Batman Arkham City.

I finally got around to finishing Batman Arkham City. I had the game on Origin , but the version I played and beat was on Steam. I got the steam version free along with Arkham Asylum because I own Arkham Knight on Steam. It was some bonus WB gave out to people who kept arkham Knight even though it was riddled with bugs and performance issues.

Anyway, I noticed that the Steam version had performance issues that I don't have on the Origin version. The Steam version had dipping FPS issues on a consistent basis on max settings. I didn't have those issues on Origin on max settings though and running Arkham Origins on max which is a nicer looking game ran perfectly smooth.

The game itself was quite fun to play through. Arkham city is a prison city for Gotham's criminals which the mayor of Gotham let a maniac named Hugo Strange to control because he got money out of it or something. Either way, Strange was using it for his own purposes and now all hell is breaking loose in the city and The Joker is a big part of the goings on as usual.

Joker is sick with some kind of deadly virus and he traps batman, injects batman with his blood so that he is sick too and is forced to hunt down a cure. This takes Batman on an Easter egg hunt that brings him up against a bunch of his usual baddies, including Ras Al Gul, The Penguin, Mr Freeze, The Joker and countless goons that follow the different bosses.

Batman analyses crime scenes using detective mode to find clues as to where to go next and when you need to get somewhere you can zipline and glide across the city with relative ease. Its pretty cool to fly around the city and seeing the snow, the lights and the buildings going by below you.

There are plenty of upgrades to unlock as you gain experience from beating up thugs or destroying security cameras or finding Riddler trophies. The upgrades give you new combat moves, upgrade your equipment or make your armour take less damage from bullets or melee attacks.

The combat is fairly simple. You just need to press X to hit bad guys and press Y to counter them. You can also use your gadgets in battle and against certain thugs you may need to attack from behind or disarm them first with specific moves before you can beat them into submission.

There are times when you need to take out a room of baddies without anyone seeing you or else they shoot the hostages. Those are pretty fun but like the regular combat can get repetitive.

The boss fights are fun for the most part and the story was really good. I especially liked the part when you had to track down Ras al gul and then take the trials to get his blood. I thought that was the most interesting part of the game and I also felt that his daughter talia was one of the more interesting characters because of her relationship to batman. They have a child together who is now Robin in the comics.

The game has some side quests to take on that will put you up against other characters from the batman comics. Hush, Deadshot, Bane and The Ridder. Though when you solve those quests the confrontations with those characters is pretty anti climactic. The riddler challenges can get tedious as there are almost 200 of them and you need to find them as batman , then switch to Catwoman and find some that only she can get.

Yes you get to play some parts of the campaign as Catwoman. Though not very much. SO little in fact that I wonder why they shoehorned her in. I thought she would play a bigger part but it was pretty underwhelming.

There is also DLC called Harley's Revenge. Dealing with Harley Quinn being upset and blaming Batman for the death of Joker, though I also think it may have to do with her blaming Batman for her lost pregnancy. I'm not 100 percent sure on this and need to look it up, but in the main campaign, you can come across a pregnancy test which shows positive. So it looks like Harley was pregnant.

Later, in the DLC campaign, if you enter that room again (which you have to) you will see that same test sitting by itself, but in the middle of the room there is now a crib with a small Joker doll in it and all around the crib are a bunch of pregnancy tests scattered around it all showing negative. That to me shows that she lost the child and kept taking tests hoping one would show positive again. I'd blame batman too as early in the game he beats her down pretty hard that any pregnant woman would lose a pregnancy after that hit.

In the DLC though, you play as Robin trying to save Batman. It was kind of neat to play a robin , and the DLC isn't overly long so it wasn't bad.

I haven't gotten all the riddler trophies yet because its pretty tedious but I finished everything else in the game. I want to go and finish Arkham Origins before moving on to Arkham Knight.

In closing, Arkham City was a really good game. When Arkham Asylum came out It was a huge step forward for super hero games and Arkham City built on it very well.

The game tends to go on sale on Steam for about 4.99 pretty often so if you have been on the fence about the game, wait for a sale and then try it out. You get a lot of bang for your buck and you get a really awesome Batman game.

