Enjoy my friends, this has been an expensive year jam packed with incredible games. This is what happens when developers learn how to use the hardware at their disposal. I dare 2012 to be a better year than 2011!
Batman: Arkham Asylum was to superhero video games what Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins was to Batman movies; just as Nolan’s film proved that it was possible to create a gritty, intelligent crime drama starring The Caped Crusader (who’s film appearances up until that point had been limited to campy garbage,) Arkham Asylum likewise proved that, after years of appearing in shovelware and quick movie cash-ins, it was indeed possible to create a good game starring Batman. So does that make Arkham Asylum’s sequel, Arkham City, the gaming equivalent of The Dark Knight? Well, not quite, but it’s still an amazing game in it’s own right.
While getting to be a superhero is every child’s (and man-child’s) dream, few games have managed to successfully recreate the experience. For every decent game like Neversoft’s Spider-Man 2, you end up with at least two or three games like Superman 64 or X-Men Origins: Wolverine. But London based developer Rocksteady Studios has bucked this trend by developing the two best superhero games ever made, Batman: Arkham Asylum and it’s follow-up, Arkham City, back to back. In a recent interview with Canadian Business, Martin Carrier and Reid Schneider, the studio heads of WB Interactive, the publisher of those games, explained why they’ve succeeded where others have failed:
Apparently October was a good month for things with “3″ in their title, as the 360 once again led console sales with approximately 393,000 new Xboxes sold in the US during the month. The 3DS also had a surprisingly good month too, coming in at second with a healthy 250,000 units sold, giving hope that there may be a future for Nintendo’s embattled handheld yet. Nintendo is now claiming that the system is selling faster than the original DS did within the same time frame. As for software sales, Battlefield 3 came out on top, with over 2 million copies sold, which, while not quite pulling in the more massive audience that Call of Duty usually gets, BF3 at least seems like it’ll make enough money to ensure that the Battlefield vs. CoD rivalry continues for another iteration.
PC gamers who are waiting for Batman: Arkham City to become available may have to wait just a little longer. It was originally slotted to launch on November 18th in North America, but it seems like it is now slotted for November 22nd.
In case you missed my first article, this is a blog of sorts that will take you through my journey of playing my first Xbox Game: Arkham City. If you haven’t played the game yet and didn’t want the game spoiled for you, please stop reading right here.
I am a novice gamer, at best. While the gaming industry does intrigue me, my gaming skills are limited to playing Mario and Donkey Kong on my Super Nintendo as well as Tetris, Pokemon, and Sims. With this in mind, I would like to go on to say some of my fellow colleagues started to make a giant point: how could I possibly write in depth articles about games if I didn’t play them? So I decided to write a daily blog of sorts on my frustrations and hardships playing my first Xbox 360 game (besides fighting games, which I like to call my button smashing games). It would only make sense that I would pick up Batman: Arkham City as my first game, since you know, it’s Batman.
There was almost no doubt in my mind that Batman: Arkham City would be a commercial success. Highly praised with some stunning game play, it truly does deserve every accolade it has received. It really comes down to numbers though, especially to the big guys upstairs, and the numbers seem promising. Warner Brothers has announced that 4.6 million copies of Arkham City has been shipped out in its first week.
If you plan on waiting to buy Batman: Arkham City (which you shouldn’t, wait I mean) from the used bin, you won’t be able to play the single-player portions of the game that contain Catwoman.
Despite what all the critics and majority of online community believe, Green Lantern was a better movie than Captain America. Yes, that is quite a bold statement, and yes, I have already been personally ostracized for saying such things. With that being said, I had every intention of buying Green Lantern on Blu-Ray when it came on this coming Tuesday, October 14th. Well, it would seem as though the nice people of DC and Rocksteady got together and came up with a plan to boost sales: exclusive Sinestro Corps skin for Batman: Arkham City.
Robin isn’t that popular compared to the Batman. In fact, the arc A Death In the Family had the Robin with the real name of Jason Todd die in an explosion by popular vote several years ago (but it was a very close vote). However, Robin in Arkham City has taken levels in badass.
Paul Crocker had said “Everyone knows who Robin is, we wanted to, I guess, reinvent Robin so that he’s one bad-ass kid. So people don’t go ‘Oh robin, he’s no good to fight with’.”, according to Crocker, Robin can “beat the crap out of anyone” to put it into his words.
We officially have our first look at Robin in the upcoming Batman: Arkham City, Robin will be an exclusive playable character on challenges maps to those who have pre-ordered the game through various retail store i.e Gamestop and Best Buy.
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