With any crowdfunded project, there is a certain degree of skepticism. Will the developer deliver on their promises? Will the final product be any good? Will there even be a final product?
The game's developer, Playtonic Games, is a new, independent studio, but it contains a few familiar faces. Much of the company's talent is made up of ex-Rare employees, and this is a note that the group leaned on significantly during Yooka-Laylee's Kickstarter campaign, claiming the project would be a "3D platformer Rare-vival."
To find out how the project was coming along, we recently spent some time playing the game and interviewing the band behind the Banjo.
GameSpot: Did you ever worry about how to balance Yooka-Laylee for hardcore Banjo-Kazooie fans and newcomers, and meeting expectations of backers?
Andy Robinson, writer and comms director: Yes and no. One of the key features we wanted to put into the game is the expandable worlds, and that naturally helps appeal to different audiences. One of the big focuses of this game is we wanted to put a lot of player choice into it, and empower players to make their own decisions in how they take a route through the game. Even watching media guys today play the game, you could see that everyone was at a completely different section. Some people decided to go straight to the second world. Some people decided to expand the first world, make it bigger, and just hoover up all the collectibles.
In that way, if you're looking for more of a laid back experience, where you play through in a linear fashion and see lots of different cool environments, you can do that, but if you're a completionist, and you want to hoover up absolutely everything, you can expand the worlds and go through in that fashion.
We've said we're going to make a Banjo-Kazooie-style game and that's where we got all our Kickstarter backing from. But at the same time, we don't want to just be stuck in the past.
Steve Mayles, character art director
There's [also] not been a game like this for a long time. We think that just by that fact that there's a whole new audience out there who have perhaps never played a game like this, never discovered a game like this before--we're quietly optimistic that it will find a new audience just because of that. Even from the fact that there's no HUD, there's no big mini-map telling you where to go. There's no imposing nav arrow, waypoint arrow, telling you, "Here's the challenge." You are free to explore and discover the game at your own pace, which is a rare thing in games today.
Steve Mayles, character art director: It's a fine line to tread really because on the one hand, we've said we're going to make a Banjo-Kazooie-style game and that's where we got all our Kickstarter backing from. But at the same time, we don't want to just be stuck in the past because like you say, that's not going to bring it to new audiences. So we have tried to add in a few elements that weren't seen in their games.
Gavin Price, studio head: We've tried to be as inclusive as possible. We've got the co-op mode in there as well [for] people new to the genre. That was based off a lot of feedback we had from people who had played the old games and wanted to get their kids into this type of game. So we thought, what if we have a kind of hand holding co-op mode that gives families an easy choice to make in terms of, well we could buy this game, we know how to play it. We can slowly show, our kids can be involved as we're playing it and then hopefully they get to take over and become the main driver.
How does the co-op work?
Price: When you have a second controller, you control the B Team, which is a team of bees. They can basically help out Yooka and Laylee. Their storyline is they're a bit angry at [main villain] Capital B giving bees a bad name so they're here to sort that out. They can do things like pause and hold platforms for you, get out of reach Quillies [one of the game's currencies], grab and hold onto and then dispense butterflies for energy as and when the player needs it. It's very much a kind of assistant mode. And the B Team we think will be back in other games as well, and hopefully they'll have expanded roles. Something we talked about once we'd developed the B Team--we thought it'd be great like how you saw in old cartoons, you saw a swarm of bees create shapes and do things, so we think they could come back in future Playtonic games, where you might see the B Team create the shape of a hammer and then you can use it to help.
The B Team and another character, Trowzer Snake, seem perfect examples of the game's humour.
Price: The humour throughout is something that purely reflects the type of people we are when we're making the game--it reflects our personalities. It's kind of a key thing that you don't see so much of in large-scale video games these days--they don't have chance to let a developer's personality come out in humorous ways, they kind of have to play things a bit straighter and by-the-book for fear of overstepping the mark. Hopefully we don't overstep any marks, we just stay the right side of it. But it's brilliant to have that creative freedom--it happens quite naturally during office discussions. Someone will say a joke and we'll find a way of re-contextualising it and getting it in the game somehow.
With our history as well, we kind of had a reputation for trying to get content in under the radar. When we all worked at Rare and Rare were part of Nintendo and [then] Rare were part of Microsoft, we kind of made a rod for our own back. Everything we did was put under the microscope and looked at, and even stuff that was completely innocent, people said, "Hang on, are you trying to say something here?" and it's like "no, no, it literally is what it is." Being completely independent again it's up to us to decide how far to push things and what goes in. But a lot of us have mellowed a bit; we've all become family men now, and I know Steve Mayles got a bit of [abuse] off his wife when she first saw Trowzer Snake, which to the rest of us made it even funnier--that was the funniest thing about the character was the fact that Steve was going home and getting earache off his wife!
What's it like going down the Kickstarter route rather than working with a big publisher like Nintendo or Microsoft like you have done in the past? Do you feel the backers' pressure?
Price: We've got 70,000-plus bosses is what we say inside the studio. And it's good. We're really, really lucky that from day one every fan we've seen commenting on it, there's so much alignment between the type of game and personality they are and we are as developers. Spookily, there's been quite a few instances of stuff mentioned by fans on forums literally moments after we were saying the exact same thing in the office regards a game feature, a character, a potential future project and we start looking around saying, "Hang on, is our office bugged?" We've moved offices four times just to make sure!
We're really lucky with having that community along for the ride with us and they're just eerily aligned to the way we think already. Perhaps it's that we're familiar in a sense through the old games and that's great to have.
It definitely feels like there's a sense of getting the Rare family back together to make this game.
Price: When we're making content as long ago as 20 years ago together, we had a way of working with each other which just worked and brought the best out in us. Since then we've had a lot experience and learned how to improve and bring other elements into our development. It was like having a family. You could say anything to each other and say anything about the game and no one would take offense and it was all, "Yep, I see what you're saying, let's do this." There's such a strong commitment from everyone to continue raising the bar internally. It's exactly like that again now.
The funniest thing about Trowzer Snake was the fact that Steve was going home and getting earache off his wife!
Gavin Price, studio head
It really was, I think the way the industry went it kind of helped us by creating with factors outside of our control. A set of circumstances that meant guys like us could come back together and give it another go at being able to develop how we want to develop on content we want to develop. Things like Kickstarter, the independent game development scene, digital distribution, they've all just come together, but often experiences and genres perhaps being overlooked by companies in pursuit of bigger revenues leave really good gaps for nimble folk like ourselves who can be really creatively led to go into it. Saying, "Hey, we love making that type of game, there's plenty of people asking for it, we don't need 100 million dollars to do this." We don't have a fancy office in San Francisco. [We have] four rooms and a roof over our heads in Stoke-on-Trent.
Mayles: There's no egos, because we've all worked together in various capacities over the years. It's quite a flat hierarchy at Playtonic. So there's no one saying, "I'm in charge of characters. That one's shit, redo it." There's none of that rubbish. So it's just a pleasure to work with these guys, and I think they're all much more talented than me. It's just a pleasure to work with them all.
Andy, you didn't work with the original team; what was it like coming in and joining what was a pre-established team and family?
Robinson: It impressed me how much comes natural to those guys. People like Chris Sutherland, our lead gameplay programmer, these guys do this stuff in their sleep. It's a culture. It really is a culture. It's the whole reason that the company was formed, is because they wanted to return to what they had in the 90s, where it was basically ... There's no imposing structure. There's no line manager. There's no big design doc saying, "You can do this. You can't do that."
It's quite a flat hierarchy at Playtonic. So there's no one saying, 'I'm in charge of characters. That one's shit, redo it.'
Steve Mayles
They all know each other. They've worked for each other a long time. They trust each other. You're trusted to go, "I want a character like this," go make it. Go and animate it. They'll go from concept to creating the model to animating it, it's in the game, which is very rare today. That would probably be five people involved in that. That's probably what impressed me the most. Chris as well, being able to just ... He'd spend months controlling a cube [rather than an animated character] for this game. He'd get the cube fun to run around with. Then that's when [he'd] actually replace it with a character. It's like a science. Watching him is like watching bloody Beethoven.
The group that we've put together during the course of this game ... When we did the Kickstarter, we were seven people. I think we're 22 now. Some of those guys joined after we'd pretty much done the game as well. We made this game with I think an average of 15 people in less than two years, which is also incredible. It's because they know what they're doing. This is their bread and butter. The group that we have put together through the course of this game, personally, is very, very exciting. With people like Justin Cook, who joined us recently, who designed Viva Piñata, and Gary Richards, who designed every single handheld game that Rare did, it's exciting for the future as well.
