I’ve been playing a lot of Batman: Arkham Origins over the past two weeks and I have yet to find a single element that distinguishes this action-brawler from the previous games in the franchise.  Much like movies, sequels seem to stall out around the third installment, especially when they try to make that sequel a prequel.   Prequels are usually a copout; an easy way to provide filler material without actually advancing the plot – something I’m sure Rocksteady plans to do with whatever next-gen sequel they are cooking up in their own bat cave.

While the idea of exploring the early days of Batman isn’t a bad one, I would have much preferred seeing him slowly build up his crime-fighting HQ.  Instead, we meet up with a fully equipped Batman and a fully stocked bat cave, and a full roster of criminals who want the bat’s head on a platter.   Aside from subtle points in the story you have no real sense of where this game fits into the timeline.  Small clues like Commissioner Gordon not being the commissioner yet and the obligatory first encounters between Batman and some of his more infamous foes like the Joker are conceptually pretty cool, but in the end the game devolves into the same button-mashing attack-counter combat that we all know and love.  Well, hopefully you love it because this fight engine seems to have been adopted by just about every other game being release, only those games continue to do it right whereas Arkham Origins seems to have broken it.

The game takes place in a familiar but slightly different version of Gotham City.  It’s Christmas Eve and the flurries of snow give the game a frosty chill that makes you wonder if Batman’s awesome new bat suit/body armor has any thermal properties.  Despite this being early in his career, Batman has obviously pissed off the mobster known as Black Mask who offers a $50 million bounty to anyone who can bring him the bat in one night.  Personally, if I was Alfred…hmmm…  With that amount of cash at stake all sorts of criminals and assassins come out of the woodwork including a few names casual fans won’t even know and then some big names like Deathstroke, Killer Croc, and Bane.

The city is much larger this time due to the addition of a southern map that is connected by a bridge patrolled by large numbers of enemies, which makes going between the maps an unnecessary chore.   In order to help you get around a bit easier (or faster)  you can hack a series of communication towers that are blocking the GPS system on your Batwing.  Once hacked, you can then fast-travel to any other hacked tower, but until then you are at the mercy of your grapple, which as always, feels more like Spider-Man than Batman.

Oddly enough, previous games seemed to handle the grapple better than Arkham Origins.   There were way too many instances where I would be zipping from building to building with a few cape glides stuck in the middle and all of the sudden there were no more connection points.  I would drop to the ground and have to walk around a bit to find the next place to grapple and continue.   These random, and sadly too frequent interruptions in my travels, really hurt the flow of the game.

Arkham Origins is huge yet it didn’t seem quite as “sandboxy” as Arkham City.  There are certainly plenty of side quests like the random criminal activity you can thwart like saving a citizen from a mugging or stopping a guy from robbing an ATM.  Enigma (aka The Riddler) has scattered extortion documents around town, both in the city and within the story levels, so you have your collectibles, and finding many of these actually requires considerable effort and environmental puzzle-solving.  You’ll also have to deal with defusing a series of bombs that Anarky has scattered about the city, so yes, there is plenty of “filler material” but it’s not that well integrated and comes off feeling just like that; filler.

Contained within this massive city are the core story missions, many of which take you indoors and that is where the game really shines; at least in level design.   While visually interesting, the missions are way to linear, funneling you along from one combat encounter to the next.   I really loved the stealth elements and all the detective bits from the previous games, but those have been pushed aside in favor of an overabundance of combat, and the more you fight in this game the more you realize that the fight engine isn’t nearly as good as it used to be.   It seems you must now fight on pure visual cues, always looking for that indicator over the enemy head signaling it’s time to hit the counter button.  In past games you could get into this awesome combo rhythm, but now the beat is off just enough that you can actually mess up if you slip into your old fight style.

Arkham Origins also has this annoying feature of grading each combat encounter no matter how large or small, so there is always this scorecard being tallied in the top corner with a resulting letter grade.  I don’t mind that system at the end of a chapter like in DMC, but we really don’t need real-time evaluation of our fight skills every two minutes.  It really breaks the immersion and continually reminds us we are playing a game.

Despite a wonderful rogues gallery none of the Batman games have been terribly strong with their boss fights but Arkham Origins seems to be the worst of the bunch.   None of the fights are all that interesting or even challenging.  You simply learn the boss patterns and exploit their weakness, usually while fighting off dozens of filler enemies who try to distract you from your true target.

