Cockatoo Island

I took a few pictures while we were on Cockatoo Island the other day... We camped overnight there, and had an explore on Thursday evening. The island is bizarre; it's an abandoned shipyard in the middle of Sydney harbour and is almost completely deserted.



There were three other groups camping on the island, so we had pretty much the whole place to ourselves. It wasn't quite what we were expecting when we booked it, but very impressive none-the-less!

Security failings of Arkham

Despite the fact that it houses some of the most dangerous criminals in the world, the security arrangements of Arkham Asylum seem to be dangerously slack.* Playing Batman: Arkham Asylum has brought home to me how bad the policies actually are. For instance, I can’t see the logic in keeping unlockable boxes of assault rifles scattered throughout the island; are they honestly that sure there will never be a breakout?

Let’s take a look at some of the other worst offenders:

At the beginning of the game, Harley Quinn seems to have gotten access to the security forcefield control room, and has a pass to enable/disable them. We’ll gloss over the fact that Arkham was willing to employ someone who was obviously already unstable enough to allow herself to be lured by the Joker into villain-dom, and focus on how she managed to get into the control room… Did she break in? If Harley Quinn, with her red and blue Basque and chalk white face makeup, was somehow able to evade security, it’s a pretty sad state of affairs. Also, why does her security pass still work? I’m pretty sure most high security prisons collect those and deactivate them once you become an inmate.

Leading on from this, why do they let Batman walk right up to the Intensive Treatment rooms? Yes, he’s Batman, and is unlikely to break anyone out of Arkham, but is it hospital policy to allow heavily armed, masked men walk the corridors?

Batman? Upset the inmates? How very dare you...

Of course, once you’re barred from proceeding any further (you’ll “upset the inmates”, apparently… where obviously a chemically-scarred, maniacal, psychotic mass-murderer won’t), that’s where things go wrong. As soon as Joker is able to get somewhere he’ll cause some damage, he is being attended by a single unarmed guard and an orderly. They even take him out of the restraints they had him in to take him down to the treatment rooms!

How did the Riddler hide all these trophies around the place? Most of them are in places even Batman struggles to get to, so Riddler must have been crawling around ventilation shafts for months. As a side issue, did no-one realise Batman had a Batcave hidden in the foundations? How did he even build it?** Who knows what else is lurking underneath the mansions.

A more appropriate level of security

With all of these flaws, it’s no wonder people are constantly breaking out. That said, when the founder of the Asylum’s idea of treatment is fatal electrocution, it’s not hard to see why the place doesn’t have a roaring trade in rehabilitation (and why so many people are keen to leave).

*Beyond the obvious ‘revolving door’ policy on sentencing, of course.

**Actually, this has always bothered me about Batman. Where does he get his labour? Do Bruce and Albert do all the heavy construction work in the Batcave themselves, or do they have a very discrete building contractor?

"Just as I expected. The agile crook also managed to slip an induction receiving antenna into your left trouser leg."

Now that I've spent a fair bit of time with it, I thought I would put down my thoughts on Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Batman shouldn't work; it's a video game based on comic IP riding the success of a movie adaptation. I struggle to think of a single recent game with either of these qualities that was better than mediocre; I hear the Marvel Ultimate Alliance games aren't too bad, and City of Heroes/City of Villains, although not based on a particular comic IP, are fairly well regarded. Nothing, however, can approach Batman in terms of style and passion. Batman: Arkham Asylum nails the one thing you want in a superhero game: it makes you feel like the Dark Knight himself.

The game begins with Joker captured and en route to Arkham. A wonderful sequence sees you escorting him to the depths of the Intensive Treatment building over the credits before, inevitably, the Joker breaks free. As you pursue him deeper into Arkham, it becomes clear that the joker has been planning his 'party' for some time, and you are his guest of honour.

It's worth pointing out that the game is not based on the recent successful films by Chris Nolan; good though they are, certain things key to the comic book had to be removed in the transition to the big screen. Though Arkham Asylum feels much more true to the comic book roots of the character, I would point to the critically lauded Batman: The Animated Series as inspiration for some of the stylistic choices (and, indeed, the story was written by Paul Dini, a writer for The Animated Series).

