Score: 92%

In short:

Gears of War 2 is a third-person co-op action game for the Xbox 360. It’s mostly awesome and you should play it.

In slightly more detail:

Gears 2 picks up where the first game left off. If you didn’t play the first game, it won’t be much of a problem, although some story elements may seem confusing to you. I recommend playing the first game before this one for a couple of reasons: it’s great, and if you play it after this one, it won’t be so great. That’s because Gears 2 tops the first game in literally every way.

The core gameplay involves you (and a buddy over Live or split-screen, or an AI with very little I) taking on the Locust horde before they conquer the planet for their own mysterious reasons. You wield a pretty wide assortment of weapons this time, including newcomers like the mortar and flame thrower. Aside from the cooperative play, the real hook is the cover system. The game is structured so that unless you routinely take cover upon entering an encounter, you WILL die. You go in and out of cover by pressing the A button. I personally prefer the cover system of Rainbow Six Vegas, but this one works fine.

In addition to the regular fighting, there are short cinematics used to move the story along. These are usually entertaining, and if you’ve played the first game, you’ll catch a few references that will slip by newcomers. A minor complaint is that your character, Marcus Fenix, is always shown holding the Lancer rifle (the one with the chainsaw), regardless of what weapon you are actually holding.

The action is also changed up by “vehicle” segments. I put that in quotes for a couple of reasons. First, I’m using the term vehicle very broadly here, but won’t go into more detail due to spoilers. Also, in a couple of cases, you could call these “turret” segments; you aren’t actually driving, you are manning a turret. I found the turret sequences to be far more difficult than the rest of the game. Part of this is due to the turrets often not moving very quickly. Even when they weren’t hard, they weren’t very fun.

There are a couple of boss battles, but they definitely break out of the mold of what you might expect. There isn’t a lot of “shoot the eye when it opens” action. You also will probably feel cheated by the last boss, since the encounter is a complete push-over.

You may have heard about how this game’s story was going to be all dramatic and intense; while it is true that there is more emotion than the first game, it certainly didn’t have me in tears. There is a key emotional scene during the game, but I found it very strange that it really isn’t brought up again later, at least not in discussion. I know that’s vague, but I don’t want to spoil anything. Click the link below for the second page.

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Score: 80%

In short:

Take Diablo and add a hefty portion of Serious Sam… sound good? It is.

In slightly more detail:

The ‘Shooter’ series has been around for a while. Developer Sigma Team hasn’t been straying very far from the formula, either. In Alien Shooter – Vengeance, you are tasked with exterminating an alien threat. You do this from an isometric view similar to Diablo. The graphics are decent, and moderate PCs should be able to handle it. My 2-year old HP laptop choked during intense moments… and the game is 90% tense moments.

You start by choosing a character from a roster of men and women. Each one has slightly different stats in various physical attributes like strength or speed, or weapon proficiencies. As you complete tasks you will gain levels. Each time you level up, you get 5 points to spend on any attribute you like. Pro Tip: Focus on a couple areas in which you want to excel. More on that later.

As you progress through the game you will also acquire money. At various points you will have access to a shop in which you can purchase (or repair) armor, ammunition, weapons, cybernetic enhancements, medical gear and other equipment. I don’t remember exactly what the enhancements are called, but you can use up to three at a time. Each one imparts bonuses to one or more stats, and they can be quite useful. Sometimes they are even necessary, since access to more powerful weapons is reliant on you having a minimum weapon proficiency. Enhancements can help out a great deal in this regard.

Weapons come in 5 classes: pistols, shotguns, machine guns, explosives, and energy (power) weapons. You start out with a lowly pistol but can upgrade pretty quickly. You can carry one weapon for each category, which sounds great at first. In practice, however, you will probably not want to do this. Ammunition takes up precious inventory slots, and you will need a LOT of it. For this reason you will probably only carry 2 or 3 weapons. I went through the majority of the game carrying a shotgun, a machine gun, and a laser mini-gun. I almost never used the explosives, and quit using a pistol as soon as I could. There is also a flame thrower, but I found it to not be as practical as I’d hoped.

