Check out the awesome gameplay trailer:

Also have a read of IGN’s very cool progress report detailing the gameplay at the start of the game.

The 28 hidden characters in Batman: Arkham Asylum

Which villains will appear in Batman: Arkham Asylum 2?

Check out some screens here. Due early/mid 2010 (gahh wanted it for Chrimbo!)

Anyone who owns Far Cry 2 on the XBOX may well have encountered the complete bugger of a glitch that corrupts your save file so you can’t play any further. I don’t know if this one appears on the PC/PS3 versions, but I was quite angry and annoyed that it had affected my copy. I love the game and it was one of the first I played on my XBOX when I first got it in October. Well, I stopped playing after wasting quite a few hours and reading about the bug, but I’ve been checking the Far Cry 2 site every few days and two days ago they released a patch that is supposed to cure some (but not all) of the instances in which the save bug may occur. Apparently it has been difficult for the developers first to locate then to eliminate because it can come about in different ways. Here’s hoping it’ll allow me to play the game though. I would have thought they could have located this problem in play testing before shipping the product, but who knows, really? sure, it is essentially a broken product when you buy it (so many people have complained about this bug) but perhaps now it’s on the mend. There may be a follow-up post, only time will tell if it’ll be a positive or negative!

Check out my new feature atricle over at Sisters Noir – “Why we need another Lara Croft“.

Also, have a look at this in-depth article on the first part of the game, courtesy of IGN.

Certainly check it out – here are a few things that caught my eye…

“One of the pillars Rocksteady’s building this game on is FreeFlow combat.
As the bad guys come at Bats, he’ll be able to engage up to 15 of them without
breaking too much of a sweat. The face buttons are strikes, grapples, and counters,
and these simple inputs will be your lifeline to throwing dudes across the room and
incapacitating foes. When you knock a standing guy out or pull off a floor takedown
(a kick to the head of a downed foe), you’ll get a health boost and some XP. Yes,
even Batman has experience points these days, and you’ll be collecting them so
that you can unlock moves such as the Hang Attack (I’ll get back to this in a bit)
and power-ups such as an armor upgrade.”

I look forward to seeing all the villains they include. I’ve not read a lot of Batman comics but
I have a rough idea of the badguys. They’re always good fun:

“Although the folks showing the game from Warner Bros. weren’t ready to tell
me all of the characters in the game, they did mention that there’s going to
be a lot of nods to comic book lore in terms of little asides, cameos, and more.
At one point in the game, Batman walked into an abandoned cell that had a few
green question marks scrawled on the walls.”

Finally, the attention to detail sounds very cool:

“Seeing as how this is supposed to be the longest night in Batman’s life, look for the hero to be sporting more and more stubble as the events wear on. As the events of the night unfold, expect Batman’s costume to become damaged and stay damaged — when holes pop up in his cape, you’ll need to account for it when you glide.”

I really love this idea, and hope it’s noticable. Too many games have promised this kind of detail which is missing when the actual product ships, let’s hope this is not the case here. Actually, I’m a little peeved they thought of the beard thing, as I was going to have my own RTB (or real-time beard, as I call it) in my comic the Sandwich Man. I’ll let them off though, at least it looks like they’ll complete the game!

See my earlier post on Arkham Aslyum (more videos here).

Oh, and expect a post on the BAFTAs following tonight’s ceremony (t-minus 11 minutes!).

And now for something completely different…

R-TYPE Dimensions is an updated version of R-TYPES 1 and 2. I downloaded the trial of the first level earlier. By pressing “Y” you can switch in real-time between the original 2-D in-game graphics and purty new 3-D vistas. It is 3-D in the way that R-type Delta and R-TYPE Final were – still side-scrolling but with 3-D sprites and scenery. It all looks bloody brilliant! Another cool thing about this is the addition of “Infinite Mode” which affords you infinite lives (R-TYPE games are notoriously hard and not particularly generous with extra lives). The best thing though, is that R-TYPE Dimensions allows you to play 2 player co-op on a single machine or using XBOX live. Not even R-TYPE Final (the terminal R-TYPE game on PS2) had this feature, it had only the baffling (and terribly disappointing) A.I. mode, where you sat and watched random spaceships fight while you wished you could actually fly them. Bugger that.

With this brand new R-TYPE news I’ve been reminded of my old R-type site. I thought it was lost in cyberspace, but here it is! OK, not terribly pretty, not compliant or exhaustive, but it was a nice little nostalgia trip for yours truly. I might think about renovating it when they decide Final wasn’t the last game in the series after all, and if Dimensions does well. I’d love there to be another new R-TYPE game as they’re so much fun to play!

As for Tomb Raider Underworld’s “Beneath the Ashes” add-on? well frankly, I’m not sure yet. I’ve read that it is set in Lara’s Mansion, (and juding by the name, after it burns down). Hopefully there’ll be some point to it. More on this when I learn more…

A nice bit of Nick Cave for you: