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'Darksiders 2' Impressions: Welcome To Gaming's Greatest Hits

Andy Yen — 2012-08-20T15:00:00+00:00

To many gamers, the original Darksiders was a fun surprise during the first week of 2010. Releasing in what is usually the most barren season for game launches, Darksiders was known for blending the art of Joe Madureira with the frenetic action of God of War and the cerebral dungeon solving of The Legend of Zelda. The game delivered a fairly solid action-adventure experience, if not a bit familiar to those who played its influences. With Darksiders 2, Vigil Games has upped the epic quotient of the franchise severalfold. The developers have created a world to explore that is double the size of the previous game, while also promising around a 25-30 hour playtime for the campaign, up from about 12-15 hours from the first game. Needless to say, Darksiders 2 is a long game. While I haven't been able to complete the copy of the game THQ sent CA in its entirety yet, I've played through the first several dungeons and have some positive thoughts to share about the experience so far.

Those who played through the first Darksiders may remember how sparse and boring the introductory sections of that game were from both a graphical and gameplay point of view. Vigil Games has definitely learned from their last go around as Darksiders 2 starts off at a brisk pace in a beautifully drawn snow environment and doesn't let up from there. As you begin the game, you're offered the opportunity to ride on an awesome skeletal horse named Despair, with glowing green flames emanating from its hoofs. That's right, the first area of the game is so expansive as to allow you to get acclimated to the controls while on a mounted steed. Within minutes, Death is knee deep in a labyrinth, spelunking with the grace of the Prince of Persia and slashing enemies with the fury of Kratos.

It may be important to point out that the Horseman of the Apocalypse du jour in Darksiders 2 is Death, rather than War from the first game. Plot timeline-wise, the story of sequel actually takes place prior to the events of the first game, as Death fights to clear his brother's name from prematurely causing the Apocalypse while also finding time to resurrect humanity. In all honesty, I've forgotten most of the story details of the first game, but the game does a good enough job of referencing the previous story early on that you feel caught up anyway. I imagine that even if you hadn't played the first game, that you would be fine starting your Darksiders Universe experience with Darksiders 2.

One of the main draws for playing this game as a comics fan is the inescapable involvement of Madureira. As Creative Director for the game, Madureira's influences can readily be seen in all of the character designs. I'm an admitted fan of his superhero comics work, dating back to his run on Uncanny X-Men in the 1990s as well as his oft-delayed Battle Chasers. While the character models in Darksiders 2 may not showcase the heavy manga influence that Madureira's comic pencils do, they do look great in fully animated 3D models. If you aren't a fan of beefy, over-exaggerated character designs, though, your impression of the visuals may vary.

Where Darksiders 2 makes the greatest leap in scope from the first game is in character customization. Enemies and treasure chests now drop individual, color-coded rarity-based (similar to Blizzard's Diablo series) equipment pieces that you can slap onto each portion of Death's body. We're talking a full slate of gear, including a primary and secondary weapon, shoulder pieces, gloves, boots, amulets - the whole nine yards. Even more interesting is the "Possessed Weapons" upgrade system where you can "sacrifice" old gear to make certain possessed weapon drops more powerful. So far, I've had some interesting decisions on whether to simply sell my old gear for money or whether I should feed them to the few possessed equipment pieces that I have. Death will also gain experience levels and money from completing quests and killing monsters. At each level up, you'll have the opportunity to place a point in a branching skill tree that grants Death new action skills as well as upgrades them. You can also spend your money to learn more combat combos, skills, and buy new equipment from the blacksmith. There's even a little persistent multiplayer component as you can mail and receive equipment pieces to your Xbox Live or PlayStation Network friends. Darksiders 2 gives players plenty to do, but all of these options haven't proven confusing or overly tedious so far.

The Darksiders series may get a bad rap from some critics for being too derivative of other iconic games. It's easy to see where the influences of games like Prince of Persia, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Legend of Zelda all fit in. Wall running platforming, large button icons hovering over near-dead enemies for execution, dungeon maps and bomb flower puzzles - hell, I was even reminded of Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden with Death running along walls and slashing enemies with his two sets of weapons. However, I think there's a point at which the amalgamation of so many gameplay influences ceases to be derivative and instead starts to take on a unique character of its own. Even though I'm still a merely fraction of my way through the main Darksiders 2 campaign, the overall playing experience thus far has been so natural, that I'd characterize the game as having found its own identity by successfully melding different gameplay genres.

If there's one thing that I have been underwhelmed with by the game so far, it's the lack of a compelling narrative thread. Yes, resurrecting humanity is a pretty ambitious goal, but most of the early game "questing" involve finding a doohickey for one person or flipping a lever for another. While I'm aware of Death's ultimate goal, early game quests could, for all intents and purposes, be outsourced to FedEx. Despite this, though, the game never gets as overly decompressed and tedious as the most recent Legend of Zelda games in between dungeons. I'd much rather be riding a horse named Despair through expansive fields, while hacking at enemies from above, than be chasing cats and chickens through pots in a sunny village.

Darksiders 2 has been a blast thus far because of its driving pace, exciting combat, and fluid platforming. If you were a fan of the first game, I'd recommend picking this one up without hesitation. Even if you haven't, it still might be worth checking out. Vigil has essentially created a "gaming's greatest hits" compilation and in a world with limited free time, sometimes the greatest hits collection is the best way to go.

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'Marvel Heroes' Hands-On Impressions: Free-To-Play And Super Fun [SDCC]

Andy Yen — 2012-07-17T12:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Gaming

One of the highlights of San Diego Comic-Con for Marvel gaming fans was the debut of the much-anticipated free-to-play MMO action RPG, Marvel Heroes in playable form. I asked the developer Gazillion's Director of Community, Stephen Reid, why they didn't show the game at E3 and he replied, "Because we wanted it to debut it where the fans are." I had a chance to stop by the Marvel booth to get some extended hands-on time with the game demo as well as get a few questions answered by the "Father of Diablo," Gazillion COO, David Brevik.

Unlike other traditional massively multiplayer superhero RPGs, such as DC Universe Online, Marvel Heroes is an action-RPG title that plays very similarly to Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo franchise. More specifically, you click to kill lots of things, and get rewarded with some phat loots for doing so. The twist this time around, obviously, is that you get to do so with your favorite Marvel heroes, rather than creating one from a milquetoast character template.

Marvel fans should be very encouraged to hear that Gazillion brought the big guns from Marvel on board to work on the game: Mastermind of the Avengers titles, Brian Michael Bendis scripted over an hour of motion comic cutscenes as well as plotted the game's overall story arc. Art duties for those cutscenes will be handled by a variety of established Marvel artists, the first of which Gazillion revealed to be Ron Lim (Silver Surfer). While voiceover casting has yet to be completed, the developers assured me that they would be looking for actors who had previous experience portraying heroes. I got a short glimpse of one of the first Ron Lim-drawn motion comic cutscenes and it looked very sharp and beautifully animated.

The SDCC demo of the game ran about 10 minutes long in real time, but was actually a time-condensed version of gameplay that will take much longer to complete in the final version. Four characters were playable: Iron Man, Hulk, Scarlet Witch, and Wolverine. Since I was standing pretty close to the Iron Man Hall of Armor display at the Marvel booth, I decided to start my run through with Iron Man. I found Marvel Heroes very easy to pick up and start playing right away. Left-clicking both moves the character and unleashes a primary attack while pressing the ASDF keys gave me access to other abilities. Iron Man has all the attacks you would expect him to have, such as the unibeam laser or repulsor blasts along with the compulsory punches and kicks. Brevik made sure to point out using certain abilities in succession would result in a unique combo attack. He promised that there would be a high number of discoverable combo attacks and that the game would try to guide the player in discovering them.

The other important note about your roster of heroes is that you are free to switch to any hero on your account whenever you want -- without having to log out. You still have to be aware that your characters will have to battle in whatever part of the game you are in at the moment, so if you're wanting to switch your Level 50 Wolverine to your Level 3 Black Panther near the endgame, you're probably going to have difficulties. But if your characters are within reasonable level ranges, you'll be fine. With over 17 announced characters, and hundreds from the Marvel vaults to choose from potentially, it certainly sounds like Marvel Heroes will be a compulsive altaholics's fondest desire.

Gameplay began in the X-Mansion, which acts as the first quest hub. Since it was a demo build, most of the mansion was non-interactive along and the other X-Men scattered around were simply placeholder models. Professor X gave the lone quest to capture William Stryker and off I went through a portal to fight some Purifiers.

While it's possible to play the game solo or with a small party of friends, Marvel Heroes is an MMO after all and Gazillion has designated certain environments as "social zones" where players are able to see and play with other heroes. The first combat area in the demo was in Mutant Town where the Purifiers harassing the citizens. During the demo, I ran across a couple of other players playing the game from other parts of the Marvel booth, but was unable to interact with them much, as the social features aren't in the game yet. Brevik mentioned that some enemy encounters, such as the giant Sentinel I fought in the demo, would be best tackled by teaming up with other players in the same area as you. He downplayed the importance of having the traditional MMORPG "holy trinity" of a tank, healer, and DPS in lieu of creating a more flexible cooperative system that would really make the player feel like a genuine superhero team up is happening in the game.

There are also instanced areas for important encounters, such as bosses, to limit the need for monster camping. After progressing through Mutant Town, I found Stryker, but he was already in the clutches of Magneto. You can probably predict that a boss encounter happened shortly afterward. The encounter was simple without being eye-rollingly easy. I had to dodge a charged up area of effect attack while also being admonished by Brevik to "not to stand in fire." As a former World of Warcraft raider, I felt extremely ashamed to have to be told that by a former Blizzard employee.

Defeating Magneto sprung a loot piñata of multi-colored treasures. While the demo contained just placeholder items (not sure "ye old leather tunic" is something that Iron Man would wear), Gazillion assured that the loot system would be robust. Along with traditional equipment slots, Gazillion noted that there would be a costume crafting system in place to change the outward appearance of your heroes. Their goal was to have an equipment system that wouldn't result in the heroes looking like clowns from mismatched gear pieces. Thus, while equipped items affect your stats and skills, they won't change your appearance at all. Those afraid of ninja looters and griefing from strangers need not worry -- all loot is automatically distributed to each player, limiting any drama that might occur from jerks being jerks.

The most surprising element of Marvel Heroes to me was that Gazillion plans on making the entire game free-to-play. Even in the game's early development state, the gameplay felt smooth while also having some elements of AAA title quality presentation, such as the motion comic cutscenes and quality voice acting. If they were planning on charging either a monthly fee or retail price for the title, let's just say that no one would blink twice. David Brevik made it a point to say that they were not interested in "nickel and diming" players.

As it stands, though, Marvel Heroes is a game that should be squarely in your radar if you're a fan of action RPGs and/or Marvel superheroes. The fact that it will be free is something that you should look at as an extreme bonus. Gazillion also plans to evolve the game post-launch with new playable characters and missions that could coincide with what is currently going on in the "real" Marvel Universe in the comics. While the game is currently being developed for the PC only, but Brevik noted that a Mac version would be their next platform for release.

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Deadpool Crashes The Marvel Video Games Panel To Announce His Own Game [SDCC]

Andy Yen — 2012-07-14T19:45:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Gaming

Deadpool literally stole the show during the latter portion of today's Marvel Video Games panel at San Diego Comic-Con by busting open the back doors of Ballroom 6 and announcing his own Deadpool video game developed by Activision's High Moon Studios coming in 2013 (and not a solo Hit-Monkey game, as an early website launch teased). Armed with a megaphone, an actor portraying the Merc With A Mouth evicted the High Moon Studios representatives from the panel table with some trademark witty banter and sent them to debut the game's trailer to the delighted fans. You can read the full panel report and watch the new Deadpool video game teaser trailer after the cut. Beware, though, it's definitely NSFW.

Prior to Wade Wilson's entrance, the panel, moderated by Marvel Games' Javon Frazier, included Marvel Games' TQ Jefferson and Chris Baker, Ubisoft's Pierre Leroux (Producer) and Dan Vargas (Art Director), Gazillion's David Brevik (President and COO) and Jeff Lind (Executive Producer), and High Moon Studios' Sean Miller (Game Director) and Terry Spier (Lead Designer). They were all on hand to talk about their respective Marvel video games in development.

TQ Jefferson talked about Marvel Games' philosophy in working with other game developers and publishers on licensed video games, which centers around three core pillars: fun gameplay, compelling stories, and true-to-character experiences. With those qualities, they hope to create successful games based on their characters.

After recapping Marvel's currently released titles, TQ revealed that the recently released Avengers Alliance Facebook game now has more than 15 million installed users and 2 million daily active users. Given the successful reception, Marvel will be releasing a lot of new content in the future including a smorgasbord of new character costumes. The panel audience was treated to a slide show of these costumes which include New Defenders Dr. Strange and Iron Fist, Classic Cyclops, Daredevil Yellow, and Future Foundation Thing, Spider-Man, Invisible Woman, and Mr. Fantastic. Among the new playable characters are Rogue, Tigra, Valkyrie, Emma Frost, Quicksilver, Beast, Gambit, and Havok. Finally, Avengers Alliance will be getting an Avengers vs. X-Men content module in the near future, complete with four of the "Phoenix Five" X-Men: Emma Frost, Colossus, Cyclops, and Magik (newly playable).

The Ubisoft contingent was on hand to show a brief gameplay trailer from Avengers: Battle For Earth, which culminated in an ominous shot of Skrull Captain America. Producer Pierre Leroux gave the audience a quick explanation of the motion-based fighting game, but did not offer any new gameplay details that were not covered in our E3 preview of the game from earlier in the year. He did, however, confirm that a Wii U version of the game is development when a wheelchair-bound fan asked if he would be able to play the game.