Mortal Kombat X

I know that MKX for the PC is a hot topic right now because of the fact that there was news that the latest DLC will be coming to consoles only. Regardless of that though, the game is pretty great. There are tons of people on Steam now complaining and saying that they want refunds because the game isn't complete and so on and so forth. All that is complete B.S

The game itself is very complete. It has a large cast of characters at 24, though its 25 if you preordered and got Goro. If not then he is listed as downloadable content. 24 characters is pretty darn good for a fighting game. That gives you a ton of options for play styles that you can try out, dabble in or downright master.

If that isn't enough, you could buy Kombat Pack 1 which gives you 4 more characters as well. With all those you have returning favourites such as Sub Zero, Raiden, Sonya Blade (my personal favourite), Kitana, Mileena and Jax. There are also new characters such as Cassie Cage who is the daughter of Sonya and Johnny Cage, there is Jaquie Briggs who is Jax and Sonya's daughter.....Just kidding, it's Jax's kid but Sonya didn't get around THAT much.

There is also Kung Jin who is related to Lui Kang and Kung Lao and there are a couple other new characters that are somewhat interesting.

The graphics in this version are great. Mortal Kombat has done a great job making detailed and interesting costumes for their characters and that is one thing I really appreaciate from a game like this. Compared to other fighting games, this one has the best costume design in my opionion. Other games seem to have very basic and boring designs, and I'm looking right at Street Fighter, one of my favourite games, but man do they ever not know how to do good costumes. Ryu and most of the cast have been wearing the exact same costumes for over 20 years.....

Anyway, the backgrounds are also very detailed and nice to look at. Some levels have weather effects such as rain and snow and most just look absolutely vibrant. I also like that you can interact with things from the background which is something they brought over from Injustice:Gods Among US. Though this time you can actually block things that are picked up and thrown at you. In Injustice you couldn't.

Fatalities are obviously back in this game, though most of them aren't all that great. It shows that more thought and creativity went into the Brutalities. Those are way better than fatalities and flow with the game a lot better. While fatalities are done to the other player after you have defeated them, brutalities are done by meeting certain criteria and usually mean performing a move as the last hit on the other player while holding a button or finishing with an X-ray attack , or having them in the right spot and shooting them with a projectile at the right time to get that brutality finish which is a much cooler and flashier finish than a fatality is.

There is also one stage fatality that I know of and apparently an old lady from the background can be used to finish a player off as well. Each character has about 6 brutalities, and only about 2 or 3 fatalities. Though there are also faction kills, which like fatalities are done at the end of the match and again aren't as fun as brutalities. Friendships and babalities didn't make this game though and I'm not mad about that.

While lots of people on Steam complain about the online play, I have had 95 percent great matches in my over 1000 online ranked and player matches. There was so much complaining that NRS included a ping and FPS icon you can view on your opponent before a match so you can decide if you want to play against them or not.

Some people online are trying to play with red ping and red FPS, so no wonder they are having a bad experience. I do notice that for games like this people try to play them on old hardware and then complain about optimization.....

Regardless. Another feature brought over to MKX from Injustice is the level select. Player one can choose a level to fight on or select random and a random level will be picked. Though player two can decide to choose a level as well and if they do , then you get a 50/50 chance that your level choice will be chosen over the other player.

Once thing lacking that I wish they added was a double blind player select. Street Fighter has it and MK should as well so that you can avoid the whole issue of people waiting for you to pick your character so they can pick based on your choice.

There is an option to hide your cursor, but the issue is that you cant see it either and that makes it possible to accidently pick the wrong character to use.

Since MK9, NRS have done a great job with the story mode for their fighting games. MK9 had a really good story and Injustice had a really good one as well. MKX has a decent one, but its not on par with the previous two games mentioned. There are lots of characters but not enough time to flesh them out, especially the new characters. I kind of wish that instead of a story mode with playable fights in between, they just made a CGI MKX movie that you could watch instead.

Street Fighter 4 kind of did this. They released an animated movie that took place before the game, and I liked that the endings in SF4 were also animated in the same style as that movie. MKX though does the usual still images for their endings with a voice over of what happened.

So, is this game incomplete like people on Steam are saying? No. Not at all. Is this game worth buying right now even though PC owners may never get Kombat Pack 2? I say yes. It still has lots of content and there are still quite a few people playing it online, that it's still a worth purchase.

Here is a video of some online matches me and a friend had the other night. Its almost an hour and 20 minutes and it doesn't really get good until I start using Sonya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pXe9gocqXg

Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 0 HD Remaster has just released on PC and consoles not long ago, but I decided to play through RE 5 again just because. I actually really like RE 5. I know that lots of people didn't like the way that the series started to go in the direction of action and not very survival horror anymore, but I think it was just a natural transition over the course of so many years.

