To the people with PS3s and X-Boxs who keep on telling me how awesome and fun Batman: AA is, you are bad, evil people, because I can’t get the game for PC until September 30th. I might not even be able to get it until *later* as I need to save my cash for Dragon Age: Origins (I want the CE), and Divine Divinity 2, and probably Alpha Protocol.

Thank goodness they delayed BioShock 2.

For those without PS3s or X-Boxes, please hold off buying the game until September 30th, or you might feel compelled to tell me how much fun you’re having.

I'm playing Betrayal in Antara and loving it. It's wonderful how a lack of expectations and choice makes a game enjoyable. This is a continuous statement though ‘RPGs need less choice;’ I can’t get others to agree with it.

Betrayal in Antara is a very basic RPG as it was made back in 1997. I have no idea how it manages to fill my 22’ widescreen monitor, but it does so with only vertical bars on the side. The graphics are crude, the fighting is very basic, and discussions involve you clicking on a topic and sitting back while the three PCs discuss something with an NPC.

The PC’s are all pregenerated: William of Escobar, third son of the noble house Escobar, who’s a warrior, Aren, son of an innkeeper who learns he can use magic, and Kaelyn, the girl who’s a ranger. Their history and looks are totally out of your control. And that’s fine. In fact, that’s great.

I’d say ‘more RPGs should do this’ but there’s a slight problem with this. If RPGs used pre-generated characters then 98% of RPGs would be about straight, white dudes. As-is, Betrayal in Antara has two white dudes who fit nicely in the plot, and a white gal who decided to join them permanently for no particular reason. However, given that Willian and Kaelyn constantly bicker, I assume they’ll fall in love with one another.

Perhaps it’s because I grew up reading books instead of playing games or watching TV, but without a pregenerated PC, I always find the NPCs more interesting than the PC. They have personality, while the PC is this boring glob that I’m expected to project a personality onto. This works fine for some people, but for the majority I don’t think this is the case. If people wanted to play a character who was simply an empty receptacle they could move around, they’d pick up a FPS, and even shooters are moving around from that model.

I’m not entirely serious when I say that RPGs need less choices. What I mean is that the increased choices in RPGs are all about things I don’t care about. Sure, oblivion style facial sliders mean we have a ton of choice when it comes to the character’s face, but does that choice matter? The majority of time, I can’t even see my character’s face, and people in the game world fail to acknowledge that I look just like Angelina Jolie or, and this is far more like, that my face is bizarrely distorted because no matter how hard I try, my create custom face skill is remains at 0.

Mass Effect is almost a parody of weapon and armor selection in RPGs. Five hundred different versions of the exact same thing. I would prefer a game where there is the basic arms and armor, perhaps three upgrades, and a few, unique items that are better than usual. Increased in damage, accuracy, speed or protection would be through increasing character skill.

We have World of Warcraft and Diablo type RPGs where, a character is purely about your class, stats, and gear, and where the main activity is killing stuff for XP. I would love an RPG that is the exact opposite: a predefined character with built in history and desires, little inventory, no attributes, no XP, and very little combat.

Oh, how I miss you Quest for Glory. It’s so sad to have fallen in love with a game design that is completely out of fashion.

The catacombs is the first ‘dungeon crawler’ I experienced in Guild Wars. There were about eight quests in it, and the areas were obviously given more thought from a visual point of view. During the game, you have the pick a second profession, and I ran around with the necromancer trainer before she dropped me off at a small side passage where I had to reanimate corpses and send them into deadly traps before killing a nightmare at the bottom of the passage.



For a reward, I got a grim cesta that I’m still using at level 8. Leveling is very slow in this game, as the max level is 20.

What this area lacked was two things 1) A boss, and 2) a story.

I ran around and killed everything I could find. The quest map – as opposed to the travel map – shows the area you’re in, any NPCs of interest, and places a bright green star where the next quest object is. Very useful for navigating a twisting lair of evil.

The only climax was finding the corpse of the moa bird in a large shrine area covered with candles and symbols on the wall. When I stepped in, a few shadowy things spawned and attacked me. That was it though. No interesting treasure, no powerful creature to beat, and no clue as to who killed the bird or why they needed it when there are tons of other critters running around they could have sacrificed.

I logged off for the night, and the next day start doing the rest of the ‘secondary profession’ quests for the XP they bring before picking my secondary.

