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Discendo Vox posted:A Serious House on Serious Earth As a kid just learning about Batman, I remember thinking "Wow, that's some hosed up poo poo." As an adult now I realize that it was just more of what I absolutely hate about bad Batman writers. Grit for grit's sake. Grimdark bullshit. And there were some good things buried in it (considering they took parts of it to make the excellent first game in this series) but....wowie. Maxie Zeus entirely, Two Face can't even make the decision to go to the bathroom, etc. Plus the art is very ugly. EDIT: Last update is on the previous page.
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May 10, 2015 01:18
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It's very frustrating to me that Serious House is considered A Good Book- mostly because its trashy atonal grimdark has continued to poison writing for Batman villains ever since. vvv Sure, but did he need to poo poo himself to develop that character exploration? Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 01:38 on May 10, 2015 |
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May 10, 2015 01:26
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I liked Two-Face in that and thought it was a pretty fascinating examination of his character, but that might just be me.
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May 10, 2015 01:26
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JT Jag posted:I liked Two-Face in that and thought it was a pretty fascinating examination of his character, but that might just be me. Well yeah, like I said, Serious House did cover some decent plot points. The idea at the base of it is great. Batman ventures into Arkham Asylum and we all get a ride through his Rogue's Gallery (sans Cat, Penguin, and the other ones who aren't crazy). I just feel like things that start from The Dark Knight Returns and go down are always the poor ones. See: The Dark Knight Strikes Again. All-Star Batman and Robin. You don't have to go full Brave and the Bold and embrace Batman's camp, but you also don't have to have Two Face poo poo himself....or have Maxie Zeus like the sound of that. To get back to what you said (and get out of my own opinions) Two-Face growing away from his coin and into broader options only for it to further damage his psyche could be a thing. Not my favorite thing, but a thing nonetheless. Jervis being a control freak with an Alice in Wonderland obsession and an unhealthy obsession with blonde women could be a thing. Crossing him over into rape just feels like going too far for the sake of going too far. I mean how can that guy exist in the same universe as Crazy Quilt? Serious thread question. For a game (and really entire series) that seems focused on the most popular Rogue's Gallery in comic books, do you guys feel like they're handled well? Obviously these guys never had a chance at batting 1000, but for the most part do they nail 'em? Scruffy, you should do some kind of video about this once we've hit the end. Not to itself of course, but maybe as commentary over the obligatory Riddler hunt/Anarky Hunt/Sidequest we haven't seen yet hunt? I'd like to hear your take on the 20 or so villains we've gotten in this series. By the way Vox, do not ever stop your effortposts. I look forward to them as much as the actual updates. SonicRulez fucked around with this message at 06:25 on May 10, 2015 |
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May 10, 2015 03:46
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SonicRulez posted:Serious thread question. For a game (and really entire series) that seems focused on the most popular Rogue's Gallery in comic books, do you guys feel like they're handled well? Obviously these guys never had a chance at batting 1000, but for the most part do they nail 'em? Depends on the villain. The villains treated the worst in this series are definitely Bane and Black Mask, though.
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May 10, 2015 03:55
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I honestly don't understand why everyone is weirded out by giving the hatter rapey undertones. The man's specialty is in mind control, as in forcing people to do what he wants against their will. He almost universally has an unhealthy obsession with an alice of some variety. Those things combined will always feel rapey. It's not being shoehorned in, it's literally the sum of his defining character traits.
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May 10, 2015 03:56
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Discendo Vox posted:It's very frustrating to me that Serious House is considered A Good Book- mostly because its trashy atonal grimdark has continued to poison writing for Batman villains ever since. SHoSE also suffers from having symbolism/symbolic imagery that works only in the mind of the creator and that sometimes has no bearing over the story. SHoSe has many good points, Two Face being probably the best part, but it also fits into the insulting definition of "pretentious."
