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dreamkin

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dreamkin

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#1  Edited By dreamkin
@HitmanAgent47 said:
" I'm glad I don't take your reviews seriously, it's over 90% on gamerankings and it was written by a competent batman animated series writer paul dini. It's not the batman movies where motivations and plot is concerned. I bet you own a ps3 because you care more about the story than gameplay, go review heavy rain later and give it a higher score. "
Maybe I should write the warning paragraphs at the start with more giant letters. As natetodamax said this review is ONLY about the story of the game. Whether of not a game needs a good story to be a good game is an entirely different topic of discussion. I think we can all agree Super Mario Bros. is a classic. But does it have a good story? Italian plummer consumes suspicious mushrooms, gets "big" and starts chasing after a little girl and kicking turtles... wait. Now that I think about it... It DOES sound a bit creepy.
 
Point is... if you're wondering about it. Yes. I think Batman: Arkham Asylum is one of the best games of this year if not one of the best games ever produced. But as I said before this particular review is not about that. I'm also not reviewing the stories of these games to give them high scores. 
 
Just wanted to make things clear.
 
By the way next week's Wet will probably fare worse than Batman if that makes you feel better. Sorry if you could not find what you're looking for in this review.
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dreamkin

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#2  Edited By dreamkin
@natetodamax: 
 To be frank I dislike the 10 point scale. At first I thought of a binary system. 0 or 1 for each category. But when I wrote a few test reviews I ended up with some pretty unfair scores. I personally would not use scores at all but people don't really have a lot of time to read everything. 
 
Still... To the dungeons with me!
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dreamkin

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#3  Edited By dreamkin
WARNING: This review is only concerned with the story of a game. Even though the story is an important part of a game, by no means is it the defining component. A game with a horrible story may very well be one of the best games ever produced. It's just that my reviews are not about that.

SPOILER WARNING: The following text may contain spoilers for the people who have not finished the game in question yet. Reviewing the story sometimes makes such things inevitable.



Idea:



Instead of breaking out of Arkham Asylum, this time, Joker wants to enter it and Batman has to prevent whatever Joker wants to achieve by doing so. This demonstrates how you don't need grand ideas for a good story. Sometimes something as simple as reversing the usual formula can serve you well. In this case it instantly creates a mystery and gets the audience interested. Why is Joker trying to get into Arkham Asylum? What's his endgame? The center idea also justifies the limited setting of Arkham Asylum itself. It's not like Batman cannot leave the asylum. He certainly can. But because of the events which come to pass, it doesn't make sense for Batman to leave the asylum before the main conflict is resolved. Therefore he stays and confronts many villains from his past. The appearance of these villains are perfectly justified too, because this is where he put these villains in the first place. A very simple and effective idea worthy of all sorts of applause.

Rating: 2 out of 2



Setting:



Almost the entire story takes place inside the boundries of Arkham Asylum. This may sound a little claustrophobic but thankfully this version of Arkham Asylum is more than a simple building. It occupies a huge area made of several separate locations including but not limited to a gothic manor, ancient underground passages, catacombs, a botanical garden and different wards. The size of the facility may seem stupid for the uninformed but it's suitably overstated for the city of Gotham. After all this is a super-asylum which doubles as a prison for the insane super human villains we can see Batman fighting against. Some of them, like Killer Croc are barely human. The setting not only contains the story focused on a single location, but it also provides variety due to the presence of several different villains.

Of course, on a grander scale the setting itself resides in an original interpretation of the DC Universe, resting comfortably somewhere between the stark realism of Nolan movies and the colorful insanity of the comic books. This is a dark Batman for sure. There is no Robin or no yellow Batman logo here. Things are much more plausible than the comic book adventures of the silver ages. Yet there is ultra high technology in every day use. There are fast acting toxic mutagens. There is poison Ivy. And people are referring to each other using their nicknames in private conversation. So we can safely say things are much closer to comic books than the Nolan movies. It's a mature version of the DC universe we're seeing here, balanced perfectly on the slippery edge between too real and too silly.

Rating: 2 out of 2



Characters:



This is a tough one. On one hand you have the legacy of DC Universe, especially the Batman part of it, with its quirky and insanely original characters. One of the best decisions made by DC at the start of things was not giving Batman any super powers. Throughout all these years this decision prevented escalation. Most villains in Batman stories are just ordinary humans. They are neither planet eating intergalactic organisms nor Norse gods from another dimension. They are just criminals with above average intelligence. This opens the doors to potentially interesting stories although, I have to admit, we rarely see such stories in comic books. We can still say the characters in Batman comic books are of the interesting variant. A good writer can always turn them into gold.

