I platinummed LEGO Batman 2 on VITA

 Hello everyone. I recently platinummed LEGO Batman 2 on PS VITA and would like to talk about it.

Unlike the PS3 version, the VITA version of the game is a port of the DS/3DS/iOS version of the game. So instead of an open world, Lego Batman 2 VITA is more like LEGO Batman 1 PS2 as this linear set of levels. That does mean it's a lot easier and more straightforward to platinum this game as you only have to complete the levels, find the collectibles in said levels and do some mini challenges on the side.

The game has roughly 3 kinds of trophies, Mandatory Story Trophies, The Collectibles, The Justice League Arena and the Miscellaneous ones.

The first are the standard "mandatory story trophies" you get for completing levels and the game normally. Only 65.7% of players completed the first level. Dropping down to 41.7% that beat all the main levels.  Which seems relatively high so I guess nearly 1 in 2 VITA players that picked this up liked it enough to finish it.

 

Oh and only 6.3% of players got the platinum.

The second group of trophies are for getting all the collectibles in all the levels. In each of the 14 levels, there is 1 red brick (which unlocks cheats and additional abilities), 1 Sound Bite Token (which unlocks an audio clip of certain characters talking) and 5 minikits (which unlock more characters for use in Free Play).

Like Lego Batman 1, you have to play through levels once on Story Mode which unlocks Free Play mode. Free Play Mode allows you to replay that level but with every character you have unlocked so far in order to find all the collectibles as different characters have different abilities to solve certain puzzles and challenges. For example, in the early levels you may come across gold bricks that need to be melted to get collectibles. But you cannot do so in Story Mode as neither Batman nor Robin have any Heat Vision ability. But later on, once you unlock Superman, you can replay the level in Free Play and use Supes to melt them.

For the most part, this isn't too bad. Most of the collectibles are pretty easy to find. There are some that are pretty hidden but you can find if you scour levels more thoroughly. There were a handful I recall that were so well hidden that even when I knew where they were, I was confused on how exactly to get them at first.

Fortunately, the game does help you a bit with this. There are Red Bricks that once you find and unlock them, highlight where other Red Bricks and Minikits are once you're positioned close to them. And the game lets you know how many you've found so far in a level. There are also hints to remind you which character you can use. There isn't a Red Brick for Sound Bites for some reason. I will say it is technically a downgrade from Lego Batman 1 PS2 since in that game, the upgrade for finding collectibles actually had arrows pointing you to them from the start of the level making it more convenient. One rather odd feature here is that you technically do not need to purchase all of the unlockables you find here. Just find the collectibles. So you can technically get the trophies without actually purchasing any of the Red Brick or Sound Bite unlockables. In addition, you don't need to complete the level to save the collectibles. You can just find the collectible and quit the level which is really convenient.

There is one potentially bugged/RNG trophy/collectible. “Starter Pack - Unlock all of the Ability Packs for the character customizer”. So the way it works is that certain characters you purchase come with an ability pack for you to use with your custom character. You don’t know which characters come with ability packs and it appears to “randomize” it based on a new save file. So the recommended approach here to purchase every character which guarantees you get the ability packs.

Sidenote, but on the VITA version, you can use the NEAR app to gift and receive gifts in the form of unlockables to and from other players. In theory, you could use this to skip getting all the collectibles manually but I could not find anyone playing LEGO Batman 2 VITA and using NEAR at the same time anywhere on the planet to do this (well, you could if NEAR wasn’t discontinued years ago).

Anyway, These collectibles are mostly fun to find. But I will say I felt Lego Batman 1 PS2 made these more fun as there were more that involved more novel puzzles or minigames or combining other characters abilities. For example, I remember there were some cool sections where you had to use Mr. Freeze to Freeze some water in specific places so Batman could walk on top of it to place a bomb. Or Riddler being able to mind control some NPCs, allowing you to control that character and do tasks. In contrast, Lego Batman 2 VITA mostly sticks with "go to thing and hold O for the character to do their thing automatically". Like, there are Green objects that Green Lantern can control and shapeshift but you can't manually carry or use these creations. The game does it for you. So instead making a 100 ton weight and manually dropping it on a weak floor to open it or manually holding a feather duster and using it to tickle a robot, the game kinda does it for you. Same for other characters. For Flash, instead of using his speed to solve puzzles where you run past cameras or lasers before they see you or can respond, you just run on these random treadmills that unlocks the thing.

Another thing I noticed when comparing these 2 games is how spread out the abilities were. You'd think that since Lego Batman 2 brings most of the Justice League along, you'd have more characters that share abilities so you can bring different characters to solve puzzles. But that doesn't appear to be the case. Lex is the only character with a Deconstructor and a good chunk of the collectibles require you to have someone point the Deconstructor at them for a few seconds. Flash is the only character that has super speed (even though Superman and Wonder Woman are right there). Aquaman is the only character that can shoot water to clean away goop. Green Lantern is the only character that can manipulate Green objects. Electric Suit Batman is the only character that can deal with electricity. And since the game repeats a lot of these kinds of puzzles, you end up bringing a lot of these same characters to every level. Some abilities are repeated. There are quite a few characters that can grapple, have super strength, fly, have X-Ray vision, can hack or are acrobatics. So the puzzles that involve them can involve other characters.

 

In Lego Batman 1 PS2, once you selected your character from the Free Play menu, the game would give you a random party you couldn't later change but make sure everyone it selected would have all the abilities you'd need. Leading to some interesting combinations as you'd have lesser known characters with abilities you didn't know they had at first. Lego Batman 2 VITA doesn't do that. You can switch characters from your active party by using a menu but they don't "save" as you traverse areas. But the game doesn't seem to actively prioritize characters whose abilities would be useful. Leading to situations where the game gives you random Mr. Freeze goon instead of Flash or Power Suit Batman as a party member. It isn't a huge hassle to then go into a menu and swap characters but it is a bit annoying. Especially when Lego Batman 1 didn't have this issue.

The third set of trophies are for the "Justice League Mode". This is a singleplayer and solo only set of challenge missions. There are around 5 levels. In each level there are 8 waves where you must defeat all the enemies or complete the challenge. And after each wave, you swap to a different character. You get a medal based on how many times you died when completing a level. With a Gold Medal if you make it through with 4 deaths or less. To get the trophy, you need to complete all of these challenge levels with Gold Medals.

When I started doing these, I'd figured they'd be easy. After all. These are Lego Games. But no. These were actually quite challenging and require you to actually learn some of the intricacies of the combat system and how some of the characters operate. You can't even use the Red Brick cheats here.

Most characters can't heal health automatically so damage taken can persist for a while and you typically only have 4 health points. You don't have many defensive options so stray bullets and punches can end up catching up to you. These levels often throw multiple enemies at you, some of which you can't grab or instantly take out so it is possible to get surrounded. The later levels often throw stage hazards at you. Such as spinning lasers which can either deal lots of damage or outright kill you while you're fighting enemies.

So yeah, it was kinda hard. Some of the challenges even took me multiple attempts. But surprisingly, this is some of the most fun I had in this game or in a Lego game period. I had scenarios where as Batman, I had to aim my attacks when surrounded so I punch alternating enemies to lock them in a hitstun and take them all out safely. I had scenarios as Flash where I had multiple enemies firing guns and explosives at me and I had to move around quickly to both dodge them and let other enemies get hit in the crossfire. Or hit an enemy into another enemy so they get stunned, allowing me to grab and throw them into other enemies to stun them and repeat the cycle. There are even boss fights. Such as using Stealth Suit Batman to find invisible Zzazz while his invincible instakill martial arts bodyguards were protecting him. Or using Cyborg to quickly time and shoot lasers at helicopters targeting you. Or the final bossfight against Brainiac requiring you to alternate between Power Suit Batman and Superman.

These challenges are made much more intense by the challenge to get all Gold Medals. But they also seem relatively fair and balanced for the character you are assigned. For example, all of Wonder Woman's challenges throw her against flying enemies with guns. These would be painful to fight with any other character since you'd take damage trying to hit them with melee or ranged attacks. But Wonder Woman can safely deflect bullets when aiming her ranged attack at the cost of losing her aim. So the challenge becomes timing your shots to bring down these enemies without eating the damage. Flash's challenges often put him against enemies with explosives since he can move fast enough to dodge them. Superman has challenges where there is Kryptonite on certain or most of an area that can move around. So the challenge becomes one of positioning to be "safe" when approaching enemies as then Supes is invulnerable and attacking enemies in positions where Supes is safe even when weakened by Kryptonite. Green Lantern typically has longer fights involving more ranged enemies and lasers. But he has slowly regenerating health allowing him to tank hits and still make progress quickly if the player plays well.

Honestly, I kinda wish there were more of these and ones that gave you multiple characters and asked you to swap between them on the fly to really mix and match the scenarios. How about one where you need to combine Flash and Green Arrow to zoom to a place, switch and fire arrows and switch back all while dodging obstacles?

The fourth and final set of trophies are for the miscellaneous challenges. These are pretty minor stuff like glide for a few seconds as Batman, defeat Batman as Bane, defeat an enemy with Commissioner Gordon’s shotgun etc. not much a challenge here.

So yeah, Lego Batman 2 VITA is a pretty fun and easy game to Platinum. All of the trophies present feel reasonable and in-line for a game like this. There’s no obnoxious stuff like “do x thing with all the different characters in a way that’s really tedious” or “here’s a missable thing you can only do once per playthrough”. Not even a VITA specific “do this thing with the touch screen in a way that’s really annoying and if you don’t, you’ll miss the trophy” (looking at you Jak 1).

I was expecting the game to ask the player to actually purchase every unlockable. It makes sense as a way to add more playtime but wouldn’t feel too crazy given you could stack the x2, x4, x6, x8 and x10 stud multipliers. But no. In theory, you could get the platinum without purchasing any Red Bricks, Sound Bites and only a handful of the characters. I mean, I’m not complaining.

As for the game itself, I would describe it as like “a budget DLC expansion/ level pack for Lego Batman 1 PS2”. Because aside from the challenge mode, this is a similar albeit lesser version of the original. There’s fewer levels, both regular, bonus and secret. There’s certainly nothing like how Lego Batman 1 had the second campaign where you play every level from the villain’s perspective. The levels that are here aren’t as varied or large.

Of course, the biggest issue here is that this isn’t a port of the PS3 version of Lego Batman 2 but rather the DS/3DS/iOS version of the game. It’s a disappointing because while this version is a step up for the DS/3DS/iOS versions (I played a bit of the DS version back in the day), it’s below what the VITA is capable of. The VITA has open world games like The Amazing Spider Man 1, Assassin’s Creed 3 Liberation, Borderlands 2 and Gravity Rush. An open world Lego game would have been a good fit for the platform as well as being feasible given the hardware. So instead of a somewhat flawed but still ambitious port that’s the “worst” among the console versions, us VITA players got the best version of a below average game for weaker handhelds. I'm reminded of that one episode from the Simpsons where Bart Simpson gets demoted to the 3rd grade and instantly does well because he knows everything there. With the ending of the episode being that it was better for Bart to be a C- 4th grader than an A+ 3rd grader.