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May 10, 2015 04:02
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SonicRulez posted:Serious thread question. For a game (and really entire series) that seems focused on the most popular Rogue's Gallery in comic books, do you guys feel like they're handled well? Obviously these guys never had a chance at batting 1000, but for the most part do they nail 'em? This series has made me very tired of the Joker. I'm not a fan of the Joker in general, and while I enjoyed him in Asylum I think he outstayed his welcome in City and really don't like him getting shoved into this one's story. The Riddler likewise, though he's at least actually entertaining a decent amount of the time, and Catwoman in City felt pointless and a bit needlessly fanservice-y. On the other hand I liked Scarecrow a lot in Origins, and Mister Freeze in City. The latter is one of my favorite video game boss fights in general.
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May 10, 2015 05:14
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X_countryguy posted:God drat, some of those guys had some really high launch velocity when Bruce Wayne took them out. Has that come up before in the regular game videos? Gotham Space Program 
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May 10, 2015 06:45
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Mzbundifund posted:Gotham Space Program I've never had it happen in regular gameplay but it happens pretty much all the time in that challenge map. No idea what causes it.
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May 10, 2015 06:50
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SonicRulez posted:Serious thread question. For a game (and really entire series) that seems focused on the most popular Rogue's Gallery in comic books, do you guys feel like they're handled well? Obviously these guys never had a chance at batting 1000, but for the most part do they nail 'em? Scruffy, you should do some kind of video about this once we've hit the end. Not to itself of course, but maybe as commentary over the obligatory Riddler hunt/Anarky Hunt/Sidequest we haven't seen yet hunt? I'd like to hear your take on the 20 or so villains we've gotten in this series. As long as we're talking the whole series, I think Catwoman and Poison Ivy were both handled pretty well. Wait no stop I can already feel your rebuttals let me finish. I know their outfits are problematic as hell and some of Catwoman's combat moves are overly sexy for sexy's sake (I mean seriously her slide is ridiculous), but a lot of the stuff story-wise is good. Poison Ivy works because across the series she basically works as a radical botanist who doesn't give a single poo poo about humans. In Asylum, she just wants out, and when she gets out, she doesn't even try to leave, she just confines herself to the greenhouse. It's only later when Joker pumps her up on Titan that she starts to go a little loopy and turn the whole island into a jungle. In City you see that she's basically overtaken a building and she's mind-controlling a bunch of henchmen, but she doesn't do anything to anybody who doesn't try to mess with her turf. She tries to off Catwoman for a falling out in their past but, well, she is insane, and like I said, she doesn't care for non-plant life. There's not much to her character, but then, there's not much to Poison Ivy other than "eco-terrrorist with plant powers", so the games kinda nail it. Catwoman works in her City story because it's basically perfect, she's just there to steal poo poo. Specifically, she's there to steal her poo poo back from Strange after he raided her place. She's pretty good at the thievery, since (in the interview tapes) she manages to break into Strange's office easily and only puts up with his poo poo when he threatens to have a friend killed. She's also good at playing other parties like Ivy into helping her do stuff like break into Strange's vault. It also shows that she's down for a good old fashioned heroic turn every now and then, when she goes to help Batman before Protocol 10 starts. The fact that pretty much every one of her segments is a predator mission helps the feeling that she's a thief and you're being sneaky (particularly in the vault at the end). If we're limiting it to this game... well there's not too many game-exclusive characters we've seen, I think, but I think both Gordons are portrayed well. Young Barbara views Batman with incredible awe and looks up to him and that fits the girl that will grow up to make her own suit and create Batgirl of her own free will. She's also incredibly smart and knows a lot about computers, foreshadowing her turn as Oracle.
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May 10, 2015 07:56
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Mzbundifund posted:Gotham Space Program
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May 10, 2015 08:01
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TwoPair posted:The fact that pretty much every one of her segments is a predator mission helps the feeling that she's a thief and you're being sneaky (particularly in the vault at the end). Only Catwoman's last two encounters are predator. The first two are combat against Two-Face/Ivy goons.
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May 10, 2015 08:05
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:Only Catwoman's last two encounters are predator. The first two are combat against Two-Face/Ivy goons. The lead-up to get into Ivy's tower is predator and that counts enough for me 
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May 10, 2015 08:08
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More like purredator missons.