On the other hand we have the cardboard cut, empty characters of Batman: Arkham Asylum. This is quite a wasted opportunity given the interesting interpretation of the setting and the cool idea. Sadly the characters in this story, hero or villain, don't really have any plausible motivations for their actions. Batman: Arkham Asylum is almost romantic in its way of dealing with characters. Joker is doing bad things because he is well ...a bad person. Batman is trying to stop him because he's the hero. He's supposed to be doing what he does simply because he is who he is.

Part of the reason for this antiquated system of characterisation is probably the game's presumption of its audience's high degree of familiarity with the subject matter. Those who have no idea who all these insane people are, are directed to an in-game encyclopedia not much different from the one you can find in the Dynasty Warriors series, although it's certainly more stylistic. The voice recordings in this encyclopedia are superbly produced and written really well. The problem is the fact that your main source of insight about the characters in the story is these optional, collectible voice recordings. There is no character development to be found anywhere and very few of the character traits you learn from this encyclopedia are to be found inside the main story.

Batman, with his superb deductive abilities, makes horrible mistakes of judgement, relies more on his shiny gadgets than his intelligence and has trouble connecting obvious dots. Bane, a character known both for his great strength and his superior intelligence behaves like a common thug in his brief boss fight appearance.

More disconcerting is the lack of real motivation in Joker. Even though it can be argued that the plot vaguely resembles Nolan's second Batman movie The Dark Knight, this Joker is just a half mad evil guy who, at the end of the day, proves to be not that clever after all. Keith Ledger's depiction of the same character was terrifying not because Joker is a chaotic character without any purpose, but because in that story Joker actually had a point. There was hint of method behind the madness lurking beneath that smiling mask of paint. It's not the insane who make us uneasy. It's the barely sane who reject the rules of the society and say the things we know to be true deep in our souls, but reject them because we're afraid of the implications. Compared to that, this Joker is a simple clown with a huge budget.

The few touching moments are there thanks to Scarecrow, but there is nothing here we don't know about Bruce Bane.

Rating: 0 out of 2



Plot Structure:



What starts as an intriguing mystery and a horrible crisis quickly turns into something very simple. Joker makes a pact with a person inside the Asylum, when that person doesn't deliver on her promise, he goes inside to pick up his package of mass destruction. Batman follows him. He throws baddies and some simple traps in Batman's way. Batman kicks his ass. End of story.

There really is nothing to see here. Of course it works as a simple hero versus villain story but no one gains anything from this encounter. The story follows an almost episodic formula setting up the next installation in a quite irrelevant way and keeping the whole plot of this installation inside itself as an isolated event.

There are hundreds of plot holes and screwed up motivations here. Was this really the best way for Joker to obtain what he's seeking? Couldn't he simply kidnap the doctor at her home? How did Harley Quinn escape in the first place? If she could escape and take the warden of the Asylum hostage, couldn't she also simply take the doctor hostage? After all it should be simpler. How did all the minions of Joker get into the asylum? Are they all insane? They looked very sane to me... Isn't this a mental institution? Why are they incarcerated here?

We're expected to ignore all these questions and more. In the end we're left with an typical silver age comic book story. Even Riddler's presence as the guy who's providing the "secrets hunt" doesn't really make much sense. The story is a more like forced pathway for you to confront a gallery of bad guys without rhyme or reason.

Rating: 0 out of 2


Craftsmanship:



Contrary to popular belief, the word "flawless", may have different meanings. Usually when it's about a work of art, it means that work of art is technically all it should be but not more. Nothing special or original. For the most part Batman: Arkham Asylum stays flawless. Visually, it's a feast. Batman has all the moves and all the gadgets you'd expect from him, yet he does nothing you don't expect. The dialog is well written and spoken, although you won't find any lines you'd want to quote when you're talking to your friends about this game. The music is effective, well used and produced but you won't find a Batman melody you'd want to hum to yourself, like the one done by Danny Elfman in Tim Burton's Batman movies.

What elevates this experience above flawless is the scenes involving Scarecrow. This interesting villain, with his hallucination inducing fear chemical, represents a great storytelling opportunity and the developers of Batman: Arkham Asylum capitalise on that. The first hallucination is hardly a surprise, especially for people who have prior knowledge of Batman lore. The event is almost telegraphed. However, the second one improves things quite a bit by its liberal use of dutch camera angles and slowly transforming reality. It proves to be a great way to retell Batman's origin story in an exceptionally interesting way.

