My favorite games are Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout NV on the XBox 360. I really enjoy the open-world RPG genre and am looking forward to Skyrim. Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City and am wondering if they’re more FPSs than RPGs. Arkham Asylum is said to be somewhat linear, but an Arkham City article on Wired.com says you can fly all over the city pretty early on.
I tend to put a lot of time into the games I buy by exploring as much as I can to get all the top gear and skills. Does anyone know how the Batman games stack up against Bethesda’s games as far as play time required/available? For reference, I put more than 400 hours on Oblivion and both Fallouts. I haven’t bought a game since 2009 Nor have I had a date since then
If you only had money to buy one, which one would you get? Maybe I should buy Skyrim then get the Batman games this summer when they’re cheaper.
I’m going to get Arkham City because this is the game I’ve been anxiously waiting for for the last couple of years. But in terms of gameplay content, Arkham City can’t beat Skyrim. From what I’ve heard Arkham City will last about 20 hours, including side-missions. Respectable but doesn’t come close to Skyrim, which will probably take you about 40 to 60 hours during the first playthrough. I also don’t think Arkham City will have the same re-play value.
That being said, it might be a good idea to wait until Skyrim goes on sale for the first time. The major bugs are probably fixed by then, not to mention there will probably be some awesome mods out that’ll make the game that much better (assuming you’re going to get it for the PC).
EDIT: Definitely give Arkham Asylum a go. It’s awesome and you can get it for cheap now.
Batman first, then Skyrim. The time between getting to play both games extends pretty far when you go Skyrim first. Unless you do a straight minimum-side quest run through Skyrim first, play Batman, then go back to Skyrim to fill in the blanks.
Take me as a counterexample. I recently played both Fallout 3 and Arkham Asylum. The latter was among the best games I’ve ever played: beautiful graphics (both technically and aesthetically), excellent voice-acting, amazing moods-setting, and a great mix of puzzle and action play. It really hit all my buttons right.
I wanted to like Fallout 3, but I just didn’t. The weapons didn’t feel all that different, the quests were (with a few exceptions) only marginally interesting, the monsters all looked pretty much the same, the interface was somewhat clunky (I probably made over a hundred trips back to town to sell gear listed alphabetically, and had to wander from vendor to vendor to find one with some ready cash). The storyline ended rather abruptly. There was no real sense of narrative drive in it. Maybe worst of all were the graphics, which, while technically well-realized and mood-setting, were unrelentingly ugly and unpleasant to look at.
So our tastes may be diametrically opposite :). I’d much prefer a railroad game with a strong narrative than another Fallout; as such, I’ll definitely prioritize Arkham City.
After watching some gameplay videos and reading the responses here, I’ve decided to get Arkham Asylum. Amazon has the game of the year edition for $31.
Mark Hamill voices the Joker very well. I’m looking forward to using X-ray vision.
All of the people I’ve talked to who had a preview copy of Arkham City were blown away. I’m really holding my breath for this one - looks like it might be the game of the decade. Besides, there’s too many good games coming around this time of year - Heroes VI, LA Noire on PC, Assassin’s Creed:Revelations… I’d keep Skyrim for the 6 slow months after New Year’s Eve.
Yes! Another Skyrim vs ‘crappy game’ thread (I’m not saying that Arkham or Dark Souls is crappy, just in comparison to TES :D).
Dude, don’t fall for this stuff, there’s no way in hell that a Batman game could ever equal the might of Skyrim. I have a rule, do not ever buy a game that’s been made from a movie or about any character from a movie…you know it will suck (before you try and tell me it doesn’t, just know that I will never break the rule, not gonna’ happen, I’ve been burned too many times to ever go there again, even if it is a good game…).
Being a Bethsoft fan you should know what the right thing to do is, Pine Fresh Scent, I shouldn’t have to tell you ;).
Your missing out man.batman is not a movie to video game turd on a plate like, well like every other movie to videogame crapfest. This is a proper game that happens to use a comic book character as its subject. Did you even bother reading anything about the previous game? Have you ever seen a typical movie to game effort win the critical acclaim and high scores praise from just about every corner?
I’m inclined to agree that skyrim will be the meatier game, but don’t be so close minded on batman. At least watch a video review.
Agreed. There’s a difference between a licensed game period, and a licensed game made to cash in on a recent movie/series/fad. The latter will inevitably be a rushed, clunky piece of shit hoping to get out the door before the fad dies down and blowing its own budget in excerpts from the movie. The former is just another game.
But there have been quite a few good Star Wars games, the Riddick games are quite all right, the X-Men Legends/Marvel Ultimate Alliance games are fun little Diablo-like brawlers… and, yes, *Batman:Arkham Asylum *is pretty darn awesome if you can overlook the mildly repetitive boss fights.
To be fair, I think there’s a little bit of fad going on here, I can’t poinpoint when it started, and I’m not bemoaning it (I like Batman), but there seems to be some Batman fad that’s going. It may not even be continuous, but Batman seems like an oddly long fad to me, and every iteration of said fad is kind of a different take on the character.
