WARNING: MINOR SPOILERS
It would be easy--if accurate--to complain that Warner Bros Games Montreal has done nothing new with the Arkham franchise. On the one hand, Batman: Arkham Origins does give the impression of stagnation, as though the series has already become afraid to try anything new. On the other hand, more Arkham is fine by me.
Given a new studio at them helm of this installment, a brisk change of pace may have been unnecessary, anyway. It might even have made a great big glowing target of WBGM (God, the acronym is somehow just as cumbersome as the full name) because any significant change would've proved--at best--controversial among the fan community. So in Origins, it appears, the studio chose to prove they could deliver the same beloved product, plus a couple more things. In that, Montreal succeeds.
And Origins does tempt fate, allowing Batman to glide and run around "old Gotham City," which players will remember as the setting of Arkham City. And it looks here exactly the same as it did in the previous game if a bit less, um, decayed: same courthouse, same steel mill; a few buildings missing, a few more added, and Batman cannot interact with this portion of the city precisely as he did in the previous game. But it's undoubtedly Arkham City. The player can explore this area (and a brand new half of a city, as well) using the exact same orgasmically-intuitive game mechanics they've become accustomed to. If nothing else, it would be ballsy to remind players of a game they love while giving them a game they don't. Not going to lie: I smiled a bit, reliving old memories.
While we're tempting fate with a new studio trying to replicate near-perfection, we've gotten new voice actors to replace the near-unreplaceable Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill. But happily, Roger Craig "Ezio Auditore" Smith's Batman is a reasonable facsimile with a flawless criminal-intimidation voice. Meanwhile, Troy Baker (who you will not recognize from here) ratchets Hamill's unmatchable rendition into a younger, more eager Joker. Both are solid enough and talented enough that I almost wish they had been allowed to break free with their performances rather than imitate what's already been done. Origins gave me that feeling frequently.
At this point, I realize I haven't gotten to the Batmanning. But that aspect is mostly the same as it was before. Crime scene reconstruction is a fun, only occasionally tedious, addition. And the Batplane quick-travel is a nice relief when having to traverse a game world that verges on over-sized. Otherwise, no big surprises here. Players who didn't like the Riddler's scavenger hunts still won't like them, and still don't have to do them. And players who love fluid fights and challenging predator sections (that is, every player) will still love those. It feels good to be back in the cape and cowl again.
Side note: a brief jaunt into the challenge rooms left me disappointed, coming off as
more a series of structured stunt-performances requiring none of the
creative criminal-bashing I loved about the previous games' challenge
rooms. Maybe opening up a few more rooms will improve that experience.
Joker aside, Origins opts to showcase the more obscure segments of Batman's rouges gallery. From semi-knowns like Black Mask and Deathstroke to out-of-left-fielders like Copperhead (now a chick!) and Anarky (whose inclusion is worthwhile solely for Batman's walk-out on a mopey manifesto). Bane, in a pleasant surprise, is a decently well-constructed villain: an enormous, hyper-intelligent tactician with a mercenary focus on killing the Bat. However, it's tarnished slightly by reverting him to the over-muscled, lumbering Bane we know from past games for the climactic battle, which is somewhat more thrilling than previous final Arkham boss fights. On that note, boss battles are decent this time around (special mention to the Mad Hatter section), but nothing like the spectacular Mr. Freeze fight from City.
True, Batman's early years--being hunted by cops, the slow-building
trust with Gordon, his first meeting with Joker--have been done before.
Sometimes better than this. There's nothing new or canon-shattering
here. We even get a brief Knightfall retread. Montreal is not trying for the road less traveled here. But if it works, it works. And Origins works.
If Rocksteady never gets another shot at the franchise, at least Arkham is in steady (hm...) hands at Montreal. If it ain't broke, yadda yadda. This can get old quickly, and Montreal will need to do something of their own eventually. But so long as future games avoid the trap, I can live with evolutionary lull for one installment.
