Batman: Arkham Origins - The First Impressions

So... the wait is finally over. Batman Arkham Origins has been released around the world. For once, being an Aussie really paid off for me and I was able to unlock the game on Steam on Thursday night (as opposed to Saturday for most of the world). I've played about 3 to 4 hours of it so far, and I have to say I'm impressed.

Hello old friend.

There was some trepidation from fans of the previous two Arkham games about the change in developer. Rocksteady Studios did an absolutely fantastic job of taking a licensed product and turning it into a game, so when it was announced that it would be Warner Bros. Games Montreal developing some people were unhappy with the change. Having played it now however, those fears are almost unfounded. The gameplay feels extremely similar to Arkham City and the stand out parts of the previous games (the combat and stealth mechanics) are intact and almost untouched.

Batman is different however. As Arkham Origins is set before the previous two games, you are dealing with a younger, more inexperienced but more raw and aggressive Batman. There is also a change of costume for the caped crusader, with him using his armoured suit rather than the more sleek suit that we have become used to from the previous games. The change makes sense considering the story line of the game, with Batman taking on assassins, regular criminals and the police. Oh yeah, I might have forgot to mention: because it is set before Gordon is commissioner, Batman is still wanted by the police and some corrupt parts of the force are actively hunting him for a payoff from the criminals.

The combat is still as visceral and flows as well as the previous games. The controls on PC still make sense, with one minor issue of not being able to bind anything to my side button on my mouse (as I usually change any middle mouse button binds to this). The addition of the new martial arts expert makes for some interesting new scenarios were you have to counter then counter again to do maximum damage. The "boss" battles that I have experienced so far have all been different enough that I feel satisfied with each of them when I beat them. The stealth side of the gameplay is also just as fun. Taking a criminal down from a vent feels very satisfying and pulling off the perfect combo of downing bad guys without being seen is still as rewarding as ever.

On a slightly different note, there are a few bugs that I have encountered in the game. The first time I launched the game it got to the point where you had to click to get into the menu and the game crashed. During the stealth tutorial all sound disappeared from the game world. And finally, keeping in mind I am playing on PC, I have had the game freeze for a good 30 seconds when changing zones. If you haven't already purchased the game, I'd consider waiting until the first patch to buy it if you feel you wouldn't like to experience these.

My only other gripe is some small things about the games world. The map is fantastic, with the top island containing a lot of familiar sights from Arkham City, including the steel factory that The Joker called his own. The south island is full of high rise buildings and dark alleys that suit Gotham perfectly. However because of the lack of civilians, I find myself wondering if I am back in Arkham City again, where the world is full of either cops, criminals and a handful of victims. Also I get the Christmas theme, but did we really need snow again?

All in all I think Warner Bros. Games Montreal have done a fantastic of emulating the amazing work of Rocksteady Games with the previous two Arkham games. The fears I had about changing too much of the formula that RS had established were completely unfounded, as WB seem to have adopted an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach to the development of Arkham Origins. In my opinion, if you are a Batman fan you'll already own this game. If you haven't played Arkham Asylum or Arkham City, pick up Origins as it won't ruin any of the story of the previous two games. If for some reason you aren't a fan of the Dark Knight (the character, not the movie), but still want a fun game, pick it up and see what you think. The gameplay stands up well enough on its own that you will find yourself enjoying the game regardless of who you are playing.

For now though, I have to go back to beating criminals to a pulp. As always!

Please read in Christian Bales Batman voice.

GAME ON!

Edit: Since playing 9 hours of the game, I would definitely recommend waiting for the first patch. There are parts of the game that have some bugs preventing you from continuing, specifically one of the radio towers locks you into a room with a vent you can climb up to but not enter. That being said, the game is still very good and the end of the main story is not what I expected, but perfect.

Edit #2: The patch to fix the issues with the radio tower has been released for PC.

Random Ramblings #7

In the distance, there is a sound... It's moving quickly, and is heading toward us. Oh my goodness IT'S THE RANDOM RAMBLINGS! This time around a rapper loses it, Activision Blizzard gets moving and someone makes me sad.

Rapper wants GTAV Recalled

A rapper by the name of Daz Dillinger wants GTAV recalled due to the fact that Rockstar included two of his tracks in the game without permission. Allegedly the developer put the tracks C-Walk and Nothin' but the Cavi Hit despite him not giving them permission to use the tracks in the game. Daz responded by giving Rockstar 14 days to reply to his request to have all copies of GTAV recalled and destroyed, or to make him an offer to use the music. There isn't much more information on exactly how Rockstar tried to get permission at this stage, but Daz was offered $4,271 for the use of them, an offer he turned down as "offensive." Hopefully some more information will come to light from Rockstar as to how exactly they got rights to use the music before this gets out of hand.

Problems with Activision Blizzard's Seperation

Activision Blizzard had announced back in July that it was breaking away from parent company Vivendi for a deal to the tune of 8.17 billion dollars. Then in September it was announced that a shareholder in the company had filed a complaint against the company for a: 

"breach of fiduciary duties, waste of corporate assets and unjust enrichment" and that ASAC II (the investor group owned by Bobby Kotick) will "score an immediate paper windfall of $664 million."

However the Delaware Supreme court lifted the decision earlier this week and Activision Blizzard announced yesterday that the acquisition had been successfully completed. Hopefully this means that Blizzard can continue to make fantastic games as they have been for the last 22 years.

Delayed PC Releases - Piracy to Blame

Someone finally asked the question to a developer about why PC game releases are delayed. The answer? Piracy. Now while this answer is off the record, it is not unsurprising. PC games are usually the most pirated due to how easy it is to crack them compared to having to chip a console to pirate games.