How do you modernize a game like Banjo-Kazooie for a modern audience? Did you even want to modernize it at all, given many backers are simply wanting a sequel to those games?
Robinson: Obviously, the mandate for this game is that we would make a spiritual successor to the games that a lot of our team worked on in the past. We did have a mandate. The second is that we intentionally spent a lot of time on look and feel. There are a lot of things in the gameplay that we did to try and modernize the genre. Player choice is something that we thought was very important, because all games today give the player a lot of choice on how they experience it. It was important that tonally it felt right, and presentation is obviously front and center to that.
It impressed me how much comes natural to those guys. They do this stuff in their sleep.
Andy Robinson, writer and comms director
That's why we spent a lot of attention to detail in things like the font, which we had made completely custom for the game. It's big, and it's loud. Even the gobbledygook speak--which [composer] Grant Kirkhope and our programmer, Chris Sullivan, made for the Banjo-Kazooie games--recreating that, even that's a long process. You'd be surprised that you have to make sure that the sounds don't go below a certain pitch, or over a certain pitch. It's very, very complex to do that, but we thought it was worth it. We thought that players would appreciate that.
Do you think you can push the genre forward with Yooka-Laylee in the same way you did before?
Price: I think there's room to do that, especially within a sequel. I think the first thing we had to do was deliver on our promise to Kickstarter backers that this is a game that's gonna be familiar to you in cool ways and if you like those, you know you're gonna like this experience. I think then, as a company, if we return to 3D platforming in the future, which I'm sure we will at some point, the challenge is then on us to take it another step further and really push harder and try riskier stuff without breaking what people already love. That's a really exciting challenge. We think we may have an answer lined up for it but there could be one, two, four, five games between now and that point. We're open to existing in any genre. We don't want to be a company just defined by a single genre.
Not unlike when Sony allowed fans to vote for a PlayStation Plus game, the company has announced a new initiative in the US where you can help decide which games are discounted on the PlayStation Store.
Voting continues until tomorrow, March 1, with the winner set to be announced this Friday, March 3. One of the two games will then go on sale for the weekend, which will see the price of Final Fantasy XV drop to $36 or The Ezio Collection to $30.
Subsequent votes will start on the Monday of each week over the next month. This campaign is based on one that's been run by Sony in other regions.
Separately from this, the newest round of weekly PSN deals should be arriving later today. We'll report back once those are live; in the meantime, you can check out our roundup of the best of the weekly ads.
Chances of me clicking on Langoth in Steam’s buried “All New Releases” list to get all of this info were very low.
With so many games coming out on Steam each week and the service’s fondness for focusing on “popular” and “recommended” new releases, it’s easier for smaller games to fall through the cracks. What’s On Steam is a website that gives every new game on Steam equal treatment.
Launched earlier this month by the folks at indie developer Dejobaan Games (Drunken Robot Pornography, Drop That Beat Like An Ugly Baby,) What’s On Steam is a website that puts every game released on Steam on the same page. Each game gets six slots for screenshots, a short description and price. What’s On Steam also delivers six-second trailers for each new release, giving folks a quick flash of the games in action.
Every game. Only games.
Though the site has only been up for a couple of weeks, I’ve already found myself going to What’s On Steam more often that navigating the new release section of the official Steam app. Dejobaan designed the site (with Valve’s blessing) as a way for gamers and the gaming press to get a better idea of the games being released without having to click through a ton of stuff.
Indie Gala offers Steam keys for downloads of Speed Kills for Windows for free. (Log in, connect your Steam account to your Indie Gala profile, and click on the giveaway banner down the page to get this key.) That's the lowest price we could find by $10.
If you already have Steam installed, click here to install or play NARUTO SHIPPUDEN: Ultimate Ninja STORM 4. If you don't have Steam, you can download it here.
'Godfather' actor Carmine Caridi, the only AMPAS member to be expelled for sharing screeners, reflects on his Oscar infamy ("I was doing a guy a favor, and he screwed me") and a career that might have been.
Nintendo has announced a new campaign to help drive awareness of and interest in the soon-to-launch hybrid console, Nintendo Switch. The company today revealed that it is hosting three events across the United States where (some people) can try the console in a "interactive living room" space.
The first stop on the tour is The Blue Movie Ranch in Santa Clarita, California. Scheduled for February 23, the invite-only event will see the WWE's John Cena play the mini-game collection 1-2-Switch with select "YouTube influencers" and other people that Nintendo sent invitations to. We can only hope Cena tries the cow-milking minigame, because that would make for some compelling video.
The second stop is in Aspen, Colorado, at the Snowmass ski resort on February 27. Anyone at the mountain that day can try out the Switch. Nintendo said it's hosting the event at the ski resort to show that the Switch can be played anywhere--"even somewhere as remote as the side of a snowy mountain."
The third and final stop takes place on the Switch's launch day, March 3, at Madison Square Park in New York. This free and open-the-public event will feature appearances by people dressed up like Mario and Luigi to celebrate the console's release.
Nintendo has revealed file sizes for a number of Switch games that can be downloaded digitally to the hardware's internal storage.
The information can be found on Nintendo's Japanese website, and while the majority of the games will fit comfortably on the Switch's 32 GB internal memory, Dragon Quest Heroes I & II will require a separate SD card.
This is because it weighs in at a hefty 32 GB, and given that some of the Switch's internal memory will be allotted to the operating system, extra space will be needed. Nintendo's website advises "a microSD card of 32GB or more is required separately."
Take a look at list of games and their file sizes below.
As previously announced, you can expand Nintendo Switch's memory with Micro SDXC cards. Nintendo has said the Switch will support cards of up to 2 TB. However, cards of this size aren't currently available.
The largest commonly available SDXC card has a capacity of 512 GB, but these retail for upwards of USD $200 / £200 in their respective territories.
Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski was at one point attached to direct a BioShock movie. For a number of reasons, the film never happened. Now, the director has revealed that his version of the movie was canceled just eight weeks before it was set to start production.
In a Reddit AMA this week promoting his new movie, A Cure For Wellness, Verbinski revealed that and spoke about why his version of BioShock movie was canceled.
"I wanted to keep it R-rated; I felt like that would be appropriate, and it's an expensive movie," he said (via GamesRadar). "It's a massive world we're creating and it's not a world we can simply go to locations to shoot. [For] A Cure For Wellness, we were able to really utilize a variety of location to create the world. Bioshock wouldn't work like that; we'd be building an entire underworld universe.
"So I think the combination of the price tag and the rating, [film company Universal] just didn't feel comfortable ultimately," he explained, repeating what he said years ago.
Verbinski went on to say in the AMA that, at the time, there were other R-rated movies that did not perform well. This might have made Universal even more wary about greenlighting the BioShock film.
Though the BioShock movie is showing no signs of starting again, Verbinski said "things have changed" as it relates to successful R-rated movies, so "maybe there will be another chance." Another director might have to step in, as Verbinski said it would be emotionally difficult for him to return.
"It's very difficult when you're eight weeks away from shooting a movie you really can see in your head and you've almost filmed the entire thing," he said. "So emotionally you're right at that transition from architect to becoming a contractor and that will be a difficult place to get back to."
In the first few minutes of Final Fantasy VI, just when you think you’ve got a sense of the game’s rhythm, everything changes. Your amnesiac hero Terra, who you’ve been controlling for half an hour and are probably assuming will be your protagonist for the long haul, falls down a hole and passes out. And then you meet this guy:
This is Locke. He’s a treasure hunter. His job, on the orders of the strange old man who helped rescue Terra from being controlled by the malicious Empire (which you know is evil because it’s called the Empire), is to go help Terra.
Seconds later, you’re given control of Locke, who meets up with a gang of 11 friendly white cat-birds called Moogles in an attempt to save this unconscious girl. Since only four characters can be in a party at once, your group of 12 splits into three parties, and you have to use them all to protect Terra’s unconscious body from monsters.
As enemies trudge up through a maze of narrow paths, you’ll have to swap back and forth between the three parties, putting each group at a chokepoint and fighting monsters as they approach. The stakes are high: If one of the monsters reaches Terra, it’s game over.
Today, this is one of the easiest encounters in Final Fantasy VI. But in the early 90s, it was mindblowing. Most RPGs put you in control of a single party; Final Fantasy VI gave you three.
“This,” the game seemed to be saying, “is not ‘most RPGs.’”
For years, the standard formula for role-playing games was as follows: you, the player, take a party of characters to a town, which gives you a quest, which takes you to a dungeon, which holds a boss battle, which gets you new levels and equipment, which lets you progress to the next town, which lets you take a new quest, which takes you to a new dungeon. Rinse, repeat.
