Tragedies bring people together but they can also be divisive. While sad and absolutely a tragic waste of talent, Amy Winehouse’s untimely demise must have been one of the least unexpected young deaths. Those expressing deep shock display at best a severe lack of imagination. And for the media outlets who hounded her for years now disingenuously to oversell this loss is only as surprising as her death. However, others are more concerned, and in some cases angered, by the fact her death has garnered such a deluge of emotion on social networks when the horrific events in Oslo, the violent murder of nearly 100 people, did not. This, to me, seems entirely natural. There is no doubt that gunning down 80 youths on an island constitutes a larger and more serious event, one that has left a country in shock and mourning, but it is also largely impersonal. A sole figure, even one who has seemed broken for many years, but to whom people relate on a personal level, will always evoke greater sympathy. Perhaps Stalin’s wisest observation was, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” A hundred may not be merely a statistic, even on Stalin’s terms, but humanity will always find one death more tragic.

In less serious news, the first trailers have emerged for next year’s Batman and Spider-Man films. The Dark Knight Rises is the third and final Nolan-helmed outing and after the last I think it’s fair to say everyone is already incredibly excited. It is disappointing then, to find a trailer almost solely rehashing old footage, which serves only to dampen that excitement. All we discover is that Nolan’s fascination with architecture, immediately evident in Inception, remains alive and well. Personally I wish they’d waited until they had something to show us.

Meanwhile The Amazing Spider-Man reboot brings the wonderful Andrew Garfield to the role, while thrusting Peter back into his school days origin. Marc Webb (yes, the Spider-Man reboot was given to a director named “Webb”) takes the franchise in a direction more grounded in the real-world. With limited dialogue I think the teaser hits the right notes and ends with an unusual first-person sequence exploring the city as Spider-Man sees it; the CGI impresses though arguably it feels a little too much like videogame footage. Two ideas emerged:

  1. Tom at Theater Hopper pointed out that a much cooler trailer might have been as the first-person sequence alone, leaving the viewer slightly confused as to what they were watching until that familiar reflection comes into view on the side of a skyscraper.
  2. How awesome would it be if someone gave the Mirror’s Edge devs the Spider-Man licence?

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Music and Bats

31 August 2009 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 2 Comments

A year into working life, I’m not entirely sure where the time has gone. These 6-month trainee seats seem to fly by and, we collectively discovered, it’s with some apprehension we suddenly find ourselves no longer first years and instead expected to help out the new crop. I’m moving into a litigation seat, a department that seems incredibly busy and is likely to cut down on my free time significantly. While I shall endeavour not to disappear entirely, at least you know why in advance…

To be honest I didn’t “get” Spotify at first. I thought it was trying to replace Last.fm but without its “scrobbling” feature which tracks the music you listen to and suggests others, as well as comparing your tastes with friends and letting you see what they’re listening to. Eventually I caved and gave it a whirl about a month ago. I swiftly realised that Spotify wasn’t competing (out of the box it supports Last.fm, scrobbling everything to which you listen) and has much loftier goals: nothing short of a paradigm shift within the music industry. In fact, quite how it got away with it remains a mystery to me. After downloading the client music player (which is simple, vaguely reminiscient of iTunes) you have access to a vast library of music for free. While there are still notable gaps at present, every single album recommended to me by someone in the past month has been on there. That’s quite something. For licensing reasons Spotify isn’t available in the US yet, but they are working on it. The service is ad-supported but a subscription fee of £9.99 per month will remove them. With an iPhone App just released for music on the go, this really could change how people acquire their music. I highly recommend everyone with the remotest interest in music signs up to both these services: I’ll probably start mentioning more albums now that linking to a Spotify playlist is as simple as providing a URL.

Batman & Joker

My bank holiday weekend has been equally split between having friends round the the flat each day and playing through Batman: Arkham Asylum. Eschewing the usual film release tie-in model, they have instead crafted a game that stands wonderfully in its own right, feeding off the entire comicbook back-catalogue. By setting the game in Arkham, they are able to wheel out any Batman villain they want, since virtually all were incarcerated on the island at some point. All its required mechanics work wonderfully — stealth, combat, gadgetry — and it looks stunning to boot. Mark Hamill turns in a deliciously gleeful performance as Joker that really pushes the game forward. Probably the year’s best game so far, you don’t even need to be a particular fan of Batman to enjoy it, and I recommend people pick it up before the inevitable “holiday season” crush of new titles begins.

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"Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has."

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