Grade: B+
Monday, October 28, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
At This Rate, I'll Never Shoot Lincoln
Today I am as old--to the day--as John Wilkes Booth was when he shot Lincoln. At this rate, I'll never shoot Lincoln. Steve Bartman was roughly my age when--ten years ago this week--he entered a strata that, in the eyes of slightly stupider Cubs fans, is roughly Booth's moral level.
I don't believe in quarter-life crises; one of about sixteen reasons I don't work for Buzzfeed. I enrolled in grad school to reach toward better, happier life. And I'll make it there, I'm starting to think, even if if 2016 seems years away. As I inch closer to 27, a quiet and dignified jaunt to 30 and beyond seems less shameful.
My writing was not a ticket to premature fame. Maybe it's the Dogfish Head Raison D'Etre talking, but for the first time in my life, I'm entirely okay with that. I was always at least mildly comfortable with it, or I'd never have gone the self-publishing route. I've made my peace with all that. I was never built for public scrutiny, anyway.
If it happens one day, if I explode out of here, well... it happens. And it'll be unfortunate for me and for the rest of the universe. But I'll be better prepared for it than I was at 25, when I self-published Nos Populus, when I started this blog. If it doesn't happen--if this poorly-named blog is all the outlet I ever have--that might be better still.
Buy Nos Populus here. Or don't. Up to you.
I don't believe in quarter-life crises; one of about sixteen reasons I don't work for Buzzfeed. I enrolled in grad school to reach toward better, happier life. And I'll make it there, I'm starting to think, even if if 2016 seems years away. As I inch closer to 27, a quiet and dignified jaunt to 30 and beyond seems less shameful.
My writing was not a ticket to premature fame. Maybe it's the Dogfish Head Raison D'Etre talking, but for the first time in my life, I'm entirely okay with that. I was always at least mildly comfortable with it, or I'd never have gone the self-publishing route. I've made my peace with all that. I was never built for public scrutiny, anyway.
If it happens one day, if I explode out of here, well... it happens. And it'll be unfortunate for me and for the rest of the universe. But I'll be better prepared for it than I was at 25, when I self-published Nos Populus, when I started this blog. If it doesn't happen--if this poorly-named blog is all the outlet I ever have--that might be better still.
Buy Nos Populus here. Or don't. Up to you.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
America's Dump
America sends its garbage to Washington and then blames the city when the stench wafts their way.
This Washington Post piece has been popular with the "at least you don't have to live with them" crowd, but because it was run under the Post Local heading it's not getting much play elsewhere. Also because no one gives a shit about the human beings who, you know, live here. Actual Washingtonians are, as I said when this masturbatory exercise got underway, an abstraction to most of the country. Granted, people are often abstractions when they live far enough away, but at least it's kind of fair to blame Texas for Ted Cruz. The District of Columbia, for reasons both arcane and childish, has no representation for itself. The only advantage to that situation is that Washingtonians are the only Americans who cannot share in the blame for any of this.
Not that it enures us from the shutdown. Just the opposite. We're the ones who live and work here, either for a government that legally prohibits us from working, or for a business that's suffering because federal employees' cash is no longer flowing their way (each had been hit badly enough by the sequester). Even those of us not directly impacted know people who are: friends and family who are angry, bitter, and bored, and who will receive back pay... eventually. In the meantime, they get to deal with the psychic impact of being forbidden from doing their jobs. For an area that has a lot of people who chose to go to work serving their country, that's no small thing.
But it's, "Washington," sneered through the fat lips of the ill-informed, that's the problem.
Example: a group of truckers thinks it'll be a good idea to "shutdown the Beltway" this weekend. The plan, near as I can tell, involves driving slowly around the Beltway for the duration of the three-day weekend, blaring their horns and generally forcing all and sundry to listen to their loud irritation with the present state of affairs. For those not familiar with DC's geography, the "Beltway" is I-495, a highway that branches I-95 into a loop around (not through) the District. It's an important road for drivers in the area and we all hate it. Here's the kicker: the politicians to be protested aren't using it. Many of them stay here on weekends and those that don't have little use for 495, anyway (Reagan National Airport is inside the Beltway). Capitol Hill will not hear your sirens. And I promise Obama will have no use for the road this weekend, either: he has a helicopter. The only people this punishes are the people who live here and who will need to get somewhere. They are the ones who will bare the brunt of the frustration of people who, in line with the inconvenient realities of democracy, are at least partly responsible for our terrible, terrible government.
