Now playing Soul Calibur IV, and Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires.  I really hate the new weapon changes they've instituted in DW6, but overall it's a pretty decent entry in the series.

...but it's too long a game to replay.

I do full replays of Deus Ex every so often, when I've got an empty block of time or when I'm in total insomniac mode and need something to do between the times when I should be going to sleep and when I need to be working. I also use quick save a lot when I play, but mainly for any sequence involving a ladder. For some reason I was always about 50%, I'd either climb up perfectly or slide off the side and plummet.

Even when I set out to play a walking tank, I usually take a very slow approach to the game - sneaking around, scouting for passwords and the like (despite the fact I have most all of them memorized by now anyway). I build stepladders with crates and boxes and hoard all my tech tools and lockpicks until I find something I can't get by otherwise.

The game is really open to almost any play style. On some replays, I set goals for myself, like "No gunfire/no detection/no alarms" or "no weapons" or "only throwing knives."

The second one plays quite a bit faster, but because of that it doesn't have quite the same level of immersion.

As to what I've actually been playing lately, I bought a couple of used games. I really enjoyed The Force Unleashed, especially on the higher difficulty settings. The segments where the character "kicks ass" are fun, don't get me wrong, but the tension of trying to take out a whole squad that is capable of killing you if you get hit once (and subsequently stunned/juggled from hit to hit) makes it feel better when you complete a level.

I have also been playing Condemned 2. I decided to go ahead and get it after beating the first one, and it is... okay. The fist fighting feels a little sloppy, and the kick seems really underpowered (I've been told there is a power up for a gold badge later that helps). It probably doesn't help that about half the time my brain is yelling at me "The disarm for that approach is so elementary, why couldn't they have programed it in!" The atmosphere is pretty good though.

I bought Shadow Complex at launch and have beaten it a couple of times. I was going for the 4% insurgent achievement, but apparently you need to level up to a point where you have unlimited foam shots to make it viable. I managed to skip a big chunk of the game to get to the foam early, but by the time I picked up enough packs to make it really useful, I was over 4% for the items. I think unlimited foam is awarded at lv30, so I should be able to take another stab at the insurgent run soon.

I took the bait and pre-orderd Batman:Arkham Asylum, so that is what I'll be playing when I get some time this weekend. The day and date shipping came out to less then the fuel cost to go to the nearest store and buy it, so it was a win-win deal.

The sequel did a lot wrong, but it is still an enjoyable game. One of the main screwups was making all weapons draw from one universal ammo pool. The second one has better physics, but still archaic by today's standards. Most of the gameplay is still there - you can set traps, you can hack (though it becomes completely automatic. You either know a password/have a high enough hack skill - or you can't access the device. You can't, say, memorize the passwords and enter them manually. This is one of many little things, likely done because it was designed as a cross platform pc/console hybrid, that hurt the game), and you can figure out (to some degree) alternate ways of achieving your objectives.

The areas are no where near as large as those in the original, likely another concession to the console arena, but for the most part they still did a good job. As I said before, with a couple of exceptions, you don't get enough time to really get into a place like you did in the original. By the time you touch the controller and move for the first time, you're already in the second city of the game. (They destroy the city where you were being trained in the intro.)

At times, it almost feels like another game trying to be Deus Ex, but other times it gets it RIGHT. Unlocking vision augments and using one of the later weapons, you can snipe through walls. You can still talk your way through, or bribe, if you don't feel like killing everyone in sight. One of the biomod upgrades let you "hack" security beams. For all the stuff that they gutted out of it, they did manage to get a couple of nice features in to offset. You can get manual bot control though, which is another plus - the first time you hijack an enemy bot, use it for recon and then either shut it down so you can get through the hallway it used to guard, or use it to ventilate the security staff, it conveys the same sort of feeling the original did so well.

They also did away with skill points and stat control. Your only customization comes through your biomods. The combat is also "faster", since it no longer requires you to have a high skill + a stable lock on your character to improve your hit percentage. The way I play these games I don't typically get into that many straight fights, so I didn't really notice that much of a difference.

Another issue I just remembered - there is no target specific damage. This works both ways. The downside is that if you shoot your enemy in the chest three times with a gun or in the head three times, the effect is the same. I wouldn't even blame this one on the simultaneous console development, it was just plain lazy.