It's the third hallucination though, which brings Batman: Arkham Asylum into the realm of unforgettable. Utilising the unique properties of the medium, here, writer Paul Dini makes the story jump out of the screen to invade your safe haven of sanity behind the game pad. The dosage of Scarecrow's hallucinogen is so great that this time, it's not only Batman who starts to lose his sanity. You join him. You, the player, who has since the beginning of the game identified himself with Batman, questions if he's losing his sanity too. The story becomes aware of its own existence in a video game and the fourth wall comes crashing down. Sure it's a disturbing experience, but that's exactly how it's supposed to be. Bertholt Brecht would have been proud.

Not only is it a great way of making the audience feel what the protagonist is experiencing, but in this case it's also a subtle critic of video game story telling in general. Hitting RETRY this time, you get to see Batman rising from his own grave as he did so many times before, when he died throughout the duration of this video game. Only he literally rises from his grave now, making this hallucinated unreality more real than the video game reality we're used to. Simply brilliant.

Rating: 2 out of 2
 


OVERALL: 6 out of 10
(0-3= BAD, 4-6= AVERAGE, 7-10= GOOD)

Already Reviewed: "Infamous"
NEXT WEEK: "Wet"
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dreamkin

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#4  Edited By dreamkin
WARNING: This review is only concerned with the story of the game. Even though the story is an important part of a game, by no means is it the defining component. A game with a horrible story may very well be one of the best games ever produced. It's just that my reviews are not about that.

SPOILER WARNING: The following text may contain spoilers for the people who have not finished the game in question yet. Reviewing the story sometimes makes such things inevitable. 


Idea:  

 The main idea behind  inFamous is the classic super hero origin story. An ordinary man somehow obtains super powers and his life changes forever. Along with him the world changes too. Now he must come in terms with all these changes. It's not a terribly original idea of course. We have seen this, countless times, in many different comic books. But the main idea here seems to center on testing uncle Ben's famous words. "With great power comes great responsibility." Does power corrupt? What will our "hero" do with his new abilities? Allowing moral choices to steer the story into different directions, it can be possible to explore this simple premise in a unique was possible only in an interactive medium. Not a particularly original but a quite functional idea for this kind of story.

Rating: 1 out of 2



Setting:

At the beginning of the story  inFamous takes place in our contemporary world. The residents of the fictional and generic metropolis called Empire City soon experience an apocalyptic event in form of a huge electrical explosion. In the aftermath, things are really torn apart in Empire City. On top of that an epidemic causes the state to quarantine the whole area. Now, this might now be a sane course of action, but it serves to build our setting as the story and medium demands. The great thing about  inFamous is the fact that game play elements make sense in the context of the story. The player is not allowed to move out of Empire City because the city is physically sealed off by the army. (in fact, early in the story, Cole tries to leave the city with his friend Zeke. Only to find it is impossible.) Cole's inability to swim or drive vehicles is explained by the electrical nature of his powers. Combined with the fact that Empire City is built on a set of islands and some other story elements, the player soon understands that it is not only impossible for Cole to leave Empire City, but it also doesn't make much sense to do so. 

Empire City itself is depicted as a huge, dirty city. You won't find any bright colors here. This contributes to the pessimistic atmosphere of the situation. The streets are ran by gangs and the police is horribly underhanded. So we can say that the setting almost serves as a character, a damsel in distress for Cole. It is begging to be saved and there is no one else who can help. It will be grateful if you help it. You will see that in the faces of its inhabitants. But it will also hate you if you abuse it. This is a choice the player has to make. Regardless, unlike most games, the city is not just a backdrop. As we come to understand later in the story, it is the secret objective of our quest.

Not all is good about the setting though. Soon we come to understand that the world of Infamous is not like our world after all. All sorts of secret organisations are making larger than life plans building crazy scientific devices and horrible weapons of mass destruction. Sadly it is too hard to avoid these elements in super hero stories. Your super hero, by definition, will soon be much stronger than his opposition if things stay mundane. For Superman, who is faster than a speeding bullet and stronger than a locomotive, terrorists in the middle east are just a minor annoyance. You need the super villains. Infamous introduces the super villains instantly. Even the nameless, cannon fodder characters in  inFamous are somehow super powered. Cole almost never fights against normal people. And the  abnormals keep on coming, which makes you wonder just how many gang members are there in the Empire City.