While in town, I decide to interact with another human being. This is harder than you’d think as chat is constantly being spammed with WTS/WTB notices. I also encountered some interesting graphical errors. The white boxes below are other players.



I eventually begin a conversation with an actual human being (who writes in correct English and everything!) and learn that the ‘50g for GM’ requests aren’t people asking for a Game Master, but a Gate Monkey. There’s a gate to the north of here you need another player to open for you, and people will pay you 50g to open it for them. She offers to do so for me – for free – and I accept, it turns out I have a quest there. I had written it off, actually, but figured if someone wanted to party with me, I wouldn’t say no.

After opening the gate, we find ourselves again in a dangerous area full of Charr (have no idea what these are, other than ugly and evil). We finish the quest, and then go Charr hunting, which means her attacking them and Maya using spells to heal and protect her.

Yes, I am becoming a support character. It’s not that bad.

When we finish with the last group, she doesn’t suggest we slip into the nearby pond, but she does explain a large number of things about the game that were not in the manual and of which I was clueless about. She also tells me to pick elementalist as my secondary profession.

I do so, and start The Path of Glory.

Yes, this is the experience I was hoping for. The Charr break through the wall and attack the heartland. The area is destroyed, the NPCs I’ve interacted with die, and I’m teleported two years later into the ruined husk of the city I started out in. Unholy magics have overtaken the area. Neat!

But that means Devona is dead! My poor, virginal monk will be devastated when she finds out.

I open up a storage bin, grab a henchman (She’s a monk and her title is ‘healer henchman.’ Do you have to rub it in guys?), and run off to meet the ambassador from Krynn or Kreia or something. At his camp, I find the Elementalist that taught me my powers. Good to know someone survived. Then again, she was far south near Wizard’s Folly when the Charr attacked, so that makes sense.

She tells Maya that she can teach the monk no more, which is odd as Maya knows all of four elementalist spells. The Ambassador and I have a chat, at which point Maya comments that he doesn’t look like he’s from around here. I like that they include actual conversations in the game, but I’d like to think my PC is smart enough to grasp that an ambassador from a foreign kingdom *isn’t* from around here.

I check the ruins of the village where Devona once patrolled, and only find a monk who wants to teach me spells. My henchman proves useful as the monsters constantly run by Maya to attack her. She then flees like the cloth-wearing coward she is, and she’s very quick. As the monsters try to chase them down, Maya damages them with her spells.



While I’ve complained about the game, I’m enjoying myself. I don’t know if I should continue on with Maya or try one of the other campaigns. I’m interested in playing an assassin, or possibly a dervish. Then again, I read that the other campaigns had spoilers for Prophesies, and I don’t want that.

Right now, I am soloing all the content without problem, but I worry that later on I'll need to join groups, and I hate the idea of being someone's healbot.

There are times when you have to admit that you’ve made a mistake. After playing Khnum Maya until level 3, I had collected eight monk abilities and three necro abilities. The majority of monk spells were meant to heal and protect, and they specified that they could be used on allies.

The cloth gear, the healing and support powers, the wand weapon, ‘divine favor’ as primary attribute – it all lead to one unmistakable conclusion. My monk was just Guild Wars’ version of a priest. The game had tricked me into rolling a priest, the only class that’s less appealing to me than a mage. The plate wearing cleric of DnD or a paladin is fine, but I’m referring to the cloth wearer whose role is to stand near the back and heal others.

And I have to say, I’m impressed that they snuck this under my radar. I don’t know why, but I’m just more inclined to play a monk than a priest, even though the only real difference is the flavor. Priest wear dresses while monks where sensible robes that still distinguish them from the common labor, merchant, or soldier. Priests represent converting others to one’s beliefs while monks represent reflecting on their understanding. The power of a priest comes from a calling a specific being while the power of a monk comes from channeling the energy that makes up everything.

These are simplifications – stereotypes even - but conceptually I’m much more attracted to the idea/ideals of an Asian monk over that of a Western priest.

By level 3, I finally figured out how to get the stupid tattoo off my head. It’s the monk version of a helmet and can be disabled in the inventory.

I’d discovered the collectors: NPCs that stand around waiting for you to give them 3-5 of a specific item and in turn will provide access to possibly useful items. I picked up a belt pouch for extra inventory space, and much later (level 6 and 7) handwraps and a chest piece, the only armor I could find in this area.

