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Phylodox posted:There's just always someone who pops up with "But they're badguys!" and "But it doesn't bother me!" isn't there? If you're not part of a demographic that has to regularly deal with gendered insults or the very real threat of sexual violence then that's great for you, but that doesn't make the perpetuation of that kind of culture okay. Are we talking about the character who is a master burglar, and does wisecracks everytime she's in any situation at all, no matter how dangerous it is, and succeeds, either through her own will, or with the help of batman?
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May 3, 2014 17:23
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Fargin Icehole posted:Are we talking about the character who is a master burglar, and does wisecracks everytime she's in any situation at all, no matter how dangerous it is, and succeeds, either through her own will, or with the help of batman? We're talking about a fictional female character written by middle-aged white dudes. The fact that she coyly flirts with the men who are threatening to violently rape her is stupid and horrible. Seriously, I don't understand why this idea is ever met with any resistance.
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May 3, 2014 17:27
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Fargin Icehole posted:Are we talking about the character who is a master burglar, and does wisecracks everytime she's in any situation at all, no matter how dangerous it is, and succeeds, either through her own will, or with the help of batman? All of which she could easily do with a zipped-up costume and less misogynist crap targeted at her. Come on. You can have your sexy, confident, thrillseeking master thief. But the game needs to do a better job of presenting her as such instead of constantly hitting us over the head with demeaning dialogue.
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May 3, 2014 17:32
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Phylodox posted:There's just always someone who pops up with "But they're badguys!" and "But it doesn't bother me!" isn't there? If you're not part of a demographic that has to regularly deal with gendered insults or the very real threat of sexual violence then that's great for you, but that doesn't make the perpetuation of that kind of culture okay. It's really a case of bad writing more then anything. Racism and Sexism can find a place in video games if handled appropriately. In the correct kind of game, if done well, they can add to the "realism" aspect. LA Noire or RDR are good examples of racism/sexism being in the game for "realism", but the game handling them well enough. In both cases you have racist/sexist characters, but the game makes sure to have it be words only. Female/Colored characters are perfectly competent normal people who do major ingame actions against the wishes of the main protagonist. It's presented as a sign of the times, rather then an affirmation of those beliefs. In Arkham City, you have characters who make jokes about 4th wall breaking stuff suddenly becoming serious master criminals just to spout sexist nonsense constantly. When you add in that you are suspending disbelief to exist in a world where a magic clown man is working together with a magic invincible man to kill off the world, it's a bit difficult to accept the "realism" statement. The world of comics doesn't need racism to set a period, because you are already suspending your disbelief enough just being in the comic book world. In fact, by attempting to make a comic book world more realistic, you only hurt the overall disbelief you've already established. Ultimately the biggest issue is that realism doesn't matter if you can't write it properly. If it makes female/male gamers feel uncomfortable to play through it, then you hosed up. If Arkham City was a super dark game, and everyone is in the nitty gritty because of the times, then sure, it might be more appropriate. But this isn't that game. It's a lighthearted romp through comic book land with our friend Batman, right up until you play the female character, then everyone wants to rape you.
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May 3, 2014 17:36
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Neo Rasa posted:The very first person she kills was sort of almost going to attempt to feel her up but it quickly becomes a purely lethal violence as she completely destroys him. A brief part of this being in a lot of the earlier trailers is what raised the ire of many in the first place regarding how her character would be treated, but I feel like they found a good middle ground and I ended up loving the game. quote:In fact, by attempting to make a comic book world more realistic, you only hurt the overall disbelief you've already established. 
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May 3, 2014 17:45
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It's not like anyone is saying sexual violence and gendered insults just shouldn't ever exist in video games, but we need to ask if they serve any thematic purpose? If not, then why are they there? Criminals are able to threaten Batman and Robin all the time without resorting to gendered insults and threats of rape, why is it impossible for them to do so with Catwoman?