Arkham Origins adds a few things to the mix.  Despite being pushed aside in favor of more combat, the detective mode has gotten tweaked allowing you to reconstruct crime scenes and then analyze these holographic reenactments for clues.  The whole concept had a very “Remember Me” feel to it, only without the ability to remix memories.  In this new mode you are looking to reveal red indicators that can be scanned for additional clues.  Sadly, the entire process, while cool to watch, isn’t very interactive.  And then you have a handful of new gadgets, which are more for show than anything else, and only leads to uncomfortable prequel questions about why he didn’t still have these in the other games.

And finally you have the completely unnecessary yet somehow obligatory multiplayer mode created by Splash Damage.  While these guys are known for some great multiplayer games, Batman just doesn’t lend itself to online or team play unless you are doing a Justice League game.   You basically have three teams; Bane vs. Joker vs Batman, and while the villains are supported by various henchmen, you get Robin.  I’m guessing this mode might be more popular on the consoles.  I wasn’t finding a whole lot of people playing or even willing to try this Battlefield-style domination game, and the few games I did manage to play didn’t compel me to go back anytime soon.

If you can do without the multiplayer (and I think we all can) then the PC version offers the superior visual experience for those with the rig to run it.  Cranking up those DX11 settings is only the first step in witnessing the glorious textures on the batsuit and the flowing cape that naturally drapes and flows around our hero.   Toggling on the PhysX gets you even more eye candy like fluttering debris as papers and trash kick up around Batman as he walks around or even the steam that floats from his mouth when he talks and breathes in the icy air.   The indoor levels are vastly superior to the indoor areas of the previous games and the city skyline looks amazing with a great draw distance, no visible pop-up, and some nice twists to the city design that keeps the landscape fresh for Gotham veterans who think they know their way around town.

I hate to say it but Batman: Arkham Origins seems more like a flashback DLC than a standalone game.  It’s one thing to try and keep a franchise alive with yearly installments, but in this case I think a year or two between games would have only made whatever Rocksteady has in store for us all that much sweeter.    Aside from a surprisingly engaging narrative, there just weren’t enough new or updated features when it comes to game mechanics or gameplay.  If anything, the game seemed a bit recycled.

I went into my review of Deadfall Adventures thinking I was about to play something along the lines of an FPS version of Uncharted, and came away realizing this was nothing more than one of those cardboard sleeve budget games you see at Wal-Mart in the wire rack next to the 1,500 versions of Solitaire, only this one is $40 and being sold on Steam.  That’s not to say there isn’t some fun to be had with this Indiana Jones knockoff, but it’s more of a $10-15 level of fun.

I hate to be harsh because FPS is my favorite genre and adventurous treasure hunting is my favorite sub-genre, but the designers tried to make this wacky hybrid of adventure and FPS that just never seems to work, and even when it does sort of work, it just seems very stale and “been there done that”.    Deadfall Adventures plays the vintage card by having your adventure take place in 1938.  You play James Lee Quatermain; great grandson of the famous Allan Quatermain who unwillingly teams up with Jennifer Goodwin to search an Egyptian archeological dig site for the Heart of Atlantis.

If this is starting to sound a bit like Indiana Jones just wait until your efforts are thwarted by…you guessed it…Nazis; but since this game is multilingual and available in Germany where the swastika is “illegal” our blonde haired Hitler groupies simply have an X on their armband.  After escaping Egypt your quest will take you on a whirlwind adventure around the globe to the icy arctic and humid jungles, trying to stay ahead of the Nazis and Russians as you search for the ancient and powerful relic.

Cliché as this all sounds, it would appear to be a firm foundation for a great backdrop to an adventure game or an FPS, or even both, but the shooting isn’t any fun and the adventuring; aka puzzle-solving and treasure-seeking, isn’t remotely challenging.    There is a nice selection of guns, authentically modeled after the period, but you feel very stiff and robotic using them and the enemy AI is ridiculous.   I did enjoy the combat where you had  to work your guns in tandem with your flashlight to weaken the enemy before bullets were effective, but even that has been done before in Alan Wake.

There are hidden treasures that actually play into your character and ability upgrades, and while some are treated like real treasure and hidden in places of honor, others are casually stuck inside Urn #87, which means you’ll spend way too much time smashing everything that can be broken in this game.   Your magic compass points to nearby treasures which helps narrow down the search.  Puzzles are a bit cooler in design, but their solution is always handed to you in the form of James’ notebook that will always be open to the proper page to show you the way past any obstacle.   It seems the designers got tired of trying to design puzzles as they all but vanish for the second half of the game, leaving you with one long and boring FPS.