Final Fantasy VI was different. In Final Fantasy VI, you’d sing in an opera, take a first-person ride through underground train tracks, steal clothing from merchants, catch a train that ushers dead souls to the underworld, talk your way into getting sweet rewards at a treacherous banquet, collect fish for a sick old man, fight off an imperial air force, and try to figure out how to piece together a group of people’s lives in the wake of earth-shattering disaster.
Like I said. It’s not most RPGs.
This is part six of Kotaku’s Final Fantasy Retrospective, in which we take a look back at every mainline FF game.
Let’s take a trip back to 1994. The Super Nintendo and Sega are battling it out for console supremacy; tiny developers like Blizzard and id are dominating our computers; and a small Japanese company called Squaresoft is about to release Final Fantasy VI, the sixth installment in the series that had saved them from bankruptcy seven years earlier.
This one is a little bit different. Final Fantasy VI trades in the Tolkien for a healthy chunk of Jules Verne, replacing the fantasy tropes we’d accepted as standard—elves, dwarves, medieval castles—with a desolate world that blends machinery and magic. One of the first places you visit in Final Fantasy VI is Figaro Castle, a hulking chunk of pixelated rock that might seem like your average medieval fortress if not for the fact that it can turn into a submarine. Unlike previous Final Fantasy games, which gently sprinkled sci-fi on top of their big fantasy sundaes, FFVI goes full steampunk. I mean, you start the game in a robot suit.
That’s not what’s remarkable about Final Fantasy VI, though. What’s remarkable are moments like this:
This scene—which is optional and only triggered when you put the brothers Edgar and Sabin in your party and bring them to Figaro Castle—reveals the tragic backstory of two characters who have, until now, seemed sort of like jokes. Sabin is a feeble-minded musclehead; Edgar is a lecherous engineer.
As you learn in the flashback, however, they’ve been through some shit. Their father died a decade before the events of Final Fantasy VI, and in his dying wishes, he asked both Figaro brothers to rule over the country in his stead. But neither Sabin nor Edgar want to be king. Sabin tries to talk Edgar into abandoning Figaro, but Edgar points out how cowardly that would be. Their father, whose shadow looms large over both of them, would be disappointed if they fled the country. So Edgar makes a proposition.
“Let’s settle this with the toss of a coin,” Edgar says (according to the Game Boy Advance translation, which trumps the garbled SNES version). “If it’s heads, you win. Tails, I win. The winner chooses whatever path he wants… no regrets, no hard feelings.”
Sabin agrees, and then the camera follows the coin up in the air for a few seconds before fading to black. We know what happens, of course. Edgar rules Figaro for nearly ten years. Sabin, meanwhile, spends the next decade training to be a martial artist. In the present, they share a few sweet words, take a drink, and then carry on with the adventure.
A little later, this happens (start at 29:36):
In an attempt to convince the wandering gambler Setzer to help their crew fight the Empire, Edgar pulls out the coin once again, proposing that if he flips heads, Setzer joins them. The coin lands on heads, Edgar wins, and Setzer immediately notices that it was a trick. Edgar is using a double-headed coin. Outside of a quick throwaway line that you’ll only see if Sabin is in the party (“That coin…”), Final Fantasy VI lets you put the pieces together yourself: Edgar let his brother win that life-altering bet all those years ago. Edgar, a character who until now was best summed up as a horny creep, intentionally threw away his entire life for Sabin. And Sabin never knew.
Final Fantasy VI is full of moments like this. Nearly every character in your 14-person ensemble is more complicated than they seem—except perhaps Umaro, who seems like a dumb snowman and is, in fact, a dumb snowman. From Terra’s tragic heritage to Cyan’s secret pen-pals, Final Fantasy VI has character depth that even today would be rare in a video game. In 1994, it was unprecedented.
That’s not the only reason Final Fantasy VI is so incredible, but it is the biggest reason. At the beginning of the game, when Locke is running through the mines of Narshe to save Terra, he’s actually thinking about the fact that he couldn’t save Rachel, the woman he loved. Although Locke comes off as a carefree rogue, he’s secretly haunted by a compulsion to try to save people—especially women—and it drives everything he does. A modern JRPG might beat you over the head with that fact, maybe throwing in some thought bubbles or lengthy monologues about how Locke just wants to save people, but Final Fantasy VI likes to stay subtle, which is one of the reasons it’s so great.
Well, there’s also the incredible music, the zippy combat system, the horrifying villain, the gorgeous 16-bit art, and so on. Let’s discuss, shall we?
The story: So hey, it turns out that Terra, our amnesiac protagonist, can use magic, an art that Final Fantasy VI’s citizens thought was extinct. It also turns out that Locke is a member of the Returners, a resistance group fighting to take down the evil Empire. Recognizing that Terra’s magic powers would be useful for their cause, Locke takes her on a journey to meet up with the Returners and their grizzly leader, Banon, the only character in the game whose death leads to an instant game over, probably because he is old. After some hilarious diversions and a Rush Hour-style adventure starring Sabin and Cyan, the group all meets up at Narshe, where they have to protect a frozen magical beast called an esper from invading Empire forces led by a lieutenant named Kefka.
The Returners win the battle, but Terra suddenly flips out, morphs into a naked pink monster (same), and flies across the world, leaving the rest of the crew to chase her down. They find her in Zozo, a city filled with monsters where everybody lies all the time, and meet an old esper named Ramuh who asks Locke and crew to go rescue his esper bros from a facility in the Empire where Kefka is draining their power. To get to the Empire, the Returners need an airship. The only working airship belongs to someone named Setzer, who has coincidentally just sent a letter to the nearby opera house, warning them that he plans to kidnap their star, Maria.
Kidnappers don’t usually warn their victims, but hey, Setzer isn’t very good at kidnapping. And hey, what do you know, the Returners have a member who looks a lot like Maria: Celes, a reformed imperial general who Locke rescued during one of those pre-Narshe diversions.
The crew devises an insane plot to have Celes dress up like Maria, perform in the opera, and intentionally get kidnapped by Setzer, so they can all get on board his airship and convince him to let them borrow it. It’s a dumb, convoluted plot that leads to one of the best scenes in video game history, an interactive opera:
The plot works, and Setzer joins the crew with his airship. Once they’ve rescued the espers and battled a pair of giant, evil cranes, the Returners return (heh) to Ramuh, who reveals that Terra’s mom fell into a portal to the esper world as a teenager (!) and decided to bone an esper named Maduin (!), making Terra half-esper (!!!). The gang heads to the entrance to esper world, just in time to watch the evil Emperor Gestahl and Kefka rip open the sealed barrier that kept all those espers inside. The espers are pissed and go destroy the Empire’s capital city, which leads Gestahl to suddenly have a change of heart and ask the Returners for a peace treaty. Then he begs the Returners to go talk to the espers and apologize on the Empire’s behalf.
Of course, Gestahl did not actually have a change of heart, and soon enough it’s revealed that he and Kefka are actually after a super-powered set of statues called the Warring Triad. With these three statues, Gestahl and Kefka rip a giant continent out of the ground and turn it into their own super-powered floating island. So you head on up to the island, thinking maybe you’ve reached the final dungeon, only to see Kefka betray Gestahl, kick him off the floating continent, and use the Warring Triand statues to take over the world. Your party runs away, escaping the floating continent just in time to save the mercenary Shadow (unless you are a dick). Then, Kefka destroys the world. Game over.
Just kidding. But everything has changed now. A year after the events of the floating continent, playing as Celes, you wake up alone in the newly forged World of Ruin, where Kefka sits in a giant tower all day, using magical laser beams to zap anyone who makes him angry. For the next few hours the game turns into a series of optional, non-linear quests to go find the rest of your allies and defeat Kefka. Along the way, you’ll help Locke try to bring his ex-girlfriend back to life, teach Terra how to love, fight magical paintings, get swallowed by an island, participate in auctions, battle tentacle monsters, collect espers, rescue an old man from a cult, and eventually bring Kefka down.
Character with the best tragic backstory: Setzer, who lost his best friend in an airship accident, which is revealed when you invade her tomb, which is infested by monsters for some reason. The scene is constructed perfectly:
Such a good presentation.
The saddest scene: At the beginning of the World of Ruin, there’s a brief mini-game that asks Celes to feed fish to her sick grandfather Cid. If she fails, he dies. Then this happens (start at 4:47):
I mean HOLY SHIT. What a haunting scene. (Fun fact: the track playing in this scene is a slowed-down version of the Opera House song. More on that later.)
