I'm not a very big enjoyer of horror games. On the very rare occasion that I do boot up a horror game, a chemical change seems to occur in my body. The part of my brain responsible for going "holy mother of hell get me away from this scary thing" is dampened. I expect to be scared, and therefore I'm more resilient to said scariness. I might just not be very good at getting into the horror games mindset. My brain is too busy battening down all the hatches and readying the engines of war against the oncoming spookies and ghosties.
The times I've been most scared playing a game are when I don't expect to be scared. And what better way to lull myself into a false sense of security this Halloween than to play an otherwise not-so-scary game, with just one particularly horror-esque moment?
]]>As Ed detailed in his review earlier this week, Gotham Knights is a bit of a disappointing dud. I've also been picking my way through Gotham City as various members of the bat family, weightlessly punching dudes in alleys before crafting new sticks that hit 2% harder than the one I was using before. Despite a relatively good looking rendition of the iconic gothic metropolis and a pretty engaging story, Gotham Knights ultimately failed to capture my imagination.
It didn't help that throughout my time with Gotham Knights, I was thinking about the Arkham series. Rocksteady's trio of Batman-em-ups are essential superhero games, titles that redefined the genre and provided a template that still feels contemporary to this day. Aslyum, City and Knight fully immerse you in the Batman fantasy, successfully crafting a depiction of the caped crusader that was deadly, capable and - perhaps best of all - human.
]]>I'm a big fan of shared, collective funtimes, so I must lay flowers at the feet of posters on the Batman Arkham subreddit (maybe not flowers; like, bat-themed knives and big stompy boots. I don't know, what does Batman like?). A couple of weeks ago, with no new mainline Arkham game since 2015's Arkham Knight, they started discussing Batman: Arkham World, a fourth game in the series that came out in 2021. Except, of course, it does not exist.
]]>A bit later than planned, but we're back once again for another edition of The RPS Time Capsule, in which the RPS Treehouse undergoes a collective mind-melting experiment to pick their favourite, bestest best games from a specific year to be preserved and saved until the end of time. This month, we've shifted our game preservation gaze to 2009, so read on below to find out which games made the cut, and which have been cast off into the eternal games bin.
]]>Rocksteady Studios, the creators the Batman: Arkham games and the newly-announced Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, on Friday night issued a response to the week's reports of sexual harrassment and discrimination. These allegations stemmed from a 2018 letter of complaint written to management by most of their female employees, one of whom felt the company hadn't done enough since then and shared the letter with a newspaper. Rocksteady say they investigated all formal complaints and disciplined or terminated some staff back then, and now have called in a independent third-party to help investigate any potential further complaints.
]]>Update: Rocksteady issued a full, proper response on Friday.
Follow recent reports that Rocksteady Studios failed to sufficiently address sexual harrassment, the Batman: Arkham developers have responded in a most curious way. While they have yet to issue a public statement themselves, they have posted an "unsolicited letter" from some of the employees behind the 2018 letter which first raised the issues. The new letter's writers say they think Rocksteady have been better than was alleged. But without meaningfully addressing the allegations themselves, Rocksteady just casually posted that letter on Twitter. That makes it their first public response and defence, a purpose for which the letter is woefully inappropriate and inadequate. This is: mystifying.
]]>Update: Many of the women who signed the original letter have now said that Rocksteady have improved more than The Guardian's account suggested, though the company have handled this in a weird and inappropriate way. Thennn on Friday Rocksteady finally posted a proper response.
In November 2018, the majority of the female employees at Batman: Arkham studio Rocksteady reportedly signed a letter raising issues of sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Since then, a Guardian report says, things haven't changed enough. In light of this, the former senior writer of Rocksteady's upcoming Suicide Squad game - who was behind that 2018 letter - has asked Rocksteady to take her name off it.
]]>The human race evolved the facial expression known as the “smile” because we needed a way to silently communicate satisfaction to other members of our species. So we decided to bare our teeth at one another and squint. This stuck, and now even the characters of your favourite digital storyderby are doing it. It’s sort of disgusting, and yet… you know what, I like it. Here are the 11 best smiles in PC games.
]]>There are only five days left to furtively flick through your cousin’s Facebook page in a desperate attempt to understand them as a person. But you do know one thing: they love to play those videogames. That’s enough to go on, surely. You can just type “gamer gifts” into the cybervoid and see what comes out!
No. Do not do that.