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May 3, 2014 17:45
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Shindragon posted:I remember that scene and I think even the author was like there is more to this game. I almost wrote it off because of that but it ends up being a good game, almost better than the Uncharted series. The big things that really got me about the Uncharted series as well as Tomb Raider is that Drake and Lara turn into brutal mass murderers without even so much as a reflection on all of the poo poo they've done. Drake is like "ooh shiny, oh poo poo, the roof's falling in" while a small town worth of corpses lay bleeding behind him, each killed by his own hands in volume that would make Jack Bauer jealous. It's the same with Lara, she's supposed to be this fairly innocent/adventurous girl at the beginning, but at the end of the game, after a day or two of murdering the poo poo out of about 50+ people, she just has a new steely demeanour instead of chronic, "oh gently caress, what have I just gone through" (IIRC). Before i read up and started playing Tomb raider, I had hoped that it would incorporate a violence/passive storyline path, i.e. the more violent you were the more hosed up your dialogue and gameplay became until you get the "violence" ending (sorta like infamous, but more subtle) and vice versa, maybe even incorporating a few things from Spec ops the line that gave you the choice to be be bloodthirsty or restrained. Kin fucked around with this message at 21:05 on May 3, 2014 |
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May 3, 2014 17:48
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Trickjaw posted:Its preferable to Fire-fly's puns. 'You say lip balm..' I never once heard Batman mention lip balm. Firefly owns, 
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May 3, 2014 18:04
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Kin posted:The big things that really got me about the Uncharted series as well as Tomb Raiser is that Drake and Lara turn into brutal mass murderers without even so much as a reflection on all of the poo poo they've done. The writer apparently fought pretty hard on this, making it take a good long while before you even get a weapon and then making it a bow, so the violence kind of has at least a little room to ramp up at the start - I imagine further branching (which I would have loved, too) simply ran against the realities of game-making. There's a delicate balance between being true to your characters and making a game that's accessible to a mass audience. Tomb Raider arguably gets more right than it messes up, but sure, there's plenty to criticise here. Unfortunately, as long as the basic gameplay loop is "defeating other humans", you're gonna be stuck with games where characters simply have incredibly high body counts. For some characters like Nathan Drake, it's actively unsettling. For a select few, it works pretty well. (Anybody remember the 2005 Punisher video game?) But yeah, if you want to change that, you need to shake up the basic gameplay pretty hard. To bring this back to Batman: anybody else not really buying the "Batmobile tasers criminals so they don't get run over" thing they've purportedly included? I sure as hell don't want to run over people as Batman, but maybe that could have been solved by having thugs run away and dodge into narrow side alleys when the Batmobile approaches. I guess we'll see how it works in a preview or something, but color me skeptical.
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May 3, 2014 18:07
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Gatac posted:I sure as hell don't want to run over people as Batman, but maybe that could have been solved by having thugs run away and dodge into narrow side alleys when the Batmobile approaches. I guess we'll see how it works in a preview or something, but color me skeptical. Jet Set Radio and many other games have done this really well where there are good animations of people just barely getting out of the way, so it's close enough to be convincing without avoiding the reality that if you're speeding around a city constantly you will probably run into people. With this new Tomb Raider game they had ideas of having a more open world with a day/night cycle and more survival aspects (the hunting stuff is left over from this). I think the coolest thing though would be to have a very finite number of enemies in the game but make them have the same regenerating health/abilities as you. It would be a huge pain to design AI to make this fun but if executed right it would be awesome if the cultists were, say 75 unique characters in an open environment. So if you get the drop on two or three of them they retreat and recover the same way you would but you could run off somewhere else also. Actually killing someone off permanently in a game structured this way would be a "game changer" both in and out of the cutscenes.
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May 3, 2014 18:17
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Neo Rasa posted:With this new Tomb Raider game they had ideas of having a more open world with a day/night cycle and more survival aspects (the hunting stuff is left over from this). I think the coolest thing though would be to have a very finite number of enemies in the game but make them have the same regenerating health/abilities as you. It would be a huge pain to design AI to make this fun but if executed right it would be awesome if the cultists were, say 75 unique characters in an open environment. So if you get the drop on two or three of them they retreat and recover the same way you would but you could run off somewhere else also. Actually killing someone off permanently in a game structured this way would be a "game changer" both in and out of the cutscenes. That new Shadows of Mordor game actually looks to have a similar system to this, where major badguys are (at least according to promo stuff) basically randomly generated specific characters who you can have multiple encounters with, and they'll remember you and react accordingly. Of course, that could just all be marketing speak and it turns out it just flips a line of dialogue if they've seen you before. Also the Catwoman thing is bad writing and egregious sexism, and it's especially jarring when I'm playing a video game where I'm a big badass male power fantasy superhero, and then I switch over to the equally capable from a gameplay standpoint female character who runs around with her cleavage out and is constantly threatened with sexual violence. It's not even like there are that many female superhero characters in video games, or female characters in open world games as well, and then we get both, and it ends up like that, and it's just incredibly discouraging.