There are 15 levels in the game, each one taking about 25 minutes to traverse. You could spend longer if you wanted to find every secret. Yes, this game has Doom-style secrets, and many of them are not obvious. Another easter egg- if you play near Christmas, the title screen changes as well. A major complaint is that there is no quick save, or mid-level save of any kind. It’s all or nothing. You get a couple lives, and health kits automatically get used when needed. Playing on normal difficulty, I never died until level 8… at which point the game’s difficulty takes a steep incline. I’m not ashamed to admit it- I cheated my ass off to finish this game. Having played the entire thing (something I don’t do that often, so when I do it, you know the game is fun) I have to wonder how someone could play through it without cheating. Literal hordes of beasts attack you from all sides. The most challenging aspect, introduced in level 8, is  monster generators, ala Gauntlet. They have a lot of health, and essentially have built-in meat shields due to the fact that you have to wade through an ever-growing sea of monsters just to reach them. Explosives are helpful against these devices, but the early rocket launchers shoot so slow that I didn’t use them very often. As for the cheats, you can get money and skills, kill all the monsters, etc. But the most useful cheat is the ability to spawn a store whenever you need it: some levels do not contain a store. This is confounding because you’ll find yourself with a full inventory that you want to sell off, as well as needing to re-supply. If you do choose to cheat, I recommend that you do it in moderation; it’s easy to go too far, making yourself a walking God. That can be fun too, I suppose.

There is limited multiplayer, but I didn’t try it. A cooperative mode is simply one survival map where you just hold out as long as you can. If the campaign had co-op, it would have gotten a much higher score. I also knocked points off for general polish- voice overs (hilariously bad) often don’t match the on-screen text, for example. There’s also a major plot point that is left completely unresolved, not that it matters because this game does not require a plot. Let’s hope the upcoming Zombie Shooter 2 has full co-op.

Final Thoughts:

My first play-through lasted 5 hours and 4 minutes. I murdered 18, 374 creatures in that time. That’s just over 1 kill a second, and I don’t think there was ever a time that I wasn’t having fun. That’s pretty impressive for such a simple game. While a quick save would have been nice, the levels are short enough to load up when you have 30 minutes and want some simple, bloody fun.

If you want to buy this game, or check out a video:

Alien Shooter: Vengeance

Score: 85%

Version Reviewed: Xbox 360, also available for the Sony PS3

In short:

With over 40 games, this is the largest batch of Sega Genesis games ever thrown into a legal compilation. Don’t worry, I’ll separate the wheat from the chaff for you.

In a whole lot more detail:

Let’s get right to the point. In order to decide if you should spend $30 on this disc, you need to ask yourself a few questions.

1. Do I demand the latest in cutting edge graphics and gameplay? If your answer is yes, you can leave now.

2. Do I long for the gaming days of my youth, or do I love games so much that I want a history lesson? If yes, stick around.

3. Do I think that the sun rises and sets with Golden Axe? If yes, you rock. Stick around.

Marketing people…. they are idiots. How many people will instantly dismiss this collection, assuming it’s just a bunch of Sonic games? It’s SO much more. In fact, this collection is broad enough that, unless you only like sports games (of which there are curiously none), you are bound to find several games to enjoy.

When you load the disc, you are treated to an interface intended to replicate an actual Sega Genesis. You can sort the game list in a few ways, and can even apply your own ratings so that you can quickly find your favorites. One thing I didn’t like here: some of the games are unlockables, and do not appear in this list, even after you’ve unlocked them. You must always go to the bonus features section to play them. Speaking of the bonus features, you can also unlock video interviews with creators. Of the ones I’ve watched, they were less than entertaining, sadly.

You can also view very nice high resolution artwork for each game, as well as get a brief history lesson about each game.