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May 10, 2015 08:16
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Main thing that irritated me with the Hatter stuff was it did some of the "interface screw" by way of taking camera control away from you, often in ways that seemed random. Thus your movement gets randomly defined on occasion because it's relative to the camera position which you suddenly no longer control; think I caught a little of that in the video when Batman started suddenly heading back and forth in one bit where there's an angle swap. Scarecrow's levels had a similar thing, but the camera swapping was logical and usually didn't mess up your movement; I utterly despise having to go to war with the control scheme to proceed so I hated this level despite the clever idea. The "finish a task to proceed but the timing has to be perfect or you get electric floor" bits also gave me headaches, especially the first one where I had no idea how to proceed so I had maybe a few seconds to try one random thing, then another, then another... but that might just be me.
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May 10, 2015 09:01
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FoolyCharged posted:I honestly don't understand why everyone is weirded out by giving the hatter rapey undertones. The man's specialty is in mind control, as in forcing people to do what he wants against their will. He almost universally has an unhealthy obsession with an alice of some variety. Those things combined will always feel rapey. It's not being shoehorned in, it's literally the sum of his defining character traits. He had rapey undertones, DC made him a straight up rapist amongst a flood of DC deciding rape was the shortcut to becoming a mature medium that would be taken seriously.
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May 10, 2015 10:30
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MadDogMike posted:The "finish a task to proceed but the timing has to be perfect or you get electric floor" bits also gave me headaches, especially the first one where I had no idea how to proceed so I had maybe a few seconds to try one random thing, then another, then another... but that might just be me. I had all of the problems you describe, but this one in particular. It really feels like this part was made by different people, and while camera control is necessary and works for a couple of the gimmicks, my suspicion is that a lot of the time it's to save on the monumental costs of rendering the entire Hatter landscape when rendering ~700 degrees of it could suffice. SonicRulez posted:Serious thread question. For a game (and really entire series) that seems focused on the most popular Rogue's Gallery in comic books, do you guys feel like they're handled well? Obviously these guys never had a chance at batting 1000, but for the most part do they nail 'em? Scruffy, you should do some kind of video about this once we've hit the end. Not to itself of course, but maybe as commentary over the obligatory Riddler hunt/Anarky Hunt/Sidequest we haven't seen yet hunt? I'd like to hear your take on the 20 or so villains we've gotten in this series. Many thanks. Remind me and I'll touch on this in the endgame, once we've introduced all the assassins/sidequests. The short answer is it varies a lot by villain, and whether you want a given character to adhere to how they're written at a given point in the comics. There's also some interesting/confusing stuff going on with characters that appear in both the Rocksteady games and Origins. Mzbundifund posted:Gotham Space Program At a guess, this is because an error was made when this space was "cut out of" its original setting in the game, which included the player gliding in from a much higher position. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 10:52 on May 10, 2015 |
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May 10, 2015 10:31
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Nah It's because this is Assassin Bruce Wayne and he's not holding back.
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May 10, 2015 11:08
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JT Jag posted:More like purredator missons. I get enough of this poo poo in the skullgirls thread. 
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May 10, 2015 17:44
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Mzbundifund posted:Gotham Space Program Dragon Kicked his rear end into the Milky Way! (Milky Way!)
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May 11, 2015 04:08
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TwoPair posted:I think both Gordons are portrayed well. Young Barbara views Batman with incredible awe and looks up to him and that fits the girl that will grow up to make her own suit and create Batgirl of her own free will. She's also incredibly smart and knows a lot about computers, foreshadowing her turn as Oracle. I wouldn't have said foreshadowing so much as beating you over the head with it. It's like "Hey, no one's called her 'Oracle' in this game, but she's totally going to be Oracle, look how she's doing all the same things even though she's only just met Batman for the first time because she's totally going to be Oracle you guys!"
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May 11, 2015 17:43
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PhazonLink posted:Dragon Kicked his rear end into the Milky Way! (Milky Way!) This is my favorite thing.  Anyway, here's an update and OH MAN WHO IS THAT  No One That Matters/PolsyNew character bio: The Joker  Predator Challenge: Easy Money/Polsy with DeathstrokeI'm starting my vacation tomorrow so the update schedule may be slightly more inconsistent.
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May 11, 2015 19:16
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Troy Baker does one hell of a Mark Hamill in this game. With Batman, you can tell it's a different actor pretty easily, but he even managed to pull off the laugh. Still, this is where the story starts going downhill - by now it's pretty much abandon hope for anything new or interesting and get ready for more of the same thing as the previous games. Three games' worth of Joker and Bane is just way too much.