Marvel's Chris Baker talked about Marvel vs. Capcom Origins, an Xbox Live and PlayStation Network title releasing later this fall that is a bundle of arcade-perfect ports of the beloved original Marvel vs. Capcom and Marvel Super-Heroes fighting games. The game will feature smoother, HD filtered graphics and will have a new persistent side-challenges feature on screen that will challenge gamers to complete certain achievement requirements as they play. Marvel vs. Capcom Origins will also have modern game features such as an 8-player lobby, spectator mode, and match recording/playback. Baker also treated the audience to a reimagining of classic Marvel covers, such as Infinity Gauntlet #1 with Capcom characters incorporated.

David Brevik (referred by the moderator as "Mr. Diablo") was on hand to explain details on Gazillion's Marvel Heroes action-RPG MMO title. After showing a gameplay trailer, David confirmed that Black Panther would be a playable character within the free to play game. Unlike other "free" titles, Brevik reinforced that Marvel Heroes will be completely free to play from start to finish without "nickel and diming" players. Fans were then shown a Brian Michael Bendis scripted motion comic introducing Act 2 of the game. Brevik explained that portion of the game as Gazillion's "take" on the iconic Mutant Massacre storyline.

As the High Moon Studios folks prepared to talk about a Hit-Monkey game in development, shouts of "Boring!" were heard from the back of the hall as Deadpool burst through the doors accompanied by a camera crew. Deadpool appropriately let loose a number of jokes, like announcing that he was, in fact, a hologram and that he shot Tupac. While the gameplay trailer shown did not make clear what kind of game Deadpool would exactly be (even the Marvel Games executives were at a loss to explain it), it seemed very true to the character with lots of very NSFW violence, humor and action. Deadpool then directed fans to go to www.deadpoolgame.com to see the website that he made "After three months in community college." After demanding to replay the trailer one more time, he got up on the table, yelled "That! Just! Happened! Mic Drop!" dropped his mic, and left the room to raucous applause from the mesmerized audience.

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The CW's 'Arrow' Is A Fun, If Predictable Ride [Review] [SDCC]

Andy Yen — 2012-07-13T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Television, Reviews, Opinion

Out of the five new television series pilots that Warner Bros. world-premiered Wednesday during Comic-Con's preview night in San Diego, The CW's Arrow received the most boisterous response from the packed crowd at Ballroom 20. I'd wager that it was partly from Green Arrow comic book fans reacting to seeing their favorite characters live on-screen, but even without any prior knowledge of the DC Comics characters, Arrow stands on its own as a slick, well-paced action-drama television pilot.We're introduced to Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) in his iconic green-hooded garb as he spryly navigates the terrain of a seemingly deserted island. He's a man who's clearly been transformed from the billionaire, tail-chasing dude-bro that we meet in flashback sequences scattered throughout the pilot. We quickly learn that Oliver was involved in a shipwreck in the South China Seas with his father and a few others, including a girl named Sarah Lance. Oliver's the only survivor to be rescued five years later and we see him struggle to return to the playboy lifestyle that his friends and family expect of him. Stephen Amell does a great job of balancing the vigilante with the young playboy alterego. I imagine that a number of audience members won't mind his many shirtless scenes, either.

The character introductions in Arrow come fast and furious. There's his sister Thea, who apparently is coming-of-age and learning how to party. Moira, his beleaguered mother, has remarried to family confidant, Walter. Laurel Lance is Oliver's ex-girlfriend who just happens to be the sister of the girl who died in the shipwreck. Tommy is the best friend who can't wait to take Oliver back into the world of money, booze, and girls.

It's a fairly predictable cast of archetypal characters, which is probably my biggest quibble with the pilot. The plot moves at a blistering pace, which is great for keeping the audience engaged, but also doesn't allow much time for us to grow attached to any of the characters or see any depth of personality. However, being that it was simply the pilot episode of a television series, it's easy to give the show a pass for not spending too much time dwelling on the supporting cast.

People have likened Arrow to a television version of Batman Begins and they wouldn't be too far off. The show plays Green Arrow's origin story very dark and seriously. We catch glimpses of what kind of horrors that befell Oliver five years ago with the shipwreck and the time he was forced to survive on that islands. The Oliver Queen that emerges from the rescue is a driven man dead-set on righting the wrongs in Starling City. Unlike a certain other billionaire playboy-turned-vigilante, Green Arrow has no compunctions about killing to achieve his goals.

The action sequences are well choreographed and received enthusiastic cheers from the crowd as Oliver Queen acrobatically dispatched of masked goons with a series of martial arts maneuvers, arrows through the heart, and my personal favorite, the old neck-snap kill. There were some light moments in the screening too, like when Tommy tries to catch Oliver up on current events. A reference to the ending of Lost got the crowd chuckling as did a reference to the Twilight series that had many people whooping and applauding.

Oliver: Which girl?
Tommy: The one that looks like the girl from Twilight.
Oliver: What's Twilight?
Tommy: Maybe you're still better off not knowing.

Arrow does a good job of setting up an ongoing television series with enough elements of mystery (What happened to Oliver on that island?), drama (Will he get back with his old girlfriend, especially since she is now dating his best friend?), and goals (Oliver's dying father hands him a black book list of corrupt white-collar criminals to catch) to drive further episodes. Fans are also treated to an "a-ha!" moment at the end of the pilot when Laurel Lance's full identity is revealed. Above all else, the show is a younger, modern take on Green Arrow that should be well worth your TV time come fall.

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'The Walking Dead Episode 2: Starved For Help' Keeps The Good Bad Times Rolling [Review]

Andy Yen — 2012-07-10T14:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Image, Reviews, Gaming

Starved For Help, the second episode of Telltale's The Walking Dead video game is finally here, despite a longer-than-expected six week wait in between episodes. I mentioned in my review of Episode 1 that I thought the game was already a stronger experience than the television show and, from the review code Telltale supplied us with to review Episode 2, it feels like the latest installment only serves to bolster that statement. After a short recap of the events in Episode 1, we join protagonist Lee in the woods hunting with new survivor, Mark. From their lack of success and banter, it becomes pretty clear early on that food has become a concern for Lee and his band of survivors. This quest for sustenance sets in motion a chain of events that supplies the meat of what happens the episode.

Those who found Episode 1 a bit slow the pacing department should be excited to hear that Episode 2 wastes no time in ratcheting up the drama. Within minutes after firing the episode up, players will find themselves having to make a life or death decision that could lead to one of the most grisly video game scenes I've ever been privy to. Without giving anything away, I found myself grimacing and turning from my monitor during that scene from pure gnarliness. I'm well aware that The Walking Dead is not a cutting edge game in the graphics and sound department, so it's a testament to TWD comic co-creator Robert Kirkman and Telltale's storytelling ability and art style that the game was able to engender such a visceral reaction out of me.

Where Episode 1 was more focused on setting up the characters and Clementine's relationship with Lee, Episode 2 is focused on social interactions within the main group of survivors and the strangers they encounter. I'm of the opinion that the main strength of The Walking Dead as a zombie tale is its focus on the humanity of its characters, rather than ceaseless zombie slaying and cheap scares. The Zombie Apocalypse is a truly f'd up situation and Telltale has players confronting some pretty dark questions in the game. Do you save someone crying for help in a bear trap, knowing that you'll have another mouth to feed with your already strained foodstores? How trusting can you be of kind-looking strangers offering to help you out with your needs? When do you make the decision to cut your losses on an downed group member, knowing that you could either be saving that person's life or damning you and your loved ones to die by their reanimated corpse at any moment? There's no easy answer to any of these questions, but they're all critical choices you'll have to make within the game, oftentimes without a lot of time to think it through.

Early on, you're tasked to divide up limited rations among the group of ten survivors. I found myself quickly making a mental priority list of each of the survivors. Did this person have an indispensable skill to the group? Should I prioritize the children? Which people were jackholes to me? Would I want Lee to potentially start a romance with a new woman down the road? I thought these kind of decisions were a very clever way of refreshing the cast of characters for the player by giving them the power to influence the survival of those characters. With immersive elements like this, I felt more drawn into this particular Walking Dead universe and cast of characters than I did at any point while watching AMC's TV series.

Telltale has been touting The Walking Dead's pan-episode tracking of gameplay choices with a promise of a unique gameplay experience for each player. Despite there being only one previous episode, I definitely saw some ramifications of the choices I made in Episode 1. Characters remember and reference events that happened previously in conversation. Without having the luxury of comparing multiple saves with different choices, I will say that a significant "wow" moment with this system has yet to appear to me. This could simply be a great implementation of gameplay choices by Telltale, such that I didn't notice a disjointed gameplay flow due to branching storylines, but all those notifications that a character "has noticed your actions" make me expect some sort of palpable payoff. Given that there are still four episodes to go, there's still a good chance that it will happen at some point, though I will probably forget enough of those choices to call the game out on whether or not it paid them off. Nevertheless, it is a nice touch that the "previously on..." and "next time on..." scene compilations before and after the episode seem to be tailored specifically towards your particular game.

Otherwise, gameplay in Episode 2 remains fairly unchanged from Episode 1. If anything, there's less futzing around with your inventory and obtainable items in the world. Essentially, if you do your due diligence in exploring every possible interactive element on screen, you'll make progress in the game. Traditional point-and-click adventure fans may dislike this streamlining of interactivity, but I welcomed it as I find story and dialog more of a priority for this particular game than inventory management and brain-tingling puzzles.

There are still a couple of technical issues with the game, especially closer to the end of the episode with abrupt cutscene changes and stutters that felt jarring -- like I was playing an unpolished product. I tested the game on a fairly powerful PC with a beefy video card and on a new SSD drive, so given that the game is no Crysis in the graphics department, one would expect the game to run like butter the entire time. These issues aren't so bad as to be unplayable, but I would have expected Telltale to have solved them given the extra gap of time between Episode 1 and Episode 2 in the series.

Episode 2 goes into some seriously dark territory as the game progresses, climaxing in a series of horrifying situations that had me quite impressed with Telltale's willingness to not pull any punches. While fans caught up with The Walking Dead comic may have already seen elements of those situations already, it doesn't take away from their emotional impact in game. Fans who haven't read all the comics are in for quite a ride, especially those who have only caught the television show. If you're wondering why The Walking Dead is such a popular franchise, Episode 2 hits many of those reasons right on the head.

I could nitpick some elements of Episode 2's story, such as some plot threads that didn't end up mattering (yet), or the almost comical melodrama that happens during the closing moments of the episode's climax, but the main story beats were so strong that I'm left with a significantly positive lasting impression. Even if Telltale's ambitious choice and consequences system doesn't end up completely paying off by the last episode, I'd be happy playing the remaining four episodes assuming they're of similar quality as this one. If you're not invested in The Walking Dead game by the end of Episode 2, you probably won't ever be. Speaking for myself, though, I'm all in for the rest of the ride.

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'Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition' Wii U E3 2012 Hands-On Preview [Video]

Andy Yen — 2012-06-20T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Gaming, Previews

It's safe to say by now that Batman: Arkham City is widely considered to be one of the best comic book-based video games ever created. The game's been available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC since late 2011, but has yet to appear on a Nintendo console. That's set to change later this year with the release of Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition for the upcoming launch of Nintendo's next-generation Wii U console. The key new feature of the Wii U is its tablet-like controller that has a full HD touchscreen built in right smack dab in the middle, allowing for dual-screen gameplay. Nintendo was clearly very proud of Arkham City coming to the Wii U, showcasing it front and center at their E3 press conference. But is it something to get excited about? Read on as ComicsAlliance goes hands on with the game for the full demo that Rocksteady and WB Games were on hand to show at E3.

First things first, Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition has no new story content compared to the original release of the game. That means that if you've already played Arkham City, you've pretty much played the same game that will be contained in the "Armored Edition". WB Games has seen fit to include all of the content that was released in the recent "Game of the Year" Edition of the game, though, so Armored Edition players will have access to all the content that has been released post-launch, including the recently released "Harley Quinn's Revenge" campaign.

So are there any reasons to play this game for someone who's already played through Arkham City? There are a couple, though how compelling they are will depend on how deep your love for the game goes (or if you're a first-time player, of course). The most obvious difference is that you're playing it on a shiny new Wii U system with it's newfangled controller. I'll get into details a little later in the preview, but suffice to say, it's a fairly different experience having a second touchscreen to use simultaneously with your television. Rocksteady has also added at least one new puzzle to the game that utilizes the Wii U Gamepad's motion functionality.

Almost equally as obvious (depending on your penchant for reading into titles) is the fact that Batman now is wearing a suit of armor in the game. The representative from WB Games described its capability as being able to absorb and unleash kinetic energy. I'm guessing Bruce Wayne's got the lawyers to deal with any sort of infringement issues that Sebastian Shaw may have with that new armor. In the game, though, the armor basically acts as a temporary power-up buff during combat situations. Getting hit by enemies will charge up a meter. When that meter is completely full, players can activate the armor and will get to beat up enemies with greater force for the next few seconds. I asked if the armor would provide any other gameplay differences, but unfortunately that's pretty much the only new mechanic the armor adds to the game.

The demo starts off showcasing Batman's new armor in what appeared to be the gladiator fight scene in the museum section of the original Arkham City game. Activating the armor showed some new visual effects that, yes, I had indeed activated the armor, but I honestly didn't really notice any major differences in combat effectiveness in the game. It may have been slightly easier to take down the thugs, but nothing that would drastically imbalance the game.

From there, the demo essentially becomes a "greatest hits" of different input methods for the Wii U Gamepad. The coolest feature of the controller is that it essentially turns into a functioning Batcomputer. Approaching a crime scene in detective mode turns the gamepad into an augmented reality viewer, letting me find a DNA trail by physically moving the controller, with the center touchscreen acting as my viewpoint. It's a neat little immersion effect, though I felt kind of silly brandishing the the controller around the hall like a creepy photographer.

Next up was the inventory management screen. Rather than fumbling through the d-pad or any menu screens, I was able to equip Batman with different gadgets by accessing the touchscreen on the gamepad. In theory this sounds like it would be the much preferred interface, but I found that using the touchscreen commanded most of my attention, leaving Batman fairly vulnerable on screen. Traditionally, doing such a task in the game would either pause the game while you navigated a menu or let you switch with the d-pad without taking your eyes off the screen. Having simultaneous control is a bit more realistic (You think Joker would really wait around for Batman to tap around on his Batcomputer during a fight?), but will take some getting used to.