I complained earlier about the barrenness of the world, so imagine my surprise at level 3 when I stepped from the shared city to the private instance and the world was crawling with mobs. It seems that what spawns in an area depends on your level. Many of the critters didn’t attack me, while a few did, and a few would attack only if others were attacking me. There’s no way to know beforehand which will or won’t do so as they’re all red dots on the mini-map. I am not sure if I like this or prefer the WoW, non-hostiles in yellow style.

Eager to see to what extent I could manipulate the world, I head to Farmer [NPC name] and gave him one of the eggs I’d gotten as a quest reward for smashing beetles. You see, Farmer [NPC name] has giant plague worms popping out of his farm. I’d already killed three of them to get their husks so I could trade them to a collector for my belt pouch. Farmer [NPC Name] says he can use a devourer egg to lure the plague worm queen to the surface, I’ll kill her and then the plague worms will leave the area.

In a regular MMORPG, I’d know this is bunk. Either a mob spawns as part of an event or it continuously spawns. If I’m in Un’Goro, and I have a quest to kill the queen of the hive in order to stop it from repopulating, that queen and those bugs will always respawn because there are five thousand other people who need to kill them. There though, no one needs to kill these plague worms but me.

I hurry after Farmer [NPC Name], kill the queen in a disappointingly unepic battle, and the worms keep popping up. Farmer [NPC Name] then thanks me then gives me a quest to find his bird in the catacombs. I have to say, that’s disappointing. Here’s a chance for Guild Wars to show me how it’s different from every other MMORPG, and it doesn’t even try.

What is the point of having an individual play experience if, like every other MMO, I truly have no effect on the world?

After wandering around the fields as plague worms continuously pop up like crazed whack-a-moles, Maya heads back to the small town Farmer [NPC Name] is from. It’s there that she meets her first real NPC. Meaning, the first non-player character with *character:* Devona. Maya is instantly moved by the way her armor sparkles in the sunlight. The way her strong hands grip the oversized warmaul she carries.



Devona asks Maya to help her defend the village from attacking Grawl. Our humble monk gladly accepts the quest, and together they run across the bridge where a band of the… ugly looking humanoid things have gathered. Maya stands back, healing and occasionally firing bolts of magical energy from her water staff, while Devona charges in, smiting the noxious creatures and their shaman leader. Afterwards, she reassures Maya that the Grawl won’t return for awhile; while violent, they won’t risk their numbers against an obviously superior foe. The group we just faced was a scouting party, sent to see how the village defenses held up as the Charr attacked from the north.

I only half-listen to this as I consider what just happened. I stayed back to heal and support another, and I liked it. Somewhat. It wasn’t bad.

Devona, still sweaty and covered in blood from the battle, and she asks Maya to join her in the pond beside the village for a bath. I imagine them stripping down, plunging into that cool water, and rubbing one another down. Afterwards, she’d wrap her muscular arms around Maya and they’d make love in the shallows, killing the occasional River Skale that wandered too close. While the attraction is obvious, I have to turn her down, as I can’t imagine monk vows allows for frisky business with righteous warrior types.

Instead, I have about five quests in the first dungeon: The catacombs

This sucks.

The continuing adventures of Khnum Maya were going well, and I decided to pick up the expansions to the original game: Factions and Nightfall. Heading down to my local Target, I found the Trilogy pack that I had looked for at Fry’s. As it was the same price as buying the two expansions separately, I snatched it up.

(Note: I’ve spent $73 altogether for this game, but I don’t plan on picking up another game until Divine Divinity 2, Dragon Age, or Alpha Protocal drops in November.)

Tonight, I finish my work and then try to load up the game by entering my ‘Access Key.’ It won’t let me.

I already have Prophecies (the original Guild Wars game) on this account, so I can’t install the trilogy pack. Why can’t it skip adding Prophecies to my account and just add Faction and Nightfall instead?

And, of course, I can’t get rid of my current access key and replace it with this one either. I can’t return the game as it’s opened software. Why NSoft? Why would you do something so stupid?

Edit:

I have figured out a way around this problem. While I can't enter an access key via the game interface, I was able to create a master NCSoft account, entered in my Trilogy Access Key, and then link the master account to my Guild Wars account. This appeared to override the original Guild Wars Access Key though, as I no longer see it listed. My character is still there though, so it's fine.

ALSO. Mass Effect Patch 1.02 is out, which includes this fix:
The issue where PCs with NVIDIA GeForce 8xxx and above video cards were experiencing random General Protection Fault crashes appears to have been fixed with the GeForce 182.06+ drivers. Please ensure when playing Mass Effect that all PC drivers are up to date.

