Small-scale escapades with Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate

Once I’m done with a few other games on my plate, namely Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion, I plan to move on and finally play Batman: Arkham City. Well, start it again; I did play a wee bit of it on the ol’ PlayStation 3…uh, some long time ago. Anyways, I got another copy of it in a Black Friday bundle last year with Batman: Arkham Asylum for Xbox One, which I’ve already played and enjoyed, but it was actually cheaper to get both than purchase Batman: Arkham City on its own. Yeah, go figure, right? My cart total came to…$5.33. I’m all about them cheap-o gaming experiences. But that’s not at all what this post is about; I’m here to talk to you about Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate, which is a big Batman game on a tiny screen.

Taking place shortly after the events of Batman: Arkham Origins, Blackgate attempts to bridge the story gap between Batman: Arkham Asylum and its recent prequel. In this one, Batman learns of a robbery that leads to his meeting the feline burglar Catwoman. As events quickly unfold, the temptress leads the Caped Crusader to Blackgate Prison, home of Gotham’s criminals who haven’t been deemed criminally insane and consequentially sent to the much more infamous Arkham Asylum. The villains already behind bars, the most nefarious being Penguin, Black Mask, and the Joker, have managed to escape from their cells and take control of the joint. With the rest of the inmates at their employ, Batman must stop the complete takeover of the prison. It’s a decent setup, but it does feel a bit samey when you think of how events went down in Batman: Arkham Asylum.

What is Blackgate, other than a mouthful of a game title? Well, it’s a Metroid-style Dark Knight adventure designed by a few of the top people behind the three Metroid Prime games on GameCube and Wii. Their new studio is called Armature, and this is their big debut. In this, you are the titular Batman, exploring Blackgate Prison, automatically filling out a map as you search for clues about how to get from one part of the game world to the next. As you go, you’ll discover obstacles that are in your way and then, somewhere down the road, find new abilities and gadgetry that let you pass those obstacles. Shocking, I know. Also, there are enemies to fight, and the combat is handled similarly to the main entry series, wherein rhythm and timing is your best bet to remain standing at the end. Blackgate is two-parts detective work and one-third combat.

As I’m wont to do, I played a small amount when I first got Blackgate…and then put it down and completely forgot about it after a few days. Shame on me, but also…that’s just totally me. Well, I loaded it back up recently. My save slot says I’ve played a total of one hour and twenty-four minutes, which puts me at a 21% completion rate. All right then. Thankfully, it immediately told me where to go to next to move the story along–the lighthouse. However, getting there still proved troublesome as I completely forgot all the controls or how anything works, such as using detective mode to find clues in the environments you are navigating. Don’t worry, it eventually all came back to me, just took a few attempts.

While the story itself is not very engaging, the way it is told is super stylish, using somewhat animated comic book-like panels for its cutscenes, with strong voiceover work from the eclectic cast. That said, everything else visually is a bit bland and samey, and many of the environments are simply gray and drab, which makes it hard to know where you are because every place looks identical. There’s a map, but I didn’t find it too helpful when I really needed it; that said, the menus for the cases you are investigating and the gear/armor you have found are nicely done and full of vital information.

I truly intend to keep going with Blackgate and not immediately drop it like a bag of bat guano in a few days, but truth be told all it is doing is getting me excited for the larger-than-life series on the Xbox One, of which I’ve already installed Batman: Arkham City. I suspect I’ll be better at the combat when I can actually see what is going on instead of squinting at a tiny screen and hoping for the best.

2019 Game Review Haiku, #28 – Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion

Simple RPG
Based on Adventure Time show
Sail to boredom land

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And we’re back with these little haikus of mine. Go on, gobble ’em up. However, if you want to read more of my in-depth thoughts about these games that I’m beating, just search for them by name on Grinding Down. As always, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry, even if they aren’t instant classics, such as the works of Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, or Kobayashi Issa. Hey, not everyone gets to be that great.

Batten down the hatches for Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion

I believe I have seen exactly one episode of Adventure Time, and I wasn’t even paying that close attention to it. Oh well. I understand it is beloved and for both kids and adults, but it is just something I never got deep into. Same goes for similar shows, such as Steven Universe, Regular Show, and Gravity Falls. When it comes to the Cartoon Network, I’m mostly only about that super stylish and cool-as-heck Samurai Jack. Oh, and I’ll still occasionally plop down on the couch and fall into a The Fairly OddParents hole, glory be to the being up above; I’m a big fan of Wanda.