Still, if you like these classic Lego games, the VITA version isn’t a bad game among the lineup, albeit a bit lacking.

Moving on, one of the biggest innovations Lego Batman 2 brought upon its release was a fully voiced story where the characters would talk to each other in cutscenes. Prior to this, the Lego games relied more on pantomimes and visual gags in their cutscenes.

 Lego Batman 2's cutscenes and story is certainly quite entertaining. I was chucking and smiling at a lot of the gags and jokes. Standouts being most of Vicki Vale's segments (oh, and the Arkham City reference), Superman hearing what the score was for a baseball game far away. And when Lex supposedly kills Batman, Joker is upset at who he will "play with now". Lex says that Robin will take up the mantle. I wasn't overly fond of Batman's whole arc where he's jealous of Superman and focussed on being grumpy but I suppose it does give him an arc and is an acceptable translation of Batman's paranoia in the comics. I remember finding the recent Lego Batman movie a bit too cheesy and "egotistical" for my tastes so Lego Batman 2 does a much better job keeping the characters more "restrained". But yeah, it's a huge praise to say I would be down for movies in this style (and the fact that there are now movies in this style that many people enjoy is a testament to that).

I do feel like a boomer when I say I do miss the style of the older Lego games. Since characters couldn't talk, there were more creative visual gaps to substitute for the dialogue. I remember in Lego Star Wars, since Vader couldn't say "I am your Father Luke", he pulled out a family picture of Anakin, Padme and baby Luke and Leia.

In Lego Batman 1, I feel the visual gags in some places, made them funnier than their dialogue counterparts. Stuff like Robin miming out wanting to have Ice Cream and Batman frowning at him felt funnier than Robin audibly asking for Ice Cream and Batman saying no. It also allowed characters to be less "human" and still fit the vibe. Like Catwoman acting like a literal cat and refusing to get in her cage so Batman traps her with a bowl of milk feels funnier without dialogue. 

 But seeing as it would be pretty hard to communicate Lego Batman 2's story and gags without audio and the fact that the voice acting is quite entertaining, I can't really complain here.

 

Actually, I do have a nitpick. Since the VITA version is different from the PS3 version, some of the cutscenes have suits you weren't wearing in the VITA levels.

So yeah, that's Lego Batman 2 VITA. A bit worse follow up to Lego Batman 1 PS2 made disapointing by the fact it's not a port of the PS3 version. The cutscenes, humour and charm is still intact. And it's a fun game to platinum.

Thank you all for reading. See you in 2 years when I platinum PS4 games like Saints Row 4.

Shadow Fight 3 - A good fighting game brought down by its monetization

 Hello everyone. Today I want to talk about the iOS game Shadow Fight 3.

Unlike my review of Shadow Fight 2 which I reviewed the premium $20 Switch version which removed many of the freemium aspects of the iOS version, there is no premium version for Shadow Fight 3. So this playthrough was entirely the free iOS version with all of the annoyances that brings.

Let’s begin by talking about the core gameplay.

Like its predecessors, Shadow Fight 3 is a 2D fighting game. Historically, such genres have had a hard time working great on touchscreens due to the imprecision and lack of feedback with virtual sticks (this recently has become less of an issue as many if not most recent mobile games now supporting regular controllers). But the Shadow Fight games have controlled quite well on touchscreens.

 

The controls consist of a virtual stick at the bottom left of the touchscreen and 4 virtual buttons at the bottom right. You have a button for strikes, kicks, magic and ranged attacks. Combat consists of moving the stick in a direction and pressing a button. Unlike other fighting games that require multiple precise inputs (especially motion inputs) to output fast strings of attacks, the Shadow Fight games' combat consist of slower high commitment attacks that can't be cancelled. For example, right + kick has your character do a kick to the stomach. You can counter this by either blocking (releasing all controls) or attacking with a faster attack to hit them before the kick lands. Blocks can be countered by throwing an opponent by getting in close and pressing right/left + strike.

The result is a very intuitive and fun combat system. It's easy to pick up and get a sense of what individual moves do and how to use them. And the fun comes from reading your opponent's moves and responding accordingly in the heat of the moment and trying to combine all the different moves you have into combos. Additional variety comes from the equipment and gear characters have as different weapons have different moves. To quote a section from my old review of Shadow Fight 2 that still applies to SF3:

"SF2 was made initially for phones so its control scheme was designed to work for that (which is weird because SF1 was a simple Facebook game so it's weird how good the controls transfer over). You have 2 basic attack buttons, kick and weapon/hand, and a virtual stick. A direction + an attack button does a specific attack. For example, No direction + Kick does a simple roundhouse kick to the head. Up + kick does a jumping kick at the opponent's chest level. Down + kick is a sweep. Front + Kick is a push kick to the opponent's stomach. Back + Kick is a weaker but longer and faster kick to the stomach. Etc All these attacks can be somewhat comboed into each other. But the main thing is that each attack is quite deliberate and long and can't be cancelled. The main way to damage opponents is to attack them during an attack animation. Maybe they try to do a rather long attack with a sword and you try to avoid it so you can counter attack. You block automatically by not doing anything when you get attacked but you can throw blocking opponents by getting in close and pressing left or right + an attack. 

So a typical match consists of all these balancing acts where players have to watch their opponents moves, counter or respond correctly and hopefully gets some really good hits in. Someone taking damage also tends to fall over quickly and moves to attack a grounded opponent are quite feeble. There are some other aspects to fights. Hitting an opponent's head does bonus damage and may even "shock" the opponent where they drop their weapons and have to fight with their fists instead which can be quite devastating as weapons are the most powerful attacking tools. 

Speaking of which, there are different weapons combatants can use, each with their own pros, drawbacks, combos and intricacies. For example, double handed sword makes your weapon attacks very strong but very slow leaving you more open to counter attacks from faster attacks but also leave you without an intermediate attack as all you'd have are slow and strong attacks with your weapon, and fast and weak attacks with your kicks. Other weapons like knives give you great speed and combo potential but a very small range which can leave you vulnerable to throws. You can bring ranged weapons like shurikens or throwing knives in addition to your primary weapons. They work by doing a somewhat fast wind up animation and throwing a single item horizontally at the opponent which can't be blocked but can be rolled under which leaves the thrower vulnerable just before and after throwing. Most of the weapons do seem relatively balanced and I never found a pair that were just too amazing or too weak."

 

Shadow Fight 3 does make a few changes to how fights proceed compared to Shadow Fight 2.

 

The main change I noticed is the pace of fights. It's hard to explain but to use an analogy, fights in SF2 felt like they played out at 0.9x speed while SF3's fights feel like they play out at 1.2x speed. Back in SF2, when you hit or knock over an opponent, they appear to get i-frames as they fall and get up so it is much harder to punish an opponent repeatedly or get multiple hits in. This is best demonstrated when you hit an opponent in the air with a quick strike and try to follow up. They seem to fall straight down and phase through your attacks. Even trying to do a "down + kick" turns your regular sweep kick into a feeble stomp that's lucky to get an extra hit in. This results in fights having much more of a "back and forth" and feeling like " a traditional duel" with more pauses in the action as it's much harder to be on the aggressive and landing a multi-hit combo feels like quite the accomplishment. SF2 even has a "style" meter that fills as you land multiple hits in a row in quick succession as a way to gauge your aggressiveness and it's quite hard to fill that up.

 In contrast, SF3 has it where when you hit an enemy in the air, instead of phasing through you to fall straight down, there seems to be actual physics where they tumble somewhat realistically based on your character's model. There are also no i-frames or any alterations to your controls to stop you from attacking. Meaning you can absolutely attack stunned or falling enemies resulting in a far more aggressive experience. Getting a 5 hit combo in SF2 felt like a real achievement. Getting a 5 combo in SF3 can be the norm as you hit an enemy with 1-2 attacks to knock them over then do a double sweep to hit them twice while falling followed by a final kick or strike (depending on your weapon). The game does try to compensate by having defenders automatically roll away quickly when they get hit while following as a way to have them recover quickly but with no i-frames, this isn't guaranteed to always help.

A more useful addition is that when knocked down, you can kick your opponent's knee from a grounded state which can do some damage and more importantly, interrupt their attack giving you the advantage. However, this kick is rather limited in SF3 as it can only be done when your character is knocked face down. Resulting in it being more situational (but still helpful whenever you can use it). This is something the next game, Shadow Fight 4: Arena significantly improves upon. In that game, you can grounded kick no matter where you get knocked down to and even remain lying down for longer if you want. This makes the combat more interesting as you can intentionally remain grounded to allow a follow up attack to pass over you and counter with a grounded kick. Or if you are the attacker, you can intentionally bait out a grounded kick from a grounded opponent and respond with a counter of your own leading to some nice mind games.

 

On top of that, I remember back in SF2, throws were a bit inconsistent to trigger. I would find myself right next to an enemy, spamming right + strike only to have my character do a few elbow strikes and then snap to do a throw or the AI could throw me instead. I could never predict with 100% certainty if my next input would result in a throw. Whereas in SF3, I felt I could predict if my next successful input would result in a throw around 90% of the time and I could do it more often and easily.

 

SF3 also expands the RPG elements from SF2. Gear can now change your movesets. Back in SF2, every character had the same base kicks and movement options with only their strikes changing depending on their weapon. SF3 has it where different gear gives you different base moves. For example, most leg armour has your down + kick just be a kick to the shin. If you want the SF2 style sweep for your down + kick, you need to specifically wear leg armour that lists that as the move. Equipping a rope dart as your main weapon changes your regular jump into a long rolling jump and your right + kick into into a cartwheel kick which can do nice headshot damage.

This also expands to magic. Back in SF2, Magic was a singular equippable piece of gear you could use after dealing/taking a certain amount of damage to fire a one off powerful attack that cannot be blocked (but can be dodged) that would then need to recharge. SF3 makes it that 4 of your gear pieces (weapon, legs, helmet and chestpiece) now each come with a magic power. And when your magic meter fills up, instead of only using one of your magic powers and it being expended, you now enter a "Shadow State" for a short time where you can use all of your magic attacks back to back around 3-6 times depending on their animations and cooldowns. It's not uncommon for when someone enters a Shadow State for them to basically become unstoppable and deal crazy amounts of damage by alternating magic attacks. Even if you manage dodge or interrupt 1 or 2 of these attacks, it can be quite difficult to successfully stall out the entire duration without getting hit once by a magic attack. And depending on the difficulty and situation, it can easily swing the match in favour of the magic user. Also, a sidenote, since your weapon contains a magic power, getting disarmed means you also lose that magic power for the round

Personally, I feel it would be more balanced if you could either only use 1 of your 4 Magic Attack if your meter was filled rather than enter a state where you can use up to 6, or if there was a Shadow State, the Magic Attacks drained more of your meter proportional to their strength. So you could do something like the "Spikey back power" to get an opponent off you and then try and go for a medium power magic attack, or risk it all in a single powerful magic attack like the "impale multiple ranged swords" move or try to chain 3-4 small weaker attacks.

