Demo Monday: Arkham Asylum

My experiences with comics-to-games is as good as my experiences with games-to-film, which means not a whole lot. The only comics-to-game adaptation that I really liked were X-Men Legends: Rise of the Apocalypse and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Everything else was either "meh" or just plain bad. So when they announced Batman: Arkham Asylum, I thought it was going to be one of those games that will only try to capitalize on the Batman franchise. Still, I have to make sure and try the demo.

The demo -which can be downloaded here- opens up with a cinematic, showing Batman delivering The Joker back to the Arkham Asylum. The intro is pretty nice and displays how well the atmosphere and the graphics of the game is. Then the intro is followed by a short and kick-ass tutorial that will give you a bird's eye view on the gameplay mechanics. This part -the tutorial- is the quick seller of the game. If you don't get sold with the game's free-flowing combat, the stealth action and other things that only Bats can do, then...there's something wrong with you.

Batman: Arkham Asylum seems to be a very interesting game. The gameplay reminds me of Thief and Prince of Persia, and that's a good thing. Plus, the mechanics -gliding, silent takedowns, swinging from wall to wall- makes me feel that I'm really playing Batman. I know I already made a very tight budget for all upcoming games for this Fall. But, I guess, I can always make room for this game.

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Games of Fall 2009

Fall is almost here, and that heralds the start of the Holiday Games Rush. So, in order to prepare my budget early on, I started checking out the release schedule for the next four months, and all I can say it's jam packed with tons of good releases. I actually got dizzy looking at the schedule. Unfortunately, I have to limit my games this year due to time and financial constraints. But here are the four games that I'll definitely save my money for:

September

Champions Online
This game melded two of the things that I really love: gaming and comics. That's why, even though I'm not that much into MMORPG, Champions has gotten me excited since the day it was announced. In truth, however, I was going to skip this game in favor of Aion. But I got sold after I participated in the open beta testing. The contemporary setting, the freedom of character creation, and the wicked travel powers in this game are just so much fun.

Aion
The first time I learned about this game, I was awed by its flight feature. Flying just changes many things in game like traveling and combat. But, other than that, this game didn't interest me at all. But since most of my guildmates (whom I love to play with) are moving to Aion, I gave this game a shot and played the closed beta. Surprisingly, I did enjoy the game. The chain attacks, especially, were a lot of fun. Plus, it's also the most graphically pleasing game I've seen in a while.

October

Alpha Protocol
This game is an upcoming action-RPG developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Most of my favorite games were developed by these guys, way before they were in Obsidian. So that alone is enough reason for me to play this game. But, beyond that, I'm also looking forward to its world and atmosphere, which an espionage setting ala The Bourne Trilogy. It will be a nice change to use contemporary arsenal in a role-playing game other than a sword and board.

November

Dragon Age: Origins
Finally, after waiting for 5 long years, this game is going to be out this coming November. Like Alpha Protocol, the developer alone is enough reason for me to play the game. I've stuck with BioWare all these years since the Infinity Engine era and not one of their role-playing games have disappointed me (not even Neverwinter Nights). So I don't think they'll start dissappoint me with Dragon Age. The game, based on the videos I've seen, is just epic.

So, there, all of my upcoming games for this Fall. I'll try to save money for all of these games, and that is doable. My biggest problem now is time. Where am I going to get all the hours to play all these games. Skip sleep, maybe? Sleeping's overrated anyways.

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Maybes and Propagandas

After 17 years of buying tapes and discs, I've finally gone digital with my music. It's hard to believe that, until yesterday, I've never bought a single mp3 file. I'm just old school like that, I guess. I like to have a hard copy of my music and actually hold it. I still do. But, combined with my books and boxes of comics, I'm running out of storage space in my room. That's why I went digital. Not only it'll save me some space but also time -from ripping my CDs- and money -because mp3 albums are always cheaper in Amazon.

Speaking of cheap digital music, my budget allowed me to buy three mp3 albums instead of just two hard copies. The albums that I bought were from the bands Dredg, Propagandhi and Maybeshewill. All of them are great albums -especially Dredg's (I'm hoping to write a review of it sometime next month)- and I'm having a blast listening to them all. But, anyways, here's a snippet of those two albums: Sing the Word Hope in Four Part Harmony and Supporting Caste.

Maybeshewill

Maybeshewill is a post-rock band from UK. I've never heard of them before prior to their new album, Sing the Word in Four Part Harmony. But when I came across them and downloaded their free mp3, "Last Time This Year", on Last.fm, they completely blew me away. Unlike most post-rock bands, none of their song are meant for shoegazing. The songs in their new album are pretty heavy and melodic, and as well as aggressive and beautiful. It's definitely the best post-rock album I've heard since Mogwai's The Hawk is Holwing, which was released last year.

Propagandhi

Now here's a band that I haven't heard from in more than 10 years. I don't know if they went on hiatus or I just buried them beneath other bands. But, anyways, even though they're a great punk rock band, I wasn't that much of a fan of their music. Their new album, Supporting Caste, however, is all balls to the walls goodness. Full of focused -not wasteful- energy and aggression. The guitar riffs, the melody and rhythm, the lyrics (which speaks a lot to me), everything here is good. I haven't heard any punk music this good for a long while.

There's nothing much left to say about the albums I featured above except that they're awesome, fun and energetic to listen to. They couldn't labeled as "classics" but neither of them are forgettable or a waste of time and money. I highly recommend both albums to those who like rock or punk music.

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A Nice, New Egg

A couple months ago I mentioned that I'm planning to buy a new portable media player (mp3 player) this year. So, since we're almost into the holidays, I did my research to find out what's the current "it" in the consumer tech world. Unfortunately, there's no news of a 64GB iPod Touch yet, and the new Zune HD -while it's an awesome device- also have a 32 GB capacity. But a new device by Creative has caught my eye, the Zii EGG.


It is, however, not just a PMP as it boasts of being a stem cell computer. But, yes, its specifications are really impressive. It runs on an Android OS (the same OS running the G1 Phones), it has 32 GB of internal storage and a SDHC card slot for external storage (increasing the storage to a possible total of 64 GB), a HD camera, and a lot more (click here for full specs). If some company shoves a mobile phone chip in it, this device could be a serious competitor for the iPhone.

Sadly, the EGG doesn't have any apps yet. So, as for the moment, it's only available for developers. But I couldn't wait for this thing to hit the tech hungry conusmers. Hopefully, it'll be on the shelves by next year.

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