Still, that’s not going to stop me from playing an RPG based on Adventure Time, which brings us to Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion. It’s one of the freebies for Gold users on Xbox One this month, and I love freebies like Princess Bubblegum loves…um, bubblegum. That’s a broad assumption. See? I know nothing about this world and its inhabitants. Honestly, after a good nine to ten hours with the game, I still know very little. Everything just seems odd for odd’s sake, but maybe that’s the whole point. Moving along…

Our main protagonists Finn the Human and Jake the Dog begin Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion by exploring the never-before-seen Ocean of Ooo after their home mysteriously floods overnight. The look of the ocean and map gives off an illusion of vastness, filling you with hope that this is gonna be an epic adventure in the vein of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker or The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, but that is sadly not the case at all. In short, it is more of an overworld map or a hub for smaller levels, and you can only travel to so many spots to dock your boat. The worse part is there is no fast travel system, and it takes a long time to get from one island to another across the nearly barren waters that it just results in a lot of boring boating.

As this is an RPG, combat plays a pivotal role in the gameplay. Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion goes the turn-based route, and it is pretty similar to things like Costume Quest 2, Earthlock: Festival of Magic, and Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. Your party is made up of stereotypical RPG archetypes, such as the tank, support, and DPS characters. The battles are rarely challenging and border on the edge of tedious; unfortunately, there’s no difficulty setting to raise the bar a bit. You can select a basic attack, a special attack, block, use an item, or run away; there’s also an ultimate attack for each character that builds up over time. For general upgrades to your stats and abilities, you’ll collect money–I think it is called dosh here–from chests, destroying in-world items, and winning battles. You then spend the hard-earned coin on whatever you want to upgrade, and I will tell you now to never put a dime into the block ability…because blocking in Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion, like in many other RPGs of this ilk, is basically pointless. Never burn a turn, always deal damage or attempt to.

BMO, which is a living video game console system and not the Bank of Montreal, basically breaks the game, and you get them in your party after a couple of hours. They are a support character that can boost a shared power bar for the party that allows more special moves to be performed, which combined with Jake’s or Finn’s attacks that hit multiple enemies in one turn really puts you on top of every fight. There are bosses, but I never felt afraid of losing to them; instead, it felt more like a fight of attrition and seeing how long I could last, with bosses often healing themselves or summoning fodder minions to fight before damaging them more. I also didn’t unlock every special ability for each character; these are usually given out as rewards for side quests, but I felt fine going forward with what I had and just spent dosh making sure I was dealing the most damage with these abilities as possible.

Honestly, Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion is fairly simple and easy as far as a game goes, and you are given more options than you truly need, especially when it comes to items. My bag is stuffed to the brim with strangely-named items, many of which I collected early on and never even used once by the final boss fight. Unfortunately, the enemies never become too much of a challenge to require throwing down offensive and defensive buffs, and the only items I used and spent money on were ones that healed my party members. Also, the game has some performance issues, hitching often when out on the ocean and passing through a loading screen section. Sometimes sound effects can be heard before a fight even commences. Side quests are finicky, with some needing to be re-triggered for them to get completed.

Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion turned out to be okay at best. If anything, it has perhaps inspired me to seek out an episode or two of the animated show to watch, and here’s hoping it is more exciting than a flooded world, which, by the end, I still never understood the reasoning behind the villain’s motives. I really like BMO and Marceline, based on what I saw here. Anyways, I 100%-ed the game, unlocking all Achievements, and have removed it from my Xbox One. Stay tuned for its arresting haiku.

2019 Game Review Haiku, #27 – Earthling Priorities

Late for work, mean door
Sneak past mob, Big Bro watching
You win, you cretin

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And we’re back with these little haikus of mine. Go on, gobble ’em up. However, if you want to read more of my in-depth thoughts about these games that I’m beating, just search for them by name on Grinding Down. As always, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry, even if they aren’t instant classics, such as the works of Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, or Kobayashi Issa. Hey, not everyone gets to be that great.

2019 Game Review Haiku, #26 – Fallen Hero

Burglar needs money
Steal celebrity diamond
Mistaken motives

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And we’re back with these little haikus of mine. Go on, gobble ’em up. However, if you want to read more of my in-depth thoughts about these games that I’m beating, just search for them by name on Grinding Down. As always, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry, even if they aren’t instant classics, such as the works of Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, or Kobayashi Issa. Hey, not everyone gets to be that great.

You don’t build a great castle just all at once, Suikoden III

Getting a castle in both Suikoden and Suikoden II remains some of my favorite gaming moments ever. No, really. There is so much to see in each castle, and, even if it is a bit empty at first, the possibility of filling it up with 108 Stars of Destiny is so exciting, especially once you begin to remember some of the people you saw earlier that could join up with you now. However, getting a castle under your wings in Suikoden III has been a serious letdown, and not just because it took me some 27 hours–many of which were spent grinding out levels–to finally see it.