Here are the 8 worst gifts for PC gamers, and if any other list goblin tells you otherwise they are a scurrilous crook and they want your money.
]]>Light the candles, roast the goose, Father Epic has come to town. Bearing gifts of cost-free games, he's telling tale of a masked menace from a far-off metropolis. Clad in black and the cowl of a bat - what delightful nonsense! For the younger children, a toy-like series of marvels await in the Lego Batman trilogy. Ah, and for you older rascals, the Arkham series awaits with a devilish tale of detectives, criminals and fast-flying fists. But make up your mind quick, there's only a week to spare.
]]>Utomik! Sounds like a stiff drink, but no. Utomik is a subscription-based games service that launched yesterday, angling to be ‘Netflix for games’ (sound familiar?) It’s currently offering a library of approximately 750 games for either $7 or $10 per month, depending on whether you want to share the account with your little sister or not. I signed up and took a stroll through its library, fingering a few tomes here and there. And while it was fast and performed well, there wasn’t a lot I wanted to play. It’s less Netflix for games and more “Spotify for older games you already own or don’t want”.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Maybe it's the E3 scent in the air or maybe it's just that I'm craving some big budget biffing, but I'm missing my favourite Multiple-A franchises right now. The Arkham games in particular. Oh, to be the bat-like man once more.
]]>A few hours into Arkham Asylum [official site], I thought Batman's cape was glitching. It does occasionally catch on railings if you brood-squat at an odd angle, but this was different; an occasional flash of colour in the gloom of the garment* caught my eye and I thought Bats' big old utility belt was glitching through the cape. But, no, the cape had been torn and as the long night in Arkham continued, Batman's beatings would make marks all over his suit.
More importantly, he gets a heck of a five o'clock shadow.
]]>Below you will find the 25 best stealth games ever released on PC. There are sneaking missions, grand thefts, assassinations, escapes and infiltrations. Stay low, keep quiet and we'll make it to the end.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I grew quickly weary of Batman: Arkham City and initially had no interest in Batman: Arkham Knight, but that game being released and then unreleased left me thinking about and eventually longing for the Bat. Batman: Arkham Asylum [official site], the first in the series, is where I choose to return. It's still a remarkable game.
]]>What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 8 of the sale.
]]>PAGE ONE, PANEL ONE
Graham lies in a crumpled heap beneath the looming figure of DOCTOR NO IDEAS.
CAPTION: This looks like a job for…
PAGE ONE, PANEL TWO
Pip, dressed in a (heroic) frog costume, sits typing at a computer.
PAGE TWO, PANEL ONE
A closeup of a Gchat window with the text "G, are there any games which do violence as well as comics?"
]]>Bruce Wayne, billion dollar playboy who was recently declared Least Likely Man On Earth To Be Batman (Of The Year) by Time magazine, is at it again. He's teamed with a gaming storefront known as the Humble Bundle to sell games largely focused on Batman for no specific reason. The proceeds of a pay-what-you-want bundle that includes that likes of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City will go toward a sprawling tunnel-based weapons facility beneath Gotham charities and game developers.
]]>Even when villains are given a good, hard KAPOWTHWACKBIFFZOTT-ing and the day is saved, Batman stories rarely end on entirely happy notes. Thus, it's almost sort of fitting that Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City haven't escaped Games For Windows Live's years-long countdown to self-destruction entirely unscathed. Yes, they're finally free of Microsoft's arbitrary, ages-behind-the-times shackles, but your save files, amazingly, won't be making the jump to Steam. Kinda justifies some of those fears we've had about these DRM systems for all this time, huh? You know, the ones companies like Microsoft tried to reassure us about by promising that they'd never leave us without the things we worked so hard to buy and earn?
]]>Small victories are important. Games For Windows Live has been minced into a fine paste and sent off to a major supermarket chain as a horse meat substitute, but the effects of it are still being felt. Most games are still saddled with the client, and it takes an act of will on the part of the publishers to swab that canker sore. 2K did that to BioShock 2 last night. All traces of the client have been yanked out of the Steam version, with the publisher adding joypad and Big Picture support in, as well as bringing the DLC to Steam for you to buy (so it's not totally altruistic). It's the first time Minerva's Den can be bought anywhere but the GFWL marketplace.