The funniest scene: I know I keep talking about how sad this game is, but Final Fantasy VI is also a genuinely funny video game. The dichotomy is yet another thing that makes it so great. The game plays up some of the characters’ sillier personality traits, like Cyan’s stuffiness, for goofy moments like this scene where the feral child Gau joins the party (start at 1:14):
The main villain: Kefka, a sadistic clown who’s sort of like the more successful version of Batman’s Joker. What distinguishes Kefka from other JRPG villains is that instead of going around and bragging about how he’s going to destroy the world and become a god, Kefka actually destroys the world and becomes a god.
When we first meet Kefka, he seems like comic relief. He stomps through the desert, complains about getting sand in his boots, and gets punked by Edgar in Figaro. A few hours later, however, we watch the malevolent clown stick poison into the water stream of Doma Castle, instantly killing the guards and civilians inside (including Cyan’s wife and son). At this point it becomes clear that something just isn’t right in Kefka’s head. Turns out he was an early victim of the Empire’s experiments with magic, flipping a few of his brain switches the wrong way.
Kefka has no real motivation or goal. He just wants to destroy things. But because he’s such a constant presence, taunting and tormenting your characters all throughout the game, he sticks in your head.
The gimmick: Every character in the game can use every magic spell in the game, thanks to objects called “magicite” that are essentially the crystallized corpses of espers. By equipping a piece of magicite, a character can learn all of the spells that belong to that esper. Take enough time to grind and you can deck your entire party with the best spells in the game, turning them all into walking nuclear weapons, and if that sounds like it makes the game too easy, well...
The biggest problem: Final Fantasy VI is way too easy. If Square ever releases a remake—and after seeing what they did to the iOS/PC versions, I’m not sure I ever want that to happen—they need to add a New Game Plus or at least a hard mode.
Speaking of crystals: There are none! This is the first Final Fantasy that ditches the crystals in favor of other MacGuffins, namely the three statues.
The best magic combo: Vanish + X-Zone/Doom, which will kill almost any monster in the game. Bosses included. It’s a speedrunner’s dream combo!
The other gimmick: Each character has his or her own special ability. Edgar can use tools. Sabin can use martial arts attacks (entered through Street Fighter-style combo button inputs). Locke can steal from enemies. And Gogo, a masked mimic who you can recruit in the World of Ruin, can copy commands from every other character, turning him into a genuine superpower and making Final Fantasy VI even easier.
Why the cut-scenes work so well: Today, when we use the word “cinematic” to describe a video game, we’re usually talking about photorealistic graphics and big explosions, like we’d see in Uncharted or Call of Duty. But it was Final Fantasy VI that pioneered cinematic storytelling. Director Yoshinori Kitase, a huge Star Wars fan with a background in screenwriting, maneuvered the game’s camera as if he was making a movie, using clever sweeps and pans to make the world feel bigger than it actually was. One early scene as you escape Figaro Castle is straight out of a heist movie, with clever camera tricks and cinematic flourishes. A later sequence, when Sabin teams up with Shadow and Cyan to escape Doma Castle, could be spun out into a buddy comedy film.
Scroll up and look at that Setzer flashback, or Celes’s suicide attempt, or the Opera House. Pay attention to the way things are presented. How the camera pans up and down during important moments, or how Setzer’s memories pop up in an old-timey box as you’re descending down the stairs of the tomb. In 1994, other games just didn’t do this.
Best obligatory sacrifice: General Leo, the noble lieutenant of Emperor Gestahl who tries to challenge Kefka, then gets promptly dunked on. It felt like there might be a burgeoning Thing between Leo and Terra before he dies, too, which makes this particularly sad.
Best character: There is no way to answer this question. Terra and Locke and Celes and Edgar and Sabin and Cyan and Setzer and Shadow and Relm and Strago and Gau and Mog and Gogo are my best friends.
Worst character: I guess Umaro kinda sucks.
Where the hell did Banon go? Seriously, where does he go in the World of Ruin? Does anybody know?
Series tradition: Wedge and Biggs, who made their first appearance in Final Fantasy VI and would go on to appear in every subsequent Final Fantasy game. (Sadly, the Super Nintendo version called Biggs “Vicks”—thanks, Ted Woolsey!)
The best dungeon: Kefka’s Tower, which calls back to the very beginning of the game by asking you to again control three parties. You have to swap between these parties as you go, alternating to fight bosses and solve puzzles, so it’s important to keep them all somewhat balanced.
Fun fact: People always wonder why today’s RPGs have such a hard time comparing to Final Fantasy VI. One easy reason: nostalgia. But here’s another possibility.
Said director Yoshinori Kitase in an interview with Edge Magazine: “It’s maybe strange to say [this], but I miss the limitations of making games in those days. The cartridge capacity was so much smaller, of course, and therefore the challenges were that much greater. But nowadays you can do almost anything in a game. It’s a paradox, but this can be more creatively limiting than having hard technical limitations to work within. There is a certain freedom to be found in working within strict boundaries, one clearly evident in Final Fantasy VI.”
The best piece of music: Other Final Fantasy games had excellent soundtracks, but in Final Fantasy VI, composer Nobuo Uematsu took things to the next level. FFVI’s soundtrack is transcendent. There are too many stellar tracks to pick just one, but what’s particularly impressive is the way Uematsu played with motifs and callbacks throughout the game.
Forever Rachel, for example, which plays whenever we’re learning about Locke’s sad past, is a slower version of Locke’s Theme.
Epitaph, which plays during Setzer’s flashbacks, is a slower version of Setzer’s Theme.
Best boss: Ultros, whose charm is best summed up by this video:
Another fun fact: Remember when all those AOL message boards falsely claimed you could revive General Leo? Well, as it turns out, YOU CAN REVIVE GENERAL LEO. You don’t have to farm dinosaurs or beat all the bosses without saving, though—you just have to break the game.
Best Woolseyism: “My life is a chip in your pile. Ante up!”
What is it with the clocks? For some reason, nearly every clock in Final Fantasy VI has an Elixir in it. Is this an inside joke? Some sort of gag I’m not getting?
Does the game still hold up? Yes!!!!!!!! Dear lord, yes. It’s still the best. Go play it right away. Just stay away from the PC and iOS versions, which look horrible.
Nintendo's press release mentions the "newly announced LAN Play feature," before going on to detail 10-player options. "Connecting up to 10 docked consoles via wired LAN will be well-suited for proper tournaments, while for more casual get-togethers up to eight players can still enjoy a quick game via the previously revealed local wireless connection."
You won't be able to shoot all 10 people, however. Nintendo explains the two extra people can spectate, but not join in on the action: "Private Battle Spectator View is a new functionality that will allow up to two people to participate in a Private Battle as cameramen to observe the 8-player battle from multiple angles."
Nevertheless, the ability to connect 10 consoles is impressive, and might suggest true 10-player gaming could come later down the line.
Elsewhere in the press release, Nintendo teased more information on its Switch smartphone app, which much of its online functionality revolves around. "This app will connect to the game," the publisher explained, "[allowing] players to set play appointments with friends who have been added to their Nintendo Switch friend list or via their social media accounts."
Setting up Splatoon 2 sessions with your friends in advance could be a useful feature, as is the ability to link your Switch account with social networks.
Splatoon 2 demo event starts on March 24, for a limited time. For the full schedule, click here.
Splatoon 2 launches for the Switch this summer. The game was announced at Nintendo's January event; it supports Joy-Con controllers, the Pro Controller, and is compatible with both TV and handheld modes.
At San Diego Comic-Con in 2015, Hugh Jackman surprised attendees by taking the stage and saying, "I've got three words for you guys: 'Old Man Logan.' Take from that what you will."
Old Man Logan is a 2008 Wolverine story arc by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven. The epic story took readers fifty years into the future where Logan had given up being Wolverine after a major tragedy. Because of licensing rights between Fox and Marvel Studios, there are many moments that simply can't happen in the Logan movie. The movie is taking a departure from the comic. Here are seven cool things you won't see, but we wished we could.
The Hulk Gang
Logan settled down, got married, had kids, and became a pig farmer with Hulk as his landlord. The Hulk Gang consisted of Hulk's offspring and they tormented the tenants and they collected the monthly payments.
The Hulk Gang
Logan vowed to never pop his claws again after the death of the X-Men. Despite the Hulk Gang being cruel and rude, he took their verbal and physical abuse. Times were tough and he wasn't able to make payment on time. After a beating, they gave him the chance to pay double the next month.
Blind Hawkeye
Prior to this story, the villains united and killed all the heroes. Hawkeye, the former Avenger, was pretty much blind and one of Logan's few remaining friends. He came to Logan after the Hulks' visit asking if he'd accompany him on a road trip to make a delivery across the country.