I’m currently in chapter two of Chris Lightfellow’s campaign and, at the beginning of the chapter, before heading back to Brass Castle, you can explore the surrounding area a bit. This is where Chris sort of stumbles into Budehuc Castle on the world map, which, as far as I can tell, is where your army will call home in Suikoden III. How do I know this? Well, upon visiting it, you can instantly begin recruiting 108 Stars of Destiny; however, in Suikoden and Suikoden II, you often had to clear the castle out of monsters before establishing it as your base. Here, it’s like you just walked into an open house showing and said, “I’ll take it.” No big battle, no hard-earned castle. It was a bit of a shock, to be honest, and exploring the thing with no map is a bit confusing, but I’m sure I’ll learn its layout soon enough.

Here’s some history about Budehuc Castle, in case you were curious. Basically, it’s an old, dilapidated castle that sits on the borders of Zexen and the Grasslands. It was an important meeting place for Zexen and the Grasslands back when they used to be on more friendly terms. Since then, it has become a traditional custom for rich nobles to send their second-born sons to become masters there, such as Thomas, who was appointed as the new castle master by his father, Councilor Lowma. However, Thomas discovers that the castle has fallen on hard times and is in danger of becoming obsolete. To keep it from going bankrupt, Thomas leases out parts of the castle’s land to merchants and eventually encounters Hugo, Chris, and Geddoe, who fill up the castle with Stars of Destiny.

Funnily enough, the first person I recruited as part of the 108 Stars of Destiny was…Jeane. For those that don’t know her, she’s been in every single entry in the Suikoden series, despite them taking place centuries apart. Guess she’s just immortal, but that could make sense since she often has the job of selling and attaching magical runes to your party members. She also wields a Charm rune herself, so you never know what is ultimately going on. Either way, the three main protagonists still haven’t truly connected with each other to join up against a larger evil, so I find it odd that all three of them can send new recruits home to Budehuc Castle despite not even talking this process through with each other.

Whatever. Clearly, Suikoden III is a different beast than the previous two games, what with it going all 3D with the graphics and switching up how combat works; I was just hoping for a bit of familiarity here, and it sounds like I won’t truly get it, with the castle only upgrading itself once you get more shops and shopkeepers to stay there. At this point, I’d rather call one of the larger towns, such as Vinay del Zexay or Caleria, home. Just give me a small inn to update, that’s more than fine.

2019 Game Review Haiku, #25 – SEPTEMBER 1999

VHS footage
Of a house, chainsaw gone wrong
Short, effective trip

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And we’re back with these little haikus of mine. Go on, gobble ’em up. However, if you want to read more of my in-depth thoughts about these games that I’m beating, just search for them by name on Grinding Down. As always, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry, even if they aren’t instant classics, such as the works of Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, or Kobayashi Issa. Hey, not everyone gets to be that great.

2019 Game Review Haiku, #24 – Zoe and the Polypantheon

A field trip, now trapped
Make sacrifices for gods
Got gummi ending

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And we’re back with these little haikus of mine. Go on, gobble ’em up. However, if you want to read more of my in-depth thoughts about these games that I’m beating, just search for them by name on Grinding Down. As always, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry, even if they aren’t instant classics, such as the works of Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, or Kobayashi Issa. Hey, not everyone gets to be that great.

Paul’s Preeminent PlayStation Plus Purge – R-Type Dimensions

Turns out, R-Type Dimensions is two games in one, specifically these–R-Type and R-Type II. Evidently, they are considered coin-op classics, but I’ve never played them, both in the arcade or on other consoles, if they ever came out for other consoles; I’m too lazy to look it up. That is…until now. By that I mean I played the games, not looked up more info on them. Eek, this whole first paragraph could sure use some editing.

Together, with these two games, you’ll be able to fight through all 14 Bydo-infested stages, whatever that means. I’m guessing the story is this: there are aliens, and you must explode them into bitty bits. You can choose your graphics too, either playing in the original 2D art or all-new 3D graphics, and you are able to swap back and forth on the fly, kind of like in The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition and Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age. Also, there are two different modes to go at it–classic and infinite–for either the single player or multiplayer missions. I only played through the first few levels of the single player stuff for both games before I decided enough was enough.

It’s a shoot-em-up, and a horizontal one at that. You hold down the fire button and destroy everything coming at you, occasionally picking up a power-up or two to help improve your weaponry. Actually, that’s not completely true, because if you hold down the fire button you get a charged shot, so it is more accurate to say you constantly mash the fire button…unless you need a charged shot for some of the bigger enemies. I found controlling the ship to feel sluggish and slow, which make dodging incoming bullets a bit tricky. If I’m controlling a high-tech spaceship, I want to feel like I’m zipping around with ease; alas, that is not this game, and it just constantly felt like the ship was sinking in invisible mud.