Ranged Combat has also been tweaked. You can no longer infinitely throw shurikins or knives. You can now only throw around 3 at a time and then have to wait for them to recharge. This makes it harder to turtle up or to cheese fights. On top of that, you now have different kinds of ranged options. You can also use bows and guns for longer range at the cost of longer animations. Or use caltrops and traps to restrict your opponent's movement. Definitely glad you can't infinitely spam ranged attacks as these are annoying enough to deal with.

There are now way more perks and modifiers you can add to your gear and weapons and upgrade using specific currencies. In addition to the usual stuff SF2 had like "extra damage to headshots, regain x% of health on hits" etc, 2 new notable ones are a "charged" state where the weapon glows orange for a short time. I'm not entirely sure what triggers this but in this state, your next attack cannot be blocked and it is a guaranteed critical hit. I've found it is often impossible to successfully stall out this state so the best approach is to keep attacking and try and keep the opponent stunned or in a position where they respond with a weak kick or elbow attack which spends the charged state and hope they don't follow up with too devastating attacks. The second is an "armoured/invulnerable" state on certain attacks. This is signified by a white flash and aura around a character as they attack. In this state, the character's attack cannot be interrupted. They will still take any damage they receive but won't stagger or be stunned. This makes it harder to properly defend yourself. Trying to interrupt them with a quick kick or jab won't work and you'll take extra damage. Trying to roll or jump away can be too slow. You can block but that can leave you open and you still take a small % of the damage.

But yeah, all this results in SF3's matches feeling like you're always on the offensive. You're always attacking and there's very few, if any, moments of downtime like in SF2. SF2 had moments where both fighters would sometimes get up and slowly inch towards each other like a climactic scene from a movie. It would be tense waiting for the other to respond and trying to come up with a plan. It also felt easier to play defensive if you wanted. Waiting for your opponent to strike first and either try interrupting or baiting out attacks. But in SF3, I feel that approach isn't viable. Between the improved throws, charged states, armoured attacks, more frequent and powerful magic attacks, I found that waiting for the opponent to attack you first was often too risky. It was better to always be attacking in some way and using the block more sparingly.

Is it fun? Yeah. It is. That said, I do prefer the slower pace of SF2 or the approach of SF4 over 3 due to the improved grounded combat but in any case, the core gameplay and combat of SF3 is really good and fun. I enjoyed that.

But now lets talk about something I'm less positive on: the campaign.

One of Shadow Fight 2's biggest selling points was the pretty lengthy singleplayer campaign that consisted of multiple chapters. Each chapter required you to defeat the main bosses to progress. To get strong enough to do so, you often had tournaments, survival, side and challenge fights to do that gave you money and XP to upgrade your character. Granted, this wasn't the best approach, especially on iOS. The free iOS version had an energy system that limited you to a handful of fights at a time which you could pay premium currency to skip. The payouts from fights was often pitiful and you had to grind the survival mode to make up the difference which got repetitive. You could only upgrade your fighter so much before the next boss so you were always walking into a disadvantage. But despite all that, at least you could play SF2 offline and it was somewhat clear you could progress your own way. Like, It felt possible that you could eventually progress once you grinded enough and the tools to do so were in front of you. That if there was no energy system (like in the Switch version), you could progress albeit slowly but still consistently.

That isn't the case in SF3's campaign. Each chapter/sub-chapter still requires you complete the main boss fights to progress. However, upgrading your fighter is far more dependent on RNG and fewer resources. Unlike SF2, there are far fewer side fights/quests per chapter. Often consisting of 1-2 events at a time. It's possible to end up in a state where either even the side quests are too high levelled for you or you exhaust them all and there isn't anything else you can do to bridge the gap between the next main story fight. There are simply far fewer renewable fights you can grind.

Like, there are duels which pit you against an AI version of another player's character around the same power level as you. Doing a certain amount of these gets you a lootbox with resources. But you can only get 1 of these per day. Doing addition duels doesn't reward you.

 

The main way I made progress was by relying on the Free Seasonal Events and Battle Passes (this game has multiple Battle Passes running concurrently). Some of these often provided valuable resources. My progress, however, depended on the generosity of these events. Some events were quite stingy with rewards so I couldn't progress much and stopped playing for a while. Others were extremely generous and gave me enough to keep going for several chapters.

It doesn't help that match types that were default parts of SF2 have now been removed and are now a part of specific Seasonal Events. Survival, one of the best ways to grind back in SF2, is now only doable if there is an event for it going on.

On top of that, upgrading and resources are far more convoluted and annoying. In SF2, there were only 2 currencies, gold coins and red gems. Gold Coins were the standard currency that were used to unlock, purchase and upgrade most gear and equipment. Red Gems were the premium currency used to skip wait times, purchase and upgrade stuff quicker and easier and even buy exclusive Red Gem only gear. It wasn't the most consumer friendly but at least it was straightforward.

SF3 makes that system look downright heavenly.

For starters you cannot straight up buy or upgrade a consistent set of gear and equipment with Gold Coins or even Red Gems. You unlock new pieces of gear by collecting them as cards from activities and lootboxes. Finding duplicates of a card powers up that card and gives you some "Shadow Energy". Shadow Energy allows you to upgrade cards directly. The in-game shop shows a small rotating selection of cards every day. Some you can buy with Gold Coins and Some only with Red Gems. You can also pay some Red Gems to refresh the shop early. But there's no guarantee you even get the stuff you want or if the prices of the new stuff remain the same. So it's entirely possible to waste your Gold Coins and Red Gems here especially if you're unlucky with Gear Cards. I found it was often better to purchase the Card for Extra Shadow Currency from the shop. However, you cannot purchase extra Shadow Energy Cards directly. Not even with Premium Currency. You must either refresh the Shop with Red Gems to get another chance to purchase the card with Gold Coins, or buy Card Packs using Real Money as opening Card Packs always gives you a small pittance of Shadow Energy.

 

There are also additional currencies. Red, Blue and Yellow Crystals are needed to upgrade the perks/enchantments/magic on certain gear pieces. However, these are extremely rare and often only obtained from specific Battle Passes rather than through regular gameplay or purchasable. So you can only upgrade a small bit of these perks. One consolation is that as you are upgrading the perks themselves separately and not the gear themselves, it is possible to transfer these perks/enchantments to other compatible pieces of gear for free. But you won't know which gear comes with which perks/enchantments or what it's compatible with until you already have it unlocked and in your inventory. So it is totally possible to waste valuable resources purchasing a new helmet or leg armour that looks good but has perks/enchantments/magic worse than what you had before or doesn't fit your playstyle. I had a situation where I spent 75% of my Gold Coins to purchase a Leg Piece that had better stats than my old one, only to find I was playing worse with it since it didn't have the double sweep move and the Spin Magic Attack. I went back to my older weaker armour as a result.

Upgrading Gear with Shadow Energy is frustrating. Different tiers of gear take different amounts of Shadow Energy to Upgrade. But there is something of a "soft cap" where, until you beat the next major story boss, your upgrades will slow down while the cost keeps going up. Leaving you in an unfortunate situation where you either keep paying the extortionate upgrade fees for minor stat increases and hope it takes you close enough to beat the next boss and wasting so much resources, or try and beat them with your underleveled gear to save your resources for the next chapter where this cycle repeats.

There are also keys. Every day, you have daily challenges and completing these earns you different coloured keys. Blue Keys are the least valuable and open Blue Chests which don't give the best rewards. Red Keys are more valuable and unlock more valuable Red Chests. Yellow Keys and their corresponding Yellow Chests are the most valuable. However, certain challenges will not complete or unlock or even go away if you haven't paid for the premium Battle Passes. They will just sit there, taunting you forever with their basic "kick 4 times" labels.

There are also "seasonal currencies" just as ribbons often used for entry into certain seasonal events and rewards for completing said events or for things in the Battle Passes. One positive is that when these seasons end, they are often converted into Gold Coins automatically.

I don't need to tell you this. But this system is a frustrating mess. Having so much of the progression dependent on RNG cards and the resources from those cards, with no way to even bypass it with premium currency is absurd and disgusting. While I haven't spent any money on the game, it feels like even if you did, it wouldn't be worth it. At least with Shadow Fight 2, the Red Gems instantly and noticeably benefited you. You could get that new exclusive gear or skip the grind and upgrade what you already had.

With Shadow Fight 3, there were times, especially towards the end of the campaign where I felt I literally had nothing to do. I had done all the side fights, duels and season events I could that day as a free to play player. I simply did not have the stats for the main boss fights. I either had to wait 24 hours for another refresh, or pay premium currency to refresh or pay Real Money to get card packs or Battle Pass stuff. While SF3 doesn't have an energy system like SF2, this feels much worse.

You can't even cheese wins partway through. In SF2, it was possible to win via time out if you had more health remaining than your opponent. In SF3, in major boss fights, you will lose regardless of how much health you have compared to your opponent if time runs out. I made a great build focused on using quick attacks to stun opponents to keep them from attacking me as I was so underlevelled that even blocking hits took a good portion of my health. I discovered an exploit with the AI that as soon as they fill up their magic meter, they will enter the Shadow Form immediately and try using their magic abilities. So if I could trap them in enough of a loop, I could get them to waste their attacks and interrupt them in the process. It was risky and I'd often lose quickly once the boss got an opening to use one of their random abilities or got a charged attack or managed to get off a single magic attack. It often took multiple attempts for late game fights but I could usually make it through by doing enough damage across a round to barely scrape by. But eventually I would start running into Bosses that I simply could not do enough damage to completely deplete their health by the end of the round leading to a loss for me even if I played perfectly and didn't let the boss get a single hit in.

I quit playing once I somehow passed all that and made to the Shadow Beast Boss fights where he is permanently in Shadow Form, has unlimited Magic and can only be damaged through you using Magic Attacks. You gain Magic Energy by taking damage. A single hit would give me a decent amount of Magic Energy but tear through my Health Bar. Even when I could get off Magic Attacks, they did a pitiful amount of damage.

While I haven't played the same amount of SF4 as I have SF2 or 3, what limited time I did have, even it felt better and it was a PVP game. The "main campaign"  there is just playing matches against other players one after the other. There are a few unlockable side modes against the AI with some story and custom rules, but the meat and potatoes is the basic PVP. And even though progression is still dependent on getting cards, it's significantly better because -1- it's just cards and Gold Coins. No Shadow Energy or anything like that -2- you only upgrade/unlock individual characters instead of gear or perks so progression is straightforward and -3- there's always something to do. While you may run into better players or players who have premium cards/characters, they aren't impossible to beat. You can even win via time out if you are good enough and -4- there are no hard or soft timers. You can play as much as you want.

