Batman: Arkham City : Harley's Revenge review

Warning: This review contains spoilers for Batman: Arkham City's main plot.

    It's been a long time since I've played Batman: Arkham City. I traded in the game almost as soon as I finished it despite how much fun I had playing it. However, thanks to the reduced cost of video games over time and Gamestop Points, I've been able to reacquire a copy. My first act upon doing so was to play Harley's Revenge, a DLC wrapping up some of the plot-lines leftover from the main game.

    The premise of Harley's Revenge is Harley Quinn, perpetually abused sidekick/girlfriend of the Joker, has kidnapped a bunch of police officers. Worse, somehow, she's managed to capture Batman. This is already a somewhat suspicious premise since Harley Quinn is a comedic villain, more pathetic tag-along than evil genius.

Harley's shrine to the Joker is double-plus creepy. I like it.

    Next, the game starts us off as Robin only to skip back to Batman later. I think this is something of a cheat as I would have enjoyed playing Robin the entire time or Batman but switching between the two diminishes both characters' stories. I imagine most people thought a Robin-centric DLC wouldn't sell as well, which is true, but he's quite entertaining for the short time you get to play him.

    So how does it play? Not badly, but not fun for me either.

    Part of the issue is my own damn fault. Harley's Revenge is set after the main portion of the game and the difficulty is ramped up to an extreme level. There's snipers, dozens of assault rifle-wielding goons, and rooms filled with dozens of melee-weapon armed minions.

    Worse, there's no Easy difficulty for those of us who are out of practice. Batman has never died this often in my games and Harley's squeaky taunts during the 'game over' sequence only made it worse. It was a slog from beginning to end, consisting of me repeating save points until I won.

    My favorite part of the game is the opportunity to play Robin. I'm not sure if this is Dick Grayson or Tim Drake, though I'm inclined to think it's the latter, but the character is a lot tougher and more likable than most versions. He's very much how I envision Nightwing acting, a great deal lighter than Batman but still tough as nails. I had a lot of fun using Robin's quarterstaff, too.

    My only regret is he plays a little too much like Batman. I would have preferred a Robin capable of going up in level and with his own set of toys. That's a bit beyond the bounds of a DLC, though, especially one where he's not the only star.

    As mentioned, Harley Quinn isn't quite capable of pulling off Master Villain by herself. Her going crazy(er) after the events of Arkham City and trying to kill Batman is appropriate for her character but I'm not sure kidnapping cops fits her M.O.

    I would have preferred an archvillain with a bit more menace to them like Hush or the Scarecrow. One thing I did appreciate was their handling of the "twist" in this game. Basically, a rather stupid plot was set-up in Arkham City and they manage to nicely retcon that out in Harley's Revenge. I'm glad of it.

     Which plot twist? The abysmally stupid pregnancy plotline. So, Harley Quinn may be pregnant with the Joker's baby. So what. It's not likely that the child will grow up to be the Joker 2.0 and even if it does, the kid isn't going to be a problem until it's the Batman Beyond era. Retconning it so Harley isn't actually pregnant is a good thing, IMHO.

Being Robin is surprisingly kick-ass.

    Batman, himself, is an interesting case in this DLC as we see him acting somewhat out of character. Having failed to save the Joker and Talia al Ghul in the main game's narrative, Batman is traumatized. I don't mind seeing Batman turn dark(er) and gritty(er) but the fact none of this seems to have lead anywhere in future DLC is a trifle disappointing. I would have appreciated getting Bruce Wayne's thoughts on the events in the game.

     In conclusion, I really enjoyed Batman: Arkham City: Harley's Revenge but I think the difficulty is way too high. Likewise, the game would have been more entertaining if it was an All-Robin adventure or had a more menacing villain. Despite this, anything Batman: Arkham City related is fun and better than 90% of most other games.