Maybe I can go back to playing the game on high at max resolution.

Edit 2:

I installed the patch, downloaded the newest NVIDIA drivers for my Geforce 8800 GTX, restarted, get the resolution to 1680 x 1050* with high particles and ultra high textures, fired up a new John Shepard and... the computer crashed when I hit the end of the cutscene. Oh well. Can't win them all.

* Someone asked how to do this. Fire up your ME config utility, scan the system, change the aspect ratio to widescreen, and *then* change the resolution.

Proof that randomly bloging about my collection of games has benefits:

Modified Betrayal in Antara Installer for Vista

Sent to me today from Talin, who read about me not being able to play it on Vista. Now I can finally finish one of the games I bought a decade ago. Great!

Today at Fry’s I picked up a new game: Guild Wars. I’ve heard good things about it from people on the BioWare boards. Fry’s only had the original game and one of the expansions. I’d have liked the trilogy pack, but I suppose if it’s good enough I’ll just buy the entire thing bit by bit.


It’s installing right now. I assume this means it’s installing the regular game, and then downloading all the latest patches from the internet. Oh, hey, that took about 15 minutes. Nice.

I’m immediately prompted to enter all of my personal information. As they’re not charging my credit card, I have no idea why they need this. After setting up my account, I'm taken to a set up screen where I’m offered the six classes – warrior, ranger, monk, necromancer, mesmer, and elementalist – the one sentence descriptions offer me little information. I usually pick a warrior for my first character, as they tend to be the same across games, but I decide to try something else. Ranger doesn’t appeal; I don’t want ranged damage and I don’t want a pet.

Necromancer and Elementalist seem like wimpy magic users, which leaves me with Monk and Mesmer. Long ago, I did a image search for female monks and came up with a GW picture where the lady was bald. BALD. That’s awesome so I pick a monk.



I’m then taken to more customization options. I can change the height of my character within a range. I assume this is so guys are always taller than women. In WoW, I always picked a Draenei gal so I could tower over the puny human men I met, but my monk will be tiny. They also allow me to change the color of my character’s clothing and to have a tattoo on her head.

Why would I want a tattoo on her head? Her head is awesome. I also keep the robes orange to show her humility. Lastly, I name her: Khnum Maya

As soon as I create the character, I’m tossed into a cutscene where a king pontificates about the charr attacking. I notice he has a flaming sword and is very white. This is apparently a fantasy setting based on the European middle-ages, so what is my monk doing there?

The king pronounces that the greatest hero in the land must be found and the camera swoops down on… something . Oh, that’s me and three other people standing in the exact same spot. I move forward, click on the NPC with the green arrow, accept a quest (I don’t read what he says, the first questgiver never says anything of interest), and another NPC gains a green arrow over his head. I run all of twelve steps, click on him, and finish my first quest (150xp).

Yes, that’s lame.

The second quest giver then sends me to a third quest giver. During this time, other people have been running around me, and someone is spaming world chat with requests for gold. I pass a guy named 'Bacon Lube.' Then there's the third questgiver who tells me to… run outside and talk to someone else. Okay.

Questgiver three stands beside an archway filled with shimmering mists. I run through, hit a three-second loading screen, and everyone else disappears. I’m in a private ‘exploration’ area.



If you can’t tell from the screenshot, it’s all terribly generic pseudo-medieval fantasy looking so far. Moreover, that damned tattoo is on my head though I specifically unchecked it, and I appear to be wielding a glowy mace. I find both of these facts disappointing. I had hoped to use punches and kicks as attacks, or maybe have monkish weapons like a staff, Chinese sword, or tiger claws. As there are classes instead of races, why not give monks their own Chinese-influenced starting area?

Anways, I have another questgiver so I run up to him and get my first real quest: He gives me two abilities (I have a row of eight possible spells/abilities in my hotbar) and tells me to rescue a little girl from across the river, but beware, there are monsters!

I immediately attack the first red dot on my map… and my mace begins to spew energy. That’s right. It’s not a mace, it’s a WAND. My awesome monk is wielding a freaking WAND. The indignity is almost too much to bear. At the same time, a humble monk like Maya wouldn’t be bothered by using the most pansy of fantasy ‘weapons.’ I try to think of grasshoppers and wrens as I slaughter three creatures I know nothing about, but I assume are evil. (He said MONSTERS. A random guy with a green exclamation point over his head would never lie to me.)