Blind Hawkeye
Hawkeye may have been blind, but that didn't stop him from kicking butt. He was more than capable of taking care of himself in a fight.
The Spider-Mobile
In the 1970s, Spider-Man briefly had a Spider-Mobile. Why did Spider-Man need a car? It was made for him, and had special abilities. The original was more of a dune buggy. This model must have been modified at some point.
The Spider-Mobile
The Spider-Mobile could drive on the side of buildings and shoot webbing. Hawkeye won the car in a card game from the Mandarin. It would be absurd to see in a live-action movie, but it'd be pretty rad.
Hawkeye's Daughter/Spider-Man's Grandaugther
Another crazy moment was the revelation that Hawkeye's third wife was Spider-Man's youngest daughter, Tonya. Ashely Barton seemed to take after her hero father and grandfather. Unfortunately she got in some trouble when trying to fight the current Kingpin. Hawkeye convinced Logan to allow them to take a detour to free her from being locked up.
Hawkeye's Daughter/Spider-Man's Grandaugther
It turned out Ashley didn't have noble intentions. Just as the Kingpin killed Magneto for his territory, Ashley wanted to do the same. She even turned on her father after he freed her to make a statement to her followers. She would have killed him if Logan didn't smash through the building in the Spider-Mobile and rescue him.
Venom Dinosaur
In the Marvel Universe, the Savage Land is a prehistoric land that exist in Antarctica. Dinosaurs had been imported but abandoned when the new owners discovered how expensive they were to feed. At some point, the Venom symbiote bonded with a t-rex.
Venom Dinosaur
The Venom dinosaur chased after Logan and Hawkeye. Luckily Black Bolt, the Inhuman, was nearby and used his powerful voice to stop the dino in its tracks.
The Red Skull was the ringleader in uniting the villains against the heroes. After defeating Captain America, he claimed the White House and kept a trophy room full of hero memorabilia.
Logan gets shot, put in a body bag and brought to the Red Skull. When he heals and wakes up, he fight the Skull, using Captain America's shield to put the finishing touches on the evil ruler. He then takes what remains of Iron Man's armor and flies home with cash to pay the Hulk Gang.
The Final Battle
The Hulk Gang got bored and visited Logan's farm early. They decided to kill his wife and kids as a message. This caused Logan to finally pop his claws and become Wolverine once again.
The Final Battle
He unleashes fifty years of fury upon the Hulk Gang. It's a bloodbath, and Logan finally approaches Banner for the ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk showdown.
There are other great moments in the story. Check it out if you haven't read it. Logan may not be using the major story elements from the comic, but it looks like it will be pretty epic in its own right.
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, known by regular humans just as Jedi Academy, is a shooter that was released back in 2003. Part of a series that originated with the best Star Wars game of all time, it’s being kept alive by mods like Movie Battles, which “lets players play and fight in the most iconic battles seen throughout the entire [Star Wars] saga!”
Movie Battles takes Jedi Academy’s fairly standard multiplayer—already very good and sadly underrated/forgotten—and juices it up with extra classes, new maps and the ability to play as characters like Han Solo and Boba Fett (including his jetpack).
Jedi Academy was never as ambitious as true multiplayer games like Battlefront, since it was designed primarily as a singleplayer game, but still; the lightsaber combat in these games was fun.
Here’s some video of the mod in action, courtesy of Vongs Yuzzan:
I mean, yeah, it’s still very 2003. You can’t do much to change that. But it’s good 2003, and the attention to detail in the recreation of famous locations like the Death Star hangar is awesome.
Available February 21 from Hyperkin, the X91 wired Xbox One controller is designed to replicate the slender form factor of the game pads of old. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.
The X91 will also be available in red and black. All three will retail for $29.99.
I just received a review sample of the X91 and have yet to put it through its paces, but it’s just such a unique shape compared to other Xbox One controllers that I felt I had to share.
It’s the bastard child of an Xbox One controller and a Super Nintendo game pad, its grips short and stunted, its guide button significantly shrunken. The analog sticks might look smaller, but they’re the same size as Microsoft’s official ones.
I’ve been playing quite a bit of games on my NES Classic recently (the kids need teaching), so I am used to a controller that’s wide and not tall. The only stumbling block I forsee is the bumbers and triggers, as the X91 doesn’t sport the extended grips that allow my forefinger to rest comfortably against the controller’s backside.
I’ll be giving the oddly-shaped controller a go over the next week to see how it handles Xbox One and PC games. Until then, just look at it. Weird.
Batman: Arkham Knight spins one of the most ambitious video game stories ever told, and watching it thunder to its conclusion is like watching a 747 successfully land on a helicopter pad. It may not be known for its narrative, but that is its achievement—a spiraling and notably interactive tale that takes you inside the mind of one of popular culture’s most enduring and fascinating figures.
Originally released in 2015, Arkham Knight told a dark story, even by Batman standards. The Arkham games, as envisioned by the men and women of the UK games studio Rocksteady, had always provided grittier, more “adult” material than your average episode of The Animated Series. But even in that context, Arkham Knight seemed different from its Rocksteady predecessors. This Batman was angry and dangerous. He pounded through Gotham in a tank, running down unarmed looters and torturing people to get what he wanted. He grunted and grimaced; he glowered and roared.
When I first played the game shortly after it came out, that darkness pushed me away. There was an ugliness to this Batman that I couldn’t reconcile with my view of the character. A year later, armed the knowledge of how the story ends, I replayed Arkham Knight in its entirety and it all made a lot more sense. This Batman is a different man from the hero of the first two games. His mind is not his own. His worst enemy is inside him, dying to burst out. Time is running low, and when the hourglass runs dry, he’ll become the killer he’s always suspected he might be. It’s up to us to guide him through this latest longest night of his life. Some darkness is to be expected.
Released after more than a year of teases, previews and general-purpose hype, Arkham Knight was set to be the crown jewel of Rocksteady’s acclaimed Arkham trilogy and one of the first definitive technical showcases of the then-newish console generation. But in the weeks and even months following its release, the conversation surrounding it focused on a few less high-minded things: The PS4 and Xbox One versions ran well, but the PC version was a buggy mess. The drivable Batmobile changed the series formula in a way some people didn’t care for. And the spoilers, oh, the spoilers! We had to avoid discussing the contents of the story, lest we spoil the surprises for those who hadn’t played.
Today, those concerns are mostly moot. The PC version was pulled from sale and overhauled, and while it still has lingering issues, it mostly runs fine. The hullabaloo over the Batmobile died down. And concern over spoilers has pulled a reverse-Ozymandias, washed away by the ravages of time. Look on the entirety of my story, ye Mighty, and rejoice!
All of which is to say that this re-review will not focus on Arkham Knight’s technical performance, will not dwell on the Batmobile, and will feature thorough spoilers for the entire story from beginning to end.
Batman spends Arkham Knight trapped in a triangle of villainy that allows the game to thoroughly, exuberantly illuminate the shadowed corners of his psyche. To fully understand what happens over the course of the story, you’ll have to be familiar with the events of the first two games in the Arkham trilogy: 2009’s Arkham Asylum and 2011’s Arkham City. You’ll also have to be prepared to machete your way through a narrative thick with vines of contrivance and logical contortions. Make it through to the other side and you’ll find four main characters contrapuntally arranged in a clearing, set to tell a single story in the same city on the same night. The resulting showdown is dynamite.
For the first act of Arkham Knight, Batman knows something we don’t. We see that he has Robin toiling away on a science project in a repurposed movie studio, and we know that the project is important enough that Batman repeatedly waves off his sidekick’s assistance in what would otherwise be an all-hands-on-deck catastrophe. Scarecrow is threatening to detonate a biological weapon that will kill countless people and destroy the eastern seaboard. He’s enlisted an army of mercenaries and taken over Gotham City, aided by a mysterious supersoldier who calls himself the Arkham Knight. The police are bunkered up in their station, chaos rules the streets, and it’s open season for supervillains and serial killers alike. In the face of this—and over Robin’s protests—Batman tells his protége to stay inside and focus on his research. Must be a pretty important science project.
My second time through, I already knew what Robin was up to. Midway through Arkham City, the Joker performed a forced blood transfusion on Batman, infecting his nemesis with blood corrupted by the Titan supersoldier formula he had imbibed at the end of Arkham Asylum. Batman spent most of Arkham City in pursuit of an antidote for the toxin, which was killing both him and the Joker. In that game’s finale, Batman was able to take a partial antidote, saving his own life. The Joker died. Somewhere between Arkham City and Arkham Knight, the Joker’s blood was shipped off to hospitals and infected a handful of civilians, each of whom begins to display signs of the Joker’s mania and even his personality. Batman has gathered them in Gotham to study and possibly save them. He’s also learned that, because he didn’t take a full dose of the antidote, the Joker’s diseased blood has been gradually corrupting his mind and taking him over from the inside.