As if it wasn't bad enough getting bullied by the self-serving, under-qualified, assclown members of Congress who manufactured the problem. Members sent here entirely by other people.
We, as a nation, have to live with the mistakes of the American voter. Some more intimately than others. Washingtonians don't ask for an apology (apologies mean more when they're volunteered); just an acknowledgement of that fact. And for everyone else to stop lumping them in with the other people's refuse.
This Washington Post piece has been popular with the "at least you don't have to live with them" crowd, but because it was run under the Post Local heading it's not getting much play elsewhere. Also because no one gives a shit about the human beings who, you know, live here. Actual Washingtonians are, as I said when this masturbatory exercise got underway, an abstraction to most of the country. Granted, people are often abstractions when they live far enough away, but at least it's kind of fair to blame Texas for Ted Cruz. The District of Columbia, for reasons both arcane and childish, has no representation for itself. The only advantage to that situation is that Washingtonians are the only Americans who cannot share in the blame for any of this.
Not that it enures us from the shutdown. Just the opposite. We're the ones who live and work here, either for a government that legally prohibits us from working, or for a business that's suffering because federal employees' cash is no longer flowing their way (each had been hit badly enough by the sequester). Even those of us not directly impacted know people who are: friends and family who are angry, bitter, and bored, and who will receive back pay... eventually. In the meantime, they get to deal with the psychic impact of being forbidden from doing their jobs. For an area that has a lot of people who chose to go to work serving their country, that's no small thing.
But it's, "Washington," sneered through the fat lips of the ill-informed, that's the problem.
Example: a group of truckers thinks it'll be a good idea to "shutdown the Beltway" this weekend. The plan, near as I can tell, involves driving slowly around the Beltway for the duration of the three-day weekend, blaring their horns and generally forcing all and sundry to listen to their loud irritation with the present state of affairs. For those not familiar with DC's geography, the "Beltway" is I-495, a highway that branches I-95 into a loop around (not through) the District. It's an important road for drivers in the area and we all hate it. Here's the kicker: the politicians to be protested aren't using it. Many of them stay here on weekends and those that don't have little use for 495, anyway (Reagan National Airport is inside the Beltway). Capitol Hill will not hear your sirens. And I promise Obama will have no use for the road this weekend, either: he has a helicopter. The only people this punishes are the people who live here and who will need to get somewhere. They are the ones who will bare the brunt of the frustration of people who, in line with the inconvenient realities of democracy, are at least partly responsible for our terrible, terrible government.
As if it wasn't bad enough getting bullied by the self-serving, under-qualified, assclown members of Congress who manufactured the problem. Members sent here entirely by other people.
We, as a nation, have to live with the mistakes of the American voter. Some more intimately than others. Washingtonians don't ask for an apology (apologies mean more when they're volunteered); just an acknowledgement of that fact. And for everyone else to stop lumping them in with the other people's refuse.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Shutdown
Mrs. Half-Drunken Scribe is a non-furloughed federal employee. So she gets to keep working, probably for real money. Too many others aren't so lucky. That includes a lot of friends.
If congressional Republicans want to strike Obamacare from history, they need to appropriate funding to build a time machine, and use it to get Mitt Romney elected president. Obamacare may not be the most popular legislation (though it becomes less unpopular when referred to by its proper name), but it was installed by a democratically-elected House and Senate, and backed by a president who ran on a platform to improve access to healthcare. It survived a Supreme Court challenge. And when that same president, who banked his job on this very law, won reelection, that was end game. That was the signal from on high that this law, warts and all, must be allowed to go forward. To aim for anything less is cheap, cowardly, and unconstitutional.