]]>Dammitall! Here we were, hoping the next Batman game would be a gloriously silly, super-colourful Silver Age tale, but instead it looks to be more grimdark Nolanism. I mean, that's fine, but we've done it twice already. Don't wear it out, as Michelle Pfeiffer once said about her name to Michael Keaton. 'Tis not to be - Batman: Arkham Origins is the next game, Rocksteady are no longer at the helm and the calendar has rewound to Bruce Wayne in his youth. Despite my arrogant suppositions a couple of sentences ago, that's all we really know and it could yet turn out to be anything. Doesn't seem like they're avoiding evoking the style and tone of the earlier Arkhams, mind, and they'll also be using the same engine. It's "current-gen" so that may mean we don't get the shiniest of all possible shines, but more positively they're hinting at depicting Gotham City as a "functional city", not a mere puzzleplace.
]]>We may be in for a third Batscapade from the Arkhamverse, according to Warner suits in the company's latest earnings call, and it'll probably be this year too.
There's almost nothing to go on, other than Warner's Chief Financial Officer John K. Martin letting slip that "and we also have a strong games release this year, which will include the next release in the Batman Arkham franchise." This means it's up to us to let slip the dogs of speculation.
]]>Edit: We're reading below that lots of regions outside the UK are being charged a really very much larger sum. Which sucks. Valve will always insist prices are decided by publishers, so yell at Warner. There's also confusion over the inclusion of Arkham City and War In The North - to be absolutely clear, the Warner Complete Pack definitely currently includes those games, whether by design or mistake. It also seems that some regions can't see the deal at all. The solution: move to the UK.
I'm never quite sure whether posting about the Steam sale is doing mindless promotion for the company, or alerting our readers to amazing prices for games. I'm going with the latter in this instance, because bloody hell, this one took me by surprise. Not boasted of on the front page of Steam's decidedly confusing sales page (not including the names of the games on sale is perhaps an odd choice) is the Warner Complete Pack. Clearly one of many extraordinarily reduced bundles (19 THQ games for £50, 80 Sega games for £70 for instance), the Warner bundle brings 18 games for £40, and one of them is Batman: Arkham City. So that's basically "buy Arkham City, get every other Warner game on Steam free." And one of those is Bastion. And another is the brand new Lord Of The Rings: War In The North. And of course yet another is Batman: Arkham Asylum.
]]>It was rumoured, and then it was confirmed, and then we were all like :(
For it is true: the man of bats will not strike back on PC in 10 days' time, but instead in 17 days' time. A small wait, perhaps, but we've already had to hang on for almost a month later than the console-folk. Yes, the already-delayed Batman: Arkham City PC port, mooted to be the very bestest version of Brucie-boy's semi-open-world swinging adventures thanks to various technical jiggery-pokery done with the help of NVIDIA, has been delayed anew. November 25 is the new date, which at least is safely after all Big Three of November's remaining new releases - MW3, Skyrim, Saints Row 3 - are all done and dusted and we'll have time to think about something else/sleep.
There's no word on why the PC version was delayed, and what the state of play will be for the various DLC by then. Oh well. Here's a Nightwing DLC trailer to tide you over.
]]>Batman! A game so good that Yahoo awarded it 6/5, thus unwittingly demonstrating that review scores are little more than a media pissing contest whose only real beneficiary is publishers’ marketing departments and people who like to shout at other people on forums. Which is exactly why we don't give scores here. Can Arkham City possibly live up to such drooling superlatives? Well, I can’t yet speak for the PC version - which isn’t out until November 18, though we’re hoping to have code before then - but I did spend far too much of my week off playing the console version (I'm sorry, I just fancied getting a different sort of RSI on top of the one I already have from my mouse and keyboard), thus have a very good sense of the game itself if not its technical aspects and improvements on PC. So, if you must, consider this not a Wot I Think, but an extended preview offering some idea of what to expect in a few weeks.
]]>I'm so sorry. There's going to be a proper scandal about that. GamesIndustry.biz or Gamasutra or someone will probably run an expose about the awful corruption at RPS. Last week, I brazenly claimed, to your face, that this would be the last Batman: Arkham City trailer we'd post before the pointlessly-delayed PC release next month.
I LIED TO YOU.
Because here's the first proper PC footage of Arkham City.
]]>Well, maybe. Suppose it depends on whether they squeak out any particularly tasty DLC. With the game due for release on the unantialiased darklands of console next week and currently drawing huge review scores - but sadly delayed on PC - its constant torrent of promotional videos is now capped off by this launch-ish trailer. It's very dramatic! It implies Batman facing his darkest challenge since all the other dark challenges he's faced and will no doubt continue to face! It features some slightly troubling voice acting!