Yes, this story development is ridiculous. It is grandiose and “comic booky” and whatever other pejorative you wish to attach to it. But as a means to an end, it’s also effective. Batman’s funhouse-mirror bond with the Joker has always been one of the most compelling and well-worn tropes in the Batman canon. What better way to explore that relationship than by literally placing the Joker inside Batman’s head? And if a game is going to have this much fun fighting a war within the Caped Crusader’s mind, does it really matter how we get there?
The Joker’s inclusion was largely kept secret prior to release, meaning this fundamental aspect of the game, arguably the most interesting thing about it, went mostly unmentioned in major reviews, including ours.
Arkham Knight’s primary conflict is between Batman and the Joker, which can be read both as a literal conflict between the hero and the biological echo of his nemesis, or as a more metaphorical conflict between Batman and the darker aspects of his own nature. This inner conflict manifests itself as the Joker, voiced by Mark Hamill, regularly appearing out of thin air and chatting with Batman, joking around and providing commentary on what his corporeal nemesis is up to. He might be dead, but that hasn’t quieted him down one bit, and as the hour grows later, he bubbles closer and closer to the surface.
The Joker’s goal is to be born again through Batman, destroying Bruce Wayne and rising anew as Gotham’s dark destroyer. He’s aided in his quest by Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight, even if they don’t realize it. They make for an effective support team: the former is a man capable of making Batman’s greatest fears manifest; the latter a literal, Joker-created manifestation of those fears.
Scarecrow’s goal is to break Batman down and expose him to the world as a frightened, ordinary man. In pursuing that goal, he unknowingly sets the stage for Batman’s ultimate showdown with the Joker, even though that showdown takes place within Batman’s psyche and Scarecrow never actually knows it’s happening. Batman’s greatest fear, which Scarecrow hopes to expose, is that he’ll succumb to the darkness he knows is inside of him. The people he cares about—Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Barbara and Jim Gordon—will suffer and die, along with the innocent populace of Gotham. Scarecrow makes for an ideal supporting villain and a useful narrative device. He can bring the Joker “out” in a variety of ways, and over the course of Arkham Knight, he does just that.
The Arkham Knight, a violent, armored soldier with a secret origin, is often maligned by critics and fans but is no less crucial a part of the story. He’s not just a convenient way for the game to introduce an army of gun-toting goons for Batman to fight (though he certainly is that). He’s also the flip side of the Scarecrow’s narrative coin. The Knight is eventually revealed to be a fallen Robin named Jason Todd. Jason was believed to have been killed by the Joker, when in truth, the Joker tortured and brainwashed him until he blamed Batman for his suffering and became bent on revenge. The Arkham Knight is a personification of Batman’s greatest failure, come back to haunt him.
In the run-up to Arkham Knight’s release, it seemed like there would be two primary villains: Scarecrow and the mysterious Arkham Knight. The truth was more complicated. Arkham Knight hinges on the intersection of four characters: the Joker, Scarecrow, the Arkham Knight, and Batman. The Joker is the central villain, and his goal isn’t control over Gotham—it’s control over Batman. Scarecrow and Jason Todd are both unwitting accomplices to the Joker’s plan. Batman is haunted by the people he failed to save, but in order to come through this trial alive, he must learn to allow his friends to risk their lives to help him. His goal isn’t to save Gotham, it’s to save himself.
Like any video game series that makes it to three entries under the same developer, there comes a point where things risk becoming too elaborate for their own good. It’s equally true of the plot and of the gameplay, and both Arkham Knight’s story and gameplay systems occasionally buckle under the accumulated cruft of years of iteration and elaboration. When it comes to the marriage of the two things, however—the places where the story expresses itself through interaction—Rocksteady is working on a level that most of their big-budget competitors can’t touch.
Arkham Knight’s major and minor story developments are almost always playable, and rarely spool out as a non-interactive cutscenes. That begins early in the story, when Batman chooses to sacrifice himself as in order to save the city from Scarecrow’s fear gas. You, the player, must manually relocate each tube of the deadly toxin, all while Alfred pleads with you over your radio to escape while you still can. Later, when Batman must brave the streets of a fear-gassed Gotham in order to install a new power cell on the Batmobile, the introductory sequence repeats. A long night just keeps getting longer, and you must urge Batman forward even as his immune system starts to break down.
An interactive story like this wouldn’t work half as well without Rocksteady’s brilliant cinematography and stagecraft. Arkham Knight’s camera is practically a character unto itself, particularly in the moments when it briefly breaks free of your control in order to more dramatically portray what’s happening on screen. It swoops and spirals, grandly framing the action on-screen. When Batman ejects from the Batmobile, he bursts into the air, the camera catapulting up behind him. When he dives toward the earth, the lens stretches, perfectly conveying drop-speeds he never actually achieves. This game moves beautifully.
Through careful staging and camera trickery, Arkham Knight enlists you, the player, to be both camera operator and leading man. Because you’re usually given control over which way the camera is pointing, the directors have come up with all manner of creative tricks to redirect your eye and surprise you. The Joker’s first appearance is a kick, with him popping into view as Batman finally vents the last of Scarecrow’s gas tanks. I’ve lamented how many of us struggled to even mention his presence in the game in the weeks after it came out, but I understand why Rocksteady wanted to keep it a surprise. I still remember my shock at seeing him smiling at me, pistol in hand.
Joker’s subsequent appearances are woven more seamlessly into your travels through Gotham. He always appears in the place you weren’t looking: One minute you’re alone, then you turn around and there he is. You’ll grapple up to a rooftop only to find him standing there, ruminating on your decisions while taking in the view. The Joker becomes the nagging voice that Batman can’t quite escape, however stoically he may ignore it. When Batman finally cracks and attacks the Joker, it’s a breaking point that the game has been carefully building toward for hours.
Those sorts of creative, interactive flourishes carry over into the strong side missions, many of which subtly echo the central themes of identity and duality. In one mission, you’re put in control of Hush, a Bruce Wayne doppelgänger whose storyline actually began in Arkham City. In another, you control Azrael, a man training to take over for Batman should he ever retire. Hush has Bruce Wayne’s face and Azrael has Batman’s moves, and both let us see our hero from a different perspective.
Another quality side mission has you tracking Man-Bat (!!) across Gotham, gradually uncovering the tragic tale of another man whose delusions of grandeur hurt the people he hoped to protect. The Man-Bat’s first appearance also happens to be one of the best video game jump-scares I’ve ever experienced, and later, the Joker perfectly re-enacts the scare before collapsing in gleeful hysterics. I yelled, loudly, both times.
Then there are the puzzles. Some are essential components of the story while others are optional, but each provides a thoughtful caesura from the narrative’s bleak forward march. Clever puzzle solving has long been a crucial part of the Arkham formula, and Arkham Knight is laced throughout with head-scratchers that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Zelda game. At any given moment you may be asked to hack your way around a battalion of tanks, or figure out how to get an electrified batarang through an inaccessible opening, or plug into a blimp’s navigational tools and rearrange massive shipping containers by tilting the whole airship on its side.
The dozens of optional Riddler puzzles strewn around Gotham are often the most rewarding challenges of the bunch, numerous and well-considered enough to be the sole focus of a less sprawling game. Each one requires some sort of lateral thinking or creative puzzle solving, along with patience and possibly some knowledge of Batman lore. I have not solved them all, and I doubt I ever will. I appreciate just knowing that they’re there, waiting for me, should I ever feel the urge.
For all my talk of groundbreaking interactive narrative and superb puzzle design, most of the player’s actions in Batman games involve some combination of: punch, kick, flying elbow, batarang. Rocksteady appears to have had a fine old time elaborating on their basic melee combat over the eight or so years they’ve spent making Batman games. It’s a system we’ve seen mimicked in countless games from Sleeping Dogs to Shadow of Mordor, and that’s for good reason: It works.