In fact, several of the voice actors return from the animated series return here; Kevin Conroy delivers a solid performance as the unflappable Batman, but stealing the show is Mark Hamil as Joker. You'll hear a lot from Joker throughout the game; he regularly pops up on the public address system to taunt you or, more likely, his own thugs scattered around Arkham. There are enough messages that they never get repetitive, though the thugs you fight for the most part of the game have considerably less variety.

The graphics are, put simply, gorgeous. The game runs surprisingly smoothly, even on a mid-level system. The character models are supremely detailed; it may just be my imagination, but I think you can even see Batman's stubble get longer over the course of the game. Some characters are definitely modelled after their animated versions (Killer Croc, for example). As this is the Unreal engine at work, outdoors environments are handled seamlessly (load times in general are very short, except for the unskippable start-up splash screen), though everything does tend to have a bit of a 'plasticy' look to it.

The visuals do a very good job of bringing Arkham to life; there are vague feelings of other games (the more gothic sections of Bioshock, for instance), but this is ultimately the comic book world of Gotham. The sprawling gothic buildings perfectly evoke the feeling of the infamous madhouse. In fact, you sometimes feel a little uncomfortable walking round it; to mirror Batman's sentiments, it's hard to imagine the place being conducive to anyone's mental wellbeing (I could talk for a while about this mirroring Batman's presence in Gotham; after all, in The Dark Knight Returns, Joker has effectively become comatose until Batman comes out of retirement. This would, however, be overly pretentious, so I won't).

The only thing which may cause drops in framerate is the PHYS-X effects. These are unique to the PC and add certain funky physical effects to the game; realistic smoke, cloth and paper curling and flapping realistically, breakable tiles, etc. These effects weren't present in the console versions and, to be perfectly honest, they're only ever a nice little extra; if you're suffering terrible framerates, you could happily turn them off.

Unfortunately, you may not see as much of the environment as you'd like as much of the game has you using Detective Mode. This vision mode allows you to see enemies through walls and highlights grates and weak walls for you to exploit. Though this sounds like it makes the game too easy, when you play for a while it just feels right; after all, you're Batman! The downside is that Detective Mode paints everything a deep blue, meaning you lose out on the lovely textures and models that have obviously had a lot of time and energy put into them.

Gameplay

MORE GAMEPLAY

Controls

Combat

Boss fights (not so good)

The 'silent hunter' gameplay is brilliant; you will occasionally be confronted with a room full of armed guards and will have to incapacitate them all before you can continue. Batman can use his grapple to swing about amongst the rafters and gothic architecture (ie, stone Gargoyles), and can sneak up behind thugs to silently knock them out. Other gadgets and upgrades offer more options, from multiple batarangs and selective detonating of your explosive gel (the inverted takedown comes highly recommended). There are plenty of ways to use the environment as well; there are walls to break down, grates to hide under, so you can meticulously plan your attack or improvise on the spot as you see fit.

The real joy in this mode, however, is watching the thugs become terrified as you take their comrades out one by one. You can hear them starting to talk to themselves ("I'm gonna die down here, and no-one's ever gonna know...") and see them shaking; occasionally, they'll even shoot into the shadows at curtains flapping in the breeze or a boiler venting off steam. Most of these sections are unlockable for play in the game's Challenge mode, so you can attempt them against the clock (or just have fun silently eliminating all the threats...).

Lasting Appeal

Challenge mode

Story mode replay

Hard mode

Unlockables (Riddler trophies)

ODST

Sorry, but what is the deal with Halo III: ODST? I’ll admit I’ve never been a huge Halo fan, but this is just starting to feel like the Emperor’s new clothes. It’s just another Halo game, people! They’re all boring; boring weapons, boring enemies, boring environments. Give me some Call of Duty any day of the week!

In other news, Batman: Arkham Asylum is out on PC today. Yay! Steam is downloading my copy as we speak… I’m so psyched about playing this; even Yahtzee seemed to enjoy it (speaking of Yahtzee, I’m intending on downloading all of his adventure games to play over the weekend to try and inspire me… I’m hoping to try and write my own adventure game [with a little help from a friend] using AGS!)