The new graphics do look sharp and crisp, but they also seem somewhat strange at times, like they don’t belong here. An alien lifeform sitting on your bedside table. It’s hard to quantify. The animations are nice, and the backgrounds have a lot going on in them, but there’s a certain lack of style missing to the game’s 3D graphics that just makes everything look a bit plain vanilla. For R-Type Dimensions, I actually prefer the original 2D art, and I love being able to switch back and forth at my discretion.

The end result is a challenging yet well-crafted recreation of two of the supposedly greatest shoot-em-ups ever made–not my words. There’s no denying that both titles are products of the genre’s formative years and, in terms of both graphical splendor and range of game mechanics, they falter next to other shmups I’ve previously played and uninstalled from my PlayStation 3, such as Steredenn and Sky Force Anniversary. However, some may still find a lot here to like, and I could see this being an excellent co-op experience, something to sit back and chat over while blasting away at Bydo enemy after Bydo enemy. Good luck on those boss fights; I couldn’t take down a single one myself.

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Oh look, another reoccurring feature for Grinding Down. At least this one has both a purpose and an end goal–to rid myself of my digital collection of PlayStation Plus “freebies” as I look to discontinue the service soon. I got my PlayStation 3 back in January 2013 and have since been downloading just about every game offered up to me monthly thanks to the service’s subscription, but let’s be honest. Many of these games aren’t great, and the PlayStation 3 is long past its time in the limelight for stronger choices. So I’m gonna play ’em, uninstall ’em. Join me on this grand endeavor.

Hope your alchemy skills are strong enough for Sokobond

This may not surprise anyone, but my strongest classes in high school were English, art, and, uh, study hall. By that logic, my weakest classes were mathematics, science, and gym. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate things about math and science, as they are fundamental to life, but gym can seriously take a hike down a long, uneven road full of potholes, dog droppings, and ankle-biting snakes. Yes, yes…I was the kid in gym class that walked the mile, each and every time. Anyways, Sokobond is all about chemistry, and I dig it.

Hey, have you heard the one about a chemist who was reading a book about helium? He just couldn’t put it down. ::cymbal crash::

Well, Sokobond comes from Draknek, who you might remember was behind another puzzle game I played recently, specifically A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, and is an elegantly designed puzzle game about chemistry. Yup, chemistry. Don’t worry–it doesn’t play like a homework assignment. It’s logical, minimalist, and crafted with love and science, full of fun facts that making completing each level worth it. All in all, Sokobond is a tricky puzzler that tasks players with pushing atoms around a stage to form molecules, and while that might sound simple, just like rolling snowballs to form snowpeople, it is more complicated due to certain rules and restrictions.

Sokobond does not feature a tutorial. and that’s a good thing. It invites you to immediately start experimenting, opening without explanation. sitting on a board of squares are three circles–two of them are red, each with an H displayed in its middle and with a single little orb orbiting it, and one is a blue O with two orbs. One of the Hs bears a dotted rather than solid circle, and you can move it around the board with the cursor keys. If you move a circle next to another and they both have orbs, they’ll bond together and an orb will disappear from each. A few moves later, you’ll have maneuvered each circle into a small cluster and discovered that the object is to remove all the orbs, leaving you with a little structure. Many will have already immediately worked out that the circles represent atoms; the H circles are hydrogen, the O is oxygen, and when you’ve put them all together you’ve made water (H2O).

Sokobond is quite varied, not your standard sliding puzzler that just repeats its one trick over and over, with levels divided into sets themed on different mechanics. For example, the first set introduces you to the concept of bonding; the next brings in a bond cutter, which divides molecules if you move their bonds over it. Further along, there’s a bond doubler, which uses an extra couple of orbs if they’re available on adjacent atoms. There’s also a rotation element, which can change a molecule’s shape if its form allows. In one level, these mechanics will be the main part of the solution, allowing you to manipulate your atoms with greater flexibility; in another, they’ll provide its core challenge, cutting a bond into parts when it looked like you had the whole thing solved. The difficulty naturally ramps up with the more mechanics to deal with, but it is never overwhelming or frustrating.

Evidently, Sokobond came into existence after Alan and Shang Lun met one another at GDC 2012 and realized they’d played and loved each other’s games. On the final evening of the conference, they decided to make “a quick four-hour jam game,” which, a year and a half later, turned into the game I’m talking about in this very blog post. There’s over 100 levels to go through, and the music and sound design by Allison Walker is blissful and soothing.

You don’t need to know much about science to enjoy Sokobond‘s puzzles, but I guarantee you’ll appreciate it a bit more if you know what type of compound you are trying to create from the start. Still, I’ll never be able to buzz on on Jeopardy! and answer anything science-related or about the periodic table confidently, but I can totally slide cells around a small board to make compounds.