Things started simple in Arkham Asylum—when a guy is about to attack you, press Y to counter. If you’re on the offensive, press X to attack. If you want to dodge, double-tap A. By the time Arkham Knight rolled around, the number of combat variables had increased substantially. There are electrified enemies who you can’t punch. There are medics who pull injured enemies back from the brink. There are towering heavies who require a focused flurry of punches to take down. There are ninjas you have to dodge multiple times, and there are gun lockers that can turn a regular grunt into a deadly threat. Batman’s toolkit has expanded as well—you can shock or freeze enemies, launch special batarang combos to K.O. downed foes, snatch guns out of your opponents’ hands with a grappling hook, leave tripmines strewn across the battlefield, and even occasionally tag-team with the Batmobile to skeet-shoot your opponents out of the air.
The same geometric growth has been applied to stealth sections—there are enemies with remote drones, jamming devices, electronic sniffers, and huge beefy guys with miniguns who take ages (and a lot of noisy punches) to take out. To counter all that, Batman has got an upgraded hacking device, a nifty tool that can project voices around the room to distract and redirect enemies, and the ability to quickly change floors by hoisting his body through vertical vents, among other things.
This added complexity isn’t always beneficial to the game, and the layered gadgets and counter-gadgets can be a lot for even the most seasoned Bat-veteran to keep straight. There are balance issues as well—if you can take out every goon with the same combination of two or three moves, are those other ten gadget combos really necessary? There are spots in Arkham Knight where the designers seem unable to counter Batman’s most powerful abilities. A mildly capable combatant should be able to survive even the most overwhelming enemy force, and by pressing the A button repeatedly, you can simply hop around most brawls without being touched.
New Game+, the more difficult mode you can play after completing the game, comes closer to balancing things out. The enemies are pumped up from the get-go, armed with the most deadly tools and weapons. Players are given fewer on-screen combat notifications, which does a surprising amount to shake up the fistfights and keep things exciting. However, the real test of Arkham Knight’s teetering pile of enemies and abilities comes in the included “AR Challenges,” which double as leaderboard time trials and give you all sorts of specific challenges to complete. You haven’t fully explored Batman’s move-set until you’ve attempted to perfectly line up three goons for a three-way line-launcher takedown, or tried to clear a room of gun-toting heavies in less than a minute.
If you think you’ve mastered Batman’s many techniques and gadgets, you can disabuse yourself of that notion by browsing YouTube and looking for AR Challenge speedrun videos. Here, watch a player set up a 13-second takedown so perfectly executed that it manages to end on an exploding-gun punchline:
In the months since it came out, players have stress-tested Arkham Knight to the utmost, often with impressive results. We mere mortals can only admire from afar. It’s pleasing to know that the game’s combat and stealth systems can support play on this high a level, even as they are responsive and satisfying enough for normals to have a good time, too. Punch, kick, flying elbow, batarang—these actions were just as fun the hundredth time I did them as they were the first.
The most interesting parts of Arkham Knight story take place between Batman’s pointy ears, and it’s too bad that Rocksteady couldn’t have done more with the city of Gotham itself. Arkham Knight is the first of the main trilogy to allow Batman to explore Gotham proper—Asylum was set entirely at that island institution, and City was quarantined within a district of the city that had been converted into an urban prison. For all its empty shops and boulevards, the evacuated Gotham of Arkham Knight might as well just be another prison, devoid as it is of civilian life or any meaningful indication of what it looks like when hell isn’t breaking loose. As critic Austin Walker wrote back when the game came out, “I want a Batman game where I’m compelled to save the day not because of abstract threats, damsels in distress, or a desire for personal vengeance, but because the beauty of Gotham City compels me to protect it. Instead, I’m left for the fourth time with Batman and his playground.”
But Batman stories have long explored complex inner conflict alongside obvious real-world derring-do, and while Arkham Knight’s outer world may not be particularly inspiring, its inner worlds are richly detailed and ripe for character development. The game does great justice in particular to its central villain, despite the fact that he may be nothing more than a figment of the protagonist’s imagination. It seemed every time I spun the camera the Joker was there, waiting for me on a rooftop, leaning against the wall with unasked-for council. Through his taunts I came to understand his insecurities, his desperate need for validation, his dreams and his darkest fears.
This Joker doth protest too much, and Rocksteady’s writers explore his psyche with such exhausting single-mindedness that the relative simplicity of some of the other villains comes as a relief. When I needed a break from the main storyline’s oppressive psychological spelunking expedition, I’d go thwart one of Two-Face’s bank robbery schemes or work with Nightwing to stop the Penguin’s weapons deals. Arkham Knight’s narrative is so tightly constructed and intense that it’s nice to take a breather every now and then.
As Batman creeps through his city, you’ll overhear a seemingly endless collection of radio conversations between various rank-and-file goons, many of whom actually seem like decent fellows. They’ll complain about their bosses, put on shows of insecure braggadocio, and trade war stories about events from previous games. A couple of guys might groan about how their significant others don’t understand their mercenary lifestyle. A different pair debate the morality of what they’re doing, salivating for an imagined payday that even they acknowledge may never arrive. After Scarecrow reveals Bruce Wayne’s identity, you’ll hear Gotham’s thugs express their disbelief. Some of them sound vaguely crestfallen, like little kids who’ve learned that Santa is just a mall employee in a fake beard. They might be bad men who do bad things, but they admire the Caped Crusader just as much as anyone else. One guy even explains how Batman inspired him to join the military and serve. He notes the irony that all these years later, he’s on the other side.
It doesn’t take long to begin to sympathize with these dopes, which can make it oddly uncomfortable to watch Batman carve through them like a weed-whacker through so much dried grass. You’ll slam into guys on the street with the monster-truck wheels of the Batmobile, electrocuting them and sending them flying twenty feet through the air. You’ll pelt them with rubber tank-bullets strong enough to immediately knock them out. You’ll torture them for information, then brutally bash them unconscious and toss them away like trash. Maybe that was the guy who just wanted his husband to support his professional goals, you know? Maybe that was the guy who secretly thinks Batman is amazing.
During one memorable sequence early in the game, Batman pins a guy under the Batmobile’s spinning rear wheel and demands information. As the man squeals and protests, you’re given the prompt to rev the engine and spin the wheel as Batman backs it closer to the man’s face. It’s a pretty hardcore move even for Batman, and the first time I played it, it turned me off. When did Batman become such a jackbooted Jack Bauer?
As I replayed the game and arrived at that sequence, I stopped and considered what was really going on. Many video game power-fantasies beg us to let them have it both ways. In order to have a good time playing as Gotham’s all-powerful protector, we must accept that his use of force is justified and his mission is noble, even though we’re basically just role-playing a rich dude who makes himself feel better by beating up lowlife crooks and the mentally disturbed. Arkham Knight can’t fully square that circle, but it does cleverly sidle up to the problem by suggesting that Batman knows he’s going too far. His mission, in the end, is to retire the cowl and fake his own death. He’s terrified of what he’s becoming and he wants to stop.
If Batman’s actions in Arkham Knight don’t seem like the even-handed, wry hero we came to know over the course of the first couple games, it’s because they’re not. This is a haunted, poisoned man, fighting to maintain control over his own mind. He’s slowly turning into his nemesis, and his violent outbursts only grow more unhinged and dangerous as the story progresses. Batman might not place an unarmed man under his tank treads, but the Joker would.
Far more so than in previous games in the series, Arkham Knight revolves around Batman’s friends and partnerships. Throughout his long night in Gotham, almost every one of Batman’s relationships is put to the test. Nightwing comes in from out of town to help take down the Penguin, and in the process demonstrates his independence despite his former mentor’s warnings and concerns. Meanwhile, Batman is keeping his new Robin, Tim Drake, out of harm’s way under the pretenses of having him study the infected Joker victims. It becomes clear over the course of the game, however, that he’s also terrified of losing another protége in the field. Catwoman is forced to work with Batman to deactivate a bomb the Riddler has locked around her throat, but as they work together in their usual uneasy alliance, their banter betrays how much they enjoy one another’s company. Even Batman’s own car is a constant companion, helping him solve puzzles and bailing him out of more than a few jams before eventually sacrificing itself for him.
Arkham Knight mechanically expresses Batman’s reliance on his allies in a number of ways. There are stealth sections, such as when Batman and Robin must work together to take down a room of armed thugs or Batman needs to distract an unhinged, singing Joker acolyte while Robin disarms bombs in the background. There are tag-team puzzle challenges, like when Batman and Catwoman must carefully communicate information back and forth to one another in order to survive the Riddler’s elaborate deathtraps. And there are tandem fights, where Robin, Nightwing, or Catwoman team up with the Bat to take down a room full of thugs. These fights are never particularly challenging, but they’re not meant to be—they’re a mechanical expression of how much better Batman is when his friends have his back.
