Update on what I’m playing next
So I played fortnite festival, beat the mortal kombat dlc, beat a run of Last of Us 2 No Return, then finally started my Arkham Asylum replay.
It’s been sooooo long, since 2010 or so because I remember pre ordering Arkham City which is crazy because it came out just after my 13th birthday. 12 year olds have no business pre ordering games on Steam. I think that might’ve even been the first game I ever pre ordered on steam, surely. I remember buying Assassin’s Creed 2 for its (at the time) full price of 19.99 on steam when Arkham City got delayed but I had paced myself to beat Assassin’s Creed 1 right when Arkham City was going to come out. I suppose I’ve always been crossing off lists when I game, huh?
Oh, I also I popped my head back in to Theatrhythm Final Bar Line where I’m in the middle of FFX. I do still enjoy it and I like the way the inputs feel but I fear Fortnite Festival has fried my brain with how satisfying the notes are and the rotating set list of radio hits. Plus, it’s addicting to get to level up my main fortnite account just from playing a silly little music mode.
So then Mortal Kombat 1 Khaos Reigns was pretty underwhelming. I felt like it was retreading the same nonsense ground as the last act of of the main game (oh no the multiverse is invadinggg). I think the most impressive part of the story was that they worked in a random dragon NPC from Armageddon in a way that was actually sympathetic. Although I do really like turning Cyrax and Sektor into exosuits rather than full robots and their move sets are really cool. Still not sold on the kameo system. Waiting for injustice 3.
Tried out Tommy in Last of Us 2 No Return. He felt a little generic, I didn’t think his “custom rifle” was different enough to feel unique. To be fair I didn’t get much use out of the scope. I did manage to clutch my third won run, first try with Tommy. So now I’ve got Joel unlocked and I figure I should try a run as him before going through Abby and her friends.
More notably for this run, I turned on 4 bit audio and pitched down audio and it was the scariest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m gonna see if I can post the vid on here.
And then I really wanted to make this post just to gush about how great Arkham Asylum is. I think it’s a really well made game even to someone who has never heard of him, but I’m particularly fresh on reading a bunch of Batman comics lately so it’s like a religious experience now. Obviously at the center of it is Kevin Conroy’s perfect Batman voice. These games have to have the biggest collection of his Batman voice acting even compared to BTAS just because of how long these games are compared to a movie or tv show, but the math on that is confusing me. Regardless, it’s so funny to hear his immaculate Batman voice reading off tutorials and hints like “I should try not getting shot by a gun” or whatever here in the beginning.
Very funny that Victor Zsasz is literally just the stealth tutorial target dummy basically.
Even without the QoL and advanced maneuvers of the later games, the combat and stealth still feel great. Of course it helps that I’m playing on PC modded to be 144 Hz so it feels like a “remaster”. The game doesn’t look all too dated for how old it actually is (16 years).
I am really enjoying the more linear, claustrophobic approach compared to my more recent memories of Arkham Knight, just a different vibe.
It’s fun how much comic stuff has already been crammed in. Jim and Babs, Zsasz, Joker, Killer Croc, Riddler, Harley, and I’m only like forty minutes in.
So funny how many of these characters are voiced by Tom Kane and Steve Blum, every other person I meet is one of the two. Of course I should mention also how great Mark Hamill as Joker is, I know that isn’t a hot take but he’s really on display here.
I’m soooo looking forward to playing more. I wanna keep an eye for the light metroidvania elements this time. I also wanna go and look up all the secrets online after even if I don’t end up finding them all in game (I ain’t doing all that).
I also never beat the final boss back in the day. I reached the end and uninstalled because I had heard the final boss was stupid and it seemed hard. At the very least, I wanna give it a fair shot this time and watch online if I don’t beat it. My memories are so foggy on big chunks of this game, it’s been so long.
I just feel real giddy playing it and I’m counting the minutes until I can get home and play more. I do think I wanna keep doing my dailies in Fortnite Festival to get my music game fix. And then I like the idea of doing No Return one run a day until I get through all the characters at least. So sorry to everybody who wants me to return to Disco Elysium 😭 I’ll get there eventually
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