So, it turns out, I’m Batman. I know, I’m as surprised as you are. I didn’t realise until playing Arkham Asylum, but there’s no other logical explanation. I don’t see how I could possibly feel this much like Batman without actually being him.

I’m not sure exactly when I realised about the Batman thing. It might have been when I first strung up one of Joker’s minions by his legs under a gargoyle, or perhaps when I swooped down from on high to knock down an enemy without him seeing me. It might even have been when I realised I had truly gathered a gadget for every occasion, without feeling completely ridiculous (i.e. No bat-shark-repellent).¹

Batman: Arkham Asylum is, against the odds, an awesome super-hero game. There’s several factors that make this happen, but key amongst them is that it isn’t actually tying into any particular Batman mythology, but just taking the bits that work for the game from whichever comic or movie it likes, and not fussing about the rest. The game happens entirely at Arkham Asylum, where the Joker’s up to some considerable mischief, and the story pulls Batman about through various locations. Balancing a plot which changes the world around you, yet retaining the sandbox nature of the game seems tricky, but Arkham Asylum makes it feel effortless.

Like any game you care to mention these days, there’s also collectibles hidden about the map which lead you down the hideously alluring path of achievement points. However, most of these ones elevate themselves from the usual pointless fare by unlocking histories of various Batman characters. Suddenly the pointless drudgery of wading through the map in search of blips becomes a lot like clicking randomly through Wikipedia. In essence, Eidos have managed to pick two of the biggest time wasters in the world today and marry them for a surprisingly satisfying effect.

The story is comic-book style ridiculous, but quite involving. Despite some pretty ropey dialogue, Mark Hamill’s deliciously over-the-top Joker keeps everything exciting, and even the more unexpected plot developments are still enjoyable — even if one in particular does find a way to recreate my least favourite video game cliche, the jungle level.² My favourite dramatic moments of all, however, fell somewhat outside the plot with the impressive and ingeniously reality-bending Scarecrow encounters. Letting the game down somewhat is the generally cheesy dialogue, though in some instances the cheese at least feels appropriate, if not entertaining.

The actual mechanics of the game are generally pretty well realised too. I love a game with hang-gliding — a love that’s swelled in my heart ever since MDK — and Batman’s cape doesn’t disappoint, though as Yahtzee pointed out, it is awfully difficult to actually see where you’re going when said cape takes up almost half the screen. Diving about, swinging, and simple combat all works flawlessly. When combat becomes more involved, to the tune of ten or more henchmen, I did find myself sucking rather uncontrollably, but I’m almost certain that this is a failing on my part.

I used to scorn super-hero games. Suddenly, I’m desperate for more. I can only imagine what these people could do with Superman.

1. Nasty buggers, bat-sharks.
2. Not because I find them unoriginal, but because giant scary plants give me the heebie-jeebies.

What is it about Star Wars? I just don’t know. Despite the disappointing prequels, despite the time passing, despite Kevin J. Anderson, there’s still something very comfortable about hanging around the Star Wars universe. People get a little down on the video games that George Lucas’s own personal empire has spawned, but inamongst the massive quantity, there has been quality. Dark Forces. Knights of the Old Republic. If I were even more old school I’d list TIE Fighter, most likely, but I’m not.

And now we have The Force Unleashed — billed as an opportunity to really go to town with all those awesome force powers that you never quite got to exploit in any of the other games. And exploit you will. You’ll crush AT-STs, you’ll blast Rancors with enough electricity to solve the energy crisis. You’ll do some awesome stuff. However, you’ll do it through the equivalent of a very, very slow game of Guitar Hero. Or to put it another way, I hope you like quick time events.

I have lived in houses where the very mention of such things will start intense argument. They’re divisive mechanics; some have seen them done well (Resident Evil 4, I’m reliably informed), and some have only ever seen their dark side. I have a problem with them — at least in their form in The Force Unleashed — and it is the following:

• Normally, if you see a progress bar, you’d assume that you need to get it from one side to the other in order to complete the task. However when fighting an AT-ST or somesuch, you’ll find that you actually only have to drop their health by about four fifths, and the rest is miraculously taken care of in the quick time event. This means you can spend precious, precious moments desperately trying to smash some horrible beastie, when if you just let yourself fall to the ground, you’d be able to start the quick time event and kill them. At least, the bar could be a different colour for the bit which you don’t have to do yourself.
• Any monkey can press random buttons when asked to. There’s no reference between the game and which button you press until after you press it — when the effect is related to that button. But it’s not like you see a Rancor staggering and think “I have to use lightning here, but for the love of god, I don’t want to push him, for that would miraculously heal him and make me repeat all my steps.”
• I like mini-games. Who doesn’t enjoy the occasional game of Pazaak? But quick time events are mini games that developers couldn’t be bothered making. I can imagine the first time someone came up with them. “Jeez, we want a knife fight here. Who’ll make a knife-fighting mini game? No, wait, hang on, what if we just told them to press the A button to win?” “We can’t do that. That’s lazy.” “OK, what if we told them to press A, then B, then Z?” “That’s ridiculous.” “Alright, I’ve got it. We’ll tell them to press A, B and Z — but in a different order every time!!!!” “You are a genius. I take my hat off to you. Let’s leave early today.”