8/10

Bioshock: Infinite review

    Bioshock: Infinite is a fine game. It's just not a great game. I completed it, which is an accomplishment in and of itself. I had fun playing it throughout, which is rare enough to earn its own praise. But is it great? I dunno. I have a lot of problems with it. Even the ending, which has received nearly universal acclaim, is deeply troubling to me on several levels.

    The premise of Bioshock: Infinite is that Booker Dewitt, disgraced Pinkerton Detective, is assigned to retrieve a girl from the flying city of Columbia. His employers, a mysterious pair of twins with an odd manner of speaking, claim that he will be able to wipe away his ample gambling debts should he successfully do this. Stuff happens. You spend the rest of the game traveling with Elizabeth in hopes of escaping with her to Paris (where she wants to go) or New York (where Booker wants to).

Elizabeth is one of my favorite characters in video games. So it has that going for it.

     Now, honestly, the plot is a lot more complex than this description. There's quantum mechanics, alternate realities, references to Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and expansive critique of American exceptionalism. There's also something of a critique of populist/revolutionary rhetoric vs. oppressive systems. All of this is window dressing. Very elaborate, upscale, window dressing. With curtains.

    The real heart of Bioshock: Infinite is the relationship between Booker Dewitt, Elizabeth, and the city's deranged founder Comstock. It is a personal multi-faceted story with multiple twists, turns, and a surprise finale I actually enjoyed for a change. Admittedly, though, I figured it out halfway through but it was nice to have my suspicions confirmed.

    The game plays more or less identical to Bioshock and Bioshock 2. You have plasmids (called Vigors), guns, and a melee weapon. There are a variety of enemies in the game ranging from police officers to weird fire-spewing psychopaths. The enemy variety is much better in Bioshock: Infinite than in its predecessors but still feels a bit repetitive after a certain point.

The action is fun and has a few twists as compared to Bioshock 1 and 2.

    My biggest problem with the game, ironically, is that the critiques it makes of everything from quantum physics to classicism are fundamentally shallow. The game observes that turn-of-the-20th century America was racist, that revolutions against oppressive governments are often violent, and the multiple worlds theory makes free will essentially nonexistent (i.e. if you do everything you possibly could in any given situation it doesn't matter what you do).

     In short, the game doesn't really offer any answers but simply presents a number of high concept ideas. I would have much preferred a game which dissects one of the many ideas it presents thoroughly versus simply showing a dozen intriguing ideas. If the game doesn't have any real opinion other than "racism and classicism is bad" it's not really making full use of the writer's ability.

    Just my .02.

Rosencratz and Guildenstern are Dead homage aside, the game could use less linearity.

     Still, I can't complain too hard. Booker Dewitt is one of the best antiheroes in gaming since Max Payne while Elizabeth is an excellent deconstruction of the Disney Princess archetype. They play off each other exceptionally well and the game really hits his stride when the two meet after Act I. Comstock, unfortunately, doesn't really work as a villain. He's about as in-depth as the Red Skull and only has a few moments to really shine, unlike Andrew Ryan (who was a many shaded monster).

     I was disappointed with the character of Daisy Fitzroy as well. As one of the few black female characters of note in video games (outside of Half-Life), Daisy's role is a Straw Political who does not contribute anything to the plot other than to serve as a temporary threat to lengthen the game. Given the game's use of racism and American exceptionalism, I would have preferred a larger role for her.

A completely unnecessary character.

     Bioshock: Infinite is a beautiful game, the city of Columbia being one of the best-designed locations I've had the privilege of gaming. It's gorgeous to look at with wonderful attention to every detail. I mean, what can you say about a game which has a steampipe version of "Girls Just Want To Have Fun"? I'd be happy to do another game in the setting, even if it didn't work out too well in Bioshock 2. Gameplay is so-so, adequate but not serviceable. The plot is wonderfully engaging but skin-deep, when you try and think about it too hard it falls apart.

     My recommendation? An absolute rental but I wouldn't say much for its replay value.

9/10

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey review

*Warning - Spoilers for the book*

    Am I alone in thinking this movie was terrible?

