Those are all that I can think of in my drunken state at the moment...

Oh! ...and the actual games must open up as bonuses as you get high scores on the songs. That is all. Make it so.

Well it's a good night for me. Supervillian Studios gave away a PSN code to redeem a copy of Order Up, and I grabbed it first. So now I have it on two systems. The new version has a new restaurant, so I'll be spending some time with it this weekend just to check that out. Very curious to see how the game will work with traditional controls. Not even this gem could get me to buy a Move though.

Yeah I know it does, but I'm wondering how it will work. SVS did a fantastic job mapping out the controls with the Wiimore, and hard to put my head around how it could be as good with standard controls. I even tried the 3DS demo and wasn't remotely impressed with the touch screen controls for that matter, so I'm a little worried. Oh well, the more I learn about SVS, the more impressed I am with them, and I don't imagine they half-assed it.

I got my 360 hooked up again yesterday.

Played 2 hours of Arkham City.

Batmans cape still looks like a bin liner, I thought they would improve it.

What's with Bruce Wayne beating people up UFC style in the beggining? Kinda obvious! If this scenario was done in the animated series he would pull down some scenary in a way that looked accidental then ran off into a darkened alleyway or run into the sewers.

I'm not feeling the game so far, it's not bad or anything but after all the GOTY hype I can't be anything but non-plussed by the game so far. The city is a nice illusion but nothing more than that, it's hardly open world gameplay or anything and if you look the buildings past a certain point are low res crap blocks with a terrible fog effect that tries to hide how bad it looks. It reminds me of old PS1 games where they would put a 2D image as a background and frankly that would have looked better.

The combat is still ridiculous, it does not feel improved at all and actually because there are more enemies it feels worse, cheaper and more labourious. Batman still has his rubber band auto pilot fighting moves. You barely have to touch anything but one button, then occasionally tap the other once and back to bashing the main attack button. It's a waste of time.

Stealth stuff is still far too easy, they make it too easy to be Batman, it's easier than Ubisoft made Splinter Cell Conviction - it's like stealth for babies with a get out of jail free card (smoke bomb and fly to the ceiling). Of course it was like that in the first game but it feels more disgruntling now considering they could have improved it and considering the critical acclaim for this game.

In the city Batmans zip line can drag you halfway around the city in one shot, seems stupid. Batmans default movement is too slow to be useful, you have to run almost constantly just to get anywhere in this game.

Basically these games are trying to make you feel like a badass when you don't actually do very much. It's praise worthy for the atmosphere and environments, but the actual controls and gameplay are shallow and perhaps even underworked. Putting the game in a 'city' does not change anything with regards to how it feels compared to the first game - the city just feels like another version of the asylum from the first game. Everything is basically the same.

If there is a 3rd game in the series I think it will feel exceedingly tired to me unless it has some sort of refresh or art style change.

With regards to Digital Foundrys claim that there is no AA, What are they talking about there are no jaggies except for the wide angle shots and things in the distance?

The graphics are great, do we really need much better than this? But even with how good most it looks I'm finding myself less impressed. Art style does it for me more these days rather than technical detail and this very muscular UE3 style. As always with these HD games I find myself texture inspecting, why is Doc Stranges face so detailed but the logo on his overalls is a pixellated mess?

aspro said:

I agree with everything you said. Except we do need more powerful systems.

I see not need for it. They can make more powerful systems, graphics can get better. Do I need it? Not really, this is good enough.

I think they just need to performance capture the actors and you're all set - one thing that sticks out for me now that I have played a few games with performance capture is that the acting and face animation is so much better, anything less sticks out like a sore thumb. I would prefer for PS4 to be on the same level graphically and instead pack in that 3D HMD they sell for $500.

That 2010 MS NExtbox document has the system coming with in-built Kinect and some head mounted glasses for augmented reality.

Spelunky Get!

This image hints at a new NiGHTS game?

Man I love NiGHTS as much as anyone, but somebody is reading wayyyyyy too much into this.

Article said

The irresponsible attitude of the gaming industry doesn’t end at Rockstar. Dead Space 3 and Electronic Arts are another example of why this industry is going to hell. In an interview with CVG, EA reported that Dead Space 3 must sell at least 5 million units for the Dead Space franchise to survive. Dead Space 1 and Dead Space 2 only moved 2 million copies each. Even if you combine the sales of Dead Space 1 and 2, they don’t amount to 5 million units.