Brutal Legend/Arkham Asylum - Reviews

Well, it's been a while. I've only been posting big, lengthy, informative posts. I've been putting alot of effort into the podcast, WoW Raiding 101, and that website, but I've also been pretty busy with RL. But, my blog will return to what it was before - a huge cesspit of random, funny content. So now, you can see above the classic banner, and below, thanks to GameFly, you can find my reviews for two great, very much random, games I played.

Brutal Legend

The campaign doesn't take too long, as long as you don't do side quests before going on with the main story. Maybe six hours. But it's a ton of fun. Brutal Legend is a hack and slash, vehicular combat, real-time strategy, first-person badass, game.

Basically, you're Eddie Riggs, roadie to a metal band that made me think of Bleach. They suck, they cater to the tween demographic, it's hell. One of the band members climbs up on a raft and Eddie has to save them - he does so, falls and survives - until a huge amplifier falls on him. When he wakes up, he is being attacked by hooded figures. You escape alongside a hot chick and find the rebel's camp. It's led by Lars, a tall, muscular, blond dude. You then can enjoy the first part of the campaign - driving around, killing things yourself, good fun.

That is - until you rescue the headbangers from evil. Then, it becomes a RTS. It becomes a RTS so fast, it's not even funny. One second it's a hack and slash, the next it's a mega RTS. You control your headbangers now. Your girlfriend nearly dies, and you go and kill a huge spider so that a doctor voiced by Ozzy Osbourne can rez her. Then you control headbangers, girls with pig guns, and doctors on motorcycles. This evolves until you have a huge fucking RTS.

But that doesn't mean the game isn't fun - alot of the battles are RTS matches, but it's still a unique PvE RTS that is different to me. It's not like Warcraft or Starcraft - you go around making towns and fighting down paths and shit. It's not like DOTA as well - you just summon mobs to your rock stage and send them off to kill towers on a parallel map. The computer player does the same. It's like playing DOTA with NPCs controlling the other team.

The game was a ton of fun and running through the campaign is epic. The conclusion? Even more badass. Spoiler alert - Eddie kills the big bad dude and Lars gets all the credit for getting one shotted. Like he said, if a roadie is doing his job right, he never gets seen, never gets noticed. His job is to make other people look good.



Batman: Arkham Asylum


This game is alot of fun. The campaign is huge, over ten hours of gameplay. You play as Batman himself. It's very much hack and slash - no loot, no additional mobs under your control - It's just Batman, raping people. You press X to attack, Y to counter, and tap L to throw your Bataarang quickly. It's easy to fight, but there are some little encounters that test your mind, fingers, and reaction time.

Batman drives Joker into Arkham Asylum, the mental institute for the criminally insane. Batman comes with the guards as they put Joker in his cell. Something isn't right. Joker came almost without a fight. And it wasn't right - Joker hatched a plan to take over Arkham Island. Harley Quinn, the Joker's girlfriend, activates the security gates after Joker runs off down a hall - his guards unconscious on the floor. Hundreds of Joker's thugs were imprisoned in Arkham, and Joker uses them to overtake the island.

You fight and try to find Joker. You can look for Riddler challenges while progressing the main story - You basically look for Joker, save doctors, smoke shrooms and fight a giant scarecrow, break up Harley Quinn and Joker, fight Poison Ivy's giant plant monsters, and the story evolves - a doctor was being paid by Joker to create a medicine to make monsters. She bailed out and declined the payments, he didn't like that so much. But his "venom" is completed and he morphs his thugs into muscular monsters who you have to use against each other to destroy.

The game is pretty fun. You can sneak around and beat people up - Batman's all about being sneaky, doing silent takedowns and the like. The game has a nice combat system, but it's not extremely difficult. The gadgets that Batman get progress gradually yet are completely awesome - and the game is full of humor. For example. I'm standing and see a giant pool of electricity on the floor. One of Joker's thugs says "Haha, stupid bat, we turned on the electricity, you can't get across!" and they high-five their partner. Then you use a gadget to slide across a rope attached to both walls and cross the insta-death water, and kick the thug smack on the nose.

GameFly

Obviously GameFly isn't a video game, but a service. For the small price of 15 dollars a month for one game or 22 dollars for 2 games, you can rent any game you want. For any amount of time you want. For 15 dollars a month. Or, alternatively, you can pay 50 dollars for some random shooter game you're only going to play for 4 hours. Or, y'know, you can get GameFly.




There ya go, finished. Enjoy! And have a Merry Christmas! Wait, that's in two months? Oh well, I'm greedy and I'm gonna milk this originally jolly holiday into a huge ball of profit and economics.