I’ll run down the entire list of games in the collection later. First I’d like to touch on a few high and low points of the emulation system they’ve put together.

The audio, and maybe this was just my system, was LOUD. I had to reduce the volume on my receiver by half just so I wasn’t blown out of the room. Volume aside, some of these games feature very nice music (any time the splash screen says Yuzo Koshiro, you are in for a treat). Others have grating music and effects, but your mileage may vary.

On the video side, they made the appealing move to allow you to display games in 4:3 or 16:9 ratios. You can manually adjust the screen borders, which you will likely have to do when using wide-screen because the image just won’t fit properly. You can also turn on smoothing, which gives games a “painterly” look. Generally it looks nice, but it can make text look a bit weird. In particular I found Beyond Oasis to really benefit from the smoothing. Your display choices are saved on a per game basis and will be restored the next time you load a game. Sadly, there is no global video configuration. If you like smoothing and wide-screen, you will be applying it for every game the first time you load it. Speaking of loading, once you get to the game selection screen, there isn’t any. You can jump in and out of games very quickly, which is great.

One final note before I go over the games in the collection- you can now save at any time, in any game. Each game is given three save slots. This is an excellent move on Sega’s part, and makes working through these games all that more fun. I remember beating Shinobi III in one sitting years ago. I don’t remember how long it took, but that was not a short game.

On to the games list. I’ll be adding comments on each game, and keep in mind that I am not the platform genre’s biggest fan. It’s also worth noting that while you can use the analog stick for movement, I found the D-Pad to be preferable in almost every case. All the Genesis titles are unlocked from the start. There are a few Sega Master System and arcade titles that must be unlocked by completing certain objectives within the other games.

Click the page link below to go to the next page. To buy this game, or check out a video, click here.

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Score: 70%

Version Reviewed: Xbox 360, also available on Sony PS3

In short:

A tongue-in-cheek 3rd person shooter that doesn’t take itself seriously. You shouldn’t take it seriously, either.

In slightly more detail:

Before we get started, I am obligated to tell you that I did NOT finish this game. I also am likely to NEVER finish it. Most reviewers have a policy that they must finish the game before they review it. I don’t have any policies at all since I am King here. That said, I played enough of this game to know that it wasn’t going to get any better. Its score would have been higher if I had stopped sooner.

The universe’s alignment must be off, because the formula for this game didn’t come out right. Wil Arnett + Neil Patrick Harris + jabs at the videogame industry should equal awesome. And it does…. for a little bit. Unfortunately things fall apart all too quickly.

You play Matt Hazard, a washed up videogame star dating back to the 8-bit days. They even have a downloadable game coming out that represents one of his “past” adventures. This is really problem number one; they chose the financially advantageous route of making separate downloadable games of Matt’s past work, when they should have put some of this in the game itself. Suddenly dropping Matt into a knock-off of Rush ‘N Attack or Mario Kart (one of his past games was a kart racer) would have been an excellent diversion.

Instead, you get a standard cover shooter much like Gears of War, if it was rated PG and ran through the ugly filter a few times. Matt’s bald, and the lack of interesting lighting made me think I was playing the original Hitman. Everything looks very plain. As for the cover itself, there are a couple of nice things here: cover is destructable, and while behind cover you can point at cover ahead of you, hit Y, and immediately dart to the new cover.

One thing I really like about Gears of War is that the combat itself is just plain fun. That’s why I’m willing to run through the game multiple times. Here… not so much. Most of the guns (with the notable exception of the Magnum revolver) feel very wimpy. Matt can only carry two at a time, which is a real pain. You often run out of ammo and are forced to switch guns. Luckily there will be plenty around, since each area requires you to kill a LOT of enemies. If you get close to them, you can melee them but it’s not overly fun to do this. It normally takes 3 hits, and meanwhile you will be getting obliterated by any nearby enemies. There is a power-up (”ULTIMATE HAZARD!”) that allows for one hit kills, but the designers have the annoying habit of placing the power-up on the opposite side of the room, so that by the time you can get to the power-up, everyone is already dead. Another annoyance is that enemies will throw grenades at you, but for some reason you never get any yourself.