What happens in the story? I don't really know all the details. I know that Chris is looking for Jill and for some reason shes under control of Wesker with some thing on her chest..... Honestly I don't play these games for the story as they are pretty weak for the most part.

There are other characters in this game that I have no idea why they are there other than to turn into monster bosses for me to kill. Irving? Some other woman? I don't know. Though I do know Wesker and hes pretty bad ass. I liked fighting him in this game.

I also really like Sheva. She's a fun new character to the series and I hope they use her again at some point. She should have been Chris' partner instead of the new guy in RE 6, but ah well.

The locations in the game look great. I love the outdoor sections in Africa the most, but all the locations are pretty interesting. The enemies are pretty neat too. I love the crazy look on the faces of the villagers who are raging and coming to take your head off at every turn.

This is a typical Resident Evil game, where you go through the levels, pick up ammo and health as well as picking up money and jewels to sell so you can buy ammo , new weapons or upgrade weapon in between levels. As long as you upgrade your guns the game isn't that hard on normal. I cant remember how Veteran was, but I know that for Professional , you pretty much need a human co-op partner because the AI one will get killed and get you killed far too much.

There is a on rails shooter part which I didn't like very much, but it's short and isn't as bad as rail sections in other games. The boss fights are pretty fun as well because you need to find out how to beat them and sometimes its obvious and other times not so obvious.

There is a good amount of replayability in this game, because of the 4 different difficulties, and the amount of guns you can unlock and upgrade. Also there are Emblems to find and shoot which unlocks some special feature in the menus. There are also 4 or 5 costumes for each character. When you finish the game once, you unlock new game + as well as mercenaries reunion which is like a horde mode which can be played in co-op.

Also, Capcom decided to finally release the Gold Edition DLC content that the consoles had and PC waited years to get afterwards. While I gave up on the PC ever getting this DLC I was surprised to hear an announcement from Capcom that the DLC was coming soon, and when it did, even though it was the full price of 15 dollars, I still bought it. Even though I already had the content for my xbox 360 edition of RE 5. Apparently it took 5 years to come to PC after launching for consoles......

I personally haven finished the DLC campaigns yet for either console or PC. I will soon though because what the heck am I waiting for? That's not completely true. I finished Lost in Nightmares, but not the Desperate Escape one. The DLC features Jill as playable which is neat.

I'm sure most of you have played Resident Evil 5, but if you haven't, it really is worth playing through a couple times. I have never seen the DLC go on sale on steam though so if you want that then its another 15 dollars. To me that's a bit pricey for old DLC but being a sucker for RE , I had to have it.

I'll probably get back to RE 6 soon playing a second time through as the secondary characters this time. RE 6 gets a bad rep but I don't get why.

Steam Machines.

So I'm sure that most people have heard of steam machines and have been at least semi interested in what they will bring to the PC gaming table. Can they compete with PCs? Can they compete with consoles?

That depends on your expectations and what you want out of them. These aren't multi purpose computers like your average desktop or laptop. They are designed for gaming, not for taking to school to take notes on.

First of all, there are lots of companies making their own steam machines. Alienware, MSI, Asus,Cyberpowerpc, Zotac, Gigabyte, and most other hardware manufacturing companies.

These Steam Machines range in price from $599 to $999 and up depending on the hardware. If you got to Alienware's website you will see that they offer 4 different Steam Machine packages. The lower end machine costs $599 USD, and has a 4th generation i3 CPU, 4 Gigs of RAM, and a GTX GPU and 500 Gigs or HDD space.

The highest end machine costs $999 USD and features a 4th generation i7 CPU , 8 Gigs of RAM, a GTX GPU and 1 TB or HDD space.

Alienware doesn't specify what kind of GPU you are getting other than its a GTX 2 GPU with 2 gigs or RAM. All steam machines run on SteamOS, so you wont be running windows. SteamOS is a Linux based OS, and because of this not all games on steam run on Steam OS.

Some Steam machines will be upgreadable with more RAM or more hard drive space being an option.

Specs aside, I'm not sure that I would find onevery useful for the price. You could go and get a current gen console instead for the price of a lower end machine, especially if you already own a desktop gaming PC.