The worst experience I had with Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition was hands-down the remote controlled Batarang control. Someone at Rocksteady thought it'd be cute to include a feature to let you steer Batarangs using motion controls, but in a completely unintuitive way. Instead of tilting the controller, you need to push and pull the sides of the Wii U Gamepad towards and away from you as if you had a steering wheel that could move in that manner. I failed so many times guiding the thing that I eventually had to give up using the motion controls and use the thumbsticks to guide the Batarang to the switch. Fortunately, that was an option.

Where the Wii U Gamepad controls really shined, though, was in utilizing the Explosive Gel gadget. As Batman, I was able to sneak around a room of thugs and strategically place Explosive Gel around the room. Then, after crawling through airducts to a safe vantage point, I whipped out the Batcomputer. Using the radar functionality, I could see each of my charges along with moving dots representing the thugs. Tapping each charge as the thugs walked by them blew them all to kingdom come within a matter of seconds. It was a very badass moment that made me feel even more like Batman than the original game did.

If you've never played Arkham City before and anticipating the release of the Wii U, Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition may be the definitive edition of the game to check out, especially with the new controls. However, I should mention that the graphics in the E3 demo looked a bit off, with some low-resolution textures and character models really sticking out like a sore thumb. Given that the Wii U is supposed to be as powerful, if not more so, graphically as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, I would assume the final version of the game will look a bit more polished.

That being said, if these new controls don't do anything for you, there may not be much value in buying and replaying the game again on the Wii U. While you can play as Armored Batman and Armored Catwoman, the gameplay differences are so minor that it's almost the same game as you've already played. Time will tell if Rocksteady adds more exclusive content to sweeten the deal for launch, but as it currently stands, the best reason for buying the game again will be to experience it through the Wii U Gamepad.

Want more visuals? Check out live gameplay footage of a developer walking someone through Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition from the E3 showfloor on the Wii U:

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'The Amazing Spider-Man' Game E3 2012 Hands-On Preview [Video]

Andy Yen — 2012-06-18T13:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Gaming, Previews

Developer Beenox has been releasing Spider-Man video games like clockwork each year since 2010's well-received Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. With this summer's release of The Amazing Spider-Man movie, though, they've been charged with bringing Marc Webb's cinematic reboot into playable video game form with The Amazing Spider-Man video game. I caught up with producer David Boudreault on the last day of E3 last week and he took some time to talk and demonstrate some of the upcoming movie tie-in for us on the Xbox 360.

The Amazing Spider-Man game is set in the same continuity as the movie, but isn't a simple rehashing of the events in the film. Though David couldn't divulge any plot details, he would say that the game's story takes place after the film and that fans will be able to play through the game without spoiling anything from the movie. Since the game releases a week prior to the film, you should be good to go to get the game on release day and play through without ruining your potential moviegoing experience.

I've played more than a few Spider-Man games in my time and I have to say that visually, this one best captures the sheer thrill it must be to be Spidey. By placing the third-person camera a little closer to Spider-Man and tilting it a little in a more cinematic angle, you really get the sense of swinging through Manhattan with ease. Spidey's character model is so fluidly animated that you can see him going from a skydiving freefall pose into flips and twirls with completely effortlessness. Frankly, I could probably just watch him do that all day and not get sick of it.

The entire island of Manhattan is your playground in The Amazing Spider-Man. However, while that may give you visions of Grand Theft Spider-Man, the game isn't exactly a completely open world affair. Rather, the island acts as more of a hub area, where you can either start the next story mission or go off and play around or do sidequests. Still, it appears to be expansive enough to be able to lose yourself in the game world if you so choose.

One gameplay highlight for me was the updated combat system. While Beenox is very sensitive about comparing their combat system for The Amazing Spider-Man and the Batman: Arkham Asylum/Arkham City games, it's hard to ignore some of the similarities between the two franchises. Like the Arkham games, combat is a freeflowing affair based off of attacking and dodging at the right time. Of course, being that you are controlling Spidey now and not The Caped Crusader, your character's fighting style is quite a bit more lithe and agile, with more flips and quick evasive maneuvers. And before you ask, yes, Spidey's Spider-Sense does tingle when it's time to dodge an attack.

The other major new mechanic is called "Web Rush," which helps you do some really awesome things in the game with a couple of button taps. One way of thinking about it is as a sort of amalgamation of "Freerunning" in Assassin's Creed combined with Batman's "Detective Mode" in Arkham City. When you're swinging around Manhattan, Web Rush will let you quickly plan out a route across town by slowing down time and picking a new point of interest to zip to via picking a golden Spider-Man silhouette across different landmarks. In combat, Web Rush will open up new tactical options for you to quickly dodge attacks using the environment, for example.

Years of crappy movie-tie in games have made me a bit jaded when it comes to checking them out, but I have to admit that The Amazing Spider-Man looks better than it ought to. Of course, the game will sink or swim based on the actual content, but the short time I spent with it at E3 impressed me enough to keep the game on my radar.

Check out real time gameplay footage of the demo being played by Beenox producer David Boudreault from the show floor (The convention center actually closes mid-video, so you might notice that in the clip. Thanks again to David for staying a little late to finish up the demo):

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'Young Justice: Legacy' E3 2012 Hands-On Preview [Video]

Andy Yen — 2012-06-15T14:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Gaming

Cartoon Network's Emmy Award-winning Young Justice television series stars some of the DC Universe's youngest heroes, so it's not a stretch to see a video game tie-in in development. Relatively new publisher Little Orbit has the reins of the game, entitled Young Justice: Legacy. It's an action RPG title and I had some time to check out an early build of the game at Little Orbit's booth at E3. Read on for my impressions.

The very first thing Little Orbit made sure to tell me was that Young Justice show creators Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti would be involved with the game closely. Those who follow the show will know that there's a significant gap in time between the first and second seasons. Young Justice: Legacy aims to fill in that void with some new story details. While Little Orbit couldn't confirm whether or not voice actors from the show would reprise their roles in the game, it certainly sounded like they were doing their best to make that a reality.

Gameplay-wise, there are many similarities between Young Justice: Legacy and Activision's Marvel Ultimate Alliance games. Play happens from a top-down perspective as you move around mission levels, killing minions and interacting with the environment. The leveling or skill-up system wasn't shown in the game's demo build, but I was told that there would be some sort of character growth and customization system in place for the final game. Unfortunately, those of us who are addicted to hoarding treasure and loot (ala Diablo III) may be a bit disappointed to hear that Young Justice: Legacy won't have a loot/equipment drop system. Personally, I had no problem when Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 did away with equipment, as managing inventory slots does ruin the flow of the game when you are playing on one screen with friends.

Players can select three Young Justice heroes from a roster of 12 for any given mission. If you're playing solo, you can swap control between any of the characters at any time by hitting the d-pad in each direction. I wondered why Little Orbit didn't incorporate 4 on screen characters at once like most other games in the genre and was told that it was a design decision to cut down on the amount of chaos on screen at once. While the E3 demo had only one controller hooked up, Little Orbit promised drop-in drop-out cooperative gameplay both local and online.

The demo level had our heroes on the island of Santa Prisca fighting Bane and his henchmen. I had a chance to play with Nightwing, Artemis, and Superboy. Combat felt very pedantic to me as I quickly made my way through the level. Gameplay was nothing different from what I had seen before in similar games as I button mashed my way through faceless minions. I knew that there were several powers to activate for each character, but they didn't really make feel like a superhero because they had little graphical impact on both the screen and on enemies. The final boss fight with Bane was anticlimactic as well, as the entire fight was basically "make the big bad buy charge into a pillar so he gets stunned and you can hurt him" type of fight that we've seen since the early days of video games.

It was interesting, however, to hear Little Orbit describe each of the characters in a traditional MMORPG sense, by classifying Superboy as a "Tank" or Nightwing as a "DPS." It's easy to imagine Superboy holding an enemy's attention with his invulnerability while Nightwing swoops in from behind and beats the crap out of the bad guy. Though these mechanics are old hat for MMORPG veterans, they do still give a great sense of working as a team, especially if you are playing with someone else. If Little Orbit can figure out a way to work these mechanics for both solo and cooperative play on a console gaming format, Young Justice: Legacy might just be able to pull off what I felt Marvel Ultimate Alliance never really did: make you feel like you are in control of a super hero team.

I hate to really judge the game based off the demo since it was quite apparent that it was a very early build thrown together for E3. Character models looked insignificant, environments were not very detailed, and gameplay elements were not really fleshed out yet. Graphically, the game looks like it had a long way to go before even approaching current generation console quality. One of the game's producers even confirmed that there were some elements thrown in there purely for demonstration purposes, such as breakable vases that didn't have anything inside of them.

That being said, they did show it in its current form and that was somewhat disappointing. The game is scheduled for release in early 2013, but based off what I saw of the game, I wouldn't be surprised if it got pushed back for more development time. Young Justice fans may want to be cautiously optimistic for the title since the show's creators will be involved. Fans should just hope that Little Orbit is able to create a decent enough game around its story to make it worth experiencing.

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'Injustice: Gods Among Us' E3 2012 Hands-On Preview [Video]

Andy Yen — 2012-06-12T17:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Gaming, Previews

Aside from the 2008 release of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, DC Comics fans haven't had many gaming outlets to play out their superhero fighting fantasies (nothing since 1995's Justice League Taskforce, really). All that's about to change with the release of NetherRealm Studios' upcoming Injustice: Gods Among Us, however. NetherRealm, for those who may not know, is best known for last year's very well-received reboot of Mortal Kombat and is headed up by Ed Boon, the co-creator of the Mortal Kombat franchise. ComicsAlliance got a chance to experience a behind-closed doors demonstration of the title at E3 2012 and you can read some of my first impressions of the content after the cut.

Before I get into the gameplay, I want to note the heavy presence Injustice had at the WB Games booth at E3. Front and center was a gorgeous double sided screen mural of the iconic Justice League heroes in their new costumes. The costumes themselves are of "NetherRealm design," but still retain some iconic elements of each character. NetherRealm stayed tight-lipped about the plot of the game, but you can see from the character designs why many fans and blogs have been speculating some sort of connection between Alex Ross's classic Justice comic and Injustice. With one of the biggest strengths of their recent Mortal Kombat game being the game's expansive single player component, fans can probably expect some meaty solo play content for Injustice as well.

If got a look at a few gameplay mechanics, such as the "Clash" mechanic, where players can bid their super meters against each other to either mitigate or deal more damage from a combo. It's an interesting mechanic that adds additional levels of bluffing and strategy by letting players leverage both their life bars and super meters as intertwined resources. Visually, the clash event looks very cinematic, with opposing characters exchanging a line or two of dialog before charging into one another in a flash of light very reminiscent of a Dragon Ball Z ability being unleashed.

During my demo, NetherRealm made sure to drive home the point that environments and arenas in the game matter. I got a chance to experience two arenas, The Batcave and The Fortress of Solitude. Both arenas offered multiple environments to fight in. For example, The Fortress of Solitude level actually starts off looking like you are fighting on the streets of Metropolis, but beat up your opponent some and you can send him careening through about fifteen stories through a skyscraper into a different area of the map. The level transitions look very comic book-like and very ridiculous (in a good way).

Speaking of ridiculous, it really wouldn't be a comic book fighting game without over-the-top special moves and NetherRealm didn't disappoint in that regard during the demo. While you won't see Mortal Kombat's trademark "Fatality" finishing moves, you'll be able to pull off some jaw-dropping moves mid-battle. Superman's special has him battering his opponent on the ground before uppercutting him through the Earth's atmosphere and into outer space before slamming them back down to the ground. My favorite special move of the demo, though, had to be Flash unleashing a flurry of punches that ends with the game's camera panning out, showing a view of Earth as it became encircled by yellow lightning streaking several times in succession before returning to showcase the hero landing a round-the-world windup punch on his opponent. Pure awesome.

Along with the multi-level arenas, there's also interactive elements within the environment that you can use to your tactical advantage. Fighting in the Batcave, you'll see buttons on both sides of the arena. Using one side's will result in grenades being lobbed at your opponent while the other side will make the Batmobile spew a couple of missiles. NetherRealm promised to put in safeguards to prevent cheap, spamming tactics within the environment, just in case you were worried about that happening.

Each fighter interacts with the environment in a specific manner rooted in the context of their character, too. Let's say there's a car on the screen that's able to be used in battle. In a fight between Batman and Solomon Grundy, for example, Batman will smash Grundy on the car's hood, causing some damage to both Grundy and the car. Grundy, on the other hand, will just straight up toss the car at Batman. I didn't get a great look at the damage differences between the two attacks, but I'm assuming NetherRealm is working to balance that in the overall gameplay. It remains to be seen whether or not the interactive environments will be more than a gimmick for more competitive players, but in terms of raw fun, they certainly seem to be doing their job.

NetherRealm will be the first to tell you that the game is decidedly not Mortal Kombat, although if I had to place the aesthetic feel of a game on a spectrum between Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, I would say Injustice skews closer to the Mortal Kombat side. It's a much darker looking game with muted colors and textures, compared to the bright and flashy color schemes seen in many Marvel fighters. In a way, this parallels the aesthetic directions DC and Marvel movies have gone in recent years, with Chris Nolan's Batman movies and Marvel's Avengers-related movies exemplifying the tonal divide.

The controls also differ from your typical two punch, two kick, block button setup that the Mortal Kombat series is known for. Injustice lets you block attacks by simply holding away from your opponent and has a more natural feeling with light, medium, hard attacks on the face buttons. Punches, kicks, and combos landed on opponents feel like they hurt. These aren't your more spar-seeming "biff" and "paff" punching bag hits from Marvel vs. Capcom - rather, the hits in Injustice come off more like a sledgehammer smashing a cantaloupe. The developers mentioned that they wanted to make the game feel great to both a button mashing newbie as well as a practiced veteran. Coupled with an expected great single player experience, it looks like Injustice: Gods Among Us might have more appeal to the more casual fan than a typical tournament quality fighting game when it releases in 2013.