The little girl follows me back to the ability-granting questgiver and I get more XP. He then gives me a quest to hike across the map to talk to yet another questgiver. No, just no.

I decide to explore the area, and quickly learn that the world is barren. After searching for three minutes, I finally find another questgiver standing beside the only mob spawn point in the area: a small cave of giant bugs with eggs. I lead his assistant into the cave and kill two giant bugs. I then encounter one stuck in the wall.

Problem: The assistant won’t pick the eggs unless the bugs are dead, but I can’t attack the bug because ‘Obstructed View.’ I run up to the bug and walk right into it, but still get the ‘Obstructed View’ error when I attempt to attack it. I finally rummage through my inventory and switch the holy wand with a two-handed hammer. Problem solved. With a feeling of great sorrow, Maya pummels the bug into the rock of the cave.

Wand = Crap weapon. That’s all the evidence I need.

Weapons in this game don’t appear to have any speed or strength requirement, and don’t seem to be limited by class. As I continue to smash bugs to a gooy pulp with my giant hammer, I wonder if I’m doing something wrong; I must have started out with a wand for a reason and wand wielders usually don’t benefit from two-handers. Perhaps in this game, weapon utility is determined by magical enhancements. Like wands give you +5 to energy while giant hammers give you +5 to strength, and energy is ultimately more important to a monk.

I have little time to ponder this before I come across the newest bit of inanity…



Large barrels in the middle of a open, well-lit area without even grass to obstruct them are now a 'Hidden Stash.' A can only imagine a game of hide-and-go-seek with the developers of this game would consist of them standing on the coffee table, waving their arms.

Coming Next: I level, and Maya finds true love.

I wrote this instead of playing Mass Effect. I want to play Mass Effect. I wish they’d just hand out a list of stuff that changes your ME 2 play through, as one of my biggest complaints about ME 1 was the lack of consequences for your actions. I’m doing a FemShep, Paragon soldier who romances Liara and sacrifices Ashley.

But, I’m not playing Mass Effect because it crashes my computer whenever a cutscene plays. (The long, unskipable cutscenes that I’ve seen at least a dozen times already) I have no idea what the problem is. I’ve played the game previously on this computer with no problem. I can only assume there’s a conflict with the game and the latest driver from NVidia. Bizarrely enough, when it crashes my desktop, it also cleans out all my cookies.

I was able to make it through the first cutscene by turning all textures and particle effects to low, and setting my resolution at 1024 x [whatever it is], but that’s rather unsatisfying when I can play the rest of the game with settings at maximum at a resolution of 1650 x 1050. Then again, when ME first came out, I played the entire thing at 800 x 600 at the lowest possible settings, and I was glad for it because my computer was woefully underspec.

I even remember the horror of the conduit run. A sequence that CANNOT be finished if your FPS is under 20. I literally went through that one section over fifty times and could not do it. It too featured an unskipable cutscene (We must protect the council!) though never once did my computer crash while I played.

This is, and has always been, the big problem with computer games: they’re just so finicky. I’ve just done a clean install on Vista (goodbye achievements/previous playthroughs) and now I can’t launch the configure utility. I’m sure the available patch will fix this. At the same time, the opening cutscene didn’t make my game crash. Why mess with a good thing?

Of course, that means I won’t be able to play Bring Down the Sky, which is something I’m looking forward to.

I mentioned that the lack of visible consequences for actions in ME was a complaint of mine I hope to see remedied in ME2. In fact, I’d say that a great deal of my eventually evaluation of the second game will depend on how well it fulfills the promises of the first. My other major complaint about the game is the alignment system.

I am not anti-alignment. In a computer RPG, choices are limited, so I think having an explicit ethical system with measurable increases, decrease, and consequences is a fine model to base actions and dialogue on. My problem is when we’re presented with an ethical system that claims to be more than good and evil, but isn’t. I had the same issue with Jade Empire and its Open Palm/Closed Fist. There’s the opportunity to explore issues and values that haven’t been tackled before, and we’re reduced to Be Nice and Helpful or Be a Violent Asshole.

In one of the newly released ME2 demos, we have a renegade option that involves kicking a guy off a roof because he gives you lip. In ME, we had punching out insane people and reporters. I realize some people love it, but I feel cheated when my options are to act like the perfect soldier or an eight-year-old in an adult’s body. Likewise, one of the ‘big choices’ in ME failed to take into account the most paragon of actions. On Noverria, I’m given the choice to kill the Queen or let her go. Garris remarks that we should leave this up to the Council. Er, good point. This is something a soldier who’s interested in protocol and following orders would definitely want to do.

