Top 5 Things I Think the "Batman: Arkham" Games Did Wrong

You all know me. If there's one thing that I love to do, it's antagonize people with unpopular opinions. I love to goad people into arguments I can never win. It's a personality trait of mine. But one thing I've always wanted to do is share with you my opinions on the Batman: Arkham games. Now, very much like my opinions for Chris Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, they only come from nitpicking what is easily still pretty damn good. The Nolan Bat films as well as the Batman: Arkham games are both superb and very enjoyable. These are more-or-less annoyances I have with each game or with the game series collectively as a whole. Just thought I'd give you some afternoon reading and food for thought on this beautiful Saturday, eh? You know me: I'm Cody, and this is "Top 5 Things I Think the "Batman: Arkham" Games Did Wrong."

5 - Chatty Henchmen
Whether it's Asylum or City or even Knight, one thing criminals in these games love to do is chat. They just ramble out of the mouth like verbal diarrhea, and one of their favorite topics of conversation is publicly and out-loudly (emphasis on the word "loud" mind you) shaming Batman. They're always talking like "If I can get my hands on Batman, I'd kill him" or "If Batman comes anywhere near me, I'll blow him away!" or something of the like. What happens? The player easily drops down into a group of fifteen of them and dispatches them with ease. Not very threatening talk for people who get beaten up so easily.

4 - Remote Control Batarangs
I despise the remote control batarang puzzles. They're so needlessly complicated and impossible. Not impossible in the sense of a player's ability to beat the puzzle, impossible moreso in the sense of implausibility. When you throw the remote control batarang, time slows down, allowing you more time to carefully plan your trajectory and maneuver accordingly. Sometimes, you leave the controls on inverted by default and wind-up fucking it up a few times. Basically, the remote control batarangs play a bigger role in Batman: Arkham City and Knight, but in Arkham Asylum, they really are tediously unnecessary.

3 - The Riddler & Riddler Trophies
I am in no way a video game completionist. To me, completing a video game is finishing the story, but when game designers quit with the generic, linear level-by-level format of video games and started reviving and building immensely successful open world game formats, they realized that story shouldn't be everything and started throwing in side stuff to do. Arkham is no exception. The tedium of feeling like I have to collect dozens of Riddler trophies just doesn't seem all that enticing to me. The only sad fact is that's how the Riddler gets his inclusion in these games, but creating tons of implausible puzzles for Batman (and later Catwoman) to traverse and solve. Poor Edward Nygma. No respect for the Riddler.

2 - Awkward & Painful Gameplay Shifts
In Arkham Asylum, there's a part where you shift to a Scarecrow hallucination that forces you to walk at a snail's pace through the halls of Arkham's Mansion. Slowly. In Arkham City, the game opens with you as Bruce Wayne walking with your hands cuffed also at a tortoise's jog. It fucks with you equilibrium because you're pushing the control stick forward but moving no faster than if you were constantly tripping over your shoelaces. The tank stuff in Arkham Knight is 50/50. You either love the tank battle elements or you despise each and every time you have to try it out. Nothing beats sneaking around on or in buildings, ledges, cliffs, catwalks, wires, gargoyles, helicopters, rafters, floors, ventilation ducts, crawlspaces and everything in between to get the drop on your enemies. That's what made Arkham Asylum so good.

1 - Over-Reliance on The Joker
Look. I get it. Mark Hamill is practically our Jesus Christ, our Messiah, when we think of who should voice the Joker in an upcoming Batman game or animated movie. Having nowadays largely walked away from the role, Hamill no longer seems to be interested in assuming the voice work for the Clown Prince of Crime. So why do the Arkham games continue to shoehorn him into every possible story aspect? Obviously the debut game Asylum gets a pass because it was the inaugural game and no one's going to buy an inaugural Batman game where you fight Black Mask or the Penguin. But when Arkham City came along, it again was all about the Joker. I guess that was acceptable. City was moreso a follow-up to Asylum in many ways. But Arkham Origins needing to be about the Joker? Give me a fucking break. The villain the entire time needed to stick to being Black Mask, but nope. It had to be a twist where it's the Joker. It wasn't even Mark Hamill as the Joker, so what was the point of shoehorning him in like that? Even Arkham Knight, the game where the Joker was dead and nothing was bringing him back, wedged him into the story in Batman's psyche and made a game about the Arkham Knight more-or-less about the Joker. I get that he's Batman's main villain, his archenemy, the yang to Batman's yin; he doesn't need to be everywhere. Arkham games have done splendidly well with showcasing other of Batman's rogue's gallery, with a few notable exceptions (*cough* Deathstroke *cough*). There was no reason to keep having to rely on Mark Hamill who was clearly trying to walk away from the role and leave on a high note after his performance in Arkham Asylum. So many other villains could've made fantastic baddies. Luckily Scarecrow was given a bigger role in Arkham Knight, but you can't argue that they didn't purposefully size-up Joker's role in the whole narrative for no other reason than "just because".