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ComicsAlliance Storms E3: The Photo Gallery

Andy Yen — 2012-06-08T14:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Conventions, Gaming, Culture

ComicsAlliance made its first trek to the Electronic Games Expo 2012 this past week, taking in a bevy of comic book and superhero related titles including The Avengers: Battle For Earth, the reimagined Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition for Nintendo's upcoming Wii U console, plus Injustice: Gods Among Us, Lego Batman 2: DC Superheroes, The Amazing Spider-Man game, Young Justice: Legacy and many others. If you've never been to an E3 before, the closest comparison just might be Comic-Con -- it's pure gaming sensory overload. I braved the crowds, survived the lingering scents, worked my way through awkward small talk and shook off digital whiplash to convey a little of the E3 experience in still photos. Take a look at a full photo gallery of some highlights from my E3 visit after the cut, and stay tuned to ComicsAlliance over the next several days for more hands-on impressions of the latest comic book and superhero titles from the show.

*Editor's Note: I am completely and utterly jealous of Andy Yen in the photo below - Caleb

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'Batman: Arkham City' Harley Quinn's Revenge DLC is a Fun Missed Opportunity [Review]

Andy Yen — 2012-06-07T14:30:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Reviews, Gaming

At first glance, Harley Quinn's Revenge appears to be the DLC that Batman: Arkham City fans have been waiting for. Unlike the other content released so far, Harley Quinn's Revenge is a full blown campaign mission set shortly after Batman: Arkham City's ending. To sweeten the deal even more, Rocksteady has made Robin a fully playable character in the story. No longer confined to challenge mode fare, Tim Drake Robin is front and center in this roughly two and a half hour story-driven campaign. Though I enjoyed my time revisiting Arkham City, I couldn't help but feel that Rocksteady missed several opportunities with the DLC that would have put it on the same level of excellence as the original game.It should go without saying that you shouldn't even be touching this content until you've finished the main storyline in Batman: Arkham City. While the DLC aims to explore the events after the original game has ended, it's technically a separate "game," as you won't have the same unlocked progress from your previously saved game. The fact that playing the DLC is a separate menu option should also help clue you in to that as well.

As one might surmise from the title, Harley Quinn is up to some dastardly antics motivated by the events at the end of Batman: Arkham City. She's kidnapped some GCPD officers and taken over the local steel mill as her base of operations. To top it off, Batman has strangely gone missing too. (On a side note, with all of the recent attempts by superhero storylines in trying to cast law enforcement as our "real heroes," isn't it a little amusing that the GCPD is almost always reduced to serving as the Princess Peach of Batman video games?) That's where you (as Robin) come in.

In full disclosure, I didn't play any of the challenge map DLC, so Harley Quinn's Revenge is the first chance that I've had to play as Robin and it's a blast. Combat is just as fast and fluid as it ever was in Arkham City, except Robin has distinctly Robin-like movement and gameplay. He's just a tad more graceful in battle than Batman with his punches, kicks and flips having boasting more of a youthful zest. Smacking around goons with Robin's staff was also slightly more fulfilling to me than laying down the law with Batman's hammers of justice. Robin's also got some unique toys to use in combat, such as shuriken, snap-flash bombs (which are kind of like sticky flash grenades), a zip-line kick, and a bullet shield that doubles as a battering ram.

Unfortunately, your time with Robin feels too short and limited. Given that it is a "Batman Game," he's forced to compete for playing time with The Caped Crusader. While playing as Batman felt as great as it always has, I couldn't help but pine for more time with the newer car, so to speak. Robin also gets the short end of the stick when it comes to environmental freedom, too. While Harley Quinn's Revenge only gives you a small slice of Arkham City to play in (the Steel Mill area), Robin only gets to play within the confines of the Steel Mill itself. He doesn't get to swing around the canopy of rooftops in the open world of Gotham like Batman does.

Then again, perhaps it doesn't matter much, since there's nothing much to do in the DLC campaign other than follow the mission objectives. Gone are any motivations such as Riddler Challenges or side quests to explore different areas of Arkham City. Other than finding and popping 30 Harley Balloons throughout the 2 hour campaign, you have little reason to revisit the content once you've played through it.

It's a good thing the combat is so polished and fun, because that's the biggest draw of grabbing Harley Quinn's Revenge. Be warned that the campaign's difficulty level quickly ramps up into the "expert" range, though. As someone who hasn't played Batman: Arkham City since last October, I had to quickly acclimate myself with the controls again with a quick refresher in the menus because I couldn't just button mash my way back to combat proficiency. The game throws all sorts of armored, shielded, stun-baton wielding, Venom-enhanced goons at you early and often, meaning that you'll have to make good use of all the gadgets at your disposal if you want to come out victorious.

Along with the fresh introduction to combat with The Boy Wonder, the narrative starts off in an interesting manner as well. Shortly after an introductory scene with Robin, the game flashes back a couple of days with to a playable Batman, although players already know they are doomed to failure. While the notion of Batman failing a mission always reflexively raises an eyebrow for me given his penchant for badassery, it's happened before and with his psyche in shambles after the fallout of Batman: Arkham City, one could definitely believe its possibility within the context of the game narrative. As you set off on your mission as Batman, a conversation involving Oracle, Talia al Ghul and Jim Gordon takes place, leading you to believe an interwoven story with major Bat-characters awaits.

You'd be wrong, of course.

It's essentially the last time you'll even hear any character other than Batman, Robin, Joker (Mainly because Harley pines for Mistah J constantly), and Harley Quinn even mentioned in the campaign. Given Arkham City's solid narrative (written by Paul Dini), the story of Harley Quinn's Revenge plays out with a resounding thud. There's enough setup and structure to justify the gameplay situations that players are put in, but with little meat beyond that. The campaign plays out in a completely perfunctory manner, with game objective tropes such as rescuing hostages, disarming bombs and knocking out bad dudes taking you straight to the end of the game.

Perhaps the most egregious offense that Harley Quinn's Revenge inflicts as an "epilogue" to Arkham City is that it doesn't tie up any loose ends or divulge any new story elements that could enhance your enjoyment of the Arkham City universe. As the short ending cutscene plays, all of the major players are essentially in the same places they were at the start of the DLC campaign. If it weren't for some achievements or trophies earned on your console, you would be right there with them too in terms of the status quo. Rocksteady, at least throw us a bone for some of the stuff you teased within the original Arkham City game!

The original Arkham City was so damned good that it set the bar really high for any additional story-driven content so I don't want to sell developer Rocksteady too short on this DLC by calling it a glorified challenge map pack. There are solid gameplay presentation elements within such as well-acted voiceovers, character modeling, and a reworked map section of the Steel Mill sector of Arkham City. However, I couldn't help but feel that Harley Quinn's Revenge could have been so much more from both a gameplay and story-driven perspective.

If the DLC was priced at $5, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, shortcomings and all, because the production values of the game are still sky high. It's still a Rocksteady Batman game, after all. At $10, though, the decision to splurge for Harley Quinn's Revenge becomes a bit more of a conundrum. You won't be angrily disappointed with your purchase, because the core of the game is still polished and fun, but you also wouldn't be missing a critical entertainment experience either, should you choose to spend that money elsewhere.

Harley Quinn's Revenge is available as downloadable content on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 for $9.99 and 800 Microsoft Points, respectively.

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'The Avengers: Battle For Earth' E3 2012 Hands-On Preview [Video]

Andy Yen — 2012-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Gaming

In the absence of an official video game tie-in to The Avengers movie this summer, fans have been eager for information about Ubisoft's new motion controlled title, The Avengers: Battle For Earth, which is slated for release later this year on the Xbox 360 Kinect and Nintendo's upcoming Wii U console. Only a teaser trailer and a few still images have been revealed from the game since its announcement in mid-May and the footage shown at the Nintendo and Ubisoft press conferences earlier in the week focused on cinematics rather than actual gameplay. Fortunately, Ubisoft had a working demonstration of the game up and running at the E3 convention this week in Los Angeles and ComicsAlliance was able to get hands-on with Battle For Earth. Read about our initial impressions of the upcoming Avengers game after the cut.The Avengers: Battle For Earth is not an Avengers movie tie-in game, although the film's core team will be among the game's 20 playable characters. The plot of the game's campaign mode is actually based on Marvel's 2008 event comic, Secret Invasion. While story elements weren't shown in the demonstration, I did catch footage of Skrull-faced Marvel heroes in costume during the introductory sequence. When probed, the developers mentioned that Secret Invasion writer Brian Michael Bendis was not involved with the game's production, but that current X-Factor writer Peter David has been working on adapting the plot for the game.

It's amusing and encouraging at the same time to see Ubisoft Quebec involve themselves with an established comic writer for this game because at its core, Battle For Earth is a one-on-one fighting game using motion controls. I played the Kinect version of the game as the Wii U port was not ready to be shown yet. Though Ubisoft would not confirm anything, it definitely appears that the Wii U Gamepad with its Asynchronous Gameplay capability would somehow be a factor in the Wii U version of Battle For Earth.

Ubisoft's goal was to make a game that really makes players feel like they're in a superhero brawl by using full body motion sensing controls. Each character has his or her own unique fighting moves that you can unleash on opponents that are represented by "poses" on the bottom of the screen. The best way of visualizing the way the game works might be to think of it as a weird crossover between Just Dance and the Marvel vs. Capcom games. The moves are pose-based, so instead of embarrassing yourself to Maroon 5 songs, you're just embarrassing yourself pretending to be a superhero.

For example, when I played as The Hulk, I would bring both my arms to the side and then bring them together in a thunderclap motion. There's also a move in which you kick your knee up like you're kneeing someone in the crotch in order to launch the enemy into the air where they would be helpless as you unleashed a flurry of punches on them. Sadly, the highest combo I could achieve was about 10. I was told that 30-40 hit combos were a regular occurrence at the Ubisoft studios.

Like the Marvel vs. Capcom games, Battle For Earth also lets you choose two characters to tag in and out by raising your left hand. Tagged out characters will regenerate health slowly. The game also employs a super meter that fills up as you give and take hits. When the meter fills halfway, you're able to use a counter defensive move that interrupts your opponent's attack on you. If you manage to fill it all the way, you can unleash an ultra move by jumping up and down in place. Each of the moves has a little cooldown, so you're encouraged to mix and match them.

I do have some concerns over the responsiveness of the motion controls, though. I found that dodging was a bit awkward as I would never be able to avoid hits from the opponents by shifting my body side to side. The developers recommended that I tilt my head to the side in order for the game to register that move, but that struck me as a bit unintuitive and drew me out of the game for a little bit. It may just be a limitation of the hardware in general, as many Kinect titles feel like you have to move your body a bit unnaturally in order to get the the right inputs across.

Battle For Earth is a very unique take on the superhero game genre. It's pretty safe to say that no one has really done something like this game before. I was a bit skeptical at first glance, but after getting the hang of the controls, I actually felt myself getting pretty into the combat. The visceral feeling of actually doling out punches, kicks, and super moves and having those translated onto Marvel characters on screen is pretty neat. If Ubisoft can really nail down the controls while also maintaining a good gameplay balance that welcomes to new players while also providing some depth in strategy for fighting enthusiasts, The Avengers: Battle For Earth could be one of the rare motion controlled games that is both a hit at party play and "hardcore" play.

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'The Walking Dead Game Episode One: A New Day' is Pretty Killer [Review]

Andy Yen — 2012-05-07T11:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Image, Gaming, Opinion

Let's get one thing out of the way for those who expected the worst out of a licensed The Walking Dead video game -- it's not a mindless zombie killing simulator. Far from that, the game is arguably a better adaptation of Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard's hit post-apocalyptic comic than AMC's TV series. Developed by Telltale Games, the folks who have made a name for themselves creating licensed adventure games from franchises such as Back To The Future, Wallace and Gromit, Homestar Runner, and even Jeff Smith's Bone, The Walking Dead is a solid piece of interactive storytelling that's well worth your time if you are a fan of the comic, television series, or a even of post-apocalyptic zombie stories. Though "A New Day" is just the first episode of a five part monthly game series, it does a good enough job telling a self-contained story while also setting up future episodes that you will feel content with your $5 purchase.The official line from the developer is that the game is set within the continuity of the comic series, while Rick Grimes is still in a coma. Working with Kirkman, Telltale decided to shift the focus of the game from Rick and the survivors fans have grown to know in the comics to a new protagonist, Lee Everett, and the survivors he meets. It's a good decision, because if there's one thing we didn't need, it's yet another retelling of Rick's story. However, that's not to say that players won't meet some recognizable characters during the approximately two-hour adventure. Lee's will cross paths with some familiar faces early on in the game and players even see some of the events that shape their personalities in the comic before Rick meets them.

The game begins with Lee in the back of a police cruiser heading toward prison just before the terrible outbreak occurs. Players initially know little to nothing about his past, but Telltale cleverly allows you to control the manner in which it's revealed through dialog options in conversation. For example, when the police officer driving you starts a conversation, you can choose to act defensive, accepting, or simply remain silent. It's a nice narrative trick that both lets you feel in control of shaping both Lee's character while also revealing tidbits about his past at the proper times.

Speaking of control, the most ambitious aspect of the game is the degree to which your choices affect how the story plays out. As you converse with other characters, the game will display notifications on the immediate ramifications of your words. You might arouse someone's suspicions about Lee's past or you might perform an act of loyalty that won't be forgotten. Of course, being a game based on The Walking Dead, you can bet your walker-infested farm that there will be some very difficult decisions of the "life or death" variety as well. Telltale promises, "Your decisions will stay with you throughout the series, and their repercussions could mean that you and a friend have a very different game experience." While time will tell if this Mass Effect-ian level of branching storytelling will successfully pay off across all five episodes, I can report that there are enough direct consequences within the first episode that I felt solely responsible for in the game.

Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly if you aren't a fan of the TV series), the new characters introduced in "A New Day" are more likable than their television brethren. Lee's a complicated guy with a past shrouded in mystery. He's not necessarily the natural "leader" that Rick is and that allows for a more interesting dynamic when you encounter characters in the game. Clementine, the little girl you meet early on in the game, is everything that Carl isn't on the show. She's vulnerable and innocent, yet strong and resourceful when called upon to be. Playing through the game, I actually began to care for her and wanted to go out of my way to protect her. That's something that I can't say the same for any character on the show.

If you're sitting there thinking to yourself that there's a whole lot of talking and reading in this game, you'd be right. That's not to say that the game is a leisurely fireside chat - some of the most thrilling and tense moments in the game come via conversation. By simply giving you limited time in order to read and pick a dialog choice, Telltale has created a fairly immersive recreation of what it might have felt like to make a tough choice in the zombie apocalypse. You'll come across situations where quick decisions need to be made (sometimes in the presence of strangers) and you won't have the time you'd like to sit for a minute to assess the situation. As someone who always likes taking the time to make the "right" choices in video games, it's a pretty disruptive mechanic to my gaming sensibilities and I have to say that I kinda liked being thrown out of my element.

It's a good thing the storytelling aspects of The Walking Dead are so strong because if you strip that all away, the actual core "game" itself is very mediocre and riddled with technical issues. Most of the "twitch" action sequences in the game rely on Quick-Time Events where you'll have to mash a particular button or aim a crosshair at certain times within a cutscene. This would be fine within the context of the adventure game genre, but die-hard adventurers will also be disappointed with the lack of difficulty or ingenuity with the game's puzzles. The Walking Dead is the kind of game where if you are thorough with exploring every interactive element on screen, you'll have no problem making progress. I had no problem with this setup, as I just wanted to experience a great story, but be forewarned to temper expectations if you are looking for a more challenging or unique gameplay experience.

Playing the PC version, I also noticed various bugs popping up here and there throughout the game. The Walking Dead had a nasty habit of graphical and input stuttering during some cutscenes on my very new high-end PC. This was not only frustrating to watch, but also had the effect of causing me to miss certain Quick-Time Events and adversely affecting some narrative scenes. Scenes that allowed "free" movement with Lee controlled awkwardly with the WASD arrow keys and I noticed that his movement and animations were very stiff. It didn't help that bringing up the control settings in the main menu displayed a giant Xbox 360 controller. Touche, Telltale.

"A New Day" clocks in at a little over 2 hours of gameplay time, which may seem a little short compared to other titles, but the pricing is fortunately commensurate with that time. At $5 an episode, you're getting a pretty good bang for your The Walking Dead buck, considering that single issues of the comic and television episodes on iTunes are $2.99 each. For those more conservative, I certainly won't blame you if you want to wait until all five episodes of The Walking Dead game are out before making the purchase, but those who want to get in on the story now will probably be pleasantly content with their purchase - gameplay and technical issues be damned.

The Walking Dead is currently on schedule for four new episodes coming out on a monthly schedule for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC/MAC. An iOS version is in the works, but is not currently released. If you have a PlayStation 3, you can take advantage of a deal by pre-purchasing a season pass for $19.99, further driving down the per-episode price (Apparently the same offer isn't given for Xbox 360 or PC owners).

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'Marvel: Avengers Alliance' Facebook Game is Free Fun with a Potential Price [Review]

Andy Yen — 2012-03-14T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Culture

The Facebook game Marvel: Avengers Alliance represents, in a fashion, both the potential and limitations of "social" superhero RPGs. Developed by Playdom (Gardens of Time), which was acquired by Disney at about the same time as the House of Ideas a few years back, Avengers Alliance has defied expectations chiefly by supplying ambitious graphics and gameplay. After all, many Facebook games are essentially disguised chores (clicking on tiles to plant and harvest crops is about as fun as doing a TPS report). But does Avengers Alliance deliver enough to make it worth your time -- and potentially hard-earned money?

Players will find out very quickly that Avengers Alliance is no Farmville. If you've ever played a Japanese RPG game like one from the Final Fantasy series (especially Final Fantasy X), you'll feel right at home with Avengers Alliance. The core of the game involves turn-based battles where your unique S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and two other Marvel heroes of your choosing do battle against the likes of Hydra, A.I.M., The Hand and various recognizable villains across the Marvel Universe. There are still opportunities for players to make progress when not playing as the game offers you the chance to send heroes off on side missions from the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier as well as the chance to undergo research for new weapons and gadgets.

At first, the game is shockingly simple since all you can do is select from one attack option per character. However, throughout an extended tutorial, Avengers Alliance slowly introduces more complex game mechanics, including item usage, healing, area of effect abilities, character classes and status ailments. If you're familiar with all the terms I just mentioned, you'll be off and running once the game takes the training wheels off. Those who have a more casual gaming background might want to heed a warning that Avengers Alliance contains some game mechanics that are decidedly complex in nature. That's not to say that the game is unapproachable as Playdom provides explanations for everything, but rather might take some more effort to learn than your typical "social game."

The first thing you'll do when loading up Avengers Alliance is creating your own custom S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. You can choose your gender, plus several facial features and hair options. I made my agent look like 616 Nick Fury without the eye patch because I roll old school like that. From there, you'll be sent into a guided tutorial of the game's interface and basic mechanics featuring Maria Hill and Ultimate Nick Fury. It was more than a little amusing seeing my 616 Nick Fury as a rookie agent take orders from Ultimate/movie Nick Fury, I won't lie.

Playdom does a good job of immediately surrounding you with familiar characters from the Marvel Universe. The first hero you meet and recruit is Iron Man while Avengers such as Black Widow and Captain America make their appearances early in the game. Marvel fans will be glad to be matched up with such villains as Madame Hydra, Baron Zemo, M.O.D.O.K., and Loki all within the first chapter. It was a pleasant surprise for me as I was definitely prepared for my initial hours with Avengers Alliance to be filled with grunt soldier fights with maybe a B-List Daredevil villain to drag things out a bit. The art and battle animations all look very slick, almost like Marvel's motion comics. The dialogue, on the other hand, incorporates some nice touches like Baron Zemo's German accent, but falls short of the quality you'd expect from a true "Marvel Architect" penned title.

The story of the game revolves around a mysterious cosmic event called "The Pulse." Little is known about the origin or purpose of the event, but the effects begin to manifest in New York City as pieces of power-giving cosmic rock called ISO-8. Let's be real, the purpose of "The Pulse" is to give the developers an excuse to have all of the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe interact with each other in the same place. From that perspective, it's a sufficient enough impetus to get things rolling. In addition to being a driving plot point, ISO-8 is also a game mechanic as it offers players the chance to customize their characters' equipment using different types of ISO-8, granting various stat bonuses.

The game is broken up into ten chapters of six missions apiece. Five of those missions are "free" with the sixth being a "premium" mission that costs a significant amount of Command Points to unlock. While you can obtain enough Command Points through just playing the game, it'll be a long and arduous journey to scavenge enough to do so (we're talking weeks and months of playtime). You're better off biting the bullet and just shelling out real money if you really want to experience these missions. As an added bonus, these missions also give you an extra hero to add to your roster as well.

Unfortunately, with the mention of the dreaded phrase "real money," we come to Avengers Alliance's greatest shortcoming: its convoluted and unbalanced currency systems. There are four types of currency in Avengers Alliance:

Silver - Common currency that is obtained from almost every action. It's used to fund new research projects, upgrades, and weapon/item purchases.
S.H.I.E.L.D. points - Social currency that can only be obtained from begging friends who are playing the game. It's needed to level up heroes and start research projects.
Command points - Rare currency that appears to be a random drop when defeating bosses . Collect enough of these and you can recruit new heroes to your squad or buy premium mission content.
Gold - Premium currency that is given very sparingly at each level increase. It's the stuff you get if you decide to put real money into the game. You can use it to exchange for any other currency in the game.

Hope you got all that because I certainly had trouble wrapping my head around everything at first. I've yet to mention the fifth "currency," which is energy, because it's the one least likely to impede early progress, surprisingly enough. You need 10 energy points to undertake a battle and you're given a pool of 60 to start with. The energy pool regenerates with time, but you'll level up so fast that you can actually get a couple hours of playtime your first go-around without needing to take a break.

Why Playdom just didn't keep things simple and use two currencies (perhaps one that you earn by playing the game and one that you earn rarely in the game and/or purchase with real money) really baffles me. The currency system in place just promotes frustration and confusion without adding any real gameplay value. That's not even the worst of it, though.

In my first couple days of gameplay, I quickly discovered that S.H.I.E.L.D. points (or lack thereof) would be the bane of my Agent's existence. You see, every time one of your heroes gains a level, you have to send them off to training by paying a certain amount of S.H.I.E.L.D. points. Problem is, there is no way of earning S.H.I.E.L.D. points by playing the game normally (The only other recourse you have is to check Tony Stark's welfare bonus tower each day for a chance at maybe getting 3 points). You have to spam your Facebook friends begging them to send you some. I don't know about you, but the last thing I want to do is write messages to people I haven't talked to in ages asking that they please sent me some S.H.I.E.L.D. points. Granted, this might not be a problem for some players out there with a close knit group of Marvel fan Facebook friends, but it's nevertheless a social burden that does nothing to enhance the gameplay experience.

"But it's a free to play Facebook game, of course they're going to make you want to pay real money for the convenience of progressing more smoothly in the game!" is something an apologist might say. According to in game gold prices, it would cost $2 to level Black Widow to level 2. You can see how pricey this route can get considering that there are up to 28 heroes to train and that the game recommends you be at level 86 to play the last mission currently available. It's hard to imagine any rational person feeling motivated to pony up this amount of cash to enjoy a "free" game, especially when they are just starting to learn the game.

As a result, I had to continue playing the game without leveling up my heroes. It sucks and really demoralizes you from continuing further because, let's face it, an RPG without a palpable sense of progression is a fairly worthless one. It's a shame that Playdom saw it necessary to shoehorn in typical "social game" currency barriers for Marvel: Avengers Alliance, because the core game is actually quite fun. The turn-based combat system is satisfying despite being overly familiar and I've seen far worse implementations of licensed Marvel art and dialog. I'd almost prefer the game cost $5-10 to begin with if it would mean that the game is playable all the way through without the premium currency garbage.

One final component of Avengers Alliance that unlocks once you finish Chapter 1 Mission 4 is a mode Playdom calls "PVP," which stands for player vs. player. In PVP you can challenge other (real) players of the game to a multiverse-crossing battle using the characters, items and heroes you each have come across during your time with the game. Unfortunately, it's not as interesting as it sounds, since you're not actually matching wits with a live person. You're essentially playing a battle versus the computer using the stats and recruited heroes of another person's game. Playdom even tries to engender rivalries upon logging by notifying you of which players have defeated you since the last time you logged in. It's too bad my heroes are experiencing arrested development from lack of S.H.I.E.L.D. points or else I might care that I've been beaten by everybody on Facebook.

Still, it's another avenue for you to earn some more experience for your team above and beyond the "normal" game, as the energy required to participate in a PVP battle is on a separate timer from the energy required to play the story. There's also an interesting extra element of customization as you can choose to trade in some of the items you've collected (such as med kits or frag grenades) for permanent bonuses in PVP. Playdom was really onto something here in terms of creating a social gameplay element that's both unique and fun, but at the end of the day the PVP mode feels a little half-baked and could use some more fleshing out. I mean, how awesome would it be if you and a friend's team could team up to take down a super-sized threat like Galactus? Or maybe you could seek out some friends to help you finally get revenge against that random bro that keeps beating your team in a massive 6v6 battle royale. These are elements that would really be compelling reasons to recruit friends to play the game, rather than simply begging for currency.

If you're a Marvel fan, Avengers Alliance is still worth checking out given that the price of the game is "free." There's a genuinely fun game set in a fully realized Marvel Universe wrapped inside some onerous social game mechanics. Just be warned that you may reach some progression barriers sooner rather than later if you're playing largely on your own. Were Playdom to wise up and balance game progression better, they'd have a truly addicting title for True Believers to skip their lunch breaks for.

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Comics Reacts To Double Fine's $1.3 Million Kickstarter Success

Andy Yen — 2012-02-13T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Gaming, Video, News, Culture

Video games designer Tim Schafer is renowned for creating some of the most quirky and lovable adventure games in the past two decades, including Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, and Psychonauts. Though he still commands a rabid fan base of the genre, the nature of the video games industry is such that financing a new adventure game through traditional publishing channels is unfeasible. Undaunted, Schafer and his studio, Double Fine, took to the crowd-sourced fundraising platform Kickstarter to raise money for Double Fine Adventure and a companion documentary piece. Schafer's also working with Ron Gilbert, considered by many including the Double Fine leader to be the inventor of the adventure game genre, which essentially makes the project a perfect storm of talent, demand, and timing.

Double Fine Adventure has become fastest-funded Kickstarter project of all time, as the $400,000 goal was met in just a little over eight hours. What's more, in just over a day and a half, the funding goal had been tripled, with over $1.3 million pledged and 32 days of fundraising left to go.

Comics fans and creators are no stranger to Kickstarter, as many comics projects exceeded their funding goals in 2011. As recently as this week, established creators such as Preacher writer Garth Ennis have turned to crowdsourcing their latest passion projects. Double Fine itself could be considered a comics creator as it employs several webcomics artists and hosts a webcomics collective called Double Fine Action Comics. Naturally, the sheer volume and speed with which the Double Fine Kickstarter got funded has elicited some interesting reactions throughout the comics creator community on Twitter.

