Three Short ReviewsFollow

X-Men: Destiny - Really button mashy, mediocre storyline, unfleshed out characters and a lot less customizable than I was lead to believe. Just because you can change the color of the attack and add one of a million status effects that all pretty much do the same thing doesn't make it really customizable. That being said, I've beat it six times so I could get each characters "X-Men" and "Brotherhood" endings. Which are all basically interchangeable. Nothing deep, but for mindless gaming I can't think of any better than this three. They actors to play all the characters, outside Nightcrawler, sounded really bored to be working so that really detracted from my overall enjoyment of the game.

Spider-Man: Edge of Time - I really wanted this one to be great after Shattered Dimensions, but it just misses the mark. The biggest problem is the complete lack of Metal Gear Noir Spider-Man inspired levels, where you stealthily creep around a stage and take down people without being seen. The combat was nice, and simple, but Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099 play almost identically the same so there's little reason for them to be separated except for the story. Pretty decent story, enjoyable. Loved the inclusion of Anti-Venom, and a lot of the jokes were hilarious, which is to be expected. Also amazing voice acting. Didn't like how they separated the Challenge from the main game, which made SD a lot of fun to replay. But the lack of Noir really hurt this release for me.

Batman: Arkham City - Freakin' huge. I just completed the main storyline and only managed about 50% completion. A metric ton of stuff to do, which is always a plus. Kind of realistic looking damage to the costume and eventually yourself as you get shot at and beat up. Kind of wish there was a costume repair shop or something, but I guess when you're a superhero those are rare, especially when in an extended stay at a fortified enemy stronghold. I wasn't a big Batman comic reader so I can't say how well the characters were done, but from my understanding of all of the ones that show up (And a lot show up) they live up to my expectations. The voice acting is amazing, but that's to be expected when you've got Mark Hamill playing The Joker.

If given the choice, go with Batman. Definitely worth the price, especially if you played Arkham Asylum and have a basic understanding of the basic mechanics. Doubly so if you're a comic book fan, and you should just kill yourself if you haven't gotten it and are a Batman fan. The others are okay, but as like rentals.

This.^

I read Dark Knight stuff when I was younger and do still like the bat but I think I can wait on this one still for a bit since I got other stuff to finish up. Nice reviews though!

Thankfully, I found the stealth and combat aspects of the first game equally fun and satisfying, and I hope AC is no different.

Agreed. I just finished AC2 last week, and picked up Brotherhood. I've been too busy with Dark Souls though to start it :(.

That's what happened to me with AC2 (and, admittedly, many other games). Played most of it a year ago, then just got busy with other games and stuff and finally decided to finish it last week. Only took a couple nights of playing to finish it >_<.

Call me crazy, but I've really lost interest in AC.

Loved the first one, in spite of its mission structure flaws. It was a little darker & more somber (which I loved), and the dialogue was heady and well constructed, especially between Altair & Al Mualim. The bad guys had a real humanity to them that made them feel believable. Didn't like the end boss though, of course, because it totally went against that.

AC2 seemed to lose a lot of that for me. A lot of the graphics in AC2 were scaled back, which really rubbed me the wrong way. I hated seeing blatantly tiled grass in the fields outside cities. Lucy looked positively weird. I also find my interest waning the more that supernatural elements are mixed in. I didn't like that issues from the first game, like the easy combat, are still there.

Really though, I think the problems for me stem from the series getting bumped up from a trilogy into this "annualizable", multimedia, big-universe thing. You can really see the marketing side driving the decisions with the series now, and a lot of elements seem rushed.

To be fair, I haven't played Brotherhood. Just don't see the point. Part of me is mildly curious about Revelations, but that's just because I'm really interested in Constantinople. The Hagia Sophia is cool. But I'll probably skip it anyway, at least for now.

PS: Tower defense? What the @#%^?

Edited, Nov 2nd 2011 12:39pm by Eske

They definitely went a new direction, yeah, but I have to say that exploring Italian cities in AC2 and ACB was absolutely delicious.

In ACB, you get to jump of the coliseum and do a stealth assassination in the pantheon.

I really liked AC. I get why people had the complaints they did (I TOTALLY do). They just didn't bother me TOO much. It was definitely repetitive, and I played on the PS3 so I didn't even have reason to track down flags and such. In any case, finding flags/feathers in ACII/ACB is fun, because it let's you figure out puzzles and see more of their amazing world. In AC is was boring, since you had to spend so much time on horseback in random little villages that all looked the same and were far from the cities.

And I'd agree that ACB feels like an expansion to AC2. But that never bothered me, because the amount of new content they included is way more than I'd demand from a $60 price tag. And multiplayer is a lot of fun.