    I didn't get to see this in theaters because I was hoping to see it with my wife but we both fell sick when the other was ready. However, on DVD, this was just disappointing on every conceivable level. The production values are fine, the storytelling is okay, but the changes from the book aren't only unnecessary but tone-shifting. The finished product is diminished as a result of them. As a movie, The Hobbit is okay but as an adaptation it's awful. Part of the issue is the removal of the heart of the story. Peter Jackson seems to forget it's a parody.

    Definition of PARODY
    1: a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule

    Contrary to what many people realize, fantasy existed before J.R.R. Tolkien. Certainly, he codified a lot of what we take for granted in the genre but that doesn't mean it wasn't possible for him to poke fun at ideas inherent in epic fiction. The Hobbit is the story of a middle-aged English busybody getting caught up in an adventure well beyond his understanding.

    That, at least, is maintained. However, the movie  ejects the next most important part of the plot: no one else is very good at it either. The character of Thorin Oakenshield is a buffoon who dreams of being a great king. The dwarves are coalminers on a treasure hunt. Gandalf, alone, is the kind of character who exists truly in the epic world of heroes they're traveling through.

The parts at Bilbo's house were about note-perfect, I should say.

     Ultimately, the book is a love-letter to rural English life. Bilbo Baggins goes on an adventure, is the better man for it, and is part of great things but virtually every heroic trope possible is subverted. I hesitate to spoil it for those two or three people who haven't read the book but Bilbo and the Dwarves accomplish nothing! They don't kill Smaug! All they do is rill it up and get a bunch of Laketown people killed! The entire Battle of Five Armies is a satire of how Europe is willing to get a bunch of innocent people killed over naked gain! Only coincidence (and Bilbo) saves it from being a meaningless bloodbath.

    *sighs*

    The 2012 movie tries desperately to be as heroic and uplifting as The Lord of the Rings. Thorin Oakenshield is a transparent stand-in for Aragorn, the specter of Sauron hangs over everything, and the naked greed of the dwarves is replaced with a more noble need for a homeland. By attempting to make the story more noble, it diminishes the tale because it's all about a bunch of people acting like they're on a noble quest when it's really not. It's a treasure hunt and nothing more, which is part of the fun.

Any parts with this guy? Not so much.

    Anyway, time to get on with the actual movie review part of the story. We all know the story: Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, dwarves, Smaug, and Gollum. This is only the first third of the story, however, getting up to the part where they kill the Great Goblin. To fill up the time, we have a posthumous character in Azog the White Orc. He pursues Thorin tirelessly, adding tension to the story which doesn't really build to anything because Azog has no motivations other than, "Kill dwarves." The orc villains in The Lord of the Rings films were placeholders for Saruman and Sauron, respectively, while Azog's one-dimensionality is solely for itself.

    The acting in the movie is well done, the special effects were fine, and the inclusion of Sylvester McCoy (my favorite Doctor) was a welcome treat. It's nice to see Christopher Lee's Saruman before he became corrupted by the Palantir. In the books he's already turned to evil by this time but I was able to make a mental divorce here I wasn't able to in other places. Gollum, of course, was wonderful and Andy Serkiss was robbed at the Oscars but no surprise there.

    As a successor to The Lord of the Rings, the movie feels off with its uneven pacing between big dramatic moments and slapstick comedy. The movie likewise drags in a few places. Despite this, it wasn't a bad film. I just think it was a terrible The Hobbit. The production values are excellent in the movie and what parts taken from Tolkien and allowed to play out on screen are wonderful. It's just that they don't flow well together at all.

    Your mileage may vary.

4/10

Happy Endings vs. Downer Endings

Inspired by this article by Peter Clines:  I win, I always win.

*Warning - this essay will contain spoilers for the Lord of the Rings, The Dragonlance Series, The Drizzt series, Romeo and Juliet [hint: they die], the Domination, series, and The Great Gatsby*

    Endings.