Captain America and Fatale writer Ed Brubaker seemed inspired by Double Fine's successful Kickstarter:

The main reasons commonly given for going the Kickstarter route have been to attain complete creative freedom and produce works that may otherwise never appear through existing publishers or channels. It's a reasonable thing to desire, especially for established creators who have already worked within the constraints of "the machine." Freedom from answering to investors and publishers should theoretically result in a more "pure" piece of work from a creator, and perhaps also a situation where creators can enjoy a more equitable share of profits.

However, the lack of professional accountability in Kickstarter projects worries some people, including Avengers and Scarlet writer Brian Michael Bendis and our own Andy Khouri, who's written before about the perils of Kickstarter.

I wouldn't underestimate the power of "social pressure," though, as it represents an obligation to the most valuable currency that a creator has, his or her fanbase. If Schafer were to completely ditch producing the Double Fine game and move to Barbados, laughing like a cartoon villain with fistfuls of cash, you can bet that he would never receive another dime from his fans. It's the sort of career suicide that most rational people would not make.

Still, it's a legitimate concern to keep in mind as we enter an age where fan-funded projects are not only feasible, but perhaps preferable for creators in certain situations. Kickstarter warns in their FAQ for people to "use their Internet street smarts" when it comes to accountability for projects, but there's no concrete way of assuring that whatever project you back will actually be made (or made to your liking). As long as fans are aware that they are donating money for the artist to create what the artist wants to, they'll be in a lot better state of mind for when the final product is delivered.

As of this writing, about 40,000 people are backing the Double Fine project, which would equate roughly to the sales numbers of a top 50 comic book. It's not truly an apples to apples comparison, though, as a comic book retails for far less than the price of a video game.
While subsequent projects in both games and comics may not achieve this same level of success, at the very least the Double Fine situation is serving as proof of the viability of fan-funded, creator-owned works. We will see more Kickstarter projects from established creators in the very near future.

Let's hope that any potential bad apples out there don't ruin it. As Powers artist Michael Oeming said, in conversation with Brubaker, Bendis and Warren Ellis, "[A Kickstarter lawsuit] would suck. I think the (far) future of comics is totally DIY."

[Lede image via Reddit]

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'Gotham City Impostors' Beta Delivers Fast, Fun and Batty FPS Action

Andy Yen — 2012-02-06T12:30:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Reviews, Gaming

At first glance, Gotham City Impostors may seem like yet another doomed licensed video game set in the Batman universe. After all, the game is essentially multiplayer-only and revolves around conflict between two Batman and Joker cosplaying groups known as the "Bats" and "Jokerz." That's right, it's a Batman game where Batman is not only unplayable, he doesn't even appear in the game! Spend any amount of time in the game, though, and you'll quickly discover that developer Monolith (the creators of successful first-person shooter franchises, F.E.A.R, Condemned, and No One Lives Forever) had pretty good reasons for setting things up the way that they did.

See, Batman has this weird fetish about not killing people. At the same time, first-person shooter games have a nasty habit of piling up the bodycount numbers, especially in multiplayer situations. So in order to make the game that they wanted, Monolith pushed The Caped Crusader into the background in order to let ordinary citizens dressed in homemade Bat and Joker costumes kill each other without worry. It may sound blasphemous, but after spending some time with the open beta of Gotham City Impostors, I have to honestly say that I hardly noticed Batman's absence. In fact, the game is actually one of the more delightful multiplayer experiences I've had in recent memory. Read on to see why in my full impressions of the game's beta.

Presentation

Let's get one thing out of the way, Gotham City Impostors has very loose roots in any meaningful Batman continuity. If you're a hardcore Batman fan seeking an extension of the comics, movies, or even the very well done Arkham City games franchise, you won't find it here. Since it's a multiplayer-centric game, you're not going to get much in the way of story or exposition. However, there are some nice touches in the game's presentation, such as the Joker manically barking orders to you if you're on the Jokerz team.

There are two levels included in the beta, Crime Alley and Amusement Mile. Both maps are bathed in sunlight and offer bright and colorful lighting, decorations, and environments of general wackiness. Let's put it this way: If Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered in this rendition of Crime Alley, they would have probably respawned in ten seconds wearing manga-style happy faces. Suffice to say, though they are fitting environments for cosplaying citizens to wage war each other, they're not the kind of environments you'd expect a "traditional" view of Gotham City to look like.

Gameplay

To describe the game in a nutshell, I'd say Gotham City Impostors plays like an combination of Call of Duty and Team Fortress 2, set in an urban area filled with crazy people dressed up like they are wannabe superheroes in Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.'s Kick-Ass. GCI's controls feel very tight and responsive. If you've ever played a Call of Duty game before, you'll feel right at home as the controls are the same, right down to the "click the right thumbstick to do a melee attack" control. Most of the weapons are also very similar to Call of Duty, with your array of assault rifles, shotguns, submachine guns and sniper rifles.

However, GCI does inject new flavors into the military-style FPS, such as the inclusion of a bow and arrow, a megaphone-shaped healing weapon called the "Motivator," and gadgets such as boomerangs and ninja smoke bombs. In addition, the game wants you to be able to zip around the level with increased mobility and to that end offers several gadgets to help you move faster, including roller skates, spring boots, and even a hang glider. Both of the beta maps are also littered with trampolines, launch ramps, and hot air geysers to facilitate gadget-based tomfoolery.

GCI pits two teams of up to six players against each other in various game modes, two of which are included in the open beta, Fumigation and Psychological Warfare. Fumigation is GCI's take on the "capture and hold" team objective game. Three sites of poison nerve gas are set up across the level and it's up to each faction to capture and hold a majority of these sites for a set amount of time. Once that happens, the losing team will all get gassed and the match will end. Because of GCI's fast and varied core gameplay, Fumigation is very fun, but doesn't offer much in the way of innovating the "capture and hold" gametype. It's the other gametype, "Psychological Warfare" where things begin to get more interesting.

Psychological Warfare can be boiled down to "Capture the Flag" mechanics but with a wacky twist: you're trying to turn on a mind control device before the other team does. Teams vie for control of one battery that they must take into the enemy base, install, and defend for a short time while the machine powers up. If it successfully activates, the other team collectively drops all its weapons and is only able to defend themselves by slapping the enemy. I've been on both sides of being mind controlled and let me tell you, nothing is more embarrassing than dying to a hysterical guy in a fugue state dressed as a clown running up to you and slapping you to death as you flail about with your supposedly menacing assault rifle. To make it even more fun, a creepy monotone voice drones on in their heads about how they are failures, quitters and losers.

Customization and Progression

Monolith is trumpeting the many ways that you can customize your character in GCI as a key selling point for the game and the beta certainly doesn't disappoint on that front. Starting out, the beta offered players a choice of several premade "class loadouts" with your typical archetypical roles: soldier, scout, heavy weapons, medic, sniper. However, once you reach level 3, players gained the ability to create custom loadouts, which is where things got really interesting. Like in Call of Duty, you can customize your primary and secondary weapons along with "perks" (called "Fun Facts") and gadgets. In addition, though, you can also customize your body type, which changes how your character handles on screen. You can pick a body type on a spectrum of five choices from lithe to walking tank. As you can probably guess, the amount of health and speed afforded to your character are inversely related to body mass. So if you've always liked playing a medic, but hated how fragile they usually are, you can create a medic with the durability (and lumbering speed) of a heavy weapons guy.

There's also a wealth of options when it comes to customizing your character's public appearance. Borrowing a page from Halo: Reach's vanity system, you can change each piece of your character's clothing. There's separate wardrobes for a Bats costume and a Jokerz costume so that you're always ready to look your best no matter which side the game automatically assigns you to. However, it does seem like a bit of an oversight that you can't tie a specific costume set to each one of your custom loadouts. After all, it makes sense that your nimble rocket-launcher carrying scout would want a different costume than your walking tank of a medic.

You can also create a "calling card" that acts as your online profile when people browse your character in between matches. Here, you can change the background of your card along with a choice of icons and witty one-liners. It's not as exciting as creating an in-game persona, but it's still a nice touch.

Finally, once you reach level 12, you can become part of a "gang." Now, the beta is fairly cryptic in explaining the benefits of joining one of the five gangs available. Doing so lets you build reputation with them without doing anything other than playing the game normally. There are two benefits to doing so: you'll start to earn access to certain gang-specific rewards (what these are, we don't know yet) as well as contribute to the gang's greater cause, which you can track the progress of on the web.

Tying these all together is a simple, yet layered progression system. What, did you think that you would be able to customize every aspect of your character right off the bat? Oh no, buddy, you'll have to earn every unlock through blood, sweat, and nerve gas vomit inhalations. Gain a level, and you'll unlock one morsel of customization, whether it's a new weapon, gadget, or modification. It's a little annoying that you're at the mercy of the game as to what sort of unlock you will be getting as you progress, but c'est la vie. Though the beta caps out at level 25, Monolith is touting 1,000 levels of progression to be obtained in the complete game. While that may seem like a lot, keep in mind that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has 800 levels of progression when you factor in Prestige mode.

The cool thing about GCI is that almost everything you do in game nets you some sort of progress. It's one of the few shooter games that awards you points for simply damaging the enemy in addition to kills, assists, and objective completions. There are also side-challenges that you can take part of, like getting a certain number of kills with each weapon or obtaining a certain number of assists. In addition, Monolith smartly separated the method of obtaining each type of customization (weapons, costumes, and calling cards), as it encourages you to customize each aspect of your character throughout your progression without worrying about falling behind in actual gameplay ability.

Final Thoughts

I didn't have high hopes for the Gotham City Impostors beta going in the first time, but after a few matches, I was hooked. The game is clearly influenced by mechanics in the Call of Duty and Team Fortress franchises, but injects enough personality and polish that it's able to stand alone. It's fast, fun, and just as deep as it's more established competitors. Best of all, the game will be priced at a very reasonable $15 (or 1200 Microsoft Points on the Xbox 360). If the final version of the game keeps up the level of quality that I experienced playing the beta, it could end up being one of the biggest multiplayer shooter game bargains of the year.

Gotham City Impostors releases on February 7 on the PlayStation Network and for PC while Xbox Live gets it on Feburary 8.

Official Gotham City Impostors Trailer

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'Judge Dredd vs. Zombies' iOS Game: Functional but Frustrating [Review]

Andy Yen — 2011-12-15T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Reviews, Gaming, Opinion

The last time Judge Dredd was featured in a video game (Little Big Planet costume packs notwithstanding) was in 2003's Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death. Now eight years later, the British comic icon is back in developer Rebellion's new iOS title, Judge Dredd vs. Zombies. It's a universal iPhone/iPad app priced at a competitive 99 cents, but as thrifty smartphone owners all know, even a $0.99 purchase requires some research before taking the plunge. Is Dredd's latest adventure worth taking?

If you're looking for an epic Judge Dredd gaming experience based on the comics, let's stop right there. This is not the game for you. While the word "zombies" in the title could imply a tie in to Garth Ennis' epic "Judgment Day" zombie storyline, Judge Dredd vs. Zombies involves nothing of the sort. The closest you get to a story is a single briefing screen telling you that Zombies have infested Mega City-One and that Judge Dredd is the "Solution." In fact, other than scattered badges and the occasional logo in each level, the only sights you're going to see are Judge Dredd, zombies, and generic looking building interiors. To be fair to the developer, though, it's what was promised in the title and by golly that's exactly what's offered.

The game is a very simple "virtual stick" shooter in a top-down perspective. Unlike other games in the genre that use twin sticks, Judge Dredd vs. Zombies only incorporates a single stick to control moving Dredd (your right thumb is reserved for tapping the "Fire" button or reloading). This is because the game has a very intuitive auto-lock system that automatically snaps Dredd's aim to the nearest enemy. On the off chance that the auto-lock doesn't work, you can simply tap any target on screen and Dredd will focus his aim there. It's a great counterbalance for the imprecision of twitch aiming on a mobile device and feels tight and natural without feeling like the game is playing itself.

The game contains 30 levels, broken up into three 10 level episodes. You can earn up to three stars on each of the 30 levels along with a commendation, which as far as we could tell, is basically a "fourth star." Though the game doesn't tell you this explicitly, it appears as if the number of stars you are awarded depends on how high your score is at the end of the level, something you'll have to build up by killing zombies in rapid succession to keep up a multiplier bonus. Take any damage or wait too long and your multiplier resets to zero, although collecting golden Judge Badges scattered across each level will keep the combo meter going temporarily while also adding some points to your score.

Earning more stars in a level will also up the amount of credits you'll earn after the mission to be able to spend on upgrades and weapons. Judge Dredd vs. Zombies offers four weapons for you to choose from, two of which are unlocked from the start of the game - his trusty Lawgiver pistol and the Scattergun (shotgun). A sniper rifle and a rocket launcher are available for purchase if you have enough credits. You can also choose to spend the credits you've earned to upgrade each gun's reload speed, damage, clip size, and rate of fire. Finally, before each level, you're also offered the option to buy up to three temporary "Special Equipment" upgrades from a selection of seven. These can range from body armor to faster reload times to having a more forgiving combo meter.

Playing through the first three levels of the game, you'll see the game shaping up to be a fairly entertaining, if very simplistic, shooting game. Killing zombies and picking up shiny things is just what the doctor ordered if you're looking for a quick violent distraction on your iOS device. Unfortunately, just when you think you're starting to get into a zombie killing groove, the game turns into a frustrating black hole of difficulty.

Around the fourth level or so, all of the satisfying one-hit zombie kills you've been getting disappear because the game starts only sending golden zombies at you that require anywhere from 4-6 shotgun blasts to kill. You go from feeling like a badass Judge killing zombies left and right to an overwhelmed weakling in over his head. Then the game starts to get downright rude by locking you in very small rooms or corridors while these super-zombies materialize from the ground on all sides. Judge Dredd can only take about four hits before dying and to make matters worse, health packs are about as rare as comics with sketch variant covers. In fact, in the first ten levels, we found that only about six of them had health packs and never was there more than one in a level. Of course, none of the levels have checkpoints, so if you die, you'll have to start again from the beginning even if you've killed 110 out of the 114 zombie quota to finish the level.