There are a few points where you will engage a boss in hand to hand combat. Rather than actually letting you do this, you get thrown into a quick time event. And we all know how much I like those.

Okay, I’ve gone over all the negatives, so it’s time to talk about the things I liked. First and foremost, this game is pretty funny. Wil Arnett does a great job as Matt Hazard, and Neil Patrick Harris is also good. The game pokes fun at practically every aspect of the videogame industry. You’ll get an achievement for pressing pause, Matt will comment on his own lame tutorial, the loading screens are self-deprecating, etc.

Final Thoughts

I really wanted to like this game. I appreciate a game that doesn’t take itself so seriously. I think this game would have been much better if they had pushed it further, doing away with the cover and making your character a true bad ass, mowing down enemies with abandon, not hiding behind a tree. That said, the game does have some merit, so I’d pick it up at a deeply discounted rate in the future if you like. Achievement whores should buy it immediately.

If you want to buy this game, or check out a trailer (that sadly shows no gameplay):
Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard

In Short: Do you like addictive tower defense games? Buy this.

In Greater Detail:

Tonight I got a Steam achievement called Cryptozombologist. You get this achievement by finally discovering the secret zombie in PopCap’s take on Tower Defense, Plants vs. Zombies. The reason I mention this is that in order to get this achievement, you need to play through the story mode of the game almost 2 entire times. For me, a person who finishes maybe 2 games a year, this is just about as high a compliment as I can pay this game. In the first 3 days of owning this game, I had logged 14 hours in it…. it’s quite addictive, at least at first.

Here’s the setup for the game: zombies of all shapes and sizes are attacking your house. Your job is to stop their onslaught by planting various plants in your yard. These plants will decimate the horde, provided you’ve placed them in the proper configuration. If the zombies manage to get all the way across the yard, they enter the house and eat your brain. At that point, it’s time to restart the level.

Unlike many tower defense games, you don’t really place plants in order to construct mazes to channel the zombies’ movement. They always move straight across your yard which is divided into 6 lanes. The only exception to this is when you use the garlic plant, which forces zombies to move to an adjacent lane. This does simplify matters, but ultimately you probably won’t miss the complex paths of other games. Speaking of simplification, this game is fairly easy overall. Certain parts do get challenging, and you may find yourself having to redo certain levels numerous times. These are often levels that have a fair amount of luck involved; while you usually select what plants to take into battle, some levels force you to choose from plants that roll down an assembly line of sorts. Despite the greater chance of losing due to just not getting any worthwhile plants, I found these levels fun, mainly because they forced me to make the best of what was given while relieving me of having to decide what plants to choose.

This game features a demo, but it’s both a positive and a negative. It only gives you a tiny hint of the contents of the full game. That said, it will likely be enough to tell you whether or not you want to spend the $10 on Steam, or $20 if you go straight to PopCap. I know, tough choice… Once you get the full version, you will be amazed at how much game they have packed into 26 MB. Here are the various modes:

Story Mode
Story mode is made up of 50 levels. These levels are divided into 5 distinct sections, taking place in 3 different locations and two times of day. The time of day is relevant because some of your plants are mushrooms and only thrive at night, unless  you plant a coffee bean on them during the day to wake them up. At the end of the game is a very fun and challenging boss battle. Better yet, when you finish the story mode, you can start it over, and it’s different.

Mini-games
Twenty mini-game levels are included. These range from stupid to fantastic, with most of them being enjoyable. One is even a take on Bejeweled, called Beghouled. The highlight is a level called Last Stand. In this game, you get a set amount of “sun” (the currency with which you purchase plants) and can use it in any fashion you like. It’s fun to try different combinations of plants until you hit on something that works.