Coming up soon (early next week) will be a brief review of Time Gentlemen, Please!, the sequel to the free Ben There, Dan That. If you haven’t checked these out, go do it now! I’m also going to write some more stuff about Fallout 3, just a few thoughts I had about the dialogue that came to me the other day.

Enjoy the weekend, y’all!

Hulk Smash!

So, I've been playing a particular game a lot over the past couple of weeks... BUT! It's not a video game! I've finally got a copy of the reissued Games Workshop boardgame Space Hulk (well, I say finally, I actually got it three days before it was released in the shops), and have spent the last few weekends giving it a spin and playing through a variety of missions.

Space Hulk is Games Workshop's answer to Alien and Aliens. Your squad of Space Marine Terminators have boarded a drifting mash to derelict ships, the hulk, to prevent it from colliding with a nearby hive world. Scans of the hulk reveal it is teeming with sleeping Genestealers, a brooding and darkly intelligent alien species related to the Tyranids. One player leads the Terminators on various missions through the hulk's twisting corridors, the other takes the role of the Genestealers as they stalk the Space Marines through the ship. The Genestealers are initially represented by 'blips' which can hide between 1 and 3 aliens, and the Marine player can use a secret pool of command points to spring surprises on his opponent. In close combat, the odds are heavily stacked in the Genestealer's favour, so the Space Marines must do their best to engage at range with their rapid firing storm bolters...

The box itself is fantastic and, though it is pricey at nearly £60, it weighs in at around 4kg, with much of that being the beautifully detailed 'debossed' cardboard corridors and snap together plastic miniatures. Beware, though, it'll be a good few hours before you can actually play the game; it took me two solid evenings to clip out all the models and shave the flash off them.

The models really do deserve a special mention. They're as crammed full of detail as any of the metal commander models, and the plastic they're made of allows authentically spindly arms and pointy claws on the Genestealers. For the most part, mould lines are hidden well underneath the joins in plates of armour, and the many intricate details makes the models a painters dream. Of course, as they're snap together, there isn't really any scope for conversions, but as the formation of the squad is fixed this shouldn't be too much of an issue (and for your own games, you could always paint up a regular box of Terminators with any funky conversions). The only two slight criticisms are that the models are undeniably Blood Angels, so tough luck if you fancy painting them up as Smurfs, and that they are maybe too spindly; I had a couple of fine bits of detail snap off as I was assembling. However, as you can see, the models are absolutely fantastic.

It's been many years since I last played the game, so I can't reliably say whether the game has changed much since its previous incarnation, but it certainly feels authentic. The rules are nice and simple; they're very easy to learn, though I would recommend rereading the rules after you've played your first few games as there will undoubtedly be some small point you've missed! The game can often feel unbalanced one way or another, with some maps being very challenging for the Marines, and others seemingly impossible for the Genestealers. However, the point of the game is to play each map with both sides in a single match to even out any unfairness.

I thought I would round things off here with a quick summary of a few hints and tips I've picked up over the past few weekends:

• Firstly, and most basically, don't ever let a Space Marine get bogged down in combat. Only the Librarian and the two combat only Terminators can really reliably win, and even then, they should be left on Guard rather than being used offensively.
• Don't throw away Genestealers. It may seem like you a limitless amount, but quite often every single one will need to count.
• You should really be using the timer, it adds a lot to the game. However, a ten second pause at the beginning of your turn can work wonders; just remember to do the things you really need to get done on your turn first!
• Don't bunch your Space Marines up; bunched up Terminators can't fire, and you are therefore wasting their shots!
• Remember to read the manual; for instance, notice that Sergeants only get their +1 bonus (+2 for the chap with the Thunder Hammer) if an attack came from the front square only. Also, closing a door will trigger overwatch, as will opening it; a Genestealer can stand behind a door opening and closing it to trigger jams or waste assault cannon ammunition!
• Finally, paint your models :)