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May 3, 2014 18:52
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Phylodox posted:It's not like anyone is saying sexual violence and gendered insults just shouldn't ever exist in video games, but we need to ask if they serve any thematic purpose? If not, then why are they there? Criminals are able to threaten Batman and Robin all the time without resorting to gendered insults and threats of rape, why is it impossible for them to do so with Catwoman? Speaking as a stunted manchild tool of the patriarchy and vociferous advocate for perpetuation of the rape culture that I undoubtedly am, the thematic purpose of not just the presence of these threats but their saturation is to give me incentive to thoroughly beat the everloving crap out of these videogame people. Not just "win the fight": I now want to do so perfectly, using every tool at my disposal rather than just hammering the Strike button to victory (as you can typically do). It's a very, very good motivational tool. Such enemies deserve everything they get. By contrast, now that such language has been scrubbed from everything post-Arkham City (Harley Quinn's Revenge, Arkham Origins, and Cold Cold Heart), what's left doesn't really inspire me to divert from my gliding to an objective to introduce skulls to pavements. Indeed, I feel bad for these enemies, because now most of the thug dialogue is variations of "I'm cold, I'm hungry, I'm away from my family and loved ones on Christmas/New Year's Eve, and I have no other choice because this is the only option I have to make money." The severity of the violence that I am set to inflict upon them--the snapped limbs, DDTs against concrete, etc--now no longer feel proportional to the moral transgressions they have committed. And certainly, one can say there's a thematic element to Batman which that reading serves well, but I just vastly prefer "they've got it coming, and one punch is too good for them" as justification for my extremely prejudiced vigilantism. Mine is obviously not a majority-held position, and the objectionable threats aren't in the games anymore anyway, so short of the developers getting in their time machine I'm not sure what else is left to be done. You guys won and got what you wanted, and it's been a few years now of that. EDIT: Unless of course, the new target is whatever has been deemed awful about the writing of Arkham Origins: Blackgate. I haven't played that one yet, but I understand nobody vocal seems to like it. Daryl Surat fucked around with this message at 20:05 on May 3, 2014 |
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May 3, 2014 20:01
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Neo Rasa posted:With this new Tomb Raider game they had ideas of having a more open world with a day/night cycle and more survival aspects (the hunting stuff is left over from this). I think the coolest thing though would be to have a very finite number of enemies in the game but make them have the same regenerating health/abilities as you. It would be a huge pain to design AI to make this fun but if executed right it would be awesome if the cultists were, say 75 unique characters in an open environment. So if you get the drop on two or three of them they retreat and recover the same way you would but you could run off somewhere else also. Actually killing someone off permanently in a game structured this way would be a "game changer" both in and out of the cutscenes. I'm secretly wishing a system like this is going to be in the new Batman game. Like, maybe there's a set number of enemies in each gang, named and with their own sets of dialogue. The more you beat them up, the more disillusioned/fearful/hate filled they get (some might end up being more agressive, while others might just run way on sight). Spider-man had a storyline where Pete ended up in a secret villain hospital and it would be cool if there could be a side mission in Arkham Knight along the same lines, maybe one that unlocked after the main storyline was finished. Like, perhaps Batman picks up on the fact that these are the same guys he keeps on beating up all night and is wondering why they're recovering so fast. All the way through the game, the thugs are dropping hints in the dialogue and there are clues that show up that can be scanned or investigated or whatever that implies there's a huge organisation being run by one of the Bat Rogues. Then at the end, once you shut the secret healing facility/hospital down, you unlock a final "clean up" bit of gameplay where you can actively wipe out crime across the city by beating up all the gangs again, but the fights are all brutally hard or something.
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May 3, 2014 21:29
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Speaking of that, are either of those Amazing Spiderman games worth playing?
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May 4, 2014 01:05
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Radical 90s Wizard posted:Speaking of that, are either of those Amazing Spiderman games worth playing? For a rental, yeah. It's pretty fun to swing around New York (and they have a neat little system where you can slow down time for a bit to figure out where to go next, it's pretty cinematic). Combat is kinda boring tho. Definitely not worth full price. Which is really odd, because the 1st ASM took a long rear end time to go down in price, and I think it's still like $40 new now.
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May 4, 2014 01:22
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Radical 90s Wizard posted:Speaking of that, are either of those Amazing Spiderman games worth playing? I just got the first one on PC, and I kinda enjoy it, but I have an AMD card, and it is terrible. But what I've played is mostly pretty good. If you have a console, or an Nvidia PC, it should be worth a play. When it's not 50 loving dollars.