The unfortunate thing is that Shadow Fight 3 does have the pieces to have a fun campaign. And in the early game and some of the Seasonal Events, it does do that as the fights are generally fair, upgrades are quick and easy to come by and swapping equipment isn't a hassle. If anything, it is really fun seeing all the new gear pieces and what they can do. Many of the Boss Fights and wacky challenge fights are really fun and unique in a singleplayer context. A boss that literally summons vines and turns the stage into an obstacle course where you jump over stage hazards or one that tries to balance on their sword to try jumping onto you are really cool spectacles and fun to fight.....provided you aren't crazy underlevelled.

I'll briefly mention the story. And to SF3's credit, it does make more of an effort to make a more fleshed out story compared to SF2. There is a "story so far" tab as well as bonus chapters where you play as the individual characters' backstories. All of which do reward you nicely. And later on, there's even fully animated cutscenes where you have to make a choice and stuff changes. The story even introduces factions and lore. There's time travel, magic, sci-fi, mind control, conspiracies, political intrigue, alternate dimensions etc. I imagine fans of the story and lore will probably enjoy it. I took a glance at the Wiki for SF3's story and it was quite massive.

 

The only problem is that it's told almost entirely through static text boxes in between major fights. I kinda stopped paying attention after a while and just fast forwarded through the text boxes as they often felt like filler. So when the fancy animated cutscene played and the major choice of the story happened, I was certainly caught off guard. I sadly won't give an extended breakdown and analysis of the story but I will say that if it was a full on and well produced anime or something, I'd probably watch it as the I do like the weird hodgepodge of ideas, themes and aesthetics the game has.

 

Finally, I want to talk about the presentation and graphics of the game. Unlike its predecessors, Shadow Fight 3 ditches the "silhouette" look in favour of traditional 3D graphics. So now you can see all the character models and stages in all their 3D glory. And they do look and are animated quite nice. The boomer in me wants to say SF2's silhouette look was still more striking and novel but I suppose the 3D look now allows characters, gear and customization to actually appear. Like, in SF2, there were some nice looking gear pieces, including a funny unicorn mask and lollipop weapon you could only buy via Red Gems but you couldn't even tell you were wearing that in-game. But for a more practical purpose, actually seeing what exact gear or equipment you are up against does tell you beforehand what perks and magic the opponent has. It does mean it's kinda odd for the game to call itself "Shadow Fight" since there aren't Shadows Fighting anymore. But if I recall correctly, The Shadow now refers to like, the magic energy and there is also a Shadow Force and your character is a decedent of SF2's protagonist (named "Shadow").

So yeah, would I recommend Shadow Fight 3? It is a large game taking up almost 3 GB. I'd say "yes"*. The core gameplay is fun so it's worth at least playing it for a while until you reach the mid-game when the game starts becoming more draconian. Stop playing then. If you want more of the gameplay, either play SF2 with its less intrusive design or SF4 with its really fun PVP.

Maybe I'll do a review of SF4 one day. Next up for me is probably Lego Batman 2 VITA. See you all then

Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag Review - I enjoyed everything aside from the pirate stuff lol

 Hello everyone. I recently finished the main campaign of AC4 (and a good chunk of the optional content). I was thinking of platinumming this game but I didn't want to deal with the multiplayer trophies. So this is a review of the singleplayer side.

Coming off playing Odyssey that removed a lot of the parkour and social stealth elements the series was known for, it was always refreshing whenever I explored the main cities of Havana and Kingston. The atmosphere and design of these cities was really cool. Their mix of architecture and layouts also made it fun to parkour and wall eject. I really missed this feeling from the latest Assassin's Creeds. I even found enjoyment in some of the tailing missions somehow (at least at first). Normally, I was never fond of these missions but just being able to sneak along rooftops and blend in crowds, even if not the most deep, still felt cool and "like I was an Assassin". Which is ironic given Edward isn't an official Assassin and is even working against the Assassins for most of the game lol.

I like that AC4 retains many of the improvements AC3 made with the Anvil Next Engine to the core gameplay and movement. I like that you can retain your momentum and movement when performing actions like Assassinations. Allowing you to keep moving seamlessly after killing your targets. I like that you can climb trees and alternate between them and buildings mostly seamlessly. I also like you have vaulting moves you can use to quickly leap over or under certain obstacles. I will complain I feel the parkour controls themselves could use a bit of work. In these set of AC games, holding R2 will make your protagonist both run, jump, climb and swing depending on context. While holding R2+X will also make them more likely to do unsafe jumps and leap of faiths. R2+O will make them try to drop. This sounds a bit like a precursor to Unity's really nice Parkour Up/Parkour Down system. But in practise, it is a bit unwieldy. Since many of the functions overlap in regular R2 and R2+X, you are often at the mercy of the automatic systems. There are times you will climb, jump or drop when you meant to run. Or you will drop low when you meant to jump farther on. Unity's later system works better because the 3 modes (R2, R2+x and R2+O) are a bit more specialized and you can better tap X or O to better communicate your intentions. Still, at least the actual speed and flow of AC3-Rogue's base parkour system is a bit of step up from AC1-Rev (the animations I feel are slightly worse to accomplish this though) and the fact you can manually side eject gives the parkour a nice bit of depth as you can use it to reach higher places quicker or without needing to find an alternate route around.

I like that AC4 incorporates the entire weapon wheel into the D-Pad. And this feature would carry over into most of the later AC games. In past ACs, you only had quick access to 4 weapons/tools at any given time out of a max of 10-15 (depending on the game). Swapping between them required holding down R1 to bring up a weapon wheel that paused the game and using the left and right sticks to select the weapons/tools you want. In some games like AC2-Rev, this process wasn't bad. It was quick to hold R1, select the stuff you want and get back into the game without much interruption. Some games like vanilla AC3 messed this up. In that game, even pressing R1 lightly completely interrupts the experience as the game transitions away to a different menu entirely, sometimes even taking time to load said menu. Then giving you the weapon wheel there. And if you only pressed R1 instead of holding it, the menu would go away and make you repeat the process. It was such a chore and step back from AC2-Rev's implementation.

AC4's approach is that now all your weapons and tools are on the D-pad. Pressing up once gives you the hidden blades. Pressing down once gives you the swords. Pressing Down twice gives you fists. Pressing left once gives you the pistol. Left twice gives you smoke bombs. Right gives you your darts. And so on. This system gives you all your weapons and tools without the need of a dedicated weapon wheel and keeps you in the game. You can even do crazy stuff like cycle between your equipped weapons while doing stuff like running and climbing without it interrupting the experience. It's great. AC4 uses the now freed up R1 button to.....display the list of collectibles in the immediate area? I mean, that's nice and all but it doesn't use the free-ed up button to allow more on-foot gameplay options. Unity used R1 to allow you to use additional tools like the smoke bombs alongside L1 for stuff like guns. Origins onwards used R1 as an additional attack button.

Despite being made to run on PS3/360, the game is still technically very impressive. Stuff like being able to dock your ship and get off to explore a small port down, start a mission and have that mission involve a naval chase to get back on your ship and begin a ship battle in a massive storm with the waves being all dynamic and there being mini hurricanes all without load screens is really cool. The game looked rad on the PS3 when I first played it back in 2013 and still looks rad on the PS4.

 

I also like many of the new tools and abilities Edward has in the game and feel they balance some of its systems a lot better. For example, Edward's 2 new tools here are the blowpipe that fires sleep darts and the blowpipe that fires berserk darts. And I like the execution here. In past AC games, there was often this issue of balancing ranged tools for stealth. In AC2 for example, you had throwing knifes which were silent and killed weak enemies instantly but barely touched tougher enemies. And you had the hidden gun which took some time to aim and reload and was loud but would instakill enemies. But the issue here is that in missions that required you to be undetected, often both these tools were useless as throwing knifes couldn't do enough damage or distract enemies. While the gun would alert everyone. Brotherhood added in the Crossbow and Dart Gun which just became overpowered as they were silent and killed most enemies quickly.

AC4's blowpipe mixes up this dynamic. The sleep dart is silent and has decent range and puts an enemy to sleep for a short time. You can use it to temporarily incapacitate a troublesome enemy like a gunner who'd otherwise spot you but then have to move quickly to take advantage of that opportunity. Either to sneak past or get close enough to the enemy to KO them. You still have the guns for loud and immediate damage. So AC4 comes the closest to getting the balance between risk/reward and choice right. I do wish there were a bit more of a challenge to using the blowpipe though. Similar to the Metal Gear Solid games, if you do a headshot, then it's an instant sleep. A single body shot kicks in after a while. And multiple body shots may take up a lot more ammo but will speed up the process. And there could be upgrades for range and effectiveness of the darts. Because as it currently is, the sleep darts start out being balanced by their low ammo count so you have to use them sparingly but with pouch upgrades start becoming overpowered.

 

I will complain that the overall combat and stealth mechanics of AC4 are quite lacking, both for the time in 2013 as games like the Arkham games had much more satisfying and fleshed out combat and stealth, and now especially in 2023 as future AC games like Unity and Odyssey have really improved these aspects. AC4's combat and stealth do still look cool. The animations for the various counterattacks and takedowns are neat. But the actual gameplay with them does start feeling stale. For combat, it's extremely easy to press O to initiate a counter, even while attacking enemies making most encounters rarely challenging as you can chain kill/counter kill through entire groups of enemies. The game does try to mix it up with different enemy types that can't be immediately countered or chain attacked, but it's simple enough to then press X to break defence them or shoot with a gun or incapacitate them all with a smoke bomb. So just like in past ACs, it's often faster and easier to fight through areas rather than stealth through them.

 

And like its predecessors, stealth in AC4 isn't amazing. There's no manual crouch or dedicated stealth mode making it awkward to sneak through areas. There aren't many tools for distraction which can slow down stealth encounters. AC4 does make steps forward with more bushes to hide in, the ability to whistle from more places to attract nearby enemies, the aforementioned sleep darts, Eagle Vision being able to tag enemies through walls and the premise of combining parkour/climbing to navigate around large forts or similar areas is cool. But it's not until Unity when all these aspects would finally come together and make stealth in AC both fun and necessary/useful.

AC4 also has its own take on the "Brotherhood/Trading/Mother Base" system. And I'm not too fond of it. It's simultaneously too involving yet too boring. I like the idea of it. The ships you capture can be sent to Edward's fleet where they can be sent on trading missions. Different ships have different stats which can affect their success, timings and actions. Trading routes can be made less dangerous by engaging in automated turn based battles.

There are a few issues with this. Lets bring up AC Brotherhood's system first. In that game, you just select the individual unit(s) you want, the task you want to send them to and just send them. It's quick and easy. And it makes nice passive income. You can access the menus from these pigeon coops scattered all over the map so it's not too out of your way.

In contrast, AC4 has these long elaborate but still basic turn based ship battles you can't fast forward which get boring. On top of that, you can "re-enter" these battles to reroll your opponents so you can never lose. There's no stress or tension here and very little stragedy. On top of that the money and resources gained from these aren't great. The long 10 hours of real time missions reward the same kind of money as capturing a couple brigs and frigates as Edward. The resources are exclusive to this minigame so you can't even give yourself the metal and wood you win from these.  And you can only access this from Edward's cabin on his ship. If you could fast forward battles, get more actual resources from missions and could access it from the pause menu or something like in AC3, then this would be a nice system.

