2015/9/9: Playstation 4: Batman: Arkham Knight

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Rookie1
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Re: 2015/9/9: Playstation 4: Batman: Arkham Knight

Postby Rookie1 » September 11th, 2015, 5:17 pm

Gentlegamer wrote:
Mention should be made that Arkham Knight is so buggy on PC, that in the face of Steam's new refund policy, WB was forced to pull the game from sale until sufficient patches could be made. To my knowledge, it's been pulled from Steam for over 2 months now.


Wow that's pretty bad. What a shame.

Breaker
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Re: 2015/9/9: Playstation 4: Batman: Arkham Knight

Postby Breaker » September 11th, 2015, 10:59 pm

Gentlegamer wrote:That is modern gaming in a nutshell. Make games that are just acceptable enough to the masses on first release, and focus on DLC to push the actual price of the full game well over $100.


This is so true. In theory, patches should be a good thing. And DLC$, when used for additional, but not necessary, add-ons could be a great thing. But it seems like it is becoming the norm, which I'm no fan of.

When I initially read your post, the $100 figure caught my eye. But as I thought on it, I regularly paid $60 for Genesis games, and adjusting for inflation $60 in 1993 is $99 today. Are we as consumers causing the DLC$ craze due to our expectations that games don't cost more than $60 off the shelf? Hmm...

Verm3
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Re: 2015/9/9: Playstation 4: Batman: Arkham Knight

Postby Verm3 » September 13th, 2015, 12:54 pm

I had some difficulty writing and condensing this, so hopefully it makes sense.

In some ways it's a case of video game technology reaching the point where it can perfectly emulate the elements of ancient media characters such as Batman; as cool as he is, he has been around decades and was probably designed around what media was capable of at the time.

As such, perhaps video games need to look toward newer media characters, in order to push the limits of video game technology again?

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scotland
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Re: 2015/9/9: Playstation 4: Batman: Arkham Knight

Postby scotland » September 13th, 2015, 1:27 pm

Verm3 wrote: In some ways it's a case of video game technology reaching the point where it can perfectly emulate the elements of ancient media characters such as Batman; as cool as he is, he has been around decades and was probably designed around what media was capable of at the time. As such, perhaps video games need to look toward newer media characters, in order to push the limits of video game technology again?


Can you tell us more on your premise?

Batman was created as a comic book translation of the many pulp heroes of the 1930s, such as The Shadow. The character translates out of the spandex fabulous world of the comics better than other superheroes because of those 'reality with a slight twist' kind of pulp roots, compared to the more fantastic heroes like The Flash or Superman.

The Batman character is about 80 years old, so that's not quite ancient. Hercules is ancient, King Arthur is ancient, but Batman is 20th century all the way. During those 80 years, he has remained one of the most popular comics heroes, in part by being re-invented to fill every role from silly to serious to maintain that popularity.

As for what different media is capable of, the reason comic book heroes often did not translate well outside of comics, book, or radio is that comics, prose stories and radio are not limited by the visuals. The Shadow hit his heights on radio, as his most prominent power was a visual one to begin with. Since to be a video game requires a visual component, the best they can do is get close to what can be imagined in a radio story. Its only very recently that a comic book character has translated to television without very careful pruning of most of the iconic comic book elements.

No matter how good video game graphics gets, it hard to think that Batman, or Superman for that matter, would no longer be good subject matter choices because having comic book origins makes them limited. Comics main strength is the unlimited vistas they can create over a few panels of ink and paper. Its still difficult to imagine anything on tv, in a movie, or a video game that could rival the visuals of 1960s Steve Ditko's Doctor Strange?

What 'newer media characters' do you think would push the limits of video game technology in ways that a character rooted in the comics would not?

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: 2015/9/9: Playstation 4: Batman: Arkham Knight

Postby VideoGameCritic » September 17th, 2015, 8:04 pm

Sorry to be a revisionist, but I bumped this game up to a C+, because I thought it was better than my other PS4 C games.


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