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May 4, 2014 01:51
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Yea I was just looking at the Activision sale on Steam and all their prices are pretty absurd.
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May 4, 2014 01:51
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Radical 90s Wizard posted:Speaking of that, are either of those Amazing Spiderman games worth playing? From what I hear, the Amazing Spider-Man is better than the Amazing Spider-Man 2, primarily because the second game tries to implement the "Crime in Progress" system from Arkham Origins, only the game penalizes you for not reacting. So you can just be swinging around, trying to collect the 300 comic books scattered around and- Oh, you didn't catch that guy fleeing in the car just now? Well the police are going to send killer robots to attack you on every block. Pay more attention next time.
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May 4, 2014 02:14
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Nothin' will ever beat Spider-Man 2 on the PS2. I could spend hours just swingin' around fake New York.
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May 4, 2014 02:35
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The Spider-Man 3 game was utter poo poo, but it had a cool system where while you were playing the game there was a big turf war going on between the NYPD and 3 different gangs. You could do little side missions to either make the cops stronger or to make the gangs weaker, and every faction would try to take the others over. If that was done with a game that was actually fun to play then it would be pretty cool.
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May 4, 2014 02:41
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Kin posted:I'm secretly wishing a system like this is going to be in the new Batman game. Like, maybe there's a set number of enemies in each gang, named and with their own sets of dialogue. The more you beat them up, the more disillusioned/fearful/hate filled they get (some might end up being more agressive, while others might just run way on sight). It would be so cool honestly. Especially for a licensed franchise as storied as Batman where I'm sure they could easily mine a ton of named non/super powered characters.
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May 4, 2014 02:56
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The weirdest thing about the latest Spider-Man games is how much they copy Arkham's combat system. its an awful fit for an acrobatic character like Spider-Man; he feels more like a lumbering wrestler than a wiley dodging blur of webbing and punching. The Captain America game is pretty fun, given that they basically take the Arkham mechanic but tweak it to include Cap's shield.
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May 4, 2014 03:04
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The Arkham-style combat mechanics in Captain America were surprisingly good. The worst thing about it is that they included a bunch of worthless moves nobody will ever use because they're not a natural part of the combat like the stuff they ripped off from Arkham. The bullet-blocking is pretty fun though.
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May 4, 2014 03:06
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Personally, I find it weird how Spider-Man's punching looks so stiff and unnatural in those games. He'll just sling his arm forward at times without moving the rest of his body.
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May 4, 2014 03:13
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ImpAtom posted:The Arkham-style combat mechanics in Captain America were surprisingly good. The worst thing about it is that they included a bunch of worthless moves nobody will ever use because they're not a natural part of the combat like the stuff they ripped off from Arkham. The bullet-blocking is pretty fun though. I really wish they had another shot at it with the movie sequel, with some time and tightening up they could have made a great game.
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May 4, 2014 03:15
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Kin posted:The big things that really got me about the Uncharted series as well as Tomb Raider is that Drake and Lara turn into brutal mass murderers without even so much as a reflection on all of the poo poo they've done. To be fair to Tomb Raider, they did actually address this in the plot and dialogue if you pay attention. They just didn't have it affect the gameplay outside of one or two scripted sequences.
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May 4, 2014 04:13
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I figure the discussion about the goon dialogue for Catwoman has been had over and over again. Anyway, I'm really excited for seeing a gameplay demo of Arkham Knight that shows off the scale of Gotham City. Some of the screenshots so far have shown off a very neon-heavy Chinatown, which I like. I hope that the different districts in Gotham have their own unique feel. I hope it evokes big urban sprawls in the vein of Blade Runner or this awesome fan-art:  One thing that disappointed me about Origins was the overall blandness of Gotham. I guess they had to cut back on the resolution to accommodate for its size, but it felt very muddy. The snow covering everything didn't leave any distinctiveness to the streets, whereas you'd get the occasional puddles and neon reflections on the streets of Arkham City. Sure, it had some Anton Furst-like designs (like the giant statues on the bridge), but overall it didn't feel like Gotham had much character in Origins. Even though Gotham City won't have much of a population in Arkham Knight because of the evacuation, I really hope it feels alive in a way we haven't seen yet in the Arkham series. MeatwadIsGod fucked around with this message at 01:14 on May 5, 2014 |
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May 5, 2014 01:09
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Assult on Arkham preview. Skirts into spoilery territory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_qkZI7no8M Oddly enough, the Riddler is not voiced by Wally Wingert. The Penguin also has bandages on his hand... even though Bruce Wayne won't break it for another few years.