Rating: 1 out of 2



Characters:

Most of the time the characters in Infamous are clearly defined by their moral choices. You have your classic bad guys and good guys. Even if the final twist changes things a bit, this is the case throughout the story. 

The protagonist is called Cole  MacGrath. We're led to believe he's an ordinary bike messenger, who finds himself in an out of the ordinary situation. You would not understand that from the characterisation though. Cole sounds more like a veteran soldier than an ordinary, everyman hero. The problem here is not only the bad-ass hero voice itself but also his behavior and lines. Cole simply doesn't have the charm of a Nathan Drake. As a result he loses the everyman hero advantage. If the protagonist acts like a normal guy it is much easier for the audience to identify themselves with the hero. This is how Spider-man became such a beloved comic book character. He was much more approachable than an alien from another world or a rich guy who builds gadgets and fights crime at night. Peter Parker is a simple guy studying at the university just like you and me. He just happens to have the powers of a spider. Cole's behavior and voice, however, make you wonder why Cole is working as a bike messenger and not a  merc for hire. 

On the other hand Cole is one of the more approachable characters in the story since his monologues, especially at the beginning of the story, flesh him out as a human being. He is bewildered by the events, doesn't want to be called a terrorist and often weighs the possible consequences of his actions even though that is part of the game play mechanic. Still you can't help but feeling a certain distance between him and the player. We do learn that he is far from being an ordinary human and his interactions with Zeke suggest that these two were not really your every day upstanding citizens. The problem is that he is supposed to be a normal guy with whom we can identify ourselves.

Things are not better for the support characters on the protagonist side. Zeke, who is supposed to fill in the shoes of a sidekick is an annoyance at best and acts more like the incompetent lackey of a villain than a sidekick of a hero. His obsession with power later turns him into a major annoyance but I can't say I was surprised by that turn of events. The whole thing would have a much stronger impact if Zeke was a likable guy who got corrupted by the lure of power. But in this story he starts off half corrupt anyway. Trish, the love interest is probably the most normal human being in the story, even though she acts like a  scizopath sometimes. At the beginning she is a concerned girl friend who is afraid Cole might hurt himself despite his new super powers. But right after the Voice of Survival tells everyone that Cole is a terrorist, she is incredibly quick to trust a DJ he doesn't even know, over her boyfriend. That really doesn't make much sense even if her sister had died in an explosion allegedly caused by Cole. We don't even see a discussion between Cole and Trish regarding this topic until much later in the story. 

The problem here is that the protagonist and the support characters are not really interesting or likable people. By contrast,  Kessler is a much more interesting person as an antagonist. Of course the final twist complicated this a bit but still  Kessler stays apart from all the other characters by having tangible motivations. He never deviates from his plan and he arguably succeeds in the end. Sadly the antagonist has even worse support characters at his side. Both Alden and Sasha are cardboard cut, silver age comic book characters. 

Wild-card characters like  Moya and John also have little impact. John dies almost as soon as he appears in person, while  Moya's methods compared to his motivations seem to be too complicated.

Rating: 0 out of 2



Plot Structure: 

 Infamous literally starts with a bang. The commendable little thing many people neglect is the starting screen, during which you can catch a glimpse of Empire City in its  pre-explosion state. This peaceful little scene contrasts with the apocalyptic event caused by the player himself by pressing the START button. Like Cole, who carries the explosive device into the heart of city and causes all the horrible events unknowingly, the player causes the explosion by pressing START, forming an early link with the otherwise unlikable protagonist. 

After the initial exposition the story seems to center on a MacGuffin called the Ray Sphere. For a long while the duty of explanation falls on  Moya's shoulders. This saves the writers from constructing legit motivations for each of Cole's actions. The bulk for the story depends on  Moya giving missions to Cole. Cole has one main motivation: Getting out of Empire City. By promising that,  Moya manipulates Cole into doing her bidding. Furthermore, the sub islands of the city conveniently serve as the chapters of the story each divided into smaller chapters in form of generators Cole has to power up. Each generator grants Cole another power but again it is never explained how exactly that happens. These underground chapters usually serve as tutorials to the new power Cole has just gained but they could have been better designed from a story perspective, forcing Cole to discover the power himself rather than showing a video of the power and presenting an obstacle course for him to try out his new abilities.