Those are just some of my opinions on the Arkham games. They're still a blast and fun to play, and I hold them in high regard for their work and narratives, but not without their flaws. They suffer from favoritism the same way the Nolan Bat films do. People love them so much that they refuse to acknowledge their flaws. I've talked about the Nolan Bat films' flaws in my Spoiler Alert! blog, but here, I just wanted to cover the Arkham games a tad. I'm sure I'll do more reviews of them in due time.

A Review of "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" :: Super Nintendo

Way back in the glory days of the 16-bit console era, there was a side-scroller we owned based off of the hit TV series called Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The game was called...surprise! Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. It was a 7-level side-scroller beat-em-up game that was just as fun to watch as it is to play.

The game starts as the city of Angel Grove bursts into flames and an illusion of Rita Repulsa appears in the sky. Players are then tasked with selecting only one Power Ranger. This is one of my few gripes about the game. It's only one player. This game would've kicked even more ass as a two-player arcade-style platformer. Instead, it's up to one Ranger to run through the entire game, beat Rita and save Angel Grove. So you have only the five starter Rangers from the first season of the show to choose from: Jason (The Red Ranger), Billy (The Blue Ranger), Trini (The Yellow Ranger), Zack (The Black Ranger) and Kimberly (The Pink Ranger). Once a Ranger is selected, play begins. There are five levels as a Ranger on foot.

AREA 1 - CITY: The player must run through the streets of Angel Grove, and then morph and fight Bones as the boss.
AREA 2 - DEPOT: After defeating Bones, the player must run through the Angel Grove industry depot, then morph and fight the Gnarly Gnome.
AREA 3 - SEWER: After the Depot does not turn up Rita, the player must enter the sewers of Angel Grove, morph and fight Eye Guy.
AREA 4 - BUILDING: Exiting the sewers, the player must traverse a skyscraper that's under construction in downtown Angel Grove, climbing from floor-to-floor, then morph and fight Genie.
AREA 5 - CAVE: The player must enter a cave filled with the most power of Rita's putty patrols, including a large energy cannon that takes up 50% of the screen, and then morph and fight The Dark Warrior.

After defeating five of Rita's monsters, the player then summons the Dino Megazord and does battle with two of Rita's monsters grown to full size.

AREA 6 - ANGLE GROVE HARBOR: The Dino Megazord leaps into action in the industrial docks of Angel Grove and fights Mutitus.
AREA 7 - THE MOON: Finally, the Dino Megazord blasts into space and fights Cyclopsis in front of Rita's fortress. Cyclopsis will not die after his health depletes once, but must be defeated twice.

Once Cyclopsis is defeated, the game ends declaring the Power Rangers the victors over Rita Repulsa. The game has no definitive ending where the Rangers defeat Rita herself, but tells you instead that if you defeat seven of Rita's monsters, you've defeated Rita.

The game's controls are pretty solid. There's no lag as far as I can tell in jumping or running or hitting. Another gripe I have is killing the putties. Sometime it takes too many hits to take down the putties. Then you put them down and they get back up and you have to hit them again. The grey ones usually die in one hit, but the purple ones are a pain in the dick to put down. One perk is the kick-ass music. Most of the areas have sweet background music to kick ass to. "Cave" is the weakest, but the other ones are super awesome and you can get them stuck in your head easily.

If you have time, find an emulator and check it out. I recommend zsnes and emu paradise or coolroom to download the things from. You'll need the ROM file for the game and the emulator to run it on, then you should be good. Happy playing!