I wish alignment systems in games were similar to the Hierarchy of Sins in Vampire: the Masquerade. The original rulebook gave us one that looked a great deal like conventional morality, but some of the splatbooks presented ethical systems that ranged from eccentric to inhuman. The thing is though that they were all based around an ideal, and when you read them, you quickly understood what that ideal was and why the ‘sins’ violated it.

And I think it’s important that the developers actually have an ideal in mind other than random jerkery. Take Open Palm in Jade Empire. The Open Palm respects harmony and social conventions. In the Jade Empire some people are considered inherently better or worse than others, and slavery has a long history. Therefore, a follower of the Open Palm ought to condone slavery, but if you do so in the game, you get Closed Fist points.

It seems in ME2, they’re abandoning the original notion of Paragon altogether. When asked if you’re going to stop an assassin, your dialogue options are ‘Why?’ and ‘No.’ Where is the ‘Hell, yeah’ option? Last time I checked, assassination is rather illegal; if a Spectre considers themselves an officer of the law, they’d stop an assassination.

I understand that the story is supposed to be darker, and the PC is gathering together a band of scum and ruffians (the most elite scum and ruffians available), but I’d rather have the option to play Paragon and suffer for it, instead of having to play Renegade or Indifferent.

Three pages of games I have on my computer, many of which I end up deleting. Read only if you find the minutia of another’s playlist of bizarre interest. Tomorrow I detail the games coming out that I look forward to.

After deleting the Batman demo from my system today, I realized had icons for 12 games, plus Steam and the NWN Toolset on my desktop.

I went through and deleted a few:
Diablo II – Just can’t enjoy it like I used to. Please implement a regular save system in Diablo III Blizzard
Fallout 3 – Didn’t finish the main story line, but explored a ton of the wasteland.
Mirror’s Edge
Mist III
Oblivion – Only played a little. It’s uninteresting when compared to FO3.
Overlord 2

I checked in my games directory and then deleted them more. When you uninstall a game, it will inevitably leaves files and folders on your computer despite any insistence that yes, you want it ALL gone.

Leaving me with the following on my desktop:

BioShock – I’m a wimp when it comes to scary games, so haven’t been able to finish it.
Dead Space – See above
Dreamfall – Could never get it to work on Window’s Vista
Left4Dead – Play frequently, but suck
Monkey Island (the Secret of) – Was playing and enjoying right before I had my tooth pulled
Mass Effect – This game is the reason I have a new computer. My old one couldn’t play it so I attempted to overclock it, caused it to break down a few times, and so decided to get a new comp. I want to do one more complete play through before ME 2 comes out.
World of Warcraft – Play frequently.

Then I cracked open my LSN/Game folder to find:

Assassin’s Creed – Interesting first part, then you realize the rest of the game is doing that first part repeatedly. (deleted)
Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, Tutu - I’ve never finished the first game, and finished the first once despite trying several times to get through it. Thank goodness RPGs have moved away from this gameplay style. Deleted.
Betrayal in Antara/Quest for Glory 5 – want desperately to play and finish them, but BiA doesn’t run correctly in Vista and QfG5 has a game stopping bug. (deleted)
Civilization 4 – One of the best games ever made, IMHO. Jump to Desktop
Devil May Cry 4 – Enjoyable game, but must remember to get gamepad the next time I’m at Fry’s, as the controls are poor with mouse and keyboard.
Thief: Deadly Shadows – Great game. Deserves a jump to desktop.
Titan’s Quest with Immortal Throne - My favorite of the Diablo Clones, but could have used randomize maps. I get tired of playing through the exact same areas. Also, it’s too easy on normal difficulty. (deleted – though now that I think about it, I gave the game disks to Max. I’ll probably never see them again)
Wizardry 8 – So much potential, but the constantly spawning monsters that you can’t avoid and are always scaled to your level annoy me. Also, I’m stuck fighting a group on monstrous rat men that I have to kill for the main quest. I just can’t survive the battle. (deleted)

Not finished!

It’s time for LSN/My Documents. Even though I have a LSN/Games directory that Windows created just for game information, companies love to toss crap in My Documents folder. This is usually saved games or ‘user generated data.’ The thing is that I’m obsessive about keeping the My Documents folder in perfect order since I have tons of stuff in there. Seeing an extra folder spring up annoys me, especially when there’s a Game folder, especially as if I delete or move it my game won’t work, and especially as they don’t always disappear when I uninstall.