Puzzle Mode
Puzzle mode is made up of two different puzzles, each with 10 levels. One is called Vase Breaker. The lawn is filled with giant vases, and as you break them, either a zombie or a plant will come out. It’s up to luck and some clever strategy for you to get enough plants out there to stop the zombies before they get across the lawn. Vase Breaker can get pretty tough.

The other puzzle mode is called I, Zombie. Here, you get to play the zombies, attempting to defeat a series of plant combinations that are set up against you. This mode is a lot of fun, and is a nice change of pace from the rest of the game.

Survival Mode
Survival mode is like the standard game, but with one key difference: you must survive 5 different waves of zombie attacks, with the chance to bolster your defenses in between waves. It’s great fun because by the time you get to the later waves, you get a chance to roll out some serious defenses that you might not normally get to use during the course of the main game. Survival mode has levels for all the locations and times of day.

Zen Garden Mode
The zen garden isn’t really a part of the game that you get to play. As you play through other parts of the game, from time to time a zombie will drop a flower that you can place in your zen garden. As you water and care for the flower, it gives you money. Money is used in the game to buy new plants and plant upgrades, inventory slots so you can choose more plant types, and all kinds of things for the zen garden itself. You can purchase a snail that will collect money for you, so you can open up the garden and literally walk away, earning money all the while. I went off to play a game on my 360, and when I came back I had earned several thousand dollars. You can also spend this money on the Tree of Wisdom. Each time you buy some very over-priced food for the tree, it spouts a game-play tip or secret. In general, these nuggets of wisdom are worthless… at least so far for me.

What could be better:

I’ve established that this is a great game that is well worth spending $10 to download. That said, I’ll list out some improvements that would be nice to see in an update or sequel. The resolution is locked to 800 x 600. There are no options to change it. The up-side to this is a smaller, faster game, of course, but my PC can handle it, so bring on some high-def zombies. As mentioned, some of the game varieties are less than fun, but I suppose that comes down to personal taste. But if you like the Bejeweled Twist mini-game, there might be something wrong with you. Finally, it would be great if they would implement Valve’s Steam Cloud service so I wouldn’t have to manually copy save files back and forth between my laptop and desktop PC in order to maintain progress on each machine. Of course, if you didn’t buy it on Steam, why would you care about that?

Score: 68%

In Short: If you can get this game for $5, it’s worth it.

In More Detail:

Larva Mortus is a horror action game developed by Rake In Grass. It’s basically a top-down game (old timers, think “Into the Eagle’s Nest“) but set up more like a gothic Alien Syndrome with no co-op. It does have many endearing qualities, and I would have loved to give it a higher score, but ultimately it just doesn’t deserve it.

You play some sort of cowboy priest, on a mission to retrieve an ancient artifact. The story unfolds via flash-style cut scenes that are actually pretty interesting. There is a large world map, and various side quests and story quests will pop up on it. The side quests are randomly generated from a pool of a few different quest types. None of them vary too wildly from each other, and the only type that you really have to watch yourself on is the one in which you have to rescue “lost souls”, aka civilians. You can kill them accidentally, and if you do this too many times you will lose the mission.

The levels themselves load instantly, and are also randomly generated. The problem is that every “room” is simply that- a rectalinear room. Even when you are in the woods, it looks like you are in a room with tree wallpaper. If they were able to introduce rooms with a more organic appearance it would have helped immensely. The levels start out small, but as your character gains experience and levels up, the levels will get considerably larger. While exploring, you’ll run into a few very common annoyances: the rooms are randomly populated with crates, chests, or coffins that may or may not contain “loot”. Some of these items perfectly blend in with the background, so it can be frustrating when you are trying to run from monsters and keep bumping into crates. Likewise, the game contains a single environmental hazard, crushing block walls. Nine times out of ten, if a room has crushing blocks in it, they will kill all the monsters before you even see any. Thank you?