Compounding the problem is the fact that since all the zombies now take so many shots to kill, it's virtually impossible to keep the combo meter going by simple virtue of not being able to kill zombies fast enough to satiate the meter's requirements. Because of this phenomenon, even if you channel your inner Dredd and make it through the end of a grueling 114 zombie endurance test, you'll most likely only come away with one star from the whole ordeal. Oh, and by the way, in order to unlock the second episode you'll need to average two stars on each level in episode one. To unlock the third set of levels, you'll need to average even more than that. It doesn't take long to realize that getting to even play all the levels in the game will be nigh impossible without outside help.

This is where the game's upgrade system is supposed to come into play. After all, a stronger Judge Dredd should make for an easier zombie killing experience, right? Unfortunately, the game is insultingly stingy with the amount of credits it doles out to you for finishing a level. As an example, in our first playthrough of episode one, we earned a total of 18 stars and only accumulated 6,000 credits. To provide context for that amount, it costs 5,000 credits to buy a temporary upgrade that makes the combo meter more lenient. If you're thinking you can just replay the easy levels over and over again to rack up those credits, think again. You only get credits the first time you obtain a new star on level completion.

It's pretty obvious from the difficulty level and credit stinginess that Rebellion wants you to take sips from the microtransaction nectar cup early and often. Tap the conveniently placed "Upgrade!" button on the main menu and you're immediately presented with an option to unlock all the levels for $1.99. You're also generously offered credit packs costing anywhere from $1.99 to $29.99. If the game were free, we might have been able to tolerate the necessity for in-game purchases, but it's not.

Despite having solid core game mechanics and well a well-executed presentation, Judge Dredd vs. Zombies is dragged down by an unsustainable difficulty level along with an unpleasantly aggressive pushing of in-app purchases. Even though the game is ostensibly only $0.99, we can't recommend the title even to the most masochistic of gamers as it's virtually impossible to experience all the content in the game unless you pump more money into it. Unless Rebellion tunes either the difficulty or credit earning system to something more reasonable, your time and money are better spent elsewhere.

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'Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3': The Latest and Greatest [Review]

Andy Yen — 2011-11-22T14:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Gaming

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, an updated version of the 9-month-old Marvel Vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, arrived in stores for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 last week. Despite adding 12 new playable characters, multiple new stages, new gameplay modes and adjusted settings, there's been some healthy skepticism about the title given the relatively short duration between this game's release and that of its predecessor. Is Capcom shamelessly milking fans for an additional $39.99 to pad their Q4 numbers? Should players take the plunge on the series if they've never tried it before? Are the game's upgrades and new additions even worth forking over hard-earned cash if for if you've already own the previous version? ComicsAlliance spent some quality time with retail version of Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 on the PS3 and got some answers.Let's get one thing out in the open first - my skill level with the game is nowhere near what one would consider tournament caliber. This review isn't going to go into detail on the various tweaks to character balance or the fighting system because, quite frankly, they're not immediately noticeable unless you're a seasoned competitive player. If you're a tournament player (or aspire to be one), you're probably going to want to pick up this version if for no other reason that your competition will be migrating over to this latest version of the game.

For those of you who've never played a Marvel vs. Capcom title, it's a fighting game that takes place on a 2D plane where you pick your favorite Marvel or Capcom characters and have at them with punches, kicks and special powers. Think of it as an interactive comic book crossover between two major publishers. Matches are a tag-team affair where three characters are picked on each side. You can call on your reserve characters at any moment for a brief assist move, tag out, or even combine powers for a ludicrously powerful Crossover Combination, which invariably fills the screen with lasers and pain directed towards your opponent. Imagine Street Fighter if it experimented with multiple designer drugs simultaneously and you have a pretty good idea as to what Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 looks like on screen. The action moves blazingly fast, the colors are flashy and vibrant, and the combo hit number routinely reaches into the 40s.

The basic premise of the game revolves around defending Earth from a hungry Galactus and the cosmic om-nom-noms he's about to unleash on the planet. There's some sort of interdimensional rift that allows for both the Capcom and Marvel Universes to mingle, but how it came to exist isn't as important as why it exists - to let fans play out some serious "Who would win?" scenarios between two robust franchises.

Capcom brought back experienced Marvel scribe Frank Tieri to pen the storylines for the new characters. I use the term "storylines" loosely here, because the only story fans get to see here is a 2-4 panel dialog box slide show once they through arcade mode with a given character. Unfortunately for players of the original game, no new endings have been produced for the characters returning from the original version of Marvel vs. Capcom 3. In fact, I actually noticed omitted panels from several of the original character endings. X-23's ending, for example, is cut from about seven boxes of dialog to just three. Granted, the overall meaning didn't change much, but still, that's four dialog boxes of flavor text players are missing, dammit!

Despite these changes, Tieri's work continues to shine through -- especially in the little quips each character lets loose at the beginnings and endings of matches. I had a big grin on my face the first time I faced Phoenix Wright off against She-Hulk and saw this exchange:

Phoenix: Ms. Walters, your witness!

She-Hulk: Soon the defense will rest... her fist upon your face.

If you were a player who didn't know that She-Hulk's alter-ego, Jennifer Walters, is a criminal defense attorney or that Phoenix Wright is also a lawyer from his own cult classic Nintendo DS series, you wouldn't totally get that reference. But if you're a fan who already digs both fighters? Payoff.

Other characters are also true to their origins and personalities. Deadpool's irreverent as ever in breaking the fourth wall. The first time I heard him exclaim "Shoyruken!" I let out a hearty guffaw. Of COURSE Deadpool would be that guy to not only know what Street Fighter is but to also mock it openly in a fighting move.

Some nice surprises await comics fans in some of the new stages as well. UMvC3 offers up eight new stages for players to brawl in. While some of the stages are essentially refreshes of existing stages, like a winter version of Tron Bonne's world or a daytime air show on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, there are a couple of unique arenas included as well. The most memorable is a 3D recreation of the cover of Uncanny X-Men #141 (aka "Days of Future Past"). The iconic list of slain and apprehended mutants are replaced with characters from previous entries in the Marvel vs. Capcom series that didn't make it over to the new editions. There's also a Shadowland stage, based on the recent Marvel mini-series, complete with an evil looking Daredevil perched on a throne, spectating the fight like a Roman Emperor. As a comics fan, it's encouraging to see this level of attention given to the source material.

The main attraction for upgrading to UMvC3, though, is the 12 new playable characters, six on the Capcom side (Strider Hiryu, Phoenix Wright, Vergil, Frank West, Firebrand, Nemesis T-Type) and six on the Marvel side (Iron Fist, Nova, Doctor Strange, Ghost Rider, Hawkeye, Rocket Raccoon). All of the characters feel unique and original - players aren't simply getting reskins of existing character playstyles.

Phoenix Wright, for example, has probably one of the most unique fighting "styles" I've ever encountered in a fighting game. He doesn't really punch or kick like a normal fighter. Rather, he does the stuff he would in his own game: investigate for clues, shuffle through papers, and argue. His most feared attacks are when he throws a bunch of papers in your face or hit you with a giant word balloon shouting "Objection!" Phoenix does have the coolest Hyper Combo animation in the game, but it's quite a process getting to a point where you can use it. First, players have to gather three pieces of evidence using his "gather evidence" move. Not only that, they have to be the three "right" pieces of evidence (identified when the folder icon lights up). Then you have to change "stances" to "trial mode" by inputting a button sequence. Next, players have to have enough of your super meter charged enough to activate "turnabout mode." Finally, players input the move and are treated to some awesome music and an epic Hyper Combo animation. It sounds ridiculous and convoluted and, well, it is. It just looks so darn cool that it gets me giddy at the thought of humiliating an opponent with the move.

Aside from the new characters and stages, Capcom has also gussied up the menu system to contain beautiful hi-res comic splash art for each option selection. It's a nice touch and polishes the total presentation up a bit. Mission mode returns with new move chains to do, but it's still no substitute for a proper tutorial system. It's basically the fighting game tutorial equivalent of Ikea instructions. You're simply given a list of moves to perform in a row with no guidance or description on how to do them.

UMvC3's online experience has also been spruced up. After playing through a handful of ranked and player matches, the experience felt much smoother than it did in the previous version of the game. For those who enjoy playing in lobbies, there's an added Spectator Mode so you can actually watch the fights going on while you wait your turn, rather than sit at a menu twiddling your thumbs. Players do have to already be in the lobby when the match starts, though, as if you join a lobby mid-match, the game won't let you start watching until the next one begins.

Finally, Capcom is promising the free addition of a new online and offline game mode called "Heroes and Heralds" soon. It's designed to give those that aren't interested in hardcore competing something extra to do. The idea is based around collecting hundreds of character cards which boost the abilities of your fighter in various ways, such as gifting them the power of invisibility. The mode hasn't been released yet, so I can't tell you if it's any good, but it's something to look forward to if you pick up the game.

Despite the minimal improvements elsewhere, all of the new characters are worth your time and are worthy additions to the UMvC3 roster. Could they have been done as DLC (downloadable content) and have saved everyone some money? According to Capcom, "Maybe." Depending on whom you believe, the decision to go with a full retail release was either because of the earthquakes in Japan stymieing development or because of a philosophical opposition to the concept of DLC. From my perspective, I'm a little disappointed that the game doesn't have much more substantial content to offer aside than the new playable characters. Granted, 12 new characters for a competitive player is tantamount to playing a completely new game, but also doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy that I plunked down $60 back in February for an already outdated game. Considering that the previous two characters available as DLC (Jill and Shuma Gorath) were $5 each, however, the prospect of having to dole out $60 steadily over a period of time for 12 characters suddenly seems much more onerous than a $39.99 one-time package.

If you skipped out on the original Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and love the characters and/or just love a good brawling game, then picking up Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a no-brainer. It's strictly superior to the previous version in virtually every way. Even if you're not normally a fighting game person, you may want to at least rent the game once just to experience your beloved characters brought to full interactive life (LifeTip for overworked readers: I've found that setting the game to an easy difficulty and breezing through arcade mode is a wonderful stress reliever).

As for those who own the first version, whether or not you'll find the right value in UMvC3 depends on how often you play with others -- either online or on the couch together. This is a game meant to be played competitively. Things will get very tiresome on your own once you're done experimenting with the new characters. Feel free to skip UMvC3 if you got the idea the first go-around and have no desire to see the new characters. It doesn't bring a whole lot new to the table.

Ultimately, the addition of new characters, new moves and tweaks to existing characters in UMvC3 provides competitive players with a rich fighting game experience. Fans can spend days and weeks trying to master all the intricacies of both new moves and old favorites. If the allure of playing to force competitors to ragequit in disgust after being pummeled them with an inescapable 45-hit air combo appeals to your gaming sensibilities, Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 is the game for you.

Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 Launch Trailer

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'Batman: Arkham City' Artist Carlos D'Anda Talks Comics, Games and Digital

Andy Yen — 2011-05-19T11:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Gaming, Interviews, Previews, Digital Comics

Batman: Arkham City is almost mythical in its pedigree. Not only is it the sequel to what many consider to be the best licensed video game of all time (Rocksteady Studio's Batman: Arkham Asylum), it also exists in comic book form as a six-issue monthly miniseries from DC Comics written by Paul Dini and illustrated by Carlos D'Anda, two of the games' principal authors. On top of that, Batman: Arkham City is one of the few comics from a major publisher to be released for sale digitally day and date with the "paper" version.

ComicsAlliance had a chance to talk with Carlos D'Anda about his work on the Arkham City game and comic book. Among the things discussed were the differences between working on a comic and a video game, the contributions of Paul Dini, and digital comic book distribution.

In addition to the digital versions of Batman: Arkham City, DC will release exclusive eight-page "digital interludes" in between the monthly issues, further fleshing out the story. The project represents a promising synthesis of what may come in the future, a seamless thread connecting traditional comics with digital media and culminating in a fully interactive video game.

The Arkham City game releases on October 21, but fans can prepare themselves in the months before by reading the DC Comics miniseries that D'Anda says provides integral story elements bridging the plots of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City.

ComicsAlliance: Batman: Arkham Asylum is widely considered to be one of the best licensed video games ever, and certainly the best superhero game ever. Why do you think Rocksteady Studio succeeded where so many others had fallen short in the past?

Carlos D'Anda: Most of the time "superhero" games are made to piggyback on a movie franchise and they are usually rushed to meet a release date, a toy line, etc., so the developers don't always have the time necessary to really do something special with that comic book character or characters. I believe Rocksteady did an amazing job not only because they are a studio full of very, very talented people, but also because they were given the time to do a game worthy of Batman. Not only did the game look beautiful, but the fighting engine was incredible; it made you feel like Batman, like you could take on 20 goons at once. That is the thing that will stick the most with me, the controls were damn near flawless; so smooth from the blocks to the hits to the throws. Then you had the voices! Most people of my generation grew up with Batman: The Animated Series, so hearing [Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hammil as The Joker] was the frosting with a cherry on top.

CA: How required of a reading will the Batman: Arkham City comic be for fans of the games? And will readers have to have played the games in order to enjoy the miniseries?

CD: I feel the comic and the games are very interwoven, so in order to really enjoy the comic, it sure helps to have played the first game. And if you loved the first game, the comic will fill you in on more of the story and give you more background of how Arkham City had its origin, what happened to Joker and Harley, etc. This series is meant to be a bridge between the two games, so I'd say it's definitely a nice complement to the "Arkham Universe."

CA: One of the latest trailers for the Arkham City game shows off a brand new costume design and look for Harley Quinn. What was the thinking behind this, and did you have any concerns over changing the design of a character that has rarely had her iconic look tinkered with before?

CD: In the first game, it was easier to "justify" the change of the outfit for Harley, since the initial idea was that Joker was also going to be dressed more like a crazy doctor. That is the original reason why Harley is dressed like a nurse of sorts, so story-wise, it made sense. For the second game, I must have done about ten or more different designs, and some were much closer to the comic book outfit. But in the end what made the most sense was something that (I hope) brought together the aesthetics of the comic book Harley and the Harley from Arkham Asylum.

