Batman: Arkham City – DEBUG MODE

After two years, I’m finally continuing this series. Candidly, what took so long was forcing myself to write it. This was really difficult for me compared to the first. Arkham City is great – it’s the best in the series – but a lot of that greatness is improvement on the solid foundation laid down by the previous game. Iteration is less exciting to talk about than revolution.

I had intended to get this up for the game’s 10th anniversary but it took much longer and became much longer than I had anticipated. I thought, since I initially didn’t have much to write about, that it would be shorter than the first video but somehow it ballooned into the longest yet for the channel.

I hope I’ve done the game some justice here. Everyone knows it’s good, but it deserves appreciation a little deeper than that.

I will be doing Arkham Origins. Originally I was only going to cover the Rocksteady games, but on replaying them all I reconsidered. Since this one took so long, I’m not going directly into production on the next one. But I definitely intend to finish the series before the 10th anniversary of Arkham Knight – and even of Origins. Since there’s a new Rocksteady game out next year and a new Bat-family game, it would probably be a good idea to get the series wrapped sooner than later. We’ll see.

A Critique of “DEATHLOOP” – DEBUG MODE

Oh Deathloop…

I was so looking forward to this game. Arkane Studios had become one of my favorite developers out there with their last few games. Dishonored 2? Great game with amazing level design. Prey? Even better and it featured the best narrative they’ve ever done.

For me, Deathloop falls flat in nearly every regard. The one way surpassess previous Arkane games is in the feel and flow of the action. That’s not nothing, but it’s not what makes them unique. Arkane making a game with lousy level design and boring player choice is like if Nintendo put out a Mario game that messed up the jumping but for some reason had a lavishly produced story.

This game got rave reviews from critics. Audiences seem to love it too. And that’s great. If I didn’t come to it with a set of expectations… I still think I would have found it lacking as I explain in the video. I’m honestly not sure how people are seeing this game as a masterpiece. If it helps people find Arkane’s older, better games or brings the studio attention for hopefully improved future ones, then that’s ultimately a good thing no matter how I felt about it.