I am the first to admit, I have pirated games in the past. I downloaded the pirate version of Game Dev Tycoon to see the message that popped up for myself. When I was living at home and couldn't afford games I would pirate them. Even now, even though I have the money to buy any game I desire, every now and then I will pirate a game to see if I like it or if it is worth dropping money on it. If I had known that actions like this had led to this fear for developers to the point where PC games are delayed to help with figures, I honestly believe I wouldn't have pirated any games at all.

As always folks,

GAME ON!

The story of my guild in WoW

So it's been an interesting couple of months for me in WoW. My real life work started to finally get busy last month, so I haven't had much time to play the game itself. However between 5.4 dropping hard, gaining almost 30 item levels in around 5 hours of play in the Timeless Isle, and farming ghost iron ore to try and get my hands on the new Sky Golem mount, I've been busy with what little time I have had to play.

Soon..........

But the truth is, it hasn't been the game that has made my recent WoW time interesting, it's something that has happened with the guild I am/was in. I say am because I am still there, and I say was because in around 10 minutes I'm going to be typing /gquit into my chat window. Why? Pull up a chair children it's story time.

The guild that I have been part of basically since I started playing the game is the guild a real life friend of mine was a member of, and his housemate is the GM of said guild. Let's call him Stab. At some point in the last couple of months Stab was automatically flagged and account banned for botting (or at least that is what we thought he was banned for, but more on that later). His response was basically to say, "Well I've had a good run, I'm gonna quit and you guys can take over the guild."

As it turns out however, when I submitted a ticket to support with regards to removing my items from the guild bank, they game back with a strange response:

As the guild itself was apart of our investigation and was associated with an account that participated in illegal activities in game, we decided to remove access to the guild bank and to the guild leadership to anyone in the guild as we were unable to determine what was and was not illegally gained. I apologize. But we will not be able to recover anything from the guild.

Hmmm, not exactly the response we were expecting. As it turns out and with tickets submitted by both my friend and Stab, we were finally able to find out that Blizzard essentially thought that the Guild was being used for real money transactions (or RMT), and that Stab's actions on the auction house (he was basically owning the gem market on our server, and the guild bank was being used to store his wealth) had flagged him as some sort of gold farmer. He has written three emails about this to an email address the support line gave him with no response from Blizzard in the last month. Will we ever get a response? Who knows.

The whole ordeal has made me wary of trying to play the WoW auction house like I do the markets in Eve. If they suspect someone like Stab who was, granted, spending a lot of time updating his buy and sell orders on the auction house, how would they view someone like myself who spends far too much time farming mats and playing around on the markets compared to "normal gameplay". I have no idea how Blizzard would respond to a player like myself. The big problem with this is that it has made me less inclined to play over this last month, as crafting and the generation of huge sums of money is one of the main reasons I like MMOs such as WoW and Eve.

So as I sit in a dead guild pondering the story of the rise and fall of some fun times right at the beginning of my WoW journey, I wonder if my next guild will be as interesting. Chances are, I will never go through what I have with this guild, and I'm not entirely sure it was a bad thing to go through it now, rather than in a years time when I have amassed some more wealth. In any case, it's time to type that magic command and /gquit my way out of a piece of my WoW history.

As always my gaming brothers and sisters:

GAME ON!

The Effect of Mining in Eve

A certain well known (some would say infamous) blogger posted something recently about how miners like to say the game couldn't function without them, and how people how pay for PLEX with isk like to say they are paying for the game. His post was along the lines of how if all the miners left the game tomorrow then CCP could put another source of ore in the game, and how people playing with PLEX could all leave and those buying PLEX could sell to an NPC. I want to say I have respect for this person, even if I disagree with a lot of what he says with regards to the community in Eve, and the player interactions that he so obviously despises. His wallet says all I need to know about how he plays the game. At the same time however, I cannot let this one go by without some comment.

I am a miner. By my own admission, both here and on the Eve forums I call myself a carebear in the industrialist meaning of the word. My ore goes into building ships, weapons and ammunition to fuel the PVP that other players enjoy. My ideal night of Eve involves logging in just after downtime (thanks Western Australian time zone) and shooting asteroids with lasers until my hold is full, while chatting with members of my corp and alliance. I go and shoot reds, but I'm not going to lie and say its what I look for every single time I log into Eve.

A lot of people who suicide gank or bump miners are under the impression that we are doing it because we aspire to be some kind of bot, that we deserve to be treated as though we were botting. While I'm sure there are people out there who literally mine for hours, even days because they just want to sell it to make isk, the majority of miners I talk to do so because they like it. Personally I don't have the time to invest into a large scale null alliance that would be required of me, so I get involved with my corp by mining, producing ships and talking with them.

Replacing me with an NPC that sells minerals, or heck if you are going so far as to do that why not straight up ships, does two things. First, it loses CCP a subscriber. If I cannot do something like mining, I don't particularly have the time to dedicate to getting involved in PVP beyond somewhere like RvB. Eve becomes pointless for me to play. Some of you would say that nothing of value is lost, but I have been a part of this game for years, and so have many of the industry people I have spoken to in the game. Second, Eve loses something that captures people. When I tell friends that the Revenant lost by PL earlier this year was assembled by players, with materials gathered by players, they all look at me like that's the most insane thing they have ever heard. The fact that nearly every item in the game is player made is a major draw in this era of theme park MMOs.

As for the PLEX thing, CCP still gets the money either way, and a large transfer of ISK happens at the point of sale. Selling directly to an NPC would introduce more isk with no loss to the buyer (as the NPC would have infinite isk). That's not good for any economy, as there always needs to be sinks for the isk to go into. I think the blogger in question needs to temper his disdain for people (as it really comes across that he wants Eve to be a single player game), with a realistic outlook on what is good for the game in the long run.

As always folks:

GAME ON!