BioShock Save Games - I hate you now, BioShock.
BioWare, Mass Effect Data - I hate you now, Mass Effect
Capcom, Devil May Cry 4 - I hate you now, Devil May Cry 4
EA Games, Mirror’s Edge -Delete
Eidos, Batman Arkham Asylum –Delete. Seriously? A demo with no save properties and no ability to change graphic settings needs this folder?
Electronic Arts, Dead Space and the Sims 3 Saves - Deleted Sims 3. I hate you now Dead Space.
Neverwinter Nights 2 - Delete
Thief Deadly Shadows – Hate you

Moving on to LSN/My Documents/My Games, which is a holdover from XP.

Sacred Underworld – Hey, I remember you! I was hoping you’d be Divine Divinity, but you were just the ugly, boring Diablo clone people claim Divine Divinity was. Delete.
Dawn of War 2 – When did I get this game? Maybe this was a demo? I remember playing it. A RTS based on the Warhammer 40K universe, and all you get to play is white, male space marines. What a waste. Deleted. (I have the WH40K Inquisitor PnP RPG though, and wish someone would make a game from that.)
Demigod - A boring, shallow game with an interesting premise. Waste of my money. Deleted.
Diablo II, Overlord 2, Oblivion, Titan Quest - Deleted again.
Dungeon Siege 2 - One of the better Diablo Clones. I liked the follower and pet system. The story wasn’t bad, the gameplay was fun, and I like that it tried out a learn-by-doing system. Hmm. I’ve decided this was better than Titan Quest. Deleted.
Enzai - Japanese H-game (that means interactive pr0n story). Never did get any of the good endings, so my waifish, please-don’t-tell-me-what-age-he-is, and wrongly imprisoned hero always ended up a sex slave in prison or murdered. It occurs to me that Americans would never make an erotic game with 15 ending, the majority of which end up with the guy dead or insane. Deleted.
Far Cry 2 - Enjoyable, open world FPS set in warring African states in which everyone is trying to kill you. Could have been improved immeasurably with a STALKER like faction system, and guard posts that don’t magically replenish no matter how many times you wipe them out. Deleted.
Freelancer - One of the better space pilot/merchant/fighter games. Meaning it tried not to be dreadfully boring. Good story and characters. Deleted.
Galactic Civilization II with Twilight and Dark Avatar - A 4x game in which you control a galactic empire. Good AI, rewards different styles of play, each alien race has its own personality, and okay ‘storyline.’ Move to regular Games folder, put shortcut on desktop. Hope nothing breaks.
Halo 2 - I ought to finish this someday. Moved to regular Game folder.
Beyond Divinity - Not as bad as people who liked the first say it is, but still hampered by a milquetoast story and the dreadful Battleground system. Deleted.
Black and White 2 - Why did I even buy this? I didn’t like the first one. Oh, wait, I liked the animals. I raised my giant leopard into a paragon of goodness. Rainbow trails followed him, he’d irrigate the fields, dance for my villagers, and constantly pick up and snuzzle them too. Moved to regular Game folder.
Sierra: Arcanum, Outpost I and II, Quest for Glory Anthology, and Throne of Darkness - I believe Outpost was the first PC game I ever played. That or the original Prince of Persia. (Moved) I didn’t realize Sierra published Arcanum. It’s okay, but nothing compared to Trokia’s last game: Bloodlines. (deleted). Throne of Darkness was a rather mediocre Diablo clone set in Japan. (deleted) Quest for Glory was an excellent RPG series in the mid-90s. I played the second one, which was texted based, without any manual and never made it to the end. It wasn’t until I got my first computer that I played through the series. (deleted)
Beyond Good and Evil - This is only the save file folder. Another game I gave to Max, never to see again. (deleted)

I know I'm late to this ball game, but...



The unlockable tribal skin for Sheva with leopard print, white paint, leaf skirt, and giant knife. I have no idea why anyone thought Resident Evil 5 was racially insensitive. Why this is the most progressive image of African spearchuckers since the 1920s!

In the interests of full disclosure, I hate Batman. Okay, hate is too strong a word, but I dislike the character immensely. Long before I was a video game geek, I was a comic geek. I’ll admit that in the hands of a skilled writer (1980s Frank Millar), Batman can be great, but in the hands of a skilled writer, any comic book character can be great.