Barbara and Jim Gordon play their own crucial roles in the story, bolstering and expanding our understanding of Bruce Wayne’s complicated relationships. Early in the story, Scarecrow appears to use fear gas to induce Barbara to commit suicide, and Batman spends the bulk of Arkham Knight believing that he’s gotten her killed. He’s reliving his worst nightmare—that of being powerless to save the people who risk their lives to help him—and he spends most of the game believing that Oracle has met the same fate as Jason Todd. When Jim learns that his daughter died because of Batman, he declares their alliance over and foolishly storms off to deal with Scarecrow himself.
Of course, Barbara was never dead to begin with. A fakeout or two later, we get a triumphant sequence where she, somewhat the worse for wear but very much alive and pissed off, teams up with Batman to take down an army of the Arkham Knight’s soldiers and tanks outside the Gotham police department. With a press of a button, she can tip the odds against the bad guys, hacking their drones and setting off chain reactions that make the victory a breeze. This is its own kind of victorious tandem fight. Once again Arkham Knight reminds us how much Batman needs his friends.
The supporting cast is further fleshed out over the course of several Arkham Episodes, which were originally released as piecemeal DLC over the course of 2015. The Episodes suffered for the way they were released, since each one isn’t really meaty enough to draw players back to a game they may have just finished a month prior. Taken together as a part of a finished whole, they’re much more appealing, particularly the Nightwing, Catwoman and Robin stories, each of which take place after the conclusion of Arkham Knight. They’re still inessential, and mostly just give us further opportunities to do the same sneaking and punching we’ve done so much of in the main game. But they also further enhanced my appreciation for Batman’s allies by letting me play them each on their own.
A great story usually has a great ending, and Arkham Knight’s grand finale is a stunner. After defeating the Arkham Knight and saving Jason Todd, Batman is forced to surrender to Scarecrow anyway. Scarecrow reveals Batman’s identity to all of Gotham, then injects Bruce Wayne with fear toxin on camera, hoping to show the citizens that their savior is just as terrified as the rest of them. Instead, Batman’s inner Joker gets involved, which leads to one of the best-executed finales I’ve ever seen in a game.
We begin inside Batman’s toxin-induced nightmare. The Joker has finally taken over his body and used his arsenal of advanced weaponry to wreak havoc on the city. Throughout this section, players are given Batman’s tools without the restriction of his nonlethal creed. We kill dozens of people with the Batmobile’s gatling gun, then guide the Joker as he guns down each of his supervillain competitors one by one. Gotham is burning, and the Joker is king. Then suddenly, our perspective changes. Scarecrow hits Batman with another dose, but the Joker has taken over, so it’s the Joker who absorbs the toxin. All at once we’re seeing things from his point of view. which means we’re seeing his fears.
The conquered city fades to black and the Joker plunges into his own frightened fantasy, imagining a world that has completely forgotten him. He’s standing at his own neglected grave, surrounded by statues of Batman. He attempts to destroy the statues, but is quickly overwhelmed by stone-carved versions of the man he could never defeat. He becomes lost within the nightmare, haunted by the thing he fears most: Batman. By manifesting as the Joker’s fear, Batman regains control of his mind and tricks the Joker into a cage of his own making, locking him away and recovering his sanity.
First of all: That is some crazy shit for a video game to try to pull off, particularly given that it doesn’t explicitly spell out what’s happening. Second: That is some even crazier shit for a video game to make playable, yet the majority of Arkham Knight’s final sequence is interactive.
Considering its towering ambition and many moving parts, Arkham Knight’s story resolves itself with an unusual amount of focus. Batman faces his fear of the Joker and proves once and for all that he’s stronger than his greatest enemy. Jason Todd comes to Batman’s rescue in the nick of time, once more demonstrating that Bruce Wayne is only as strong as the people he’s got in his corner. Even the Joker plays his part, inadvertently saving his greatest enemy from overdosing on fear toxin by absorbing the brunt of the second dose. Betrayed in different ways by both the Arkham Knight and the Joker, Scarecrow’s master plan unravels.
It ain’t exactly Shakespeare, and there are certainly plot holes and contrivances. Jason Todd’s introduction lacks the necessary setup to make the reveal of his identity really land, and the Scarecrow’s master plan never makes much sense on its own. The final showdown with the Arkham Knight is drawn out over too many boss battles, and those endgame Batmobile fights are a real slog. But there’s a reason so many video games fall apart in their back half—eventually, the people making the game have to make some compromises. It’s remarkable that for all the things that doubtless barely held together in the final cut, Arkham Knight’s ending manages to tie three games’ worth of plot into a ludicrous but satisfying finale.
When you die in an Arkham game, you’ll have to sit through one last taunt from the villain who defeated you. They loom over your body, presumably watching as the life drains from your eyes. Two-Face might lament that you couldn’t come around to his way of thinking, or the Penguin might order his boys to take your mask and string up your body. Arkham Knight continues that tradition, with a notable twist: sometimes, the Joker will come out and talk to you. Instead of expressing glee at your demise, he’s panicked and upset.
The Joker has lost his last chance at resurrection, but he also just seems sad that his old nemesis is gone. Given what we’ve come to understand about him over the course of the game, it makes sense. His relationship with the Bat has always had a dash of romance, and the love story is finally over. Even in death, the Joker needs Batman to feel alive. If his plan to conquer his foe’s mind had come to fruition, he probably would’ve been miserable.
After defeating the Scarecrow and locking up the rest of the villains terrorizing the city, a now-unmasked Batman activates something called the Knightfall protocol and vanishes, faking Bruce Wayne’s death in the process. The circle closes, but it forms the dot of a question mark. Is Batman really gone? Is the Joker really dead for good? Could either of these characters exist without the other, and in one’s absence, must the other disappear?
As the curtains gently billow to a close, those and other lingering questions can remain unanswered. Arkham Knight almost certainly won’t be the last great Batman video game, nor must it be. But after watching Bruce Wayne and his clown-faced nemesis wink out of existence one last time, I feel I’ve seen what I came to see. I can crinkle up my ticket stub and shrug into my winter coat, exiting the theater without a look back for whatever secrets or teases may await after the credits. It’s over. This was the story of Batman, and it was good.
We started this contest with a much darker vision of life in New Donk City for Mario, but thanks to this week’s winner, we can end it on a much brighter one.
The winner for this week is Ihsus who somehow managed the unthinkable, taking a beautiful meme and making it even better, somehow, by the addition of Mario. It’s hard enough moving to a new place, especially when you’re barely more than two fee tall, apparently. That’s why it’s important to make friends quickly, and who better to show Mario the ropes of New Donk City than Mr. John Wick himself.
The rest of you did a pretty great job too!
barhat518 with an amazing runner-up.
sciteach with an homage to one of my all-time favorite movies.
Curryrider dreams up a movie I would totally never watch.
toolsoldier lays on the filters.
PunditGuy keeps Mario woke.
Vinyourg has the call back.
Tamales y Atole with a glimpse into our future when the Switch finally launc
cecil_banon is tired of Mario being for kids.
PunditGuy has me wondering if by the end of Odyssey Mario will exist at all.
Mrichston is digging Mario’s new pad.
Slackar goes Home Alone 2.
Orionsangel with some stellar vapor trails.
DamienSandmanOvertime just wants to see Mario save toads from being packaged into delicious soft drinks.
Bob imagining some of the other vigilantes Mario is sure to run into.
Juuni shows there a right time and a wrong time to move to a new city.
Too dark MartinTherrien...
GLLong76 sticks Mario right in the middle of a classic groove.
ZeroBx500 writes, “Straight Outta Donkton.”
Tiberius Grubgadus writes “I don’t know what you think you can get away with in the Mushroom Kingdom Mario, but here in New Donk City we have laws.”
VitriolicShampoo reminds us that Mario might not be used to the city’s more stringent stop and frisk policies.
barhat518gives us posh af Mario on his work commute.
bravefencermusashi with another stellar Home Alone 2 reference.
CynicalOne welcomes Mario to Trump’s Amer
And back to Bob, who writes “Mario finds out being a fake plumber doesn’t work.”
offensivename doesn’t think there’s room enough in New Donk City for more than two really bad plumbers.
And finally, KnightHawk284 sends Mario back to a less welcoming time in the Big Apple’s history.
Indie Gala offers Steam keys for downloads of Speed Kills for Windows for free. (Log in, connect your Steam account to your Indie Gala profile, and click on the giveaway banner down the page to get this key.) That's the lowest price we could find by $10.
Jeff and Drew stare down Team Nintendo in a contest of milking, hip shaking, and gorilla wooing.
Nivea offers a sample of Nivea Men Creme for free when you fill out a short form. Expect your sample to arrive in six to eight weeks.