The graphics look really nice once you turn up all the settings.  The opening level in Egypt gave me serious Serious Sam flashbacks.  The environments, textures, and lighting are pretty cool as are the weapon models, but the supporting characters are a bit bland in their design.   Obviously James is the macho cool dude and Jennifer is the busty sidekick – everyone else is just filler.  Even the villains seem generic.   The script is poorly written, full of clichés and sad one-liners for James to try and deliver with a straight face.   Cutscene conversations and encounters with Nazis are cringe-worthy at best.   Sound effects are good and there are some nice adventure themes happening with the soundtrack that you can actually get separately if you purchase the $50 Digital Deluxe Edition of the game, which also includes a Making of movie, Artbook, and some DLC – a new gun and three multiplayer skins.

Whoa…what’s that you say…multiplayer?  Yes, for those who just can’t get enough of this generic shooter you can head online for some competitive deathmatch or even a co-op survival mode.   Keeping in mind Deadfall Adventures has just released might explain the lack of “anyone” playing this game online, but I’m guessing the bigger reason is that people looking to play online shooters are playing Battlefield and Call of Duty.   Multiplayer is obviously an afterthought that deserves as much attention as the core adventure you’ll struggle to finish.

I hate to be so harsh on Deadfall Adventures, but what little fun I do admit to having was quickly sapped away by all of the game’s inadequacies.   Sure, there might be something worth exploring if this game ever drops to $10-15 on a Steam sale, but as far as a $40 PC game, you can do much better and probably for less money with any of the exceptional indie shooters out there.

“Two great tastes that taste great together…”   If you were about to sing the finish to that famous tag line using “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups” you would be historically correct, but I dare say that when WB Games and TT Games got together one day to “play” these words were heard in the executive conference room:   “Hey!  You got your LEGO’s in my comic books.  No…you got your comic books in my LEGO’s”.   And magic was born.

And by magic I surely mean LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, perhaps one of the best comic book inspired games of all time and certainly the best in the long line of LEGO games.   Yes, better than Star Wars, better than Indiana Jones, and definitely better than Batman, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes excels in every facet of being an enjoyable game from start to finish, although I’m not sure you can ever finish this monster endeavor.  With more than 100 heroes and villains waiting to be unlocked, each with their own abilities; that makes for thousands of possible combinations when it comes time to go back and revisit the amazing worlds TT Games has crafted and populated with ingenious puzzles and hidden secrets.

The first LEGO games were very much about the blocks, but slowly, over the years, game after game and now movie after LEGO movie, LEGO has become more of an art style than a way to assemble architecture.   If it weren’t for the distinct plastic head character designs and the occasional pile of vibrating blocks, you’d never realize this was a game based on interlocking bricks.  LEGO Marvel Super Heroes blew me away on the PC with crisp visuals and no aliasing on the edges.  I don’t know what this game looks like on the consoles but it sure isn’t this good.   The colors are vibrant and the design for each of the 100+ characters was as flawless at it was charming, and don’t even get me started on all the fun superhero animations.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes is more than a random assortment of missions.  There is a movie-worthy plot at work here with villains like Doctor Doom, Loki, and Galactus, and while the Avengers are featured prominently led by Nick Fury onboard his flying carrier and S.H.I.E.L.D. star Phil Coulsen, just about every other Marvel character has been mined from the archives and makes a valid contribution to the story and the action.    And therein lies the beauty of this game.  While the Avengers movie gives us the cool mash-up of a handful of heroes, this game creates some of the best ensembles in entertainment history from all franchises, and if you don’t like the way the story assembles your team you can always replay the level and mix and match your own from any of the unlocked characters or even create your own custom characters.

It’s almost mind-melting to conceive some of the adventures you’ll be playing out.    Iron Man and the Hulk vs. Sandman and Oblivion kick things off, and then Spidey joins in for the final battle.  Next its Captain America and Mr. Fantastic skydiving off Fury’s heli-carrier and battling Doc Ock in the Baxter Building, then seamlessly moving across the rooftops to the Daily Bugle where Spider-Man joins in for the final battle.   And so it goes with one amazing mash-up after the next with loners like Magneto to team players like the X-Men.   No one is safe from being buddied up with the most unlikely of partners, and that is where all of the fantastic cooperation and teamwork comes into play.

Like previous LEGO adventures, the gameplay relies heavily on puzzles that can only be solved by a certain character using certain abilities.  If you are playing alone this means a lot of switching around between the two or three available characters.  Obviously playing with a drop-in/out partner makes things a bit easier when it comes to getting past the puzzles, but you do have to come to terms with the unique split-screen nature of these LEGO games.   The rotating angular split was even more pronounced in this game as some characters can fly, and if you go higher than the other player the screen will quickly rotate around so the flying character is on top.   You just really have to focus on your character if you want to play local co-op.