If you don't own a gaming PC and are looking into Steam Machines, then I would suggest building your own PC instead with a windows operating system so that you have access to a wider range of games and more versatility in what you can do on your PC. You will get more bang for your buck in that case.

So in short, I don't think that Steam Machines are a good replacement for desktop PCs nor are they a good replacement for consoles. This is all my opinion of course.

Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded.

 I just finished LSL Reloaded for the first time. Though I have played the original a few times so I mostly remembered what to do and the game took about 5 hours.

This game was funded by a kickstarter program and was created by the original series creator Al Lowe. I bought this game the moment I saw it for sale on GOG.com. I hope that Al decides to make Larry 8 after this.

Reloaded follows the same story, you chase after the same girls and the puzzles are the same. It even has an updated age check, but this time the game is fully voice acted and the narrator from LSL 7 is back to keep Larry Company. The graphics look really good as well. They are sharp and colourful and make each area look amazing.

This game doesn't have any nudity in it unless you know the secret at the very end of the game. LSL 7 had nudity in backgrounds and with and without the finding of easter eggs. This one has suggestive screens but no nudity.

The humour is in tact and makes for a very fun 5 hour adventure game. The social references have been updated for todays times as opposed to keeping it grounded in the 80's

Larry comes to the city of Lost Wages to find true love. He meets a handful of women who he wants to get with but for Larry it's never that simple. He has to do favours for these women which means solving puzzles to get them what they want, so that he can get what he wants.

Most of the time even when he does these tasks he gets screwed over in the end. (no pun intended)
Unlike Larry 7, you can die in this game. Walk into the wrong dark alley and a shady thug will come and beat you to death. No matter how you die though the game puts you back to where you were right before you died so death doesn't have much of a penalty at all.

The puzzles in the game aren't that hard to figure out though you will do lots of travelling back and forth with the taxi, so make sure you win some money in the slot machines before heading out as you need to pay the taxi driver before you leave the cab or he will beat you to death.

If you are a long time fan of the series, then this is definitely worth buying and playing, and if you haven't played a Larry game before then this is a good start. You will have fun either way if you have the patience for point and click adventure games.

Come on Al Lowe, make Larry 8!

Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail!

The Leisure Suit Larry series has been around since 1987. Sierra was the company that was making the most and the best point and click adventure games. To gamers today, I'm sure that point and click sounds like a boring genre when there are tons of games out there with non stop gun shooting 360 no scoping action.

Well, to me and I'm sure a lot of other probably mostly older gamers, the point and click adventure is a favourite genre for the stories, animation and exploration.

If you liked point and click, then you were always in anticipation of a new Sierra game. They have created many, many popular adventure games over the years until the company closed down. Not only did they have the Leisure Suit Larry series, they also had the popular Police Quest which they collaborated with a veteran officer to get certain details of police life portrayed in a realistic way.

They also had the King's Quest series which spanned 7 games and now has a newer episodic game that I haven't looked into yet. They had Quest for Glory, Roger Wilco, Gabriel Knight, and one of my personal favourites, Phantasmagoria.

Adventure games were so popular that many companies were making them. Interplay had their Star Trek series, Lucas Arts had a ton of classics such as The Dig, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle and The Monkey Island series.

Other notable games were the Tex Murphy series and Dreamfall. Also some more recent adventure games for Focus Entertainment were the Runaway games which are excellent in every way.

As for Larry, I was pretty young when someone showed me a part of the game that I was too young to be seeing. A few years later I saw LSL 7 Love for Sail in a store and bought it. The game came out in 1996 so I was 15 years old. I took the game home and couldn't wait to play it. The graphics on the back of the box looked amazing , like a cartoon.

The Game disk was bright and colourful and the first gag of the game was that Larry was shocked that the hole in the middle of the CD was where his crotch should be.

Along with the manual, inside the jewel case was another card with small different coloured and numbered boxed that you could scratch and sniff. I didn't realize until playing the game, that at different parts of the game that card would pop up on the bottom right of the screen and show you with section to scratch and sniff so you knew what Larry was smelling. Pretty neat and unique if you ask me.

That was when I was 15, and while I still have my disk version complete with box and manual and scratch and sniff, the version I played recently was from GOG.com The Larry series goes on sale often on that site and I purchased LSL 7 on there so I didn't have to deal with the hassle of using the CD and it was only a couple dollars.

For the most part I remembered what to do and where to go in the game so it didn't take me too long to get through, but if for some reason you have never played it before and decide to buy it and play it, I suggest you do what I did my first time. Take your time, click on everything and select every option.