It also looks rather cracking, which makes me only grumpier that we'll have to wait a few weeks to play it on our faithful game-towers.
]]>More Arkham City footage this morning, which makes me very happy indeed. It’s the reveal of a new villain, and we all know villains are one of the best things about comic book games. The footage comes courtesy of Gametrailers and as well as showing some footage of the game, it has excitable fellow Sefton Hill giving some background on another villain out to cause mischief and mayhem. This time it's Deadshot, the world’s greatest assassin. That’s right, all those historical wrist-bladed assassins can step aside, because Deadshot has wrist-mounted cannons. BOOM. Take a look.
]]>I have nothing but sympathy for poor old Mr Freeze and the comics writer who created him, Ian Cold. From Batman's already ludicrous rogue's gallery (Man-Bat! Calendar Man!), his star is surely the most fallen, thanks to the governor of California's chilling portrayal in the most nippletastic of all the Batman movies. How to make this pun-spewing pastiche remotely fearsome again? Well, give him a massive helmet, Terminator-esque body language, all manner of complicated-looking technology including some natty robot goggles and the sum total of zero one-liners: that's the Arkham City approach.
]]>Gotham City Imposters, which can very loosely be described as Team Fortress 2 populated by armies of crazies pretending to be either Batman or the Joker, is two important things: 1) the first game from NOLF-makers Monolith since the dour FEAR 2, and more importantly their first attempt to do humour and outlandishness rather than po-faced horror since 2003 2) bonkers.
This is why my bat-sense is tingling at news GCI has opened beta sign-ups.
]]>The videogames promotional cycle can be so exhausting - take Batman: Arkham City, for example. It's still three and half months away but already we're at a sort of hype crescendo. Yes, I want it. Do you hear me, Warner Brothers? I am prepared, right now, to say that I want to play it and I am prepared to hand over in the region of £30 to make this happen. Do I still have to watch tons of videos that tease and torture me with the fact that it's probably going to be very really good but I'm not allowed to have it yet? Do you want me to beg? Alright, I'll do it.
Please, Mr Warner and your delightful brothers, can I have this game now? If I promise to watch another video, can I have it? Please? Please?
]]>Batman: Arkham City gets closer and closer, and we get exciteder and excitider, and in the heat of our anticipation become less gramatickly accurate. After what feels like years of teasing, concept art and pre-order incentives, finally we get to take a long, lingering look at what it's really like in action. Below: 12 minutes of the game, including playable funtimes from both Batman and Catwoman, good acting, awful acting, Two-Face's disgusting head and many many many goons and hi-tech shenanigans.
]]>And here was I thinking that all the non-comics Batman spin-offs were doing their damndest to pretend that the dark knight detective wasn't in the habit of dragging a boy along to his late-night soirees with angry street thugs. Robin has been resolutely absent from Christopher Nolan's Batman movies and went without mention in the solid, tight Arkham Asylum. But the Boy Wonder has found his way into upcoming sequel Batman: Arkham City after all. How're they going to reconcile the wee lad's bright costume and cheery demeanour with something so grim? Let's take a look...
]]>Rocksteady's slightly delayed PC version of their rather well-received man-thumper/ledge-grappler goes on sale this week. I've been playing it. I've also written some words detailing how I feel about it. But I'm not just going to give them to you, oh no. If you can solve my cunning riddle, you can work out how to read them. Riddle me this!
]]>I'll be Wotting My Thinks all over Rocksteady's much-ballyhooed Batman adventure next week (we'd hoped for sooner, but I've been fruitlessly chasing review code for weeks now. Apparently the fancy PhysX effects have held it up), but until then let's bask in the warm glow of promised free stuff. No idea what the free DLC will be, but it's due on the 17th - a mere two days after the PC release - and will hit all three of the game's platforms. Lovely to not be left in the dust of the console folks for once. Hopefully we'll enjoy the PS3's Play As The Joker mode at some point too.
]]>We're going to be taking a closer look at Bruce Wayne's secret identity on PC soon, but until we do there's a rather shiny "showcase" trailer showing off how implementation of physics engine tech looks on nVidia-powered PCs. Stuff swirls and swishes and dudes get kicked. It's quite impressive. It's still the same gloomy, doomy Arkham Asylum, but there's quite a lot more detail. And, my, it is good lookin'.
For those that missed it: there's a demo out.