Honestly, I think a well crafted short game is better than a haphazard long game. Even if I’m getting Skyrim at release, it’s near the bottom of my to-play list. Elder Scrolls games (save Morrowind, maybe) are rarely amazing without mods, usually due to counter-intuitive or outright broken mechanics.
That’s not to say they’re not good games, they’re certainly above the level I’d call mediocre, even if Batman lasts you say, 20 hours versus Skyrim’s 60-80, I’d argue that value can’t be measured solely in hours. Personally, playing Arkham Asylum for 18 hours felt like a much better experience than playing Oblivion for 40-60 did.
HOWEVER, if your main draw is exploration and not story, I’d probably have to give it to Skyrim. Arkham Asylum had a certain amount of exploration content (mostly Riddler trophies), but it’s overall very linear. And from what I understand, City is much the same, there are more sidequests and such, and apparently the sidequests are VERY well crafted (some reviews have said a few sidequests were better than the main plot), I find it dubious at best that exploration will really be as big a deal as the plot is, I mean, even sidequests are scripted to a degree and not true exploration like dicking around in random caves and dungeons is.
If you were on PC I’d still recommend waiting until the mods came out, but if you’re insistent on 360 (if your PC can’t play it or you like console gaming more or whatever your reason), then I’d say Skyrim is probably more up YOUR alley.
These are great responses. I bought the Fall 2011 copy of PC Gamer titled “Build Your Own Gaming PC” and am thinking about doing that this Spring to try out some Fallout and Oblivion mods, not to mention the eventual Skyrim mods. The last PC game I played was Return to Castle Wolfenstein back in 2002, and I’ve come to prefer the 360 controller for moving and fighting (and playing on the couch instead of at a desk). Managing my inventories is a pain on console, though. At least until I bought a lockpick spell and threw away the 150 keys I had to scroll through to get to the good stuff.
My plan is to play the Arkham series, then I’ll probably build a gaming desktop + 360 controller combo for the Bethesda games. I’m thinking I’ll need a wireless keyboard on the couch to take advantage of the PC versions’ features, though.
Today’s Wired.com article on Skyrim mentions that when you drop items while managing your inventory, NPCs will sometimes ask to keep them - nice touch. The main mod I want is multiple followers. It’s nice to sometimes watch others do all the fighting then swoop in for the loot.
A little bit of a fad, you’re being too nice, the Batman fad seems to have outlasted even the Superman and Spiderman fads…maybe cause Batman’s human with no super powers other than skill and therefore easier to relate to, but still, it’s one hell of a fad.
I don’t always understand why people say the mods are so great and the game’s broken without them. I’m just curious, but I wonder if the PC version is not as polished as the console version, I’ve never had a problem in Oblivion with glitches, everything worked fine from the time I got it on the 360 and unlike Morrowind, I’ve never found anything that didn’t work (the only thing in Morrowind that had a bug was the Quarra Vampire questline, there was one quest that I couldn’t take simply because it never became available when talking to the clan-leader.
Tsk tsk…you say that TES has no story? I realize our individual tastes differ, and true, the acting out of the story in an Elder Scrolls game is not as good as one in a game that’s riding on rails. However, it’s the rails that keep me from being sucked into the game, thus my strong aversion to such games. Morrowind, for example, had no voice acting at all (except simple stuff when walking past someone, my favorite thing was when the Argonians would say “No one wants to see that”), but in this game, it was the story that made it for me, and I’m sure this was the case for most people even if they don’t realize it. The thing I loved about Morrowind was all the back-story, the hundreds of books that told you about things that happened in the past, all the history, the fact that every inch of the game is covered in story, hell, they’d even tell you about why the Khajiit have such funny names (I don’t know what it is, I actually never completed that quest…just goes to show how much there is to do in one of these giant games, I played that for years and still didn’t do it all, and same for Oblivion, just recently completed a quest I’ve never taken before…and remember, I’ve got the console version :p).
Not quite what I’d call a fad - the character is popular, certainly, but it’s not something like, say, Avatar, Harry Potter or Twilight that for a time were utterly impossible to avoid. That’s what I’d consider a fad. And not coincidentally, the Avatar and Harry Potter games ? Utter shite.
By comparison, Arkham Asylum is mostly based on the animated series from the late 90s, which while it admittedly still enjoys some cult status isn’t quite plastered on every billboard either. Had it been pure Nolan Batman with Christian Bale voice-overs and 3D model and so forth then I would have been waaay more careful.
The 360 controller wouldn’t go amiss for Arkham, either. I played through the first game with mouse & keyboard, but the controls and minigames are clearly designed with a gamepad in mind.
Yes, but you also have to realize every time a new Batman movie comes out, even if it’s like that Dark Knight one that is way too intense and violent to the point that I thought it should’ve been R, every kid from age 5+ has to either get a Batman toy or a costume. I even see costumes and stuff being advertised even when it’s long after the last movie, in some cases it lasts until the next movie comes out. So, my question is, how’s that not a fad? :dubious:
Well… I’d have to say that the fact that it’s still around long after the primary inspiration has faded is what makes it not a fad, since a fad, by definition, is short lived.
Nor have I had a date since then 