Now for the section that might be the hottest take of this piece. I didn't enjoy the pirate gameplay in AC4. Which is odd given that is like 60% of the game and the reason why many people love this game.

The pirate and ship gameplay isn't bad. It is cool to sail around. And it is improved from AC3's sailing as you have more options and weapons, boarding is more dynamic and the strategies of positioning your ship in front of or behind ships or using waves as cover is neat.

But I found it rather repetitive and boring. After a few hours of taking ships, it stagnates. Capturing a ship requires you kill the crew or do the things the same way every time. There aren't new tactics or options. And the slow paced nature of certain animations like boarding end up feeling like a drag. At least Rogue added stuff like icebergs you could shoot to create waves and that you could be boarded by enemy ships to mix things up.

I wasn't as bored of ship sailing in AC3 because in that game, ship sailing was relegated to a handful of missions rather than being part of the open world. It worked better as an occasional change of pace so its shallowness didn't bother me as much. And in Odyssey, everything was sped up and more streamlined. AC4's approach feels like that side activity in AC3 made better, sure, but not deep or varied enough to sustain 60% of the gameplay.

On top of that, AC4 shifts away from the urban based environments of past AC games. Most of the map is now ocean with the land being islands or small settlements. And I find these sections not as fun in AC games. Like, yes, you can parkour on trees and rocks and cliffs here, but these lack the options or freedom of parkouring in cities. Trees typically direct you in a linear path and you can't climb them entirely or make a custom path while climbing. You can't even side eject when scaling up the branches. Small port towns don't have the same architecture or variation as Havana or Kingston. This was an issue in AC Brotherhood's Rome where a good chunk of the Eastern section was flat countryside, and in most of AC3's Frontier but at least there, a good chunk of those games were set in their mostly urban sections. And this becomes the norm in Origins-Valhalla as the series moved away from large urban cities towards massive rural environments.

I suppose it does complement the pirate fantasy. Being able to sail anywhere, and leave your ship to explore a random uncharted island and finding treasure is cool. And some of the side missions such as the Smuggler Dens, Music Sheets, Warehouses, Treasure Maps, Assassination Contracts were fun and I enjoyed them. The Assassin's Creed formula and gameplay does lend itself well to a pirate game where your pirate has to explore jungles, cities, use stealth and flashy combat and climb stuff.

But it often felt like I was grasping for that fleeting AC formula in between the Pirate gameplay it was enabling.

To use an analogy, imagine if the next Spider-Man game had a place like Manhattan with skyscrapers so you could do all the web swinging Spider-Man was known for and you always enjoyed. But now lets say that 60% of that game was set in like, the countryside where there were no skyscrapers so no web swinging. And instead, it was GTA style gameplay where you used cars and guns to drive and complete missions. Even if this GTA style driving and shooting was cool and fun and made cooler by Spidey's powers, you'd rather this Spider-Man game be set in Manhattan so you could do stuff like Web Swinging instead of driving and shooting. Except most people really liked this aspect so now future Spider-Man games moved farther and farther away from cities and web swinging and more into the driving and shooting in the countryside.

AC4 is a good Assassin's Creed game when it chooses to be. I had a blast playing in Havana and Kingston. It's just that it's obligated to be a pirate game most of the time. One I don't really enjoy and am bored of. Which is odd because I imagine for many people, it's the other way around. Most people probably enjoyed the pirate stuff more than the Assassin stuff.

Onto more positive notes: The Story:

The story is also really good. I enjoyed it. A common criticism against AC4 is that "it's a good pirate game but a bad AC game". I remember listening to the game's developer diaries when the game first released that refuted that. 

AC4's story is unique among the AC games because it's arguably the only AC game where the protagonist initially couldn't care less about the Assassins or their Creed, and actively opposes the Assassins, but then comes to see the value of it over the course of the adventure (the only other AC game that tries something similar is maybe Odyssey since there, as there are no official Assassins, Kassandara comes to a similar realization about the philosophy of the Assassins but on her own. But she doesn't oppose the philosophy tho). AC4 is arguably the first AC game that is about why someone who doesn't like the Assassins or their philosophy would come to see the value in the Assassins.

Like, if you look at AC4's predecessors, in AC1, Altair was born into the Assassin Order. The story does have the Templars question Altair's motives and Altair doesn't have the answers. But ultimately the story is still from a different angle there. In AC2, while Ezio was not born into an Assassin order and did enjoy a civilian life initially, he sort of.....goes along with the Assassins. He doesn't really question the tradition or push back against his teachers. The game also does a lot of timeskips so we don't see much of Ezio's Assassin education. In AC3, it's a similar setup. Connor joins the Assassins (consisting of literally one retired old dude) and is 100% on-board with their philosophy. To the point that even Haytham and co call him naive for this (and the story supports that).

In contrast, Edward starts the game with no knowledge on either the Assassins or the Templars or the Isu. He just wants money. He falls in with the Templars and impersonates the defector, Walpole, just for the payday. He continues to work with the Templars and double crosses them and the Assassins just for the money. Leading to him being marked an enemy of both of them. Edward is an outside observer to the conflict and the rhetoric of the sides. This creates a more interesting dynamic as characters like James Kidd and Adewale, who see Edward's potential, act like "angels on his shoulder" nudging him closer to the Assassins. Edward initially mocks them and the Assassins. Even jokingly saying stuff like "if nothing is true and everything is permitted, I guess I'm doing well then" only be chastised by Kidd. Saying "the words are in your mouth yet you do not understand their meaning".

The story explores this idea of freedom through the perspective of a selfish pirate. Edward and his peers set up their own independent pirate city in Nassau with the intention of living their own free life. Edward even uses this as a knock against the Assassins. Citing how his version of freedom is working out better. Of course, a city built on piracy isn't sustainable. Nassau eventually begins to fall from an accumulation of disease and the British Empire cracking down on piracy. Even offering a pardon for pirates that splits the founders of Nassau. On top of that, even Edward's peers admit that their future isn't bright. They had their chance to show the world they were legit with Nassau and, in their own words, pissed it away. Some of Edward's peers even side with the Templars. Unlike the Ezio games, AC4 actually does a good job in making the Templars look reasonable. Justifying why these pirates would join them. Remember, The Templars whole philosophy is that humanity isn't competent enough to govern themselves so needs to be "guided" from behind the scenes. They offer protection and purpose to many people. Governor Torres even tells his fellow Templars to stop engaging in slavery and aims to help in abolishing it.

All this ends up affecting Edward. Because, eventually, while he does become wealthy and gains the success he always wanted, it feels hollow because he's a wanted man and criminal whose peers died in pursuit of the same goal. And the people that didn't and had actually noble aspirations like Kidd were killed while he survived. This combination of guilt and introspection drives Edward into understanding more of the Assassin philosophy. That blind freedom, for its own sake with no plan and only violence, isn't worth it. That the Assassins preach a kind of "freedom with wisdom".  While Edward doesn't become inducted into the Assassin Order as an "official Assassin", it doesn't matter because he still becomes a real Assassin as he comes to understand and support the Creed.

Also, I don't know where to fit this in but I like that the whole plot about the Observatory feels like an analogue for modern surveillance and tracking. Edward is absolutely horrified that it is possible for a person to be able to spy through the eyes of another person so easily. And once he becomes allied with the Assassins, wants the placed sealed so its power cannot be used by the Templars to control people in the world. The analogy Mary gives to describe the power the Observatory holds and why the Templars are the enemy here is "it's like a man with endless supply of water who refuses to share with others during a drought. He'd be a murderer with no blood on his hands" to which Edward agrees. Which is why he intends to help.

 

Which feels tragic given that is what happens in the Modern Day with Templars/Abstergo. That's often the bittersweet thing about the AC games. No matter the successes and things you accomplish the Animus, it's always for naught given we know what happens in the Modern Day. Nothing Edward accomplishes here matters. Either in the short term because we know what happens in AC Rogue with Shay helping the Templars take over. Or in the Long Term with Abstergo taking over the world.

Speaking of which, the Modern Day sections. AC4's Modern Day sections have been widely criticized by both non-AC fans and AC fans. It feels like an interruption to Edward's pirate gameplay. On top of that, it doesn't really progress the overall story forward. Mostly spinning its wheels and adding some cool details. Like, we know Juno is hanging around the internet but is disconnected from not only Edward's story but even the Modern Day one. And is only resolved in a side comic years later. The concept of the sages is really cool though but the future games barely follow up on it. It's gone after Unity.

But despite all that, I'm going to drop the second hottest take of this review. I'd argue this take on the Modern Day is actually pretty good.

I do agree the pacing and the actual story being told in it isn't particular exciting, but the appeal it has is a bit specific. One of my favourite parts of AC1 and 2's modern day wasn't playing as Desmond but rather hacking into computers or Subject 16's puzzles and peeling back the curtains to learn more about the world of AC.

Because AC is the only franchise that dares to ask the question: "what if every conspiracy theory ever throughout history and no matter how trivial or wacky was not only true but connected?"

In AC1, you could hack Warren Vidic's computer to learn that: "that Africa's population has been decimated by a plague; massive number of illegal immigrants are crossing the U.S.-Mexican border... into Mexico, resulting in a shooting war between the U.S. and Mexico; hurricane season no longer exists, since hurricanes happen all throughout the year thanks to climate change; and the last film studio has closed, as piracy has destroyed the movie industry". All this back in 2012.

In AC2 and Brotherhood, doing Subject 16's puzzles tells us that: Alan Turing was Murdered to prevent him from inventing too powerful computers. Cable TV is actually a method for transmitting brainwave altering signals and monitoring citizens. The Moon Landing was done to find an Isu artifact on the moon. The JFK assassination was done by an Assassin who defected to the Templars to recover JFK's POE. He uses his subordinates to kill JFK, stole JFK's POE, used said POE to create the illusion of gunshots and framed Templar Sleeper Agent, Harvey Lee Oswald for it. Which lead to the Templar Lyndon B. Johnson taking the presidency to accelerate the space program for that aforementioned moon landing. Or that Jesus Christ was someone who used Isu Artifacts and his crucifixion was spearheaded by the Templars.

Obviously this is quite unhinged and wacky and I am all here for it. I find this aspect of AC lore fascinating. Seeing how seemingly random historical events have some connection to either the Assassins, Templars or Isu is really interesting to me. And AC2 and Brotherhood in particular, I feel, nail this aspect well because of its presentation here. Subject 16's puzzles are presented in this really creepy and unnerving way. You have recorded phone calls from random civilians talking with Abstergo reps about how their cable TV has their private history storied on it. You have paintings that ask you find meaning in seemingly innocuous details. That photo of Napoleon putting his hand in his pocket? He has an Apple of Eden there. I remember back when AC Brotherhood first came out, I joked that we would eventually learn that BigFoot was actually real and was this Isu experiment gone wrong or something by the Templars to create an Isu. And after playing Odyssey, I think that might actually be true lol.

