RATING: 9.5/ 10
PLATFORM: PS3, X
GENRE: Movie based Adventure Game
RATED: Teen
PURCHASE RECO
STORY: Batman Arkham Asylum story is the perfect example of how to tell a story through a video game. I am not going to talk about story plotlines in particular because you need to play this game and experience in yourself but what I am going to do is explain what Batman did right. This is what I call the 5 golden rules of gaming story:
1.) Thou shall not take control away from the player.
Too many games get stuck on story telling and not entertaining. If your player is force to listen to dialogue or read instead of playing your doing it wrong. Batman from the opening credits tell story through the world of Arkham. Never is a player unable to move around you are constantly playing the game as the story is told to you. This is how you immerse a player into a world and make a great story.
2.) Thou shall not force story on the player.
Yes some people love lore and a novel of story to go with their game but many don’t. Forcing too much story down someone throat is just going to piss them off and bore them. This also almost always occurs while violating rule 1. So how do you please both sides, you use selective reading. Selective reading is where the player can choose to enjoy or pass up on the extra back story / lore. Batman does this through little goodies you find throughout the world. These goodies are not required to beat the game and can be completely ignored. At the same time a player can choose to collect all these and get the entire story. See everyone wins.
3.) Thou shall only show awesome cinema scenes.
The age of how many cinema scene my game has bragging is over. Technology now allows normally gameplay to look like the movies. With that said only a truly awesome cinema scene should be in your game because a cinema scene violates rules 1 and 2. Also less is more in this category as cinema scenes should be intermission breaks for your fingers. Batman had a few cinema scenes and they were amazing not only in quality but in story.
4.) Thou shall be unpredictable.
Like any good story you shouldn’t be able to predict what is going to happen next. The moment a player realizes your using a cookie cutter story line and how it is going to end the interest is gone. Keep the player guessing excited and on their toes. Batman story was filled with enough mystery that you did not know what is going to happen next.
5.) Thou character shall be meaningful.
Players do not want to baby sit characters they could less about. If the player is not attached to a character that character better be a standard grunt. If your character has a unique image they better have unique story and personality. Villains we must hate Heroes we must love and comrades we better want to protect. Batman characters were not only classic but each of them served a purpose. Even some of the scientist and security guards who were important had names, faces and story.
GAMEPLAY: Batman Arkham Asylum designed a fluent gameplay experience around being Batman. Gameplay can be broken up into three categories, combat, exploration and investigation. Combat is the bulk of game as you must fight your way through the Asylums many goons and villains. Combat in this game is not about direct contact but stealth Batman style. You quickly learn that Batman can take a beating but will not run in to a room full of guards armed with machine guns. Batman is smarter then that and so must you your wide range of gadgets to grapple, climb, and crawl your way to ambush your opponents. After all you are the dark knight and your specialty his taking out enemies before they know what hit them. There is really no one way to take out an enemy be it an inverted takedown or an explosive mine the world is your play ground. When Batman does encounter some foes in hand to hand combat you can't help but to fell if you are really Batman. Batman combos his way threw enemies keeping them off balanced and eating Bat-a-rangs for breakfast. Exploration is also tided directly into combat as you must explore your surroundings for points of exploit. Gargoyles, ledges, and vents will help batman avoid many obstacles in the world and add a very unique feel to level exploration. Batman doesn’t need doors.
CONTENT: Batman’s only weak point is that the game is very short. Now having a short game is not bad but it helps to get more bang for your buck. Batman is loaded with lots of extra content that helps make up for its short length. The many collectible items give you a scavenger hunt replay value and if you are into lore and story they are very rewarding. Batman also has a series of challenge modes that can be very addicting. These challenge modes are short scenarios they capture the best part of the gameplay.
2 comments:
Mwhahaha, it's the Danimal here.
Found your blog Jason, didn't realize you were posting reviews of the games you talked about at work.
Anyway, wanted to comment not to refute your golden rules (specifically #2) but to add a caveat: Reading blocks of text is not inherently a bad thing. Obviously what type of gamer you are will strongly influence this point, but my point is more that there is a tasteful and more compelling way to have blocks of text. Case in point, Torment: Planescape. Heavy reading was required to fully enjoy that game, but it never came across as dry and boring. 2 reasons why:
1. Text for more than just exposition. conversations were important and influenced a LOT more than just the immediate future. In recent games the most you could change with choosing the "right" dialogue option was to bypass a battle or to get more of a reward when you finish a quest. In Torment, you could chat about philosophy with one of the other playable characters, Dakon, and could actually cause him to question the core of his beliefs. What did this do gameplay-wise? He reacted differently at certain points in the game, had different comments, gave you an item that let you explore his beliefs (hard to explain it all in this comment) and his stats would permanently change. When I first played Torment, I spent a half an hour just chatting with my party, and had more fun and was more engaged than most games I've played all year. You mentioned in your review making the player care about the antagonists, well, I felt like I had a real heart to heart moment and connection with my party memebers.
2. One of the things they did differently that worked so well was that they wrote each block of text as if it were from a novel. Your novel. This is partly because of the limitations of the software at the time (couldn't have intricately acted cut-scenes with the 2d engine they used) and it allowed them to say things like "What can I get for ya darling?" The waitress cooed, raising her brow as she studied the ragged stranger standing before her. There is so much detail in the subtle actions of people that are lost in 99% of the in-game cut-scenes/voice-overs in games these days. Partly due to expense and part to engine limitations. I love Bioware RPGs, but they have several "talking" animations, an idle or two, and BAM, that's most of the in-game dialogue. I can't blame them for it either, the cost to hand-animate every line of dialogue is just out of the question, and even meeting halfway, with only key points of the storyline being acted out is a lot of time and effort (and I mean more than just your average "in-game cut-scene" where they have the characters reuse walking, interacting, and attack animations)
I can see I'm getting a bit long winded here (and approaching the character limit) I'll finish my third point with a anecdote.
3. My first run through Planescape: Torment I escaped the first area, the mortuary, as quickly as I could, smashing all of the skeletal servants wandering the halls for their precious XP and loot.
It wasn't until my 4th time through the game nearly a decade later that I stopped and noticed that I could interact with each of those skeletons. I mean, I knew I could click on them and it'd say something about the skeleton just ignoring me, but I never bothered to click on the other ones, I thought they all gave a generic response and didn't matter. Turns out that each and every one of those skeletons had a unique dialogue tree. One of the skeletons had a hole in his head, and if I told my character to check inside I found a note from one of the morticians to another. They were using the undead's hollow skull as a messaging service. And suddenly the world of Torment felt that much larger and more fleshed out. Instead of smashing every skeleton I came to, I read every bit of text as I examined and interacted with each and every one of them, finding all sorts of story bits and humorous asides. I no longer wanted to smash the skeletons, I felt like he was just doing his job, I was going to let him be even though I'd get a few xp for his destruction.
And for a moment there, I was no longer playing a game, but interacting with another world.
That's what I'm trying to get at.
I enjoyed Arkham Asylum, but I felt like I was playing a videogame the entire time, which is what I wanted from it, a fun bit of escapism. But there are gamers who want to be enthralled, immersed, and all together transported to another world.
With the right type of gamer, and the right game, a block of text can be worlds more interesting and enthralling than a 10 second action packed cutscene.
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