Not much about the Ray Sphere is explained. John's illogically placed "dead drops" speak about its creation but we don't exactly know how and on what basis it grants super powers to people. Cole seems to have electrical powers while others seem to have entirely different abilities. Fights against two of the super baddies, Sasha and Alden, also double as the ending for the first two chapters. 

inFamous throws us at least two big plot twists before we can see the ending cinematic. Both of them are problematic for different reasons. The twist about  Moya doesn't come as a huge surprise and seems fitting but it also invalidates most of her actions. Characters choose the path of least resistance towards their objectives.  Moya's methods seem incredibly convoluted and her failure quite illogically surprises her. He either has to be incredibly naive or incredibly stupid To expect cooperation from Cole after all the things she has done, and both options are not logical for a supposedly highly intelligent and scheming character like  Moya. 

I have both positive and negative feelings about the final twist about  Kessler's identity and true goal. Most of you probably won't see it coming unless you are actively looking for a twist and it will probably make you question who the hero and the villain really are. And added bonus is that the story in general doesn't really depend on the twist itself. This is merely a reveal of the main mystery, not a huge game changing twist like Metal Gear Solid 2's "it all was in virtual reality". 

That being said, even though the twist does actually answer many questions and solves the main mystery, it is technically a very bad and unfair solution. The writers basically trust in what you'd assume you know about the setting of  inFamous without telling you some key elements of the setting. 

One of the biggest sins in creating a setting and a mystery is not giving the reader the rules of the mystery. In a classic mystery story, which uses the English Cozy setting, the writer makes it clear that the murderer is one of the guests in the isolated environment. The fact that the environment is isolated is key here. We know the manor was locked for the night, the train was moving, the ship was in the middle of the ocean etc. So the murderer is clearly one of the characters we have seen. The culprit never turns out to be someone from the outside world or someone who can pass through walls. Both cases would be unfair. The reader has to have equal opportunity in solving the mystery and ideally should say "Ah-ha! Of course!" after the protagonist has revealed the truth. If someone is able to pass through walls, this is a change in the rules of the story. There is no way the reader could have known that. 

Similarly  inFamous plays the time travel card to solve its main mystery even though we had no idea that time travel was possible in this world. Of course this invalidates many of the previous clues we had about the motivation of the villain. We do understand the villain's reasons for doing all the things he did, but this is hardly fulfilling. A huge chunk of information comes at the end of the story. You simply can't throw your protagonist out of a helicopter, go to the commercials, and return saying "Oh by the way... People can fly in this story." 

Furthermore, despite its popularity with comic book and fantasy fiction writers, time travel is one of the most problematic storytelling devices in the world. Its presence alone disturbs the chain of causality in a story and raises a lot of questions. Is  Kessler from a parallel dimension? Is this a  CTC model? (closed time-like circuit) If yes what's the use of time travel to past? If no what's the point of time travel? How does an ordinary bike messenger become entangled with secret organisations and develop super powers without the aid of of the ray sphere? Is this the most efficient way of fighting whatever evil thing  Kessler was fighting against?

Interestingly the ending, along with the title of the story, suggests the better way of telling this story would be choosing the evil path. (better according to Burke's theory of storytelling.) The choices the player makes conveniently makes little change in the main storyline. The changes we experience are in side missions, most of which are irrelevant. 

There are a couple of potentially very interesting hooks and themes. Terrorism, the nature of truth, good and evil, fate, the relationship between Trish and Cole, media and how it manipulates reality, the nature of trust are a few of those. Sadly none of these themes are explored in depth

The goal here is to construct a classic silver age comic book story. In that the writers succeed. It all could have been much more though.

Rating: 1 out of 2



Craftsmanship: 

 Most of the dialog here makes sense even if some stuff is out of character or unnecessary. The star of the show is again Empire City. Its depiction makes you believe there are actual people living here. People whose lives depend on you. This is more than a huge level for a video game. This is a living, breathing city. The change between 2D comic book cut-scenes and realistic video game graphics may at first have a jarring effect. Even though these two visual styles are incompatible they are both beautiful in their own right. 

A story like  inFamous needs a good sound track. Although the music here is technically not bad, it's far from being memorable. There are no strong themes for characters or the story itself. There is no Cole melody we can hum. This is a major problem for a super hero game. 

On the other hand story to  gameplay transitions and chapter ends are done expertly. Even though the pacing is somewhat problematic the craftsmanship is good enough to make you want to reach the end of the story.

Rating: 1 out of 2



OVERALL: 4 out of 10
 (0-3= BAD, 4-6= AVERAGE, 7-10= GOOD)


NEXT WEEK: Batman:  Arkham Asylum