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Batman: Arkham Origins (Wii U): COMPLETED!

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Is_this_some_sort_of_jokeWhat’s this? Two Batman games completed in a single day? What are the chances?

Before today’s session I was actually pretty close to the end anyway, so it only took about half an hour to finish off. Well, over an hour if you count the ludicrously long credit sequence which listed every single person who has ever existed ever, and plenty of other people who never existed at all. Probably.

Anyway. The game! Was brilliant. Although it started off full of bugs, I actually found very few after the first few hours. Aside from this one, from not far from the end:

Hardly game breaking, I know. Thankfully, that was pretty much it – better than Arkham City by the end. In fact, the whole game was better than Arkham City by the end.

tumblr_n9ho13pr1j1svmpf2o1_1280Yes! It really was! Despite the map being bigger, and that being one of the things I disliked about City over Asylum, for some reason I preferred it here. The combat was more or less the same as previously, and there weren’t many (or any?) new enemy types over the earlier games. I’m not really sure why I enjoyed it more than City, when I come to analyse it – I just know I did.

One thing that was definitely an improvement was in the boss fights. They were more varied, and some of them, such as the Firefly one, were really something new. The Electrocutioner was hilarious with his one punch kill, and Bane’s final fight was pretty awesome.

tumblr_n9ho0irmnz1svmpf2o1_1280I also preferred the plot. I never got on with Arkham City’s “I’m dying and now you’re dying” Joker story, perhaps because although you really had all the time in the world to finish the game, there was this nagging sense of urgency as you needed to find the cure before you died. It was interesting to see the origins (that’s the name of the game, remember) of some of the characters, like Harley and Gordon, but laying the smackdown on a load of cops never really felt right, no matter how bent they appeared to be.

In order then, Arkham > Origins > City. Although I know many will disagree.

Onto Blackgate on the 3DS then.

Lego Batman 2 (Wii U): COMPLETED!

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1337I actually started this over a year ago, but I don’t seem to have made any mention of it. What happened, was that I played the first three levels in co-op with my daughter, but because it didn’t support the Wii Classic Controller I had to use the Wii Remote which is terrible for this sort of game. I wasn’t enjoying it, so I intended to play something else for a while and come back to it to play solo or when I bought a Wii U Controller Pro. Other games happened, and it got put away.
Evil_receptionistThen it came back out a few days ago, and, since I have a Wii U Controller Pro now, I thought two player was back on! Only it doesn’t support the Wii U Controller Pro. Player 2 is Remote and Nunchuk ONLY. Which is rubbish.
Thankfully, in this case, my daughter mainly just wanted to watch, so I flew through the game in single player while she was back-seat driver.

Yep.Like most Lego games, it’s a lot of fun. The voice acting is great, and the tasks and levels are suitably silly. The best bit, however, is the huge open world hub, which is even more impressive than Lego City Undercover, despite that game coming out later. Yes, Lego City is more fun and there’s more to do (and there’s traffic too), but Gotham is seemingly bigger and the loading sequences are virtually non-existent – especially in comparison. The music is lovely too, especially the Superman film theme triggering each time you take off as Superman.

New_Transformers_film_is_a_jokeAs always with these titles, completing the story is just the start. I’ve still almost 200 gold bricks left to find for a start, and haven’t managed a single full minikit yet. I have found most of the red bricks though, which should make collecting enough studs to buy every character and vehicle a bit easier. Not that they cost very much in Lego Batman 2, and I was surprised at how cheap the red bricks themselves were as well – 500k or so for the 8x multiplier? I’m sure that’s been 8 million or more in other games.

Lego Batman 2 (Wii U): COMPLETED!

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1337I actually started this over a year ago, but I don’t seem to have made any mention of it. What happened, was that I played the first three levels in co-op with my daughter, but because it didn’t support the Wii Classic Controller I had to use the Wii Remote which is terrible for this sort of game. I wasn’t enjoying it, so I intended to play something else for a while and come back to it to play solo or when I bought a Wii U Controller Pro. Other games happened, and it got put away.
Evil_receptionistThen it came back out a few days ago, and, since I have a Wii U Controller Pro now, I thought two player was back on! Only it doesn’t support the Wii U Controller Pro. Player 2 is Remote and Nunchuk ONLY. Which is rubbish.
Thankfully, in this case, my daughter mainly just wanted to watch, so I flew through the game in single player while she was back-seat driver.

Yep.Like most Lego games, it’s a lot of fun. The voice acting is great, and the tasks and levels are suitably silly. The best bit, however, is the huge open world hub, which is even more impressive than Lego City Undercover, despite that game coming out later. Yes, Lego City is more fun and there’s more to do (and there’s traffic too), but Gotham is seemingly bigger and the loading sequences are virtually non-existent – especially in comparison. The music is lovely too, especially the Superman film theme triggering each time you take off as Superman.

New_Transformers_film_is_a_jokeAs always with these titles, completing the story is just the start. I’ve still almost 200 gold bricks left to find for a start, and haven’t managed a single full minikit yet. I have found most of the red bricks though, which should make collecting enough studs to buy every character and vehicle a bit easier. Not that they cost very much in Lego Batman 2, and I was surprised at how cheap the red bricks themselves were as well – 500k or so for the 8x multiplier? I’m sure that’s been 8 million or more in other games.

Armillo (Wii U): COMPLETED!

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Standard_evil_bants.When this was shown in some eShop roundup a while back, I was only slightly interested. Since then, I was less and less interested as the screenshots I’d seen looked pretty poor and, well, I had too many other games to bother with it. However, when it was released last week (or the week before?) it was on special offer for just £4. The videos made it look a bit more impressive than the screenshots, so I thought, yeah, OK.

I was pleasantly surprised. It isn’t a fantastic game by any means, but it’s fun enough. Rolling Armillo around feels a little like games such as Kororinpa and Mercury to start with, with some Mario Galaxy “on a planetoid” inspiration. Sadly, it’s no Mario Galaxy in gameplay, although it does have a similarly huge number of ideas in one game.

Shovel_Knight_Whereas Mario Galaxy’s levels were all different, with many throwaway (as in, used once) ideas that the levels were based around, Armillo’s ideas mostly feel shoehorned in. Few of them are truly bad ideas, but there are too many, with hardly any of them fully realised.

For example, there’s a powerup which turns the game into a twin-stick shooter for a few minutes. Another which makes you big to squash things. Keys to find, switches to press, buttons which duplicate your ‘dillo. Even a whole timed section in each level. There are bonus levels (some of which aren’t optional) which are side-on platformers – again with several unnecessary ideas.

It’s also pretty short, although I haven’t found all of the bonus and secret (yes, it has both) levels. There’s also a really nasty screen freezing bug which almost pauses the action for a couple of seconds – which happens at least once on most of the levels.

Perhaps with some more polish – on the bugs, the presentation, and the puzzles – and with some of the fat trimmed so fewer ideas were included but they were fully developed, this could have been great. As it is, it’s well worth £4, but it’s by no means a must-buy.

Time Gentlemen, Please (PC): COMPLETED!

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tumblr_n90qeszluu1svmpf2o1_1280When I made a start on this, almost two years ago, having just finished the previous game, I didn’t expect to just stop playing. In fact, I’m not really sure why I did, but having reached what turned out to be about a third of the way through the game, I put it on pause.

Then I played it some more over the last few days, and completed it.

Like “Ben There, Dan That”, it’s utterly ridiculous and the plot is nonsensical. It’s witty, dirty and downright silly – like many of the best point and click adventure games are.