The game is fully voice acted. Larry has internal thoughts about what he's seeing or doing, or the people he's talking to and there is also a narrator who talks to Larry sometimes giving information and sometimes warning him that what he's doing doesn't make sense or isn't a good idea.

The game starts you off with the girl from LSL 6, though she's had enough of Larry and handcuffs him to the bed and leaves him with a cigarette in his mouth which starts a fire after she leaves.

Larry has to find a way out of the situation and out of the burning room. After he does, he decides to go on a cruise. This is where the game really starts. Larry meets the Captain of the ship, Captain Thygh and finds out that the person who wins the competitions on the ship can spend a week with the captain doing things that Larry wants to do!

Like the other games in the series (The series has no 4th installment), Larry meets women and tries to get them into bed. He usually has to perform tasks for them and win them over and sometimes it works out for him and other times it just doesn't.

Larry is a pretty pathetic guy. His jokes and pick up lines are pretty cheesy and his luck is always terrible. The first thing that happens is Larry finds out there was a problem with his room so he's been bumped down to the supply room.

The women you meet are all based on famous women. You will meet, Jaimie Lee Coitus, Dewmi Moore, Drew Barringmore, Wydoncha and Nayomi Juggs, Annette Boning and Victoria. There are lots of references to famous characters throughout the game. At the pool, where clothing is not allowed, you can see Mickey Mouse's shorts, Fred and Wilma's clothes and every so often Ron Jeremy will walk by. When you get into the pool area you can see Archie, Jughead , Betty and Veronica playing nude pool volleyball.

There is a bit of nudity in the game, so if that is something that bothers you then you should avoid the game and probably the series. You see naked people swimming, you see the Juggs on stage with Larry and you get glimpses of their nipples and you even see Larry's tiny member later in the game. Most of the nudity though is hidden in easter eggs. Little out of the way things you can do that will add a scene of nudity to the game. One instance in where you are in the library and the once prude Victoria who you now converted to a sex enthusiast has LSL 6 on her computer behind her. Click on one of the characters on the screen and a slashing egg appears on the top corner of the game. Then when you ask her about the weather she jumps you and because the egg is activated this time you will see her breasts.

Another case is when talking to Drew who is naked at the pool but covered by a pesky branch. You have options when you click on the branch to move it or break it but neither option works. Though if you select the "other" option and type in "push" Larry will move the branch exposing Drew's breasts.

The animation in the game, while dated now still looks pretty good and the voice acting as I've mentioned is great. If you aren't offended by the content and can appreciate the type of humour then I would suggest trying this game out if you are into the adventure games. Then if you like this one, I might suggest getting the series collection which usually goes on sale on GOG.com.

The end of Love for Sail hints at a Larry 8 but that game never got made. Instead, not long ago a remake of the first game was released called Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded. I'll be playing through that soon for the first time.

Unreal 4

Unreal 4 is in Pre-Alpha and I have to say that's its fun as hell. I really loved the Unreal series from day one and I was pretty sad that UT 3 didn't last too long. I'm not sure if its because it was also released on consoles and suffered a but of consolitis? I had both the xbox 360 and the PC versions of the game ( I still have and love my UT 3 xbox faceplate)

The big difference between the PC version and the console versions is that the console versions were much slower paced than the PC version. If you happen to have both versions you probably noticed that immediately.

Also, the PC and PS3 versions both got the Titan upgrade, which was a huge addon with more story mode , more maps and game modes as well as some new characters to use. The xbox 360 version did not get this upgrade because of MS's update policies.

As for UT4, you can download the pre-Alpha for free and play it though you do need to install the unreal engine 4 launcher. Yes, yet another game launcher to add to the collection. If you're like me you already have Steam, Origin, GOG, Uplay and now another one to add. To me, its worth it though. UT 4 is really fun and there are lots of players on it.

You gain XP during matches and as you level up you gain items to customize your character with. I think that you also unlock more characters because as of now I only have 2 while other people are using characters I cant use.

If you have played and liked the series in the past, you will probably enjoy this one, though if you're new to the series the fast pace might turn you off of the game.

Here is a very short clip of my gameplay. My first match against AI was at a nice 59-60 FPS , then the second match which I started recording on had some terrible FPS range until I paused the game and then restarted. The game runs really smooth though and you need to run it smooth to keep up with the fast paced action.