And those were the appropriate adjectives before a government shutdown and a default crisis got thrown into the mix. But, after all, this is the Tea Party: the self-important, half-informed, thin-skinned, cosplaying, paper patriots. People for whom the democratic process becomes moot as soon as it coughs up a result they don't like. People who love America so much, they're willing to kill it before anyone else... gets access to healthcare.
They're not fighting against something that was rammed down America's throat, as they would have you believe; America's had ample opportunity to shut this thing down. Sure, the law isn't great, but when Republicans make every effort to block the thing, it's not because they have a better idea. They didn't have an answer for preexisting conditions and the subsequent millions of uninsured aside from "get a job." They didn't have--and still don't have--an answer for healthcare's abominable costs, only part of which will actually be addressed by Obamacare (again, not a great series of laws, just the best one possible (apparently)). They keep flogging free market approaches, cheerfully forgetting that the market is in no way capable of handling healthcare costs. They've got nothing. And they know it. Or they'd have had something substantive to add.
Now we get no government. For anyone or anything except "essential services." No one who matters seems to care about the blind-spots that will impact even the still-operating agencies. Or how the national economy will be impacted.
And then there's the $200 million that the Washington area could lose every day. Whenever you hear someone talk about DC, it's never about the people who live here. These people are abstractions, even the ones who don't work for the federal or city governments. But we feel the impact when spending gets cut, because we all know people getting furloughed, going without paychecks. There's a word for people who threaten livelihoods to prove ideological points. I'd tell it to you straight, but it'll stick better if you figure it out for yourself.
This will almost certainly hurt Republicans in the short and medium terms. And it probably won't affect the Affordable Care Act too badly (it may even give the program a crutch if people can blame any holes on a lack of government). But it's hard for me to care about either of those things right now.
I just want my friends to go back to work.
If congressional Republicans want to strike Obamacare from history, they need to appropriate funding to build a time machine, and use it to get Mitt Romney elected president. Obamacare may not be the most popular legislation (though it becomes less unpopular when referred to by its proper name), but it was installed by a democratically-elected House and Senate, and backed by a president who ran on a platform to improve access to healthcare. It survived a Supreme Court challenge. And when that same president, who banked his job on this very law, won reelection, that was end game. That was the signal from on high that this law, warts and all, must be allowed to go forward. To aim for anything less is cheap, cowardly, and unconstitutional.
And those were the appropriate adjectives before a government shutdown and a default crisis got thrown into the mix. But, after all, this is the Tea Party: the self-important, half-informed, thin-skinned, cosplaying, paper patriots. People for whom the democratic process becomes moot as soon as it coughs up a result they don't like. People who love America so much, they're willing to kill it before anyone else... gets access to healthcare.
They're not fighting against something that was rammed down America's throat, as they would have you believe; America's had ample opportunity to shut this thing down. Sure, the law isn't great, but when Republicans make every effort to block the thing, it's not because they have a better idea. They didn't have an answer for preexisting conditions and the subsequent millions of uninsured aside from "get a job." They didn't have--and still don't have--an answer for healthcare's abominable costs, only part of which will actually be addressed by Obamacare (again, not a great series of laws, just the best one possible (apparently)). They keep flogging free market approaches, cheerfully forgetting that the market is in no way capable of handling healthcare costs. They've got nothing. And they know it. Or they'd have had something substantive to add.
Now we get no government. For anyone or anything except "essential services." No one who matters seems to care about the blind-spots that will impact even the still-operating agencies. Or how the national economy will be impacted.
And then there's the $200 million that the Washington area could lose every day. Whenever you hear someone talk about DC, it's never about the people who live here. These people are abstractions, even the ones who don't work for the federal or city governments. But we feel the impact when spending gets cut, because we all know people getting furloughed, going without paychecks. There's a word for people who threaten livelihoods to prove ideological points. I'd tell it to you straight, but it'll stick better if you figure it out for yourself.
This will almost certainly hurt Republicans in the short and medium terms. And it probably won't affect the Affordable Care Act too badly (it may even give the program a crutch if people can blame any holes on a lack of government). But it's hard for me to care about either of those things right now.
I just want my friends to go back to work.
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