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May 11, 2015 19:35
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Actually there is a second place to get challenge #6 done: the predator map in Blackgate.
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May 11, 2015 19:48
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Technowolf posted:Actually there is a second place to get challenge #6 done: the predator map in Blackgate. I suppose that would work actually. Too bad it's so far down the line, by the time you get there there's no time to do the other challenges.
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May 11, 2015 19:50
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dscruffy1 posted:This is my favorite thing. One thing of note: there is one more area where you can do the 4 exotic takedowns but it's unideal since it's at the endgame. It's at the last real predator section at blackgate - the area is also reused as the challenge map Hard Time. On the top floor centre there is a little office area w/a hostage in the middle in the challenge map. You can do reverse ledge takedowns on guards who patrol the outside of this office. If you've already broken the glass ceiling you can also do a reverse ledge takedown from the railing around the glass on any thug that walks below. One other neat thing, the reverse ledge takedown is the only quiet takedown you can do on armored thugs.
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May 11, 2015 19:58
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Really Alfred? The Joker is dangerous? And not, I don't know, any of the other assassins?
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May 11, 2015 20:03
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Interesting that Alfred said earlier in the game it had just reached midnight, and was wishing Bruce a Merry Christmas, but according to the clock at the bank, it's only 21:00... Edit: It took me a while, but I actually do prefer the design of Joker in this game to the earlier games - he looks much more... carnivorous. And even though I do agree three games of Joker was too much, I think this is probably the best he was represented in the whole game series. AND the manager's death is pretty unsettling. Samovar fucked around with this message at 20:40 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 20:33
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Oh one other thing, at the bank just before you enter the room with the cutscene, if you take your time and start examing the corpses Bats does a little dialogue and begins to piece together that BM isn't really BM given the large number of thugs among the deceased.
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May 11, 2015 21:20
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Goddamn, Alfred's burns on Batman keep getting better.
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May 11, 2015 21:34
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Samovar posted:Edit: It took me a while, but I actually do prefer the design of Joker in this game to the earlier games - he looks much more... carnivorous. And even though I do agree three games of Joker was too much, I think this is probably the best he was represented in the whole game series. AND the manager's death is pretty unsettling. Honestly I prefer most the the designs in Origins. I don't think character design is Rocksteady's strong point.
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May 11, 2015 21:38
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On an Arkham City note, god drat New Game+ is some loving bullshit. The addition of the harder enemy types so early as well as taking away the counter indicators is such a pain in the rear end.
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May 11, 2015 21:51
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I wish you could get the new enemy combinations and keep the counter indicators. They make fights a lot more interesting but I'm horrible at reading the enemy tells.
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May 11, 2015 21:53
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Manic_Misanthrope posted:On an Arkham City note, god drat New Game+ is some loving bullshit. The addition of the harder enemy types so early as well as taking away the counter indicators is such a pain in the rear end. If you decide to double down and go for a Hard NG+, anyone with a blade becomes a much bigger issue too. They're crazy fast, and that's just the knife wielders. Ninjas become a whole different problem!