I’ve got another problem with the game, but before I go into it, let me first provide a disclaimer along the lines of I might just suck. That said — in much of The Force Unleashed, it just takes too damn long for Mr Apprentice to respond to things you do. I realise that its arguably more realistic to not always be able to change what you’re doing mid-action, but for heaven’s sake, I’m supposed to be an awesome Jedi/Sith with lightning coming from my fingertips. It’s… unseemly to be getting knocked to the ground, waiting several seconds to get back up, only to have homing missiles knock me over again. Not to mention, tremendously irritating. Towards the end of the game, there are moments where you’re surrounded by snipers and other associated bastards with homing bullets, so that no matter how nimble and jedi-quick you’re being, no matter what angle you’re running relative to your attackers, you’ll still keep getting knocked over, and most likely immediately killed due to your subsequent prolonged bout of immobility.

But let us not get sidetracked with irritating quibbles. There are two things worth playing this game for, assuming they sound appealing to you. One, is a decent and involving story set before the original Star Wars trilogy which fits in reasonably neatly with the movies.¹ It’s surprisingly compelling, though the central relationship feels a bit cliched. Luckily, it’s underplayed as well, so it doesn’t really get up your nose. It might be because I wasn’t expecting much, but the few twists sprinkled throughout the story genuinely surprised me.

The second virtue of The Force Unleashed is, perhaps unsurprisingly, being allowed to unleash the force. Cleverly, the game gives you a good taste of it in the prequel level when you play as Darth Vader with every power known to Sith-kind.² You can throw people, you can push them, you can zap them, or even a combination of all three. It’s tremendously enjoyable when it works, but unfortunately for me, I found lifting people less and less practical as the game went on, as there were more and more people shooting at me while I did so. The game does provide an incentive for you to endeavour to kill people amusingly though — you’re rewarded for amassing force points at the end of each level.

The game contains your obligatory collectables — in this case holocrons which as well as satisfying your inner obsessive compulsive, also occasionally grant stat boosts and lightsaber crystals. Thus, they’re slightly more exciting and fulfilling than pigeons. The levelling up system works well, though the ‘pick anything you like’ system is ultimately less interesting than the choices one has to make in a skill tree. Close combat is more interesting than you might expect, especially against baddies who parry your lightsaber strikes and force you both to retreat a few metres to regroup; an elegant way to make a dedicated button-basher like yours truly stop and think about what the hell he’s doing.

So: if the idea of wrapping yourself up in a big Star Wars blanket and using the force to decimate your enemies sounds pleasant, you don’t mind a few imperfections and flaws, and you can stand to hear someone who isn’t James Earl Jones trying to recreate Darth Vader’s voice,³ then this game is for you.

1. I’m not saying it’s seamless, but it’s an improvement on certain prominent recent efforts in that no one dies before meeting characters who will later claim to know them.
2. Reviews have complained that the come-down to knowing none of them afterwards is no fun. I can’t say I understand this viewpoint and so have no rebuttal to it.
3. This, for me, is the biggest flaw in the game. I don’t care how much Mr Jones was asking for — if there’s one voice in the world which is utterly inimitable, it’s that one.

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if game developers hadn’t been so eager to embrace the third dimension in games. While 2D platformers ruled the eighties, by the nineties 3D was all the rage. So instead of focusing on games with better artwork, music and gameplay, developers struggled to deal with things like movement and the camera — problems which still around today.¹ I wonder what the world would have been like if all that effort had been focused on making brilliant 2D games.  One of the stars in this imaginary world would be Braid.

You might not have heard of Braid. If you don’t read an indie game blog, or check xbox live for the latest arcade games, or live in a house with obsessed gamers, then you probably haven’t. It’s a 2D platformer, loosely modelled on Mario,² in which you can rewind time. Being able to rewind time is such a liberating experience. No more worrying about precise jumps — if you miss, just rewind back before you jumped and have another go. This means that it is almost impossible to screw anything up. You can always rewind back past the mistake.

This ability isn’t just to make the platforming easier. There are plenty of puzzles which need solving in order to collect all the puzzle pieces. Most of these are excellent puzzles and I found great satisfaction in solving. I liked that the puzzles showed how your powers are used rather than using a tutorial, although there were a couple of puzzles that relied on a game mechanic that you didn’t know existed and didn’t follow logically from the rest of the game. In a game about rewinding time where there is no real life example to follow, this seems unvoidable, but annoying.

The detailed backgrounds are fantastic, as is the beautiful music, although when you’ve been looking at the same puzzle for half an hour, it gets on your nerves.  Having the music keyed to the speed of the game is a nice touch,³ and adds to the poignant story.  I won’t give any details about it for fear of spoiling it.

While I wouldn’t give up the third dimension because of games like Resident Evil IV, I do like to imagine a world in which everything is flat.

1. I’m looking at you Sonic Team.
2. I’m trying not to hold that against the game.
3. I was disappointed that there was no secret message when hearing the music in reverse.