While I absolutely love games and novels, I’m very cautious about comics. Comics are short, and most comic stories are pretty shallow and seem too short to be fleshed out. What I love about comics is the art, and Hollow looks amazing. It captures the gore and violence of the games as well as the post-apocalyptic setting. However, it follows Jace, who is one of the worst characters in the series. Jace is just average; he isn’t memorable like Delta Squad at all. Of course, you follow Marcus Fenix as well as a new guy named Barrick. I wasn’t too keen on him either. He’s a roughed-up redneck who smokes a lot and has rusty lungs. A new Gear named Gil pops up for a couple issues as he went through boot camp with Jace. Cole and Baird make a short appearance on one issue, but that’s it.
Delta Squad (Dom and Marcus) are out looking for surviving gears through the first few issues. Marcus and Dom are trying to get to Montevado to find survivors after the Lightmass bombing in Timgad and the sinking of Jacinto (Hollow takes place after Gears of War 2). On their way, they find a stranded camp called “Fucked.Nice name. Jace has flashbacks from firefights about when he was trapped in his home during E-Day and how he was saved. I just can’t get into Jace, not even in the games. He’s a very average character and very boring. I honestly just wanted more of Delta Squad.
They find a little girl named Lily in “Fucked,” and Jace promises to find her mother, so they take her along. I found this a bit odd because Delta Squad knows they can’t do that. Taking a little girl is too risky and can get them all killed. They should have left her “fucked” and come back for her later or something. Of course, there are some firefights with Locust, and the art does a good job getting the violence across. I just feel that this story is pointless and wouldn’t make a difference to a Gears fan. I want to hear about a part of the war that wasn’t told in the games, not about some boring character trying to be sensitive.
Hollow is a decent six-part comic series, but the art is the best thing about it. The story is pretty average and just unnecessary. I can only recommend this to hardcore fans looking to increase their Gears collection.
Marvel vs. Capcom is considered the official fighting game among Marvel fans. What about DC comics? There really hasn’t been a full-on fighting game except for the lukewarm Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. It felt a bit stiff; Mortal Kombat fans felt the violence was too watered down, and it just lacked some polish. The MK team has come back, minus Mortal Kombat, and created a very solid, full-on DC fighting game.
If you have played 2011’s Mortal Kombat reboot, you will be very familiar with this game. The 2D fighting plane remains with interactive environments, special moves, and various other things. The game plays a lot like Mortal Kombat, with several special moves and small combos at your disposal. You must combine all these to create larger combos; it’s tough and really takes some practice. Some characters are harder to play than others, but they are all fun to play in their own way. The interactive environments are very neat, and I hope more fighting games pick up on them. You can press R near different objects, and some are on offense while others are on defense. In Batman’s Bat Cave, you can press a giant red button to ignite the batmobile’s thrusters and burn your opponent. Some items can be picked up and thrown. Some levels have items at the very edges to help you escape and keep you from getting cornered.
The fighting engine is solid and responsive. Each character looks great and has an awesome arsenal of moves that are faithful to their comic origins. Each character has a special power-up they have that is executed with A. No longer are there four attack buttons, but three. Wonder Woman can use her power-up to switch between her sword and whip. Batman can shoot three batarangs, while some characters have defensive and passive power-ups. These have to recharge, of course, so they can’t be spammed. They are helpful and can give you a slight edge over your opponent. The power meter returns, like in Mortal Kombat, but is used for different things. Instead of the gory X-ray moves, you can unleash super-special attacks that look awesome. Some are a little less awesome than others, but they all take advantage of the power that each character wields. You can also use the Clash system, which allows you to wager part of your special meter once per battle for extra health. These are all tactical additions that can give you an edge and turn the tide of the battle, which a lot of fighting games don’t have.
The fighting system takes a little while to get used to because it’s unlike anything else out there. It breaks the mold of traditional fighting games, which the genre desperately needs. Injustice has some of the best over-the-top action seen in a fighting game, thanks to the source material. Blood and gore are exchanged for comic book action, which you can’t get anywhere else. I also like how NetherRealm made Aquaman cool again. He looks awesome, and he’s one of my favorite fighters. He feels a lot like Jade from Mortal Kombat, where he whips his trident around a lot and is quick and jabby. I just wish they didn’t use so many obscure comic characters like Sinestro, Grundy, Black Adam, Raven, and various others. I also wish the roster was a bit bigger. At least it makes up for it in content elsewhere.