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May 7, 2014 15:32
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I wonder why they decided not to include Deathstroke and Bronze Tiger in the Suicide Squad roster for that animated film? Only thing I can think of is perhaps another game from WB Montreal with the Suicide Squad that occurs before this film. Eh, I probably shouldn't worry too much about continuity with the animated film. It will probably be like that animated film that was apparently part of the Nolan continuity. Edit: Although I do like they're showing parts of the Asylum which were pretty much exactly how they were in the Arkham Asylum game. Keeku fucked around with this message at 15:56 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 15:54
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Maybe Deathstroke and Bronze Tiger are on different missions. And yeah, you can notice that in the original trailer, too. When Harley is trying to shoot at the Joker, they're in the part of the asylum with the electrified floors.
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May 7, 2014 15:58
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:Assult on Arkham preview. Skirts into spoilery territory. And a monacle,as opposed to the bottle bottom. Actually, was it ever explained in City why he has that trachea thingy? (Apart from smoking)
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May 7, 2014 16:02
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It was not. I presume there's no story behind it other than smoking.
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May 7, 2014 16:22
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Arkham Origins is currently on sale in the Humble Store, if anybody needs it.
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May 7, 2014 17:29
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Looks like a new screenshot was released sometime today: Also, some people have theorized that the Batmobile will be upgradeable to a Batboat (or at least an amphibious vehicle) based on the screenshot below. You can see waterways with ramps leading out of them onto the streets: 
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May 10, 2014 01:28
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:From what I hear, the Amazing Spider-Man is better than the Amazing Spider-Man 2, primarily because the second game tries to implement the "Crime in Progress" system from Arkham Origins, only the game penalizes you for not reacting. I have a soft spot for Spider-man games and I bought Amazing Spider-man 2 day of release for $30 using a 25% discount code. I bring this up because, for 30 bucks, I feel like it was worth it. There is an open city you can swing around and they made the web-slinging like Spider-man 2: you can only swing from poo poo that exists. It's a lot of fun when you get the hang of it and can motor around the city. It's got a lot of side-quest stuff to do (the main story takes about 4 hours tops unless you suck and die a lot). The combat is basically mediocre Arkham combat (so still better than most 3rd person brawlers to be honest). The lovely part, as has already been mentioned, is the Hero/Menace system. It's taken from Web of Shadows sort of except instead of how you deal with crimes (aka. blowing up 30 cars to catch a purse snatcher makes you a menace) if you don't help you become a menace. All random events are timed before they expire and, though you can keep max Hero if you just keep doing events close to you if you want to just gently caress around or collect stuff you rapidly become a menace. This affects gameplay as once you become a menace special forces come out to kill you AND your gear becomes less powerful (it becomes better as you become more of a hero). So, in short, picture GTA IV's phone system except you can't even turn it off for a second and if you don't look at tits with Roman he sends out death squads for you and makes all your gear shittier.
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May 11, 2014 20:48
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3554580/ Probably just some smartass having fun on IMDB but it lists Jensen Ackles as the voice of Arkham Knight and since Jensen voiced Jason Todd on the animated movie...
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May 15, 2014 23:08
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Dark_Tzitzimine posted:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3554580/ Even if he is voicing the Arkham Knight, Jason Todd is just way too obvious. Rocksteady jokingly tweeted that Jason Todd was the Arkham Knight on April Fool's day. The only reason this might be true is because Geoff Johns had a hand in it, and I have a hard time believing he'd write a new character.
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May 15, 2014 23:56
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Sorry if this is a stupid question, but which Robin is in Arkham City? I'm assuming it's Tim Drake, but I guess it could be Jason Todd. I honestly can't remember if it's mentioned anywhere, or if I'm just supposed to know...
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May 16, 2014 17:15
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Mogomra posted:Sorry if this is a stupid question, but which Robin is in Arkham City? I'm assuming it's Tim Drake, but I guess it could be Jason Todd. I honestly can't remember if it's mentioned anywhere, or if I'm just supposed to know... It's Tim Drake, I forget if it's Oracle or Batman, but someone in the Harley DLC explicitly calls him "Tim" at some point.
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May 16, 2014 17:24
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Crappy Jack posted:It's Tim Drake, I forget if it's Oracle or Batman, but someone in the Harley DLC explicitly calls him "Tim" at some point. That and the character profile you unlock specifically states that it's Tim Drake.
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May 16, 2014 17:36
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