]]>There's a launch trailer appeared for Batman: Arkham Asylum. Launch, that is, for the console version of course. The PC version is being delayed until 15th September, so it can be filled with PhysX magic. In the meantime, of course, you can play the demo, and if you're thinking of upgrading your graphics card for the occasion, NVidia has just announced they're giving away a free digital download of the game with GTX 260, GTX 275 or GTX 285 cards. In the meantime, you can see the grumpy manbat in action below.
]]>The Batman: Arkham Asylum demo is up, and weighs in at a portly 2gb. The third-person action game seems to be earning reactions ranging from the satisfied to the hysterical, but at least you can judge for yourself in this instance. You can get it here or here. The PC version of the superheroic skull-thumping game is out September 15 in North America and September 18 in Europe, and will include PhysX support and GeForce 3D Vision stereoscopic 3D, which seems like a 3D too many. Three hefty game footage trailers sit below, making for more Batman action than you can shake a batarang at, should you happen to have one.
]]>So, this has perked up my interest in the forthcoming Bat-brawler. This new Batman: Arkham Asylum trailer shows the caped protagonist beating on the nasties in a knuckle-crunching fashion. It looks remarkably robust and fairly fluid. The devs had been promising a flowing combat experience, and, judging by the game footage we see here, they might just have pulled it off. We should find out for sure on 23rd of June, when the game is released.
]]>The dark'n'mysterious picture of what manner of beast Batman: Arkham Asylum may be is becoming clear. Beneath the cut, footage straight outta GDC of the Splinter Cell/Metal Geary Invisible Predator mode.
You can also find my initial thoughts on that and another of AA's modes (a high score attack one, very much in the the vein of The Club) in a big ol' preview piece over here, based on a few hours of hands-on perp-thumping earlier this week. While I've yet to try the PC build, so far it's looking like a pretty slick superhero game as they go.
]]>It would be fun to extrapolate a kind of superheroic Splinter Cell from this new stealth-action trailer, but I don't suppose the reality of Arkham Asylum will be anything like as precise as Ubi's military infiltrations. Nevertheless the BatAction does look fairly entertaining, with plenty of swooping and batarang-ing. I'm wondering whether this or Wolverine will win out in the third-person action stakes. I guess we'll find out on June 9th, for that is when Arkham Asylum is release on all formats.
]]>A new trailer of Rocksteady's forthcoming Batman Arkham Asylum has gone live. You'll find it beneath the cut, and see a lot of criminals being a cowardly and superstitious lot. The last time we posted about it, a lot of people seemed a little bewildered about what the game's about. I've actually seen it a couple of times, so you'll some thoughts on exactly what this Arkham Aslyum creature is, as well as the aforementioned video of punchitude.
]]>Eidos have released the first teaser trailer of their Batman game, and it's looking appropriately moody. The game is being developed by British studio Rocksteady Studios, who previously developed moderately successful (critically anyway) console first-person shooter Urban Chaos: Riot Response. However, all we really know about this latest Batman game is Eidos' blurb: "Upon entering Arkham Asylum, The Joker greets Batman over a loudspeaker and Batman has no choice but to enter into what can only be an ambush. Batman: Arkham Asylum features brutal combat, giant sized boss battles and deadly experiments all within the notorious island prison." And also that it's a pretty snazzy looking action adventure, natch...
]]>The Poisoned Sponge points us in the direction of the first shots of the previously announced Batman: Arkham Asylum. And they're quite the bunch - there's a real gritty lot to it, which feeds into the whole current Dark Knight hype, while having something of the seediness which brings to mind the much-loved-by-Jim Riddick: Escape from Butchers Bay. Oh - and a splash of the Cradle. It's looking like a distinctive take on the Bat-guy, if nothing else. Go see.
]]>BATMAN! Game Informer's new issue reveals Batman: Arkham Asylum, a bat-chap game from Rocksteady Studios who you may know from (er) not much, but they're fellow North London boys, so I'll nod at them respectively. While games like Assasin's Creed may have hinted how a more open-world Batman game would work, from the very scant information here, it doesn't appear the way they're going - Bioshock is namechecked, and the setting of Gotham's favourite Bedlam implies an intense closed environment. Main interesting info is that its story is co-written by Paul Dini who you'll know from being the main architect of Batman: The Animated Series. Which is good. Apparently. Formats aren't mentioned, but I hear down the grapevine they'll include the PC. Which is good news, as we're a PC site and all.
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