I played the entire game on the normal difficulty level. For probably the first 2/3 of the game, there is little to challenge you. Then, all of a sudden, the bottom drops out and you will find yourself starting to die more frequently. Sometimes this felt legitimate, and other times… not so much. You can enter a new room, only to have 4 monsters spawn on top of you and kill you before you know what’s going on. There are also ghosts that are barely visible. You can be standing on one and might not notice until it’s too late. Missions are an all-or-nothing affair; it does not matter if you are in the last of 21 rooms. If you die, it’s time to start over. Yes, that happened to me, and yes, I turned the game off for the night. I also encountered a bug that would prevent me from being able to clear a room, forcing me to re-enter it and do it all over again. Whenever this happened, it was in rooms populated with bats. I think they literally flew out of the walls, into space where I could not see or touch them. I still heard them, but they were unwilling or unable to come back in.

Sadly, there is only one character to choose from. He has several statistics, and each time you level up, you get a point to assign to one of those statistics. My suggestion is that once you hit level 12 or so, start pouring points into constitution. A high melee score is also quite helpful, since some enemies are slow enough that you can easily dispatch them with your sword, saving ammunition in your other 7 weapons. Overall the skill progression, as well as finding new weapons, works very well.

The graphics are okay, but as I mentioned, the rooms are all very similar and bland. The resolution is fixed as well. The music is fantastic, and really helps add to the environment. There is one little thing the designers did that never ceased to unsettle me, even after having it happen dozens of times over the course of the roughly 6 hour campaign: sometimes while playing, some sort of vision will appear over the top of the screen, obscuring your vision. This can often happen at inopportune times, but it serves to heighten the tension instead of anger you. I never died as a result of it. Usually the vision is a giant demon head, some glowing eyes, or a colony of bats flying overhead.

Make Me a Sequel, Just Not Like This

I liked this game, and I hope the designers do well enough financially to make a sequel, because there is a TON of room for improvement. For example… You can’t map your keys. The English in some of the text is not overly great, but that’s a minor annoyance. As mentioned earlier, the rooms need a more organic feel, especially in the forest. They also need more environmental hazards; the crushing blocks aren’t doing it for me. Melee is really too powerful. In fact, upgradeable weapons and ammunition would go a long way to helping the game. Having some sort of currency and the means to buy weapons and ammunition would be cool as well. Adding co-op and a few different characters is also a no-brainer. Finally, amp up the action… see Alien Shooter.

Score: 65%

In short:

Remember Alien Shooter? It’s like that, only shorter and not as good.

In slightly more detail:

You may remember that I was pretty fond of Alien Shooter: Vengeance. Zombie Shooter is virtually the same game, except the objective is supposed to be mowing down hordes of zombies instead of aliens. That probably sounds good to you, but the problem is that most of these zombies are not of the shambling variety. In fact, I’d say they are of the “re-skinned alien” variety. I don’t think a lot of people would picture mutated zombies with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. Many of these “zombies” have missile weapons, and that would be okay to an extent, but it all causes the game to lose any semblance of a zombie massacre. Sigma Team might as well have called this Alien Shooter 3.

Even that wouldn’t be accurate though; the levels are much smaller, there are fewer objectives, and the action just isn’t as intense. Sure, there are a few times when your jaw will drop when you see the horde coming at you, but this game is infinitely easier than Alien Shooter: Vengeance. I didn’t even cheat!

Final Thoughts:

I know this review is astonishingly short, but really if you want to know what this game is like, read my Alien Shooter review and change the title of the game. Zombie Shooter is a fun game, but it is not as good as the games before it. I’d say it’s worth $5 on a good day.

Score: 96%

Platform Reviewed: Xbox 360. Also available for PC and PS3

In Short:

Batman kicks ass during a long night at Arkham Asylum. You are missing out if you don’t help.