While there is a bit of combat in the game, most of the action is more thinking than fighting.  You’ll spend much more time smashing inanimate object rather than people to create debris that can be reassembled into something useful.   Puzzles often rely on a character standing on a special plate or using their special ability like Captain America’s shield or Fantastic’s rubbery shape shifting abilities or even Spidey’s tingling spider sense.

While I enjoyed playing co-op with some of the guys in the office I ultimately played most of the story mode solo.  The AI for the uncontrolled characters is pretty good, but there are times; mostly navigation puzzles, where the game insists on your moving all characters individually across the obstacle using their unique route.   The open world map of New York City serves as your hub to the various levels giving you easy access to revisit them with new and different characters later.    But your adventures aren’t confined to the NYC skyline.  Prepare to explore Stark Tower, Asteroid M, a Hydra base, the X-Mansion, and one of my favorites, Asgard.

As is the case with LEGO games, you will see plenty of interactive objects during the story that cannot be accessed with the default characters.  Make notes and return later with the proper character to unlock those secrets and collect all the collectibles.   Speaking of collectibles, a LEGO Stan Lee is hidden in each level much like “Where’s Waldo”, so find him for a fine “Excelsior” thank you.

The music is very heroic and adventuresome and the script is delightfully charming and makes me so grateful they finally added speech to these LEGO games.  They even got some reasonable sound-alikes to do the voices; some of which are from the Marvel animated shows.   Sandman utters one of the most hilarious lines of the game in the very first boss fight – I was laughing so hard I had to pause the game, and it stays consistently funny throughout.  And then you have all the subtle sight gags and character expressions going on that you really have to watch for, especially in the cutscenes.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes is not only my favorite LEGO game to date, it is also one of my favorite action-adventure games of the year.  With a strong emphasis on teamwork (even when playing alone), puzzle-solving, and for the most part, non-violent combat, this is the perfect family-friendly game that will delight gamers of all ages.   And that 10-12 hour campaign is just the beginning because there is more than 20-30 hours of replayability lurking behind all those colorful bricks.  Your adventure is only getting started.

Hexodius is a game that sounds promising at first glance. It’s a twin-stick shooter dungeon crawler. It’s a cool combination, and one that worked well for Gauntlet or (if you think it counts as a shooter), Binding of Isaac. Unfortunately, Hexodius fails to recognize what makes these games work.

The key to a good twin-stick shooter is frantic action coupled with a compelling score system. Geometry Wars is the unseated champion of what a good shooter should be like. This kind of experience is pretty intense, so the bursts of play need to be short and sweet so players don’t get tired out. On the dungeon crawler side, you need a big place to explore, and that’s going to take some time. If a game like this is going to succeed, it needs solid pacing and variety.

That’s where Hexodius falls short. This is a game the developers really intended for people to play in longer stretches of time, giving the game a big map to explore, throwing in a shop system, and writing a story about a killer AI. To stop this AI, you’ll have to go through stage after stage, and each stage has the exact three same objectives: An escort mission, a target destruction mission, and your basic “Destroy every enemy” mission. This gets old quickly. Sure, you have boss fights to mix things up here and there, but ultimately, you’re just doing the exact same thing over and over. To make things worse, the enemies in general are slow and never really put any pressure on you, which is a grave sin in a twin stick shooter. I should be constantly on the run and trying to clear an escape path through the enemy waves. On an alarming number of occasions, I found myself just sitting in one place and just shooting the enemies as they came at me.

Between levels, you can purchase upgrades. Here, I thought, would be a point where the game distinguishes itself, but that turned out to not be the case. Here, the game features an enormous variety of upgrades, but to be honest, you don’t really need any of them. Few of the upgrades really do anything that you have a real need for, and I rapidly stopped caring about them. This could have been the killer feature that could bring some excitement to Hexodius, but it just became another example of unfulfilled potential.

As far as aesthetics go, there isn’t much to write about. The graphics and special effects are serviceable. You’ve got a snow world, a lava world, and your basic video game environments. More irritating is the plot. Like the rest of the game, it’s barebones. I don’t expect Chris Avellone-quality writing, and I can forgive it for being an afterthought, but when you start repeating the same flavor text to describe each type of mission when there are only three types of missions and dozens of stages, it’s hard to draw a generous conclusion.

Hexodius is a neat idea, but that’s all there is to it. If the experience were shorter and more exciting, we might have something here. The Binding of Isaac is arguably a twin stick shooter, and there are mountains of text offering it praise. There just isn’t enough content to justify the game’s length. It’s just another dime a dozen example of a good idea that just couldn’t be executed with the care it needed.