The first thing you will dive into is the story. Unlike Mortal Kombat, you won’t fight like every character in the game. I was also highly disappointed in the story because it’s just a pointless mess. Superman is tricked by the Joker to kill Lois Lane, and this causes some sort of rift, and everyone crosses dimensions. Superman, on the other hand, wants to take over the world and suppress everyone, so everyone is fighting their doppelgangers, which is kind of uninteresting. The plot is just a bunch of DC characters beating each other up, and it doesn’t really come to a head. I was glad that the story was as short as it was and was just over. It seems the story was kind of slapped together and wasn’t given much thought; DC fans will be highly disappointed in it.
After you finish that, you can go online or partake in the 240 S.T.A.R. Lab missions that are similar to the Challenge Tower in Mortal Kombat. Go to the Archives to unlock alternate costumes (not enough!), battle mutators, and concept art. This is similar to the Krypt in Mortal Kombat but doesn’t quite offer enough.
Overall, Injustice is a very solid fighter that tries to break the mold but offers a weak story mode, and the game just feels like it’s missing something. Is it because it feels so close to Mortal Kombat that everyone is expecting fatalities or something similar? Is it that the roster isn’t big enough? Too many lesser-known characters? I can’t really say, but I can’t quite place my finger on it either. What’s here is great, not to mention that the Wii U gamepad can be used to play the game off the TV or used as a display for special moves. The game does look good, with the Wii U getting higher resolution textures and some nicer lighting effects than the PS3 and 360 versions. The Wii U version is definitely the best of the three. With that said, there are dozens of hours of content here, and you will be playing for months.
Arkham City is the successor to the critically acclaimed Arkham Asylum, which is considered the best superhero video game ever made. That’s a true fact because it made you feel like you were Batman, both in character and in the atmosphere. Arkham City captures this atmosphere but adds a ton of new features to make this game even better.
The story continues from the last game, where the Joker is infected with the Titan virus but also infects Batman. He is rushing to get a cure, but if the Joker dies, then so does Batman. The story has a satisfying ending and plays out like a great comic book would. As you go through the main story, you run into new faces in this series, such as Penguin, Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, Clayface, and Dr. Hugo Strange. All the characters in the game are excellent portrayals of their comic book form, and every character is masterfully voiced. Mark Hamel does an amazing job as The Joker (he has since said that this was his last role as the Clown Prince). You truly feel like you are in a comic book, and this is probably the best comic game made so far.
Exploration is upgraded tenfold here, with a large open area to explore. As the name implies, you are in a city where hundreds of criminals, kingpins, and thugs were thrown to kill each other off. It just so happens that Batman’s cure is in here, along with the Joker. The game may seem smaller than Asylum, but there are fewer interior areas and more outdoor areas, so this does become an issue. There seems to be less to do with the main story because there are fewer epic set pieces, and a lot of the game is filled with getting from point A to B. Sure, it’s fun using your grapple hook to swing around the city like Spider-Man (I know, wrong universe). You can use your cape to glide around town and do some pretty tricky maneuvers like jumping off walls, dive-bombing, and then pulling up and weaving around corners. Hell, they even give you some physical challenges based on this enhanced and well-put-together exploration system.
Don’t worry too much about being bored because there is a lot of variety in the story, and the indoor areas differ. The majority of the game is actually the Riddler stuff, of which there are over 400. There are trophies to find, solutions to puzzles, cameras to destroy, and Tyger computers, and this also includes having specific ones for Catwoman. There is enough here to keep you entrained for 30+ hours easily, but people who aren’t completionists may actually be bored quickly.
My favorite part about Arkham City is the new gadgets and the updated free-form combat system, which is the best one ever created since God of War. The combat is silky smooth, with Batman leaping and bounding on enemies with the push of the analog stick in a direction and the attack button. As long as you are in the combat area, Batman will jump to an enemy, no matter how far away, to keep your combo up. You can counter when an enemy has a symbol flash above their head, but you can also break through shields and knives and even use gadgets in combat. The system is so fluid with smooth animations that it looks and feels like a perfectly choreographed fight scene from a movie. Some of the new gadgets are a remote-controlled batarang, freeze blast bombs, and a weapon disruptor.