My main complaint is that Batman can do no wrong. He’s supposed to be the most ‘dark and realistic’ hero in the DCU, but is often portrayed as a model of intellectual, physical, and ethical perfection who the plot-gods make sure always comes out on top no matter what the situation.

But I’m talking about the GAME DEMO here, so I will attempt to keep an open mind, even though I greatly dislike the main character.

The first thing I noticed was an inability to fiddle with the graphic settings. No changing your resolution, textures, or SFX. It’s very possible this is just because it’s a demo, but if that’s the case in the full game, I wouldn’t complain. I tend to think of graphics settings as either accommodating people whose computer doesn’t meet the recommended specs or massaging the ego of those who’ve have high-end systems. Graphically speaking, I think games would be better if there was a single end-user experience.

The second thing I noticed was the ‘character bios’ section. I love this sort of fluff, so I immediately clicked on it. Only Batman and the Joker are displayed. Batman has an expression I interpret as constipated man stoically going to the bathroom, or five-year-old denied his peanut butter cookie. The Joker has two out of five audio tapes of an interview between the Joker and… Magma from X-Men: Legends? It sounds just like her to me, and she’s apparently a doctor now. While the Joker’s tapes don’t interest me – by definition, his psyche is meant to be impenetrable – I hope we get to listen to/discover those of other villains. It might be a neat way to get into their head and have them portrayed as more than one-dimensional punching bags. (It worked in BioShock!)



We start with a brief cinematic in which Batman rushes through the city in his Batmobile with the Joker handcuffed in the backseat. Gotham looks suitably stylish. Not as impressive as Tim Burton’s Gotham, but not just a copy of New York either. Batman himself is very broad and muscular, moreso than I prefer. While he’s not Spider-Man, his fighting style is fairly athletic and acrobatic, and he spends as much time running and swinging as he does lifting heavy objects.

After the cutscene, we’re immediately tossed into a battle with a group of shirtless thugs who all have the same broad, muscular build. I vaguely point Batman at one, click my left mouse button and he punches. I continue to click the button while sometimes changing direction and Batman performs a wild range of stylish moves, sometimes in slow motion. I’m even graded on my combos. It feels like Devil May Cry 4, but requires far less in the way of timing or chaining together moves. There’s an interesting contrast between the stiff, Dead Space like movement just walking/moving, and the very fluid movements of the combat. One moment, I’m playing a comic book, and the next, I’m back to driving my grandfather’s rice combine harvester.

After the obligatory smack-down segment, the Joker invites me to come and find him. I wander into the nearby cells and find something out of Silent Hill. This pleases me, as one of my favorite versions of Arkham is that of a hellish, cruel pit the uncaring citizens of Gotham toss anyone who can’t handle reality. And that people tend to become more violent and insane after being interred in it for awhile. I get a few new character bios, and discover a fairly obvious secret object.

The corridors are all narrow and the rooms seems very small, possibly a stylistic choice, but it reminds me of too many games developed on the old Xbox that had to have tiny areas because of memory restrictions.

I head down to the patient pacification center, which has a giant electrical chair. Zsasz has captured a guard and strapped him down, and will kill him if he sees me coming. Is it the stealth tutorial? I think so! I’m also alerted to ‘detective vision’ which allows me to see through walls and highlights important objects.



I first try to fail the stealth portion to see how the game deals with my failure. I learn to grapple, then hang upside down on a gargoyle, drop and walk in front of Zsasz. I’m treated to a small cutscene of Zsasz electrocuting the guard (the man dies off screen), then the Joker appear in front of a black background and appears to be taunting Batman’s dead body. It’s game over, would I like to retry?

Now, I could understand if this was a critical situation, but it’s a single guard. Why does his death mean the game has to end? To be sure, I’m not asking for multiple endings or for events in the mission to change. The guard dies, I beat up Zsasz, and I continue on in Arkham. Instead, the game makes me replay this part, and I stealth knock-out Zsasz.

The demo then has me sneak attack a few groups of henchmen, and it’s over.

Thoughts so far: Fairly shallow combat, characters, and story. Being the World’s Greatest Detective seems to boil down to using your X-Ray Batvision and interacting with anything that glows orange.

On the other hand, leaping from gargoyle to gargoyle while people fire at me, and sneaking behind thugs to take them down was fun. They seem to have the atmosphere right, and while a bit of the voice acting is questionable, it’s mostly solid.