Part of this is to reinforce one of the themes of those early AC games. Of how skewed history can be and how difficult it can be to ascertain what really happened. And how the Templars are doing a really good job skewing and controlling history.

AC4's Modern Day......sorta keeps this up. I am a bit disappointed because I felt there would be more wacky, creepy and unhinged stuff here. Like, you're in Abstergo itself and can hack their computers. You're at the centre of all the wacky conspiracies, not receiving snippets from an insane computer backup of a dead guy in a USB stick. But while there is some stuff related to the Tunguska event, there's not much as wacky as JFK from Brotherhood.

But there is still some juicy stuff here I enjoyed reading. I loved all of Desmond's material. Seeing what happened to his body and DNA, and the contents of his phone and audio recordings. It retroactively makes AC3's modern day even more tragic given how Desmond was getting closer to his squad.

I loved reading emails from the higher ups at Abstergo. Stuff like cool potential ancestors from Desmond's DNA and shooting down why projects set in Ancient Egypt, WW2 or the Wild West wouldn't be good fits (and I agree with that lol). Oliver and Melanie joking about some of their work. Or one guy complaining that "we have the means to show history in its most accurate light through the Animus, and we are using it to make terrible and lowest common denominator movies and video games". Only for the truth to be that is intentional. Making terrible movies and Video games allows Abstergo to control pop culture and therefore people without them realizing it. Hell, that's what they plan to do with the footage you get from Edward's memories. And they do it. You can see a trailer for their terrible Pirate Movie with some of the "artistic liberties they wish to take". (and in Unity, you learn that movie bombed. So I guess humanity has some hope. Or perhaps the Assassins sabotaged the premiere?).

Another one of the standouts was Subject One. He was one of the first Animus test subjects and his experiences in the Animus exploring the life of Aveline de Grandpre was used 30 years after his death to create the hit video game Assassin's Creed 3 Liberation on the VITA. And the most unrealistic part of all of this is the fact that the VITA was a success in the AC Universe lol.

You can find material and recordings that explore some of his experiences and feelings.  He notes that his centre of gravity is lower, and he can feel the eyes of everyone looking at "his" attractiveness as a female, and finds the roles society expects of a woman restricting. He is also really uncomfortable with attraction she has to men, and asserts that he is not gay but now has a hard time separating his sexual feelings from Aveline's. Someone get Mirror and Image to write a fanfic on this because I would kill to read this story.

You also have the "Market Analysis" videos where an Abstergo executive explains why they passed on making movies/video games on Altair, Ezio and Connor but gave the greenlight to Aveline. And I love how funny and biting this satire is on how executives meddle with and change projects to better appeal to a mass market and ignore the context of the games. He talks about how Ezio is a lecherous old man with anger issues and not a "model leading man" as he corrupts impressionable youth. Or how Altair is a fanatic who breaks the taboos of his time and how Abbas (the guy that literally corrupted the Assassin order, kills many of his own people) is a model leading man. He puts in a request to find any descendants of Abbas. Or how people would take umbrage with Connor's personality and find his early life "foreign" and how it lacks the "balance" to tell the whole story of America. And they approve Aveline because they can edit her footage to show her as a well behaved girl inspired by her mentor Madaline as an empowering piece for female audiences (ignoring that their editing does the opposite from Aveline's already existing story lol).

Like, even though walking around Abstergo Entertainment as a floating iPad and doing basic hacking puzzles isn't the most exciting thing, I found getting the lore from it enjoyable. I honestly wish there was even more juicy lore or more wacky revelations to spice it up.

I will complain however, that the overarching plot of Juno isn't something this modern day does very well. And part of that is because, I feel, the modern day of AC games isn't equipped to handle a story like that.

Hear me out here. But generally, one of the advantages of an AC's game structure is that it allows for there to be an overarching and looming threat/story/stakes across games without interfering with the historical aspects. Like in AC3, the world is going to end on December 21st 2012 from a Solar Flare. Desmond needs to explore Connor's memories to get the information needed to save the world. But at the same time, it's fine for the player to engage in side missions and goof off as Connor because it still adds synchronization to Desmond and points to leads that can help them in the future. And because this is a simulation, AC technically avoids the "Fallout 4 style the main character is supposed to save their family but instead goofs off with side missions" issue (which I don't agree is an issue but I digress) since we know what Connor actually did and you are playing a simulation of it through the Animus.

But this approach doesn't work well if there is a more pressing and urgent issue in the Modern Day that doesn't require the Animus as an immediate solution. Like, if AC4's Modern Day made Juno's threat the focus, well then it feels odd why you the player, instead of going after Juno, spend the next several weeks exploring the memories of a random pirate who had no connection to Juno. It kinda devalues Juno as a threat.

 The Modern Day stories of AC games struggle at this time because without Desmond and some kind of specific threat or stake looming on the horizon, there's nothing for the story to focus on or build to. You now have these ancient God seemingly loose on the Internet, this Dr. Who style reincarnation whose DNA you now have, an observatory that can see through any person's eyes and this magical shroud that can bring back the dead that Jesus Christ himself used....... and none of it seems relevant or like its building to anything or even connects together. Not to say Desmond's stories were amazing (Brotherhood really made most of Desmond's story feel like filler. Revelations was mostly a retelling of lore we already knew etc). But there was at least some sense of progression. Something that appears to be happening again with Layla in the recent games.

 

In closing, a common complaint leveled against AC games is that a certain game is "a good x game but a bad AC game" or some variation of that. I disagree with that used against AC4 for the story. The story is arguably the best take on why someone would become an Assassin despite an initial reluctance. Its Modern Day even at least showcases some nice lore.

With the gameplay, it's harder to say. The Assassin gameplay that is there is still fun. Especially in large cities like Kingston and Havana. It also complements much of the pirate gameplay as, just like in the story, there is a lot of crossover between the abilities of a pirate and an Assassin. But much of that dedicated Assassin gameplay in towns is sparse. Leaving little of parkour and social stealth to shine.

Most people did enjoy this and the game is fun so I cannot call AC4 a bad game. But is one I won't be replaying too much.

Thanks for reading. My next post will probably be either on Shadow Fight 3 or Lego Batman 2 VITA's Platinum. See you then.

I platinummed every Batman Arkham game on PS VITA

Hello everyone. I recently platinummed every Batman Arkham Game on the PSVITA and would like to talk about the experience.

Lets start with the first Arkham game released on VITA, 2013's Batman Arkham Origins Blackgate. A sort of sister game to Arkham Origins. Batman Arkham Origins Blackgate (which I'm just going to call BAOB for short) was initially released for the 3DS and VITA and has been ported to other PS4, XB1 and PC. Unlike other Arkham games, BAOB is a 2.5 side scrolling Metroidvania-type game. It has a sorta similar freeflow combat system and predator sections comparable to the console games. The premise of the game is that a few months after the events of Arkham Origins, a riot breaks out at Blackgate penitentiary. With Joker, Black Mask and Penguin taking control of different sections of the prison. Batman has to work with Catwoman (her first canonical appearance in the ArkhamVerse) and explore different sections of the prison to contain the situation.

The game really takes advantage of its metroidvania premise. Batman enters Blackgate with just the baterang and a basic Cryptographic Sequencer that can only hack the most basic looks. You must then explore the rest of the prison, going in between areas to collect the rest of Batman's gadgets (it's a little weird why Batman's gear is in various WayneTech crates scattered randomly all over the place but eh, you kinda need that for a Metroidvania) to overcome obstacles.

Batman's final goal is to reach the Arkham Wing of the prison. To this, he needs to take down the 3 main bosses, Joker, Black Mask and Penguin to gain access as Joker has the administration codes and has taken control of the Admin building. Black Mask has shut off the power to the Arkham Wing (and his tampering of the generators risks blowing up the place) and has taken control of the Industrial Section of Blackgate. Penguin has taken control of the Cell Blocks and is directly guarding the door to the Arkham Wing.

The main "gimmick" here is that you can tackle these bosses in any order you want. And the game changes depending on which order you choose. Like, the entire final sequence of the game is entirely different depending on which boss you did last. Doing Joker last has him rig these 5 gas filled presents you must disarm. And these presents are placed all over Blackgate. Doing Penguin last changes the ending sequence to needing to rescue 5 hostages guarded by elite minigun enemies that need to be taken out by the Batclaw. These hostages are in completely different areas to Joker's presents. Doing Black Mask last has the ending sequence consist of needing to get to 5 different junction boxes, "activating them", then racing to find the 3 panels they connect to nearby in a short amount of time to hit them with the explosive gel (I personally found this to be the most fun of the 3 ending sequences). These junction boxes are in different areas to the presents and hostages. The final cutscene is also different.

In addition, there are also more minor changes depending on your order. For example, saving Penguin for last has a mini-segment where when you are chasing him, he is able to lock Batman in a room and disperse some poison gas since he had more time to prepare traps for Batman as Batman was busy taking the other bosses down first.

The gameplay is also different but not in the way you expect. Like, the actual fights don't change depending on which order you do things in. Penguin will fight you the same way regardless of if he's the first or final boss you pick. But how you can fight him is different depending on which gadgets you picked up and when you choose to fight them.

Like, during my first playthrough of the game, I went after Penguin first and I found his boss fight extremely difficult. He packs these minigun wielding henchmen that can melt you if they see you. You cannot brute force or attack them like you can with other armed enemies. And there are no hiding spots so losing these alerted enemies is difficult. The only way to eliminate these enemies is to use the Batclaw on them but that takes a few seconds and alerts every enemy to you. If you get shot at while doing this, it deals heavy damage and frees the enemy. He also sends these drones out after you which cannot be dealt with. Suffice it to say, I died a lot. I barely squeaked through this fight.

On my second playthrough, I did Penguin second. As a result of doing Joker first and a good chunk of Black Mask's section, I had more armour and gadgets like the Shock Baterang and Explosive Gel Launcher which made Penguin's fight more manageable. You can use the Shock Baterang and Explosive Gel to destroy the drones and draw enemies to them. The added armour also helped me take a few more shots.

The most extreme example of this is with the Solomon Grundy Boss Fight you get as you are exploring Black Mask's sections. Normally, in this boss fight, Grundy charges Batman. You have to use the explosive gel launcher (that you get from Black Mask's section) to blow up these vents as Grundy charges through them which blinds him, and then blow up these junction boxes as the stunned Grundy goes underneath them. This shocks Grundy and damages him. He then destroys that Junction Box. You need to repeat this 2 more times with different junction boxes. But, if you have the Shock Batering (which you get from doing a good chunk of Joker's section first), you can just shock the water in front of Grundy as soon as the fight starts and beat him up to instantly KO him. So instead of a 3 phase fight where you need to time 2 different explosive gel uses and dodge a charging Grundy 3 times, it's a 1 phase fight where you just throw a Shock Batering and be done with an entire boss fight early. The game even gives you a trophy for it "Bad Case of the Mondays - Defeat Grundy using the Shock Batarang and water" (also, sidenote but Batman seems to be familiar with Grundy here. I thought this was supposed to be the first time Batman and Grundy met?).

