Experience Points: Dark Souls, Batman: Arkham City, Doom II, Crysis

Hey all! Another Experience Points entry here with my latest gaming endeavours...and trust me, there have been quite a lot of them recently. Quite a few long games, some delving into classics, and some extreme frustration at the hands of one in particular. I'm gonna review that one next though, so it gets saved up for another time! For now though, allow me to convey some quick thoughts on the latest games I've been plowing through!

Dark Souls - Well, not so much plowing through this game, but rather plodding along slowly and surely. Dark Souls, developed by From Software, is the pseudo-sequel to Demon's Souls which came out about 2 years ago, I believe. I never got a chance to run through that game, myself, so Dark Souls was a brand new experience for me, and one that I was extremely excited to try out...might have been something to do with all the trailers that had the tagline "Prepare to Die". Anyway, Dark Souls is an action-RPG, but it's an absolutely brutal one. I'm not talking something like The Legend of Zelda or The Elder Scrolls...this is a no holds barred, destroy-you-every-chance-it-gets video game. You WILL die...but it's all a part of learning the game, leveling your character up, and discovering patterns in enemies that you can exploit. The combat is extremely responsive and feels great, and when you get killed by a Hydra, you know that it's because you messed up either by playing badly or by going against it too early to begin with. The entire world is all linked together and it feels very much like a Metroid or Castlevania title in that there are multiple branching paths to take, and it's up to you to figure out which one best suits you at that moment in time. If you get killed, all of your souls (experience and currency, basically) drop at that spot where you died, so if you can manage to get back there without being killed again you can reclaim your lost souls. It's a neat system that really begins to emphasize risk/reward mechanics...should you take your 30,000 souls and upgrade your weapon or level up your character? Or do you really think you can make it through the next area and get to a bonfire (basically a save point and resting area) safely without encountering a deadly trap and losing them? You really need to think about things a lot...and it's nice. Each area also has one or multiple bosses to tackle, and some of them are absolutely brutal...but the point is that they never feel unfair, and there's always a way to best them. I really haven't played an action-RPG as good as this one in ages, and with its open-ended structure, responsive gameplay, and multiple classes and techniques to fiddle around with, I'm sure I'll be ripping through this one very, very frequently. Oh, and just so you're aware, the story isn't the driving force here...it's the tight combat and the satisfaction you achieve once you've conquered an area that just seems to ALWAYS feel amazing. Hats off to From Software for making such a sweet fuckin' game.

RAWR!

Batman: Arkham City - Alright, let me get one thing out in the open here: Arkham Asylum was a great fuckin' game with really well-done combat mechanics, a well-laid out world, a neat little experience system, and a few cool encounters with classic Batman villains. The dialogue was great, naturally, being provided by Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and other veterans of the Batman series, and overall the game was really damn good and I really would never be able to fault it for anything. In a world where so many franchise-based games are terrible, seeing a gem come out of it all like Arkham Asylum was a breath of fresh air.

Onto the actual game I'm supposed to be talking about, Arkham City. Did it blow my fuckin' mind out of the back of my skull like it seems to have done to other people? Nope. Am I saying it's a bad game? Nope, not at all...that'd be a straight up lie. Arkham City has everything that the first game offered, and then some. The combat's a bit more refined, there's an extra playable character, there are more villains than before, there are tons of side-missions to check out, and nearly 3 times as many Riddler challenges to collect and accomplish. But that's just it...it's just more of the same and that's it! Not to say that that's a bad thing, but it didn't snag me as well as the first one did because it's not something new anymore. The game itself is very well-made, and the atmosphere and universe is established very successfully...the presentation really is top-notch and there's nothing bad about it. However, like I said, it didn't really surprise me with much, save for a few cool occurrences. If you had doubts about getting this game, don't...it's a completionist's paradise filled with tons of stuff to do, and even if you're not a completionist you can still enjoy a well-made Batman story for what it is. Just don't expect anything insanely different from the original game.

Reminds me of my bachelor party!!!

Doom II: Hell on Earth - I just downloaded this recently on my XBox 360...even though I have it on my computer, I've always wanted to be able to play Doom II on a console I own with a controller. I like having a controller in my hands, just because it's what I've always been used to since I was 4 years old. I do not regret downloading this game for one second...playing through it was as much of a blast as it always has been, and there's even a brand new episode thrown into the mix called No Rest for the Living. If there's one thing a Doomer loves, it's the prospect of new maps to play through that test your mettle rather than the old classic ones that you practically have memorized (or so I thought...apparently I've gotten a little bit rusty). The new level set is pretty good, and there were one or two parts where I was killed repeatedly, but they weren't the toughest maps I've ever played (Look up the Scythe and Scythe II map packs for Doom if you want those...). However, the best thing about this version of Doom II that I didn't even know about when I downloaded it is that it has splitscreen co-operative and deathmatch modes. THIS IS SOMETHING I'VE WANTED IN A CONSOLE VERSION OF DOOM FOR YEARS. Doom's so damn fast paced and the weapons are so well-made, that the deathmatch was always ridiculously fun, and now having that experience all in one room where my friends and I can smack-talk each other has paid for this download all by itself. I FUCKING LOVE DOOM!!

I FUCKING LOVE DOOM!!!

Crysis - I remember when this FPS game originally came out on PC, my machine just flat out wouldn't have been able to run it because it was so damn graphically intensive. I think the tower would have started fizzling and exploding and probably bleeding and pissing itself, even though it was just a computer and technically would have been unable to do so. Recently, Crysis was released on the PS3 and X360, so I finally was able to give it a shot! It's still a beautiful game, made even moreso by an engine upgrade to CryEngine 3. The gameplay is very similar to that of Far Cry, where you clamor around a jungle island and pick people off stealthily from the trees and bushes...it's a slow-paced FPS, but it feels pretty damn good. An additional aspect of the game is your suit, which happens to be a Nanosuit. This provides you with an energy bar that depletes as you use the suit's functions. Such functions include sprinting at a super-quick speed, jumping about 30 feet in the air, cloaking yourself, or hardening the suit so that it becomes an impenetrable armour to shield you from some bullets...at least until your energy runs out. This adds a pretty cool level of depth to the game, allowing you to choose how you tackle some situations. You could armour yourself and book it between various forms of cover, for example, to take some enemies out along the way...or you can stealth your way around your opponents entirely and not even have to encounter them if you correctly budget the use of your cloak. It's pretty cool when your plans all come together from your use of the suit. Overall, the game is pretty good...I don't know if I'll play through it again though. Even though it's a solid experience, it didn't grasp me as well as I thought it would...but at the low price that it's offered for on the XBox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network, you can't really go wrong with Crysis if you want a tactical first-person shooter for yourself. Check it out if you feel so inclined!

Hope you don't mind if I DROP IN!

That does it for the Experience Points wrap up this week! Next up, I've got that review I promised...and I swear I'm actually gonna write it relatively soon! I wanted to review it mid-playthrough...but I decided I should probably finish the damn thing before I went ahead and did a write up on it. This took me a tad longer than I expected due to EXTREME FRUSTRATION...but the good kind! I'll elaborate on it further and you'll see what I mean, hopefully...

Until next time!