    They happen to every story, at least if you finish them. However, what is the best way to end a story? This is an interesting conundrum because I am not a great believer that happy endings are always the best way to end a story. Indeed, in one of my novels (titled: Cthulhuapocalypse in case you wanted to know) resolving the end has proven to be on of my greatest challenges in getting the work done.

    The original ending was meant to be a deliberate challenge to stereotypical Lovecraftian stories with as happy an ending as can be imagined. That didn't really sit well with me. So, I rewrote it to be darker and more depressing yet that didn't sit well with the novel. Trying to figure out the titular balance is more of a struggle than people might think.

    In Greek theater, the trope of Deus Ex Machina came from when the playwrights literally had the gods sort out everything in the end. This isn't always a bad thing. In the Lord of the Rings, a bunch of Eagles fly from pretty much nowhere to rescue not only our protagonists but all of the supporting characters who would otherwise be buried under a bunch of volcanic ash. This rescues the ending from being wholly depressing with everyone involved in the story dying horribly.

    However, the Lord of the Rings' ending works, I suspect because it is not a wholly happy one. Frodo is left traumatized to the point of needing to leave Middle Earth entirely. That small moment of trauma in an otherwise blissful sea of crownings, weddings, and triumph makes the story infinitely better in my opinion. Even The Hobbit, a largely humorous story, has a number of deaths in the end which highlight the cost of war.

    Obviously, it depends on what sort of story you're telling. Detective stories tend to end just fine with the murderer's caught because the worst of their crimes have already happened. A love story doesn't exactly need tragedy as countless romantic comedies have proven you don't need extra dramatic weight to the story.

    Yet, sometimes the Downer Ending is more meaningful in the end. The Great Gatsby is a love story, for example, only in the titular character's mind. Everything turns to crap in the end and he dies unloved chasing after a dream which doesn't matter because the person he loves is entirely unworthy of it. Romeo and Juliet is entirely memorable over Shakespeare's other romances because of what an epic disaster it all turns into.

    So where does an author want to make the ending slightly more bittersweet? It's a difficult question but I think it's a question of whether or not you want the story to have weight. Countless forgettable fantasy fiction from the 1970s and 1980s effectively consisted of "and everyone lived with no tragedy whatsoever, except that one guy who died but got brought back to life."

    Even the Dragonlance trilogy, father of all mass-marketed D&D paperbacks, ended its story in a rather bleak manner. One of the company dies ignominiously of a heart attack, another fully gives himself to evil, the ex-girlfriend of the hero refuses redemption, and not everything is sunshine happy day. Yes, the world is saved but it came at cost. This is in contrast to R.A. Salvatore's the Legend of Drizzt series where after twenty or so books, the only major death was undone by author's fiat, effectively removing the only meaningful sacrifice in the series.

    I will challenge, however, authors that darker and bleaker doesn't mean better. SM Stirling, author of the Domination series, has made a career of writing the most repulsive Nazi-esque villains imaginable opposed by plucky heroes only to have the bad guys win. Every.single.time. This subversion has repulsed as many fans as it's attracted. Let's face it, a lot of people come to series wanting to see evil punished and good triumphant--monsters are rarely characters you enjoy see triumphing. The exception is horror and rarely does this work outside of short stories or as a stinger to the ending.

    What do I prefer? I think I generally prefer endings which are hard fought. My favorite urban fantasy series is the generally uplifting Dresden Files. The series is sprinkled with a number of unhappy or bittersweet endings despite the fact its primarily an action-comedy story. The deaths of characters we love adds to the drama and makes the struggles meaningful. While I doubt I would enjoy a story where Harry Dresden dies locked in a cellar forgotten by everyone, the tragedies he endures give the story dramatic strength.

    In short, the question of what sort of ending you want to have is something you should consider as to how it makes the audience feel as well as how you want the characters to feel themselves. Sometimes, a character's story ending comes suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of the story. These facts should be considered when you're doing a write-up of your tale. Many a good character has been created to die and this isn't a bad thing.

    Just my .02.