Speaking of which, lets talk about what it takes to platinum this game. If you've read my prior platinum reviews, you'll notice I usually start by describing what the trophies are, how I got them and then a review of the game itself. I chose to instead do a summary of the game, then the trophies, then a review because this game is really confusing to platinum. Being a VITA game released in 2013 means there isn't as much info or resources on some aspects of the game or its trophies.

The game has 31 trophies. 16 of which are missable and requires at least 2.9 playthroughs to get all the trophies.

Part of this is due to Metroidvania nature of the game. Depending on which order you play the game, you can miss sections that house collectibles (for example, if you do Black Mask last, destroying the Junction Boxes takes you to an area of the Cell Blocks you have to no reason to really go to. Which houses 2 of Penguin's collectibles. Some armour and gadget upgrades can no longer be collected if you don't collect them before completing a playthrough), or not have the means to complete a challenge or once you complete it normally, it is no longer present to reuse. Such as the aforementioned Grundy trophy. Another example is the trophy "Unnecessary Roughness - Get a 50 hit combo" and " LEAGUE OF SHADOWS - Get a 100 hit combo". That trophy can only be gotten in one specific place in Joker's section as there is nowhere else in the game with enough armoured enemies for you to beat up on to get close to 100. And once you complete this fight, the enemies don't respawn. There are no challenge rooms or any equivalent.

I even tried doing this on other combat encounters and the most I was able to get was 83 even after playing perfectly and farming for high hits. In that one Joker section, I managed to get 123 and that was after multiple attempts. Though, I've read from others on other sites that this is RNG and results aren't consistent.

 

The collectibles were confusing to get. Both in collecting them and what to do for the trophies. BAOB has quite a few different collectibles. The first are Detective Cases. These shed light on the lore and background of the story and are really cool in that regard. I loved reading them and trying figure out the mystery before it was solved. However, they can be extremely annoying to find. Each Case requires you find between 2-6 corresponding clues scattered all over the game. These clues can be anything from a large broken door to a tiny USB flash drive to generic rubble. Unlike other Arkham games, Detective Vision doesn't automatically highlight items of interest for you. Instead you must stop and manually scan an area by dragging your finger across the touch screen to move a cursor. If the cursor lands on an item of interest, it will be green. Then it scans the item which takes about a second. It then becomes yellow in Detective Vision. If it's a Clue, the game will inform you you've found a Clue and which Detective Case it belongs to.

I love the idea of these Detective Cases and Clues, but the way the game handles them is pretty annoying. Like I said, the game doesn't highlight them beforehand and they can be literally anything. Often they are innocuous things that don't really stand out. Especially given how cluttered environments can be. It can be really hard to tell if a particular area even has a clue never mind what it even is. Especially as there often isn't much consistency in what clues can or can't be. Like, in a room filled with say, paper, computer monitors, rubble on the ground, lights etc any of these can be clues. In fact, all of the items I have listed are clues in other rooms. On top of that, some clues cannot be scanned unless Batman is in the correct position even though the perspective doesn't reflect that and you can see the collectible. For example, one of the clues, a USB Flash Drive, requires Batman to be next to it as there is a table blocking his view to the USB Flash Drive even though the player can see the USB and hover over it. And some Clues don't require this. One Clue was scanning this white cloth which was in the cross section of a wall while Batman was in a vent and couldn't even "see" from his perspective. But you could scan it from seemingly anywhere.

There is some signposting when the player might have found an area that houses a Clue. If the player finds a secret area like a vent that leads to a random cluttered room with nothing to interact with, that usually houses a Clue. But I feel that still highlights an issue, if aren't using a guide, you wouldn't know where or even if a Clue is in an area. And if it is, if you can even scan it or need to do something first. The end result is that it really slows the pace looking for Clues. The game doesn't have the equivalent of Riddler Maps that give you an accurate idea of what you're looking for and where (I can't believe this game made me miss Riddler trophies lol).

 

Detective Cases are also required for multiple trophies and carry over between NG+ runs. Meaning if you find a Clue in one playthrough, you do not need to re-scan it in a NG+ run. So if you can get all the Detective Cases early, you're set for the rest of the playthroughs. There are 2 trophies related to Detective Cases, "World's Greatest Detective - Complete all detective cases" which you can do on first playthrough (I recommend it as you're then set), and "The Collector - Find all detective cases and have all pickups and upgrades" which requires you have all the Detective Cases but cannot be achieved until the very end of your final playthrough.

The second set of collectibles are "Gear, Armour, Gadget and Gauntlet Upgrades". These include stuff like armour pieces (4 of which gives you more health which can be really helpful), Rush upgrades (Rush is a mechanic where if you have full health when you attack enemies, you do extra damage. I personally never saw much use in it) and Gauntlet Upgrades (increases the base damage of your attacks. But I personally never felt like they were that powerful). Gadgets also get upgrades. Such as the Batering being upgraded to the Shock Baterings or the Explosive Gel Launcher getting upgraded to the Explosive Glue Gel Launcher. You will find most of the gadget upgrades as part of the main story as they unlock more tools to explore the map. Wheras only one gadget upgrade (the proximity upgrade for the Gel Launcher) and all the Armour, Gear and Gauntlet ones are entirely optional and missable.

I like the idea of these upgrades. They are typical in Metroidvanias. But they aren't very useful in BAOB. Aside from armour which can help you in your first playthrough (but can be potentially redundant if you get a specific suit), Rush and Gauntlet don't make much of an impact. They don't even make bosses easier since you deal with them in preset ways anyway. The gadget upgrades are mostly mandatory anyway. But unlike Detective Cases, they appear as these black boxes/crates and if you scan one with Detective Vision, the rest will be highlighted in Detective Vision as well. So at least you "know" what they are when you see them.

These collectibles do not carry in between NG+ runs. So if you find all the upgrades in one playthrough, they will be present for another and you can collect them again to get the same upgrades as before. There are individual trophies for getting all the armour, gadget and gauntlet upgrades which you can get in any playthrough. However, you will need to re-collect them all for your final playthrough in order to get the Collector Trophy.     

I really dislike this aspect. Aside from the fact you have to re-collect them to get the Collector trophy, even just for a casual NG+ run, one of the coolest aspect of a NG+ in a playthrough of any game is that you're powered up from the upgrades you got in prior run. In the other Arkham games, when you do a NG+ run, you have all the upgrades and most of the collectibles from your last playthrough (these games do compensate by taking away counter indicators). Which means in the case of BAOB, it's not really that much of a NG+ in terms of gameplay (ignoring the suits that is). I can understand not giving the player all the gadgets and their upgrades since that blocks progression. But I feel in the case of BAOB, you can already get most of the gadgets and their upgrades before you take on any of the big 3 bosses. Aside from the Cryptographic Sequencer upgrades, I genuinely feel you can give the player all the other gadgets and upgrades from the start of the game and it wouldn't break the game.

The third set of Collectibles are what I call "Boss Collectibles". These consist of 20 Joker Teeth (found in the Administration Building), 20 Penguin Birdcages (found in the Cell Blocks) and 20 Black Masks (found in the Industrial Building). You break them by throwing a Baterang at them. Though some Joker teeth and Penguin Birdcages will explode if you get close them since they are designed to be traps. That still counts as breaking them.

These Collectibles do not carry over in between NG+ Runs. So if you destroy 15 Joker Teeth in a playthrough, in NG+ it will act like you haven't destroyed any Joker Teeth. So all 20 are back in the world. There are individual trophies for getting each set of these collectibles but no trophy for getting them in conjunction with other trophies. The Collector Trophy doesn't require you get these collectibles as well (which none of the VITA guides I looked at mentioned. I had to go to Xbox Achievement forums to find that out). Meaning if you get all of these collectibles in a playthrough and get their corresponding trophies, then in NG+ run, they will still show up but you don't have to collect them again.

I'm not complaining that I don't have to re-collect these. But I ask why they respawn if they aren't counted for additional trophies? Surely it would be better if they stayed gone for NG+? My only guess would be that they indicate to a player they haven't fully explored an area yet?

Also, the trophy for the 20 Joker Teeth and 20 Penguin Birdcages are Silver. But why is the trophy for the 20 Black Masks Bronze? This is an insult to Black Mask! The Arkham Games really do Black Mask dirty. In Origins, he gets ousted as the main villain by Joker and in BAOB, he doesn't even get the same tier of trophy as the other 2 main bosses' collectibles.

The fourth set of collectibles are Suit Pieces. There are 5 suits you can get in BAOB. Only 3 of which are needed for any trophies. You have the standard Arkham Origins suit you start with (the game's description says it provides "minimal ballistic protection and offensive capabilities". Which is odd given how bulky and armoured it is. Like, it looks more powerful and armoured than all the other suits in the game lol). It offers no additional bonuses. You have the Beware the Batman suit from the CGI Animated show Beware The Batman (I remember watching a few episodes when I first came out. I remember liking it). It isn't "Batman wearing a suit inspired by that suit", it's that 3D model of Batman in the game. His proportions look whack. Like his chest is comically large since its not "realistic" like the other models in BOAB. If you've been the Animated Batman Suit in Arkham City, it's like that. I do like this skin. It's really cool and it offers a bonus in that reduces damage from firearms by 50% (I guess that animated chest is more powerful than Arkham Origin Batman's armour). You can only unlock this suit if you have played Arkham Origins on PS3. Fortunately, even if you haven't, it's not required for any trophies. The suits that are required for trophies are the Red Son Batsuit (which increases health regeneration by 50%), the New 52 Suit (increases damage by 25%), One Million Suit (decreases all damage taken by 25%) and the Darkest Night/Zombie suit (makes Batman invulnerable to all damage).

Apparently, on the remaster for PS4, XB1 and PC, there are more suits like the The Dark Knight Returns suit which makes you invulnerable and increases damage by 25%. But I won't be talking about that.

To unlock a suit for the trophies, you need to find the 5 pieces of the suit scattered over the game. The suits and all their pieces you've found carry over into NG+. So if you've found all the pieces for the Darkest Night suit and 4/5 pieces for the Red Son Suit, on your NG+, you will have access to the Darkest Knight suit and have 4/5 pieces for the Red Son Suit.

There is one catch with the suits, you cannot collect all the pieces in one playthrough. Remember earlier when I said the game has different ending sequences depending on which boss you fight last? This sequence also gives you a different final piece for one of the batsuits. Like, if you fight Joker last and do the present sequence, the final present contains the final piece of the Red Son Batsuit. If you do Penguin last, the final hostage contains the final piece of the New 52 Suit. And same for Black Mask and the 1 million suit. Meaning that in order to get all the suits, you need to NG+ this game twice so you can get the final pieces (and also the trophy for completing each of the sequences).

By the way, it is possible to accidentally miss picking up the final piece here. Requiring you to NG+ the whole game again and fight the same boss again last to get the piece again. So make sure you don't miss it.