In Arkham City, you can play as Catwoman as well, but she only has a few segments in single player, but she’s just as fun. Her combat is just as fluid, but she’s faster and more nimble. She only has a couple of gadgets, but you won’t play here long enough to get disappointed. She has the ability to crawl on grates on ceilings and use her whip to move around buildings. I found this to be slower than Batman because you can whip something far away but have to climb the building with the press of A, so it takes twice as long to move the same distance.
The visuals are also stunning, even in DirectX 9. High-resolution textures, awesome lighting effects, and a dark, moody atmosphere that makes you feel like you are in the Batman universe. If you have the monster rig (at least an ATI 6xxx series card is needed for high FPS), you can run the game in DirectX 11, but it is extremely tessellation heavy and probably the most advanced use of the technology since Crysis 2. Even my rig had FPS drops in the single digits sometimes.
Overall, Batman: Arkham City is a huge game with excellent production values. This is how a comic book game should be made, and all other developers need to take note. With a silky-smooth free-flow combat system, tons of hidden secrets, and a very engaging story with state-of-the-art graphics, you will not be disappointed. With added challenge maps to hone your skills, DLC costumes, and even new characters, this is one meaty package. I just wish the game had more epic set pieces and didn’t rely on the open world so much as to use it for filler.
Most third-party controllers are usually never good. Power A did a great job with this officially licensed (by DC anyways) PS3 controller. While it looks a bit cheap, with some areas not coming together smoothly and seeing a few uneven gaps, the controller feels good and has a few nice features. For one, the thing lights up with seven different colors that you can change with a push of the button. All the regular PS3 buttons are here, including the Home button, plus there is a battery indicator button that lights up the quadrants to the left of the top row of buttons.
The overall feeling in your hands is great, except that the shoulder buttons are a bit closer together. People with huge hands will not like this. It has kind of a triangle shape, and the ergonomics are great when wrapping your fingers behind the controller to grip it. The sticks are laid out like the Xbox 360, which I prefer, and they are just tight enough for the perfect sensitivity range (which is really important for shooters).
Overall, there are a few problems, such as the top buttons being too close to each other, so you have to look down to press Start and Select. Several times I didn’t look and hit the color change button instead of starting. I also like how it’s wireless, but it doesn’t use Bluetooth, so you have to use a dongle in the PS3 USB slot. That also means no turning on the console with the controller, but it does have an on/off switch to kind of make up for it. The battery lasts a long time, so no issue there, but if the controller didn’t look as cheap as it does, the top buttons were spread out more, and this thing used Bluetooth, I would say it was perfect. For what you get, this is a great controller for Batman fans.
Game of the year is the hardest of them all. What makes the game of the year? Everything must be almost perfect, well balanced, epic, have a great story, characters, mechanics, graphics, and everything that makes up a game must be amazing and better than the competition. I wish I could have picked more than one because there were so many amazing games this year.
Skyrim actually wasn’t my first choice. It won because of how grand in scale the game was and the attention to detail that only a few games this year did. Over 100 hours of gameplay, unique characters, a grand story, beautiful graphics, lots of customization, and a gorgeous soundtrack made Skyrim come out on top of the entire pile. Skyrim is a special game in the sense that no other RPG or game can do it.
Action-adventure games are all about open worlds with great combat/fighting, lots of missions to do, variety in activities, and even customization is great. These tend to be the heavy hitters and one of the most revolutionary genres in gaming history. There were a lot of AAA action-adventure titles this year, and a few didn’t even make it on the list. Only one can win, though.
Arkham City may be a sequel, but it’s a sequel that does everything that a sequel should do: Make everything 100x better and introduce so much new content it’s a completely different game. Arkham City has a huge open world and allows you to really feel like Batman with investigation missions, smooth and fun combat, plus all of Batty’s gadgets. This is truly a beautiful and unique game, something that all comic books games need to model from.
Voice acting is what delivers the personality in characters, and good voice acting is key to any good game. What makes it the best is a wide variety of personalities delivered by the voice actor and thus bringing out the greatness of characters. Good voice acting makes them unique, lovable, and makes you become attached to them. This year had some great AAA titles with amazing voice acting, but only one can take the prize.