My mindset in general when I did designs for both Arkham games was, "This needs to look mean, durable, and kinda scary." When I think about Gotham City, I keep thinking of steel, leather, lots of rain, Gothic architecture, and cars that guzzle lots and lots of gas!

CA: You've worked with Batman: The Animated Series writer Paul Dini on both Arkham games and now the Arkham City comic book. As a big fan of Batman: TAS, that must have been a fun experience?

CD: Paul is one of the premier Batman writers. He's been living with these characters for so long that he knows how they think, feel, how they speak. I am convinced that a part of Paul's brain actually lives in Gotham City, so working with him in this is not only an honor, but very very fun.

CA: Now that you've worked in games and comics, what differences, challenges and strengths have you observed about the two mediums?

CD: Mainly, in games you tend to focus on one thing at a time: a character, an environment, a vehicle, and you have a bit more time to "soak" in a specific idea and evolve it. In comics, you have to be able to draw anything and everything in a page, and also do it with crazy deadlines most of the time, which in itself really tests you as an artist and is very satisfying for those same reasons. You also get to tell a sequential story all by yourself, so it's like making a little mini-movie. Both mediums are very satisfying for different reason, I am just a very lucky man in being able to work in both sandboxes!

CA: The Batman: Arkham City miniseries is one of few titles to ship day and date with a digital version of the comic retailing for the same price as well. Can you give us some of your thoughts on where comics distribution and consumption is headed?

CD: I think we are at a major turning point in publishing, especially for periodicals. I don't think that printed comics and books will go away, but I do feel that digital comics will become more and more common, and with cool new gadgets like the iPad -- if you ask me, comics are made for that kind of technology. I am not a purist when it comes to my comics. I feel I am in the business of storytelling, so whatever medium makes it easier for our stories and character to get to fans, why resist it?

CA: What's coming up next for Carlos D'Anda?

CD: A looong vacation after I am done with this series!

Batman: Arkham City #1 is on sale now in comics stores, online retailers like Things From Another World, and digitally from the DC Comics app. For more Carlos D'Anda artwork, check out our gallery of his concept art for Batman: Arkham Asylum.

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ComicsAlliance Demos 'The Darkness II' Game & Free Comic Book Day Tie-In

Andy Yen — 2011-05-06T17:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Gaming, Previews, Video

It's hard to believe it's already been four years since the release of the original The Darkness game, based on the long-running comic book series from Top Cow Productions about a mafia hitman in possession of an ancient, primal and astonishingly violent force. ComicsAlliance had a chance to get some hands-on playtime with a demo version of The Darkness II on the Xbox 360 at a recent 2KGames press event, and fans can rest assured that the continuing story of Jackie Estacado and his demon-armed possession by The Darkness remains intact and as disturbing as ever.

Additionally, we spoke with Top Cow Publisher Filib Sablik about the game's Free Comic Book Day tie-in comic, and how the company hopes to leverage its popular games franchise into new comic book sales.

ComicsAlliance: Filip, the first Darkness game was a big hit, which I think might have come as a surprise to a lot of people given the (increasingly outdated) reputation of licensed video game titles. To what to attribute that title's success in the games market?

Filip Sablik: The great thing about the first video game is that it did very well for 2K Games when it was released. I believe it went platinum around the time of its release. I think what separates The Darkness games from other licensed game products is that it's not tied into another media release like a film or tv show. Those games tend to have a very short turnaround time and as a result there's only so much the developers, programmers, and publishers can do. With The Darkness II, 2K was able to take their time and make sure they found the right development partner in Digital Extremes and brought back Paul Jenkins to write the game.

In many ways, it's the same approach we take when making comics - quality is king. We've always felt internally, the toughest part about licensing your properties is finding the right partner. After that you should be able to step back and let them do what they do best. If you are constantly having to look over their shoulder and give a ton of notes, you've probably picked the wrong partner!

CA: With the sequel finally coming out, Top Cow has produced a tie-in title for Free Comic Book Day. The strategy seems admirably aggressive and designed to position Top Cow in such a way as to benefit from the large fanbase for the Darkness game.

FS: Once we knew that the sequel was definitely coming and 2K was going to announce a Fall 2011 release, we decided very quickly that this presented us with a unique opportunity for Free Comic Book Day. Free Comic Book Day is all about bringing new potential fans and readers into direct market comic shops and the interest in The Darkness II certainly has the potential to bring in gamers that have not read a comic in a long time or maybe never read a comic. Doing any other book this year strikes me as a completely missed opportunity. We were fortunate that 2K was completely behind it and also saw it as a great way to introduce gamers to the property and bring them up to speed on The Darkness.

CA: Tell us about the story in this book. It's designed to serve the story of The Darkness II while also sort of demoing the Top Cow Universe itself, correct? What if any challenges are there with that approach, in terms of storytelling? Are the continuities compatible?

FS: Definitely. We wanted to introduce readers to Jackie Estacado, bearer of the Darkness, the nature of the Darkness itself, the world, and bring readers up to speed on what happened in the first video game. The Jackie Estacado of the game universe and the Jackie Estacado of the comic universe are recognizable as the same character, but there are differences in the continuity. Part of that is that the comic has 15 years of history and a soap operatic quality to it and we didn't want to tie 2K down by being dogmatic that history. What they've done in the games is mined the comics for the best story elements and then built off of that source material in an incredibly respectful way. Plus having Paul Jenkins, who is one of the seminal writers of The Darkness, as one of the key creative people involved in the game ensures that the games feel true to the property.

FS: The largest storytelling challenge was providing a fairy significant amount of information to new readers, but not making it feel like you were reading a Wikipedia entry and, at the same time, providing some new information and emotional resonance for readers who are already familiar with The Darkness. [Top Cow President] Matt Hawkins and I came up with the story idea of having Jackie having a real heart-to-heart with his one true love, Jenny, at her grave site. Jackie's not the kind of character to normally share his feelings, but his guilt over what happened to Jenny was a great set up to get him to open up. From there I took the idea and wrote the issue's script and dialogue. The story is entitled "Confession" because this is in a sense the confession of Jackie Estacado.

CA: Longtime Darkness artist Michael Broussard drew the FCBD issue, but it was written by yourself and Matt Hawkins, rather than Darkness writer Phil Hester. Why did you guys opt to take on this project?

FS: A good part of it was due to the timing and scheduling. This project came together rather quickly and we knew we were limited on time to get the book created and to stores in time for Free Comic Book Day. Matt and I were already talking with 2K about a variety of other ways we could cooperate on promoting the game, so I think it was largely a case of right place, right time. Matt and I brainstormed the idea for the issue and he liked what I had done on Pilot Season: Asset last year, so he suggested I write The Darkness: Confession.

CA: What Free Comic Book Day events will you and other Top Cow staffers and creators be participating in this year?

FS: We'll be doing a bunch of store signings and events all around the country. In the Los Angeles area, I'll be appearing at Brave New World in Newhall, Matt Hawkins will be at Golden Apples Comics, Michael Broussard will be at Earth-2 in Northridge and then Earth-2 in Sherman Oaks, and the current The Darkness team of Sheldon Mitchell and Rick Basaldua will be at Collector's Paradise in Pasadena. Other Top Cow creators like Ron Marz, Phil Hester, Whilce Portacio, Joshua Hale Fialkov, Jeremy Haun, and Afua Richardson will all be participating in signings as well. Fans can find details at www.topcow.com by clicking on our Conventions & Events calendar.

FS: The Darkness is celebrating its fifteenth year anniversary this year, we have The Darkness II game coming out, the Artifacts event concluding this year, and The Darkness #100 on the way. It's a fantastic year for the property and a great time to jump in and find out why the character has stood the test of time. Phil Hester is doing some terrific work on the regular series, the first The Darkness: Accursed trade is available in comic shops for $4.99 and you can try it out for free this Saturday with The Darkness II: Confession!

GAME DEMO

Given that the first installment was so well received by the gaming audience, it seemed like a no-brainer for work on The Darkness II to begin soon after the first one's release in 2007. Unfortunately, due to "rights issues" it has taken a while to get The Darkness II development underway, but the game is now on track for an October 4, 2011 release on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. While the developer in charge of creating the Darkness games franchise has changed from the acclaimed Starbreeze Studios (The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay) to Digital Extremes (Dark Sector, Unreal Tournament, Bioshock), we came away feeling that the Darkness was safe in the capable hands of its new makers.

The demo begins in a darkened room with you looking through the eyes of Jackie Estacado at a man that can only be described as Adolf Hitler if he was a disfigured zombie with longer hair. This man quickly begins to drive bright blue stakes into Jackie's arms in a brutal first-person Crucifixion. The man wants Jackie to give up The Darkness willingly, and seems to have the means to harness it.

Soon Jackie flashes back to a scene earlier in the day when he was having dinner at an upscale Italian restaurant. The setting is a bright contrast to the crucifixion scene in the dark and lonely room, with vibrant colors and paintings filling the space while you listen to the bustling chatter of a busy social scene.

The restaurant setting is an eye-opening example of the new "graphical noir" style that Digital Extremes is using with The Darkness II. Unlike other games that use an algorithmic cel-shading rendering technique to achieve a "cartoony" look, all of the textures in The Darkness II are painstakingly hand-painted to give the feeling of playing through a Top Cow graphic novel. Cross hatches dirty up tablecloths. Sharp, angular lines define facial features and clothing. Unique lighting and shadows keep environments from looking too sterile. It's a beautiful new styling for games and is probably one of the best reasons to at least check out The Darkness II.

Jackie sits down to eat dinner with two lovely young ladies when, all of a sudden, one is shot in the head and a car crashes through the window, wounding Jackie's leg. His lieutenant, Vinny, quickly comes to Jackie's aid to tries to drag Jackie away from the light and into a place where The Darkness can heal him. This begins the demo's first action sequence, which is an on-rails escape from the restaurant using a pistol. Dual-wielding is eventually introduced when Vinny hands Jackie a second pistol to fend off enemies.

Once Jackie makes it to the darkened alleyway of the restaurant, the true stars of game appear - the two demon arms of The Darkness (a voice role reprised by rocker Mike Patton). In The Darkness II, players have control over each demon arm (I prefer to think of them tentacles, but to each his own) via the left and right bumper buttons. The left arm functions as the "grabber," as players can use it to pick up objects or enemy bodies on the ground. For those who have played Half-Life 2, the function is similar to the Gravity Gun. You can use the left demon arm to pick up objects like poles and impale enemies with them.

(Fans of the first game will also be happy to see that, once again, you can eat the hearts of enemies to recover health.)

The right arm of The Darkness acts as a melee slashing attack. You press the right bumper while holding the right analog stick in the direction you want to slash in and the demon arm does the rest.

Coupled with the option of dual-wielding weapons, it quickly becomes apparent that you have four different options to attack enemies. Digital Extremes is calling this feature "Quad-Wielding" and have even trademarked it.

Further emphasizing the demon arms' power are the different "execution moves" that Jackie is able to pull off with The Darkness. In the first game, executions were focused on a close range melee kill. In The Darkness II demo, the demon arms become the sole dispenser of violent death. Holding down the left bumper after an enemy has been hurt and glowing purple will initiate an execution sequence depending on what part of the body is targeted. If you are worried that the brighter colors incorporated into the graphical noir style of The Darkness II might be a sign of a watered down violent experience -- don't be. Let me tell you, these new demon arms executions are gnarly. I almost had to turn away in revulsion a few times when maiming enemies using The Darkness.

Targeting the lower leg area of an enemy initiates the "Wishbone" execution, in which the left demon arm holds the enemy's body in place while the right one grabs a leg and neatly splits him in two. Aiming for the midsection starts what is called the "Anaconda," where both demon arms slither and coil around the helpless goon, crushing the life out of him. Finally, aiming for the head in an execution attempt initiates what Digital Extremes lovingly calls the "Daisypop." You can probably guess what that entails.

All the gameplay mechanics come together in an explosive open ended firefight in the middle of a large street in Little Italy. Using the left demon arm to grab a taxicab door to use as cover while I mowed down enemies with my dual-pistols and slasher demon arm was a cathartic experience. I'll admit, though, that I almost felt too obligated to use all four attacks of the "Quad-Wield" feature at all times during the fight. I'm the type of player that likes to find one effective attack at a time, so while I liked the options afforded to me, I'd probably settle into using either guns or the demon arms as my primary weapon. If you're a creative killer, though, you'll probably enjoy all the weapons at your disposal to maim enemies in differing ways.

The final playable section of the demo takes place through a New York City subway station and tunnels. It offers more chances to kill some enemies, but also introduces a vital companion in the game -- the Darkling. Fans of the first game will remember the four different types of Darklings that Jackie could order around to help even the odds. The Darkness II consolidates the ally concept into just one Darkling companion for Jackie. Digital Extremes promises to make up for the fact that there are less companions by beefing up the personality and effectiveness of the "new" Darkling. Instead of having to be micromanaged by the player, Darkling will act as an autonomous companion, distracting and attacking enemies, picking up weapons and ammo to bring to Jackie, and dispensing post-mortem justice via urinating on fallen enemies. (No I did not make that up.) He's got a bright Union Jack logo on his frontside and even talks in a cheery British accent. While it's sad to see some of the more strategic elements of controlling Darklings go away, there's just no substitute for the satisfaction value of having your diminutive British demon companion drench fallen foes with green pee.

Going back to the initial scene in the darkened room with Zombie Hitler, Jackie makes a daring escape from the room with the little help of deus ex machina. It's an in-game cinematic that truly sold me on the "graphical noir" style as there was a breathtaking shot of a silhouette standing in an open doorway with lighting that evoked imagery of vintage Frank Miller artwork. If Digital Extremes can continue delivering great moments like this, fans of the series will be very satisfied.

The Darkness II releases on October 4, 2011 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

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