That said, you can pick it up really cheap now, I'd imagine, so you should probably give it a try. If you go in knowing that it has some issues and don't expect the perfect game, you can probably still really enjoy it. It is paced quicker then the original, and it ends quicker as well. It also suffers one of the same problems as the first one your decisions all along don't add up to much because, yet again, what you do in the last area of the game alone determines which ending you get.

I actually own two copies, one for the Xbox that I bought for myself and one for the PC that was a gift. Even once I addressed the graphics card issue that initially made the PC version run fairly terribly, I still found the game a bit more enjoyable on the console.

man if i had the time for it I would replay Deus Ex.  i never did get around to getting all the endings, and while that isn't particularly something that I care about, back in the day it was like pretty much my favorite game and I still have so many fond memories of beating the game.  Also yeah, though.  Everyone knows that strength is useless to pick up as a skill.  Like the first time I played through the game without any prior knowledge of anything else I could tell right away because well.... all you do is pick up box???

The microfibral muscle enhancement comes in handy a couple of places. I know it lets you use a back entrance into Castle Clinton (though there are better ways to get in there unnoticed), and I remember it coming in handy a few other places - then again I do a fair bit of box moving/platform building during my average replay, so it might just be that I choose to play it that way.

And anybody who thinks that his own chest is a good place to hide a giant sword, and does not hesitate to pull it out in the middle of a fight, is not someone you want to cross in even a well lit alley... unless you've leveled up your summons and can break 9999 with your Overdrives.

The microfibral muscle enhancement comes in handy a couple of places. I know it lets you use a back entrance into Castle Clinton (though there are better ways to get in there unnoticed), and I remember it coming in handy a few other places - then again I do a fair bit of box moving/platform building during my average replay, so it might just be that I choose to play it that way.

no i'm pretty sure its useless

no i'm pretty sure its useless

If you get the speed enhancement aug instead of run silent, you can jump high enough that crate stacking becomes pretty much obsolete. That build leans towards a hit and run character, so Combat Strength would be a natural fit.

If you pick the run silent aug and want to be able to use some of the same alternate approaches, being able to move a crate out of your way or to build a stack up to reach an area you can't quite make it up to otherwise, Microfibral muscle is the way to go.

Well, UPS just delivered my copy of Arkham Asylum, and I also just found out I don't have to go in to work again until Thursday... I'll post some impressions of the full game later, I'm hoping it lives up to the hype.

i never used any of the enhancements unless i knew there was a recharge droid or whatever around. i'm a hoarder.

i never used any of the enhancements unless i knew there was a recharge droid or whatever around. i'm a hoarder.

Almost the same here. I always made sure I had a ton of bio electric cells before I started using stuff, and then it would be just as much as I needed for whatever plan I had in mind.


As for Arkham Asylum - it is really good so far. The pacing seems pretty good: mixing up brawling, hunting from the shadows, and investigating nicely. Some of the crime scene investigations give me flashbacks to old point and click games where you just had to scan the screen until you found that one thing the cursor locked onto. In some areas, the game disguises things like waypoints with a trail of evidence that you have to follow. It fits with the character and blends with the game world a lot better then say, a flashing gold arrow. I've only had one "real" boss fight so far (well, maybe two), and the controls stayed tight.

The Riddler bugs you about a bunch of hidden clues. Sometimes finding them is the easy part, and it is just a matter of figuring out how to get the game engine to line stuff up correctly to give you credit for it. I've "solved" about 10% of the riddles... they aren't that hard, but they can be a little annoying since you have to go around searching for that one little area you need to scan.

My only gripe at this point is that a couple of the situations had only one way to approach/deal with them. I'm still early in the game, it may just be the game teaching me the mechanics of it, so I'm not judging to harshly - yet.

The setting and mood are perfect. Joker regularly chimes in over the p.a. to taunt his underlings and Batman in equal measure. A couple of the phrases were repeated fairly often, but that could be my fault because I was skulking around trying to clear all the riddles I could in the first couple of areas before moving on.

The area where you encounter Scarecrow is absolutely amazing. It goes from ho-hum to holy shit in about three seconds flat. This is the first game in a long time that actually made me stop and say "Whoa" with respect to level design/presentation.

i never used any of the enhancements unless i knew there was a recharge droid or whatever around. i'm a hoarder.

yeah seriously, that + save on every occasion sounds crazy.