Portal 2 delivers some amazing characters through witty whimsical writing and some talented voice actors. Portal 2 doesn’t just have good voice acting but diverse, funny, and unique voices for characters that are one of a kind. This is what made it top the others and is definitely something to be remembered. With characters like Wheatley, GlaDOS, Turrets, Cave Johnson, and other characters you just can’t beat that.
An atmosphere is what delivers emotion and overall feelings in the game. The atmosphere can make a game scary, colorful, cartoony, or make you feel alone and sad. Atmosphere much matches and represent the idea of the game. Sometimes the atmosphere isn’t delivered right and can make a game feel boring, or just look bad.
The Best Atmosphere category was even harder than last year’s because so many great AAA titles came out with strong atmospheres. There were also some games I didn’t get a chance to squeeze into the runner-up’s area so that tells you how well this category did this year. While some of the others may have better art to back up their atmosphere L.A. Noire does something that most can’t: Make an atmosphere without fancy art or licenses. L.A. Noire is a new IP and pulls off a 1940’s era in realistic detail and really pulls you in and brings you into a time period that most games don’t explore outside World War II. L.A. Noire had amazing visuals to back it, but to make the game feel so true to an era is very hard to do. You don’t need fancy art for that.
The Spider-Man games have always been generally good, but with the success that Treyarch made with Spider-Man 2, it’s a wonder why this game is not as good. With the success of that game, you wonder why this could have been messed up so badly. While the core game is pretty good, there’s just so much wrong with it, such as a terrible camera, a useless upgrade system, a poor story, bad voice acting, bad graphics, repetitive missions, and the list goes on. The game is about Venom fusing with a bit of Spider-Man and creating bastard symbiotes that are trying to destroy the town. They take over a few Marvel characters (Wolverine, Black Cat, and Vulture, just to name a few), and it’s an interesting twist, but not interesting enough.
The gameplay is what the game is supposed to be best at, but it falters on this. You have a pretty robust fighting system here with heavy and light attacks, web shots, and new wall and aerial combat, but it just doesn’t work very well. The aerial combat isn’t as broken as the wall combat and can be pretty fun at times. You can shoot a web at someone in the air and just keep juggling them. Upgrading this allows for more juggles and more powerful follow-ups. You can also just attack normally, and you will kind of home in on the enemies, and it’s pretty solid.
Ground combat works too but feels pretty boring due to the fact that there are only a few combos that you can upgrade, and there really isn’t anything Spider-Man about it at all, like tying enemies up to light posts or anything like that. Wall combat is the most broken, thanks to the crappy camera. You can climb a wall, but instead of the camera zooming out at a fixed angle, it follows you, and if you’re locked onto an enemy, it’ll follow it, and the camera will do backflips and somersaults, and it’s nauseating. Not only that, but you can’t look very far up a building thanks to the camera being right behind Spidey. The camera also poses an issue when swinging around the city because if you get stuck on a building, the camera jitters and freaks out, and it can get mildly annoying.
Of course, you have a black suit that you can do, but it’s not much different from the red. Instead of being extra powerful or using a completely different fighting style, it just borrows from the red suit and changes the combos slightly. This also leads into the story of being able to be a good or bad spy, and the results are mildly amusing. It’s interesting to see Spidey turn bad, and you can choose the path at different points in the story. I would normally mention epic parts of the game that could have saved it, but there aren’t any.
The missions are also highly repetitive and irritating. There will be a mission that has you waiting and guarding citizens, and then the next mission will be the exact same thing, but just shorter! Forget about the side missions because they are even more repetitive, and even doing things like saving citizens, rescuing them, and fighting bad guys is just boring and not fun at all since it never ends.
Lastly, the game doesn’t look too good. It doesn’t look next-gen at all, but it’s a highly polished Xbox One game. The game just doesn’t look good at all and doesn’t even sound good. Spider-Man has a whiny voice and sounds like he belongs in an emo band. Plus, everyone else sounds pretty bad and just, well, isn’t up to Marvel standards. Web of Shadows isn’t the best game in the world, but it’s good enough for a mediocre rental if you’re craving Spider-Man action.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.