But, any benefits these suits would give you is rendered moot by the Zombie suit. This is the only suit whose 5 pieces don't depend on how you play the game so you can get it no matter the playthrough. And it breaks the game. You are invulnerable to any damage. Including stuff like Joker gas so combat is a joke. The only place where you can still die is in Black Mask's boss fight as, if he shoots you, you die automatically for some reason. But that's not really a problem since you don't really fight him directly anyway. Every other combat encounter is trivial now. The only "downside" is that you are invulnerable but not invincible. Meaning enemies can still hit you which can stagger and stun Batman. This can interrupt any combos or moves he was doing. But that can be dealt with easily since you don't lose any health anymore.

Putting all this together, if you want to platinum this game (or more likely, the PS4/XB1/PC version since you aren't going to be playing this on the VITA lol), here's my "optimal" plan.

Playthrough 1: Try doing as much as you can of the Administration/Joker section first. This also gets you the Shock Baterang and Line Launcher gadgets. And the chance to try for the 100 hit combo trophy. Hopefully it's more doable if you go for it early and don't have any damage upgrades. Spam that stun beatdown move.

Once you rescue the Warden, go the Industrial Area and play through enough of Black Mask's section until you get the Explosive Gel Launcher.

At this point you are set to go after Joker or Penguin as you have all the tools you need to get to them (as you can get the remaining tools to get to them like the Batclaw and Tightrope upgrades are found along the way to the boss). The Shock Batering will make quick work of Grundy and make Penguin's boss fight easier.

I would recommend playing more of Black Mask's section until you get the green upgrade for the Cryptographer Sequencer as that can save you a second run all the way back to get the Glue upgrade but you can do this later if you want. It is a little confusing anyway if you haven't played the game before. The game eventually marks on the map where you have to go if you play "naturally".

 

Lets say you want to do Joker last for this playthrough and Penguin first. Head to the Cell Blocks and complete it as much as you can until Penguin hides in the Arkham Wing and Catwoman tells you that you can use the Lighthouse to get to Penguin. Before you leave the Cell Blocks to get to the Lighthouse, if you have the Green codes, you can get the Glue Gel upgrade and save yourself a trip. It is quite out of the way so if you're unsure where to go, you can ignore this and go straight to the Lighthouse and through it to get to Penguin.

Once Penguin is down, you can return to the Industrial Building and continue pursuing Black Mask. If you haven't gotten the Glue Upgrade yet in the Cell Blocks, the game marks for you where it is on your map. After you get it, you can go after Black Mask and take him down. Then backtrack to where Joker's section starts in Industrial. Follow it until you beat Joker.

You can then enter the Arkham Wing. Enter it, make sure you nab the Zombie Suit Piece located here. Then do Joker's Present Ending Sequence, making sure to grab the final Red Son Suit piece. Then, before you go to the Lighthouse for the final confrontation with Catwoman, try scouring the 3 main areas and get the collectibles of interest. For a first playthrough, I advise getting all the Detective Cases, Joker Teeth, Penguin Birdcages, Black Masks and all remaining suit pieces. That way, you don't have to worry about them again. You can ignore any optional armour, gauntlet and Rush upgrades for now. I recommend collectibles guides online.

Once you beat Catwoman, start a NG+ on the same save file you just beat the game with.

Playthrough 2: Lets say you want to beat Black Mask last for this one.

Put on the zombie suit for the invincibility.

Repeat what I said earlier about Administration first, then Industrial and get the Explosive Gel (and Green Codes early if you want).  You can then backtrack and go after Joker since he's in the same building anyway. Then go to the Cell Blocks and go after Penguin. You can then get the Glue Gel upgrade along the way. Leaving you set for Black Mask. Make sure to grab his suit piece. Complete the story and do another NG+ on that save file.

Playthrough 3: Now lets say you want to do Penguin last.

Same deal. Admin first. Then industrial. Only now, you have to get the Green Codes early. You can go after Joker now. Then go to the Cell Blocks. You can choose to play some of Penguin's section until he flees to the Arkham Wing and then get the Glue Gel upgrade here if you want. But you have to get the Glue Gel Upgrade here to be able to go after Black Mask. 

Once you do that, and then go after and take down Penguin and then get his suit piece. You are now free to go after any remaining upgrade collectibles one final time. Then you're done. No need to beat the game for the 3rd time.

So yeah, BOAB isn't difficult to platinum once you know what to do but it is confusing to even know what you have to do even if you have a guide at times. 

As for the game itself, my feelings on it are complicated. If you asked me what I thought of the game during and even after my first playthrough, I'd tell you I really disliked the game. Maybe even that I hated the game. Because BOAB doesn't make a good first impression.

Let start with the combat. On the surface, it looks similar to typical Arkham combat. You do strikes, can bounce between enemies, counter attacks, cape stun, jump over enemies and ground takedown. Only on a 2D plane. Enemies can move a bit "up and down" on that plane but Batman will usually adjust his position as well to compensate. The issue is the flow and responsiveness. Like, in the main Arkham games, when you're fighting a group of enemies and there is a knife or armoured enemy coming at you and you need to respond, you can typically either try cape stunning them early or jumping over/around them to evade them. If you do this, Batman will typically "lunge" at the enemy which closes the distance and keeps the flow going. If you have to cape stun an enemy, the game will help you out by prioritizing the most dangerous enemy and even cape stunning multiple enemies if your cape stun gets them as well. This is a bit forgiving, sure, but it ensures the controls are responsive and the player's intentions are read.

BAOB messes this up royally. Moves like the cape stun and counter have no "lunge" nor can they work on multiple enemies at once. So if you do a cape stun, Batman will do it right in front of him. If there isn't an enemy exactly right in front of him, the attack will whiff and you will take a lot of damage. If an enemy is about to attack you and you try responding but there is another enemy close by or next to him, Batman may target that one instead and you will take a lot of damage. Even the dodge/evade move is whack and arguably even less responsive. You are supposed to be able to jump over enemies that are right in front of you by double tapping X but there were times I mashed it and it wouldn't work (and other times it did). And other times when it did register, Batman would do a normal roll which is useless and would result in taking damage. The end result is a combat system that works against the muscle memory learned from every other Arkham game and is still less fun because of how unresponsive it is.

The game has Predator Stealth Sections but they aren't as fun as the main versions. In part because of the limited gadgets and moves. But also partly to the design. Armed enemies do crazy amounts of damage, have great eyesight and can track you much further. Many environments often aren't even big enough or offer enough ways to lose enemies' attention. Resulting in a much slower "trial and error" approach as you find the one set of moves and silent takedowns that work. Even standard moves and approaches in other Arkham games aren't as helpful here. For example, snaring enemies onto gargoyles/vantage points is useless because it attracts too much attention and enemies will see you moving away after doing it.

The other Arkham games were more fun here because the areas were designed with multiple routes so there were multiple options and ways to both take out enemies and escape when you made a mistake. On top of that, enemies didn't have the best eyesight and would even be startled for a few seconds if they saw you. Giving you time to respond by trying to take them out or get away or use smoke bombs etc.

To BAOB's credit, there are some good ideas here. For example, some Predator Sections have chandeliers you can hit with a baterang to make it fall and KO enemies. Some have bells you can hit with a batering to draw enemies attention. But the game never expands on these ideas or fleshes them out so Predator Segments never feel great to play. So I don't believe it's a flaw of the perspective and hardware. I truly believe it was possible for BAOB to have pretty fun and good Predator Segments (hell, Mark of the Ninja shows you can do it in even stricter 2D).

The pacing of the game is also whack. Like I said earlier, Detective Vision doesn't automatically highlight stuff so you have to stop and manually scan stuff. But this also extends to objects you can interact with the environment. Like, if there's a wall you can blow up with the explosive gel to progress, you can't put explosive gel on it until you scan it first. Even if you know that wall is there, you can't target it with the Explosive Gel Launcher until it is scanned. Same for debris or switches you can interact with using the Batering and Batclaw. On top of that, many of these interactibles don't look distinct. Like, in Batman Arkham Asylum, walls you can use the explosive gel on have a crumbled look you can recognize even without Detective Vision. But not so in BAOB where Explosive Gel walls and regular walls look the same. The end result is that it makes a first playthrough extremely stop and go which prevents a good flow going. You're always stopping and looking for things to scan. And once you do,  waiting an extra second for it to complete scanning. And doing this hundreds of times for around 8 hours? It really drags the experience down. The experience would be a lot better if the scan was an optional tool beginners could rely on if they were stuck or confused. While if you were more experienced, you could just play normally and use gadgets directly without needing to scan first. And also if the scan was instantaneous.

With all these aspects, I don't blame anyone for dropping this game or disliking it.

However, when I was doing my second playthrough on NG+ for the trophies, something weird happened. I believe it's called Stockholm Syndrome because I was genuinely enjoying myself. I was surprised. Why am I enjoying myself?

I think it's because at that point, I was so used to the game's flaws that I could bypass them and, as a result, see its positives?

Like, the combat still has its issues, but by then, I knew how to position myself beforehand so knife, armoured and baton enemies were less of an issue so I could focus on bouncing between enemies with strikes and counters. Predator Segments were still an issue but I knew from prior trial and errors where to position myself and take out enemies. Navigation was no longer an issue since I already knew where everything was and didn't need to find any collectibles. So I could focus on using my knowledge of the game to speedrun. And that was fun. It was fun charting my own path to play the game in a way as to get all the gadgets and upgrades and hit the bosses in the desired order. And I could appreciate how truly open ended the game was and how it rewarded me for my knowledge by letting me save time by getting gadgets in fewer trips and easily stomping bosses. I truly felt like I was the master here.

The closest analogue would be like a Hitman level where you know exactly where everything is so you just go and get the things and be an absolute master.

Even the story was more interesting. I could read the Detective Cases and see all the background and it's really well thought out. Stuff like how the main bosses each orchestrated their own breakouts and took control or other DC characters like Toy Man were involved.

Of course, the main difference here with something like Hitman, or even other Metroidvanias is that the experience is fun on the first playthrough and that the mechanics are solid enough that you don't need to "get used to the flaws" to have fun. Like, it's nice that I eventually came to enjoy and appreciate BAOB, but the experience would have been better if the combat flowed better, if Predator Sections were more open ended, if the game didn't require you to scan everything. Then even a first playthrough would be more fun and more people would see the game's more unique aspects.

Playing BAOB made me wish for a modern remake of this game. One with those improved combat/stealth etc but also more open ended design.

Imagine a 3D version of this game. Like, Batman Arkham Asylum but a complete Metroidvania where you can explore different parts of the Asylum, pick up gadgets in different orders and boss fights and sequences would be different depending on when you do them. Basically, BAOB but on steroids.

In closing, BAOB is arguably the worst Arkham game. Its execution of many of the gameplay features of its console counterparts is often lacking. But it's arguably the most unique Arkham game for how truly open ended it is and how cool it is as a Metroidvania. I wish this game had more time and resources during development because it could have been one of the best games in this series and on the VITA.

This is probably going to be my last platinum for a while. I might do Lego Batman 2 VITA at some point in the future. I'm currently playing Rainbow 6 Siege and it's quite fun. Don't have any plans to write about it though.

See you all in 2024.