In much more detail:

I haven’t played every comic book game out there. That said, I still feel pretty safe saying that Batman: Arkham Asylum is the greatest comic book game ever made. Even if you want to argue that point, it’s much tougher to argue that this is the greatest Batman game ever created…oh wait… all the others sucked.

Just in case you have recently emerged from your cave, I’ll give you a brief synopsis. Batman has brought the Joker to Arkham Asylum to be locked up with the other raving lunatics. The Joker has other plans, and manages to take over the island. That gets us past the first 10 minutes of the game, and from that point on it’s Batman’s job to take out thugs, explore the island, rescue various individuals, and otherwise put a stop to the Joker’s nefarious plans, not to mention actually finding out what those plans are.

There are a few general activities that you will undertake as the Dark Knight. Combat is fun, and doesn’t happen so much that you get sick of it. Batman generally has no trouble wiping the floor with over a dozen henchmen at the same time. Over the course of the game you’ll run into a couple of upgraded henchmen that can be a bit of a pain, but even they will go down with a few swipes of your cape (this stuns them) followed up by a heavy dose of boot to the jaw. Things change dramatically, however, when Batman is dealing with armed thugs. Bullets are not kind to Batman, so the best tactic is to separate the group and take each guy out individually. This is generally done by using your bat hook to grapple up to the ceiling and perch on conveniently placed gargoyles. When a henchman comes by, you can do an inverted takedown, leaving him hanging and screaming until he passes out. It’s always good for a laugh. You can also do a glide kick, swooping down and laying a guy out cold. One annoying problem with this tactic is that sometimes the henchman being targeted will shift unexpectedly (this happened to me a LOT, actually), leaving you glide kicking an unintended target that can leave you open for gunfire from nearby thugs. Many areas also have ventilation shafts (you spend a lot of time in these) that allow you to get behind thugs and take them down silently.

As you take down the henchmen in a room, the remaining guys will get more and more nervous, eventually firing into the shadows. Joker taunts them as well. Unfortunately he tends to repeat his taunts, so it won’t be long before you hear the same comments over and over.

In addition to combat, you can complete various challenges left around the island by the Riddler. Considering how difficult it is for Batman to get at some of these, I really have to wonder how the Riddler put them there in the first place. Some of these are simple trophies that need collecting. These can unlock challenge rooms (mini-levels where you fight waves of thugs or perform stealth takedowns) and character trophies (like Resident Evil or Smash Bros.). Other times there are actual riddles that require you to use your “Detective mode” vision to solve them. This mode is an x-ray like vision that you will use quite often. By holding the left bumper while looking at something, you ’scan’ it. If it is the answer to the riddle, you are credited with the solution. In case you were wondering, the Riddler has hacked into your communications, so he can talk to you, taunting you and growing increasingly annoyed as you solve more and more his riddles. Apparently he can only talk to you, and not hear you. That’s a good thing since Oracle calls Batman “Bruce” at least once. It deserves mention that many of these hidden challenges really delve deep into Batman lore. It’s obvious that the designers are big fans.

The game also features several boss “battles”. I put that in quotes because some of these are not true battles. For example, encounters with the Scarecrow are actually stealth sequences (with some combat, but not against Scarecrow directly) in which you have to avoid the gaze of a 150 foot tall Scarecrow. I found these fun and not annoying. Another non-battle is against Killer Croc. You essentially have to run from him until you can trap him. Overall this sequence was not overly thrilling. The other boss battles are pretty good, particularly sequences where you actually control one of the bosses. I won’t spoil exactly how that happens, but it’s fun and you can get an achievement for it, if you care about that sort of thing.

I won’t spoil the last battle, but it’s not great either. With so much build-up, it would have been nice to have a better pay off.

All of these activities grant you experience points which can be used to purchase several upgrades to Batman’s moves or equipment. It’s a great system since it gives you an actual game benefit to hunting down ridiculous trophies. Some of the upgrades themselves are not amazing. Over the course of my game I obtained 17 of the 20 upgrades, and some of those I never even used.

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