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May 11, 2015 21:57
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Challenge Video Notes FYI Scruffy, you can lead enemies to your location by hitting the environment with batarangs or the ballistic staff. Hostage-takers are a cool concept Nice showcase of some of the frontal and side silent takedowns at the end. You can almost only see these by using smoke, so they're rare to see. Most of the corpses in the map from campaign mode have been cleared away, but there's one still sitting in a corner. This one was placed in such a way that the devs couldn't remove them. Video 12 Notes Surprise! Black Mask really being Joker isn't a bad twist, and it's not entirely spoiled by advertising. Like others have said, Baker's VA work is great, and it'll keep being great as the game continues. Joker's lines that aren't in cutscenes will also sometimes be quite good. That said, this "twist" is a large component of why the game sucks so bad. Joker was not going to be included in the game when it first began development. Instead, his introduction was mandated from above late in the planning phase (which was, remember, already on an incredibly compressed schedule) and shattered plans for what was probably going to be a merger of features from Long Halloween, Knightfall and the Bane episode of the animated series, and which was going to set up a new Suicide Squad IP. What is clear is that the developers felt they didn't have enough time to write a new script, so Black Mask got rewritten and Joker's big reveal got inserted into the third act (which we are now in) of a roughly five act structure, sharing time with Bane, who appears to have originally taken center stage. As a result of these changes, a lot of the lategame plot and gameplay structure is a rushed, incoherent mess. The interior areas from here on are going to be much worse than previous ones, especially the ones involving the Joker, which appear to have had a lot less time spent on them. It looks like entire sections of the game got rearranged in order to fit the new narrative, and although we've seen some traces of this already, it's going to get a lot worse. The Bank All interiors that Joker is involved with will from here on out be festooned with ridiculous amounts of decorated corpses in wacky poses. While this occurred a bit in previous Arkham games, here the bodycount rapidly stops making any sort of narrative impact and starts feeling dumb. Having a bunch of dead civilians in the empty bank lobby leading up to the big reveal makes a serious impact (though it would've been nice if the reactions were better, and they bodies weren't all decorated). This stops having the same impact when it's done another ten times. I think there are probably over a hundred decorated corpses between this video and the end of the game. The "Hidden Crime Scene" Right after the big reveal, when you get up out of the vault wreckage, you can enter detective mode and set up a crimescene in a small area with the broken vault door and the manager's corpse. Batman can analyze the Joker Toxin that killed the manager, and has some nice lines about how he could have saved her. My guess is that originally, the predator room happened before the big vault reveal, and that your crime scene investigation would be mandatory- and then interrupted by the entry of either a) more Joker Goons or b) SWAT in the aftermath. Also, this is the only time Joker Toxin gets used or referenced in the whole game. It never comes up again. Great writing. Joker Goons are well-done- they're Black Mask goons with hastily remade outfits and handmade masks. Their lines reflect discomfort with the "new boss", who is pretty clearly a lot less stable than the old one, even if Sionis was a massive sadist. They do not, as far as I know, have any different features, although if memory serves there aren't any joker-themed martial artists- no time to make them. The Wall God, this challenge sucks. Some other wrinkles Scruffy doesn't mention- a) the reverse ledge takedown isn't very well-described by the game, so it's hard to tell what it is. b) if you get the proximity gel detonation upgrade (DO NOT DO THIS, it is a universal downgrade), it will almost always autodetonate before the enemy is close enough to be knocked out. Instead, you'll just stun them. c) Remember, if you're playing through the game, you won't know that predator rooms don't repopulate with enemies, and that this is your only real chance to complete this challenge tree. This is a hidden point-of-no-return dead man walking completion failure state right out of a King's Quest game, and it's one of the things the devs refused to patch. Intercoms Intercom systems replace the heart monitors in previous games. Instead of a visible piece of gear to tell the boss that one of the patrolling guards is down, they just...know, somehow, and alert everyone else. I think the idea is that this way you can temporarily disable the heart monitor system and have a predictable set of takedowns lined up. In practice, as scruffy has mentioned, it's not much use. Open World Martial Artists Now that I think about it, I believe martial artists only appear as part of side missions in the open world. Something weird definitely went on with their implementation, likely related to the previously mentioned scrambling of the game. Shiva Shiva's sidequest is one of the casualties of the game's screwed-up development. There are traces of a really interesting idea here, but they don't get developed. More on it, and her, next video. Hellioning posted:Really Alfred? The Joker is dangerous? And not, I don't know, any of the other assassins? No, you see, this game has the best writing in the whole series! You can tell because batman is ANGRY Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 22:21 on May 11, 2015 |
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May 11, 2015 21:59
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Say what you want, but I really like the evil version of carol of the bells you hear in this game when the Joker pushes the detonator.
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May 11, 2015 22:02
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dscruffy1 posted:If you decide to double down and go for a Hard NG+, anyone with a blade becomes a much bigger issue too. They're crazy fast, and that's just the knife wielders. Ninjas become a whole different problem! *Whimper* Might just play City on regular hard, I don't mind them throwing guns and the like at you faster, you do have all the tools for them after all but the lack of tells do highlight some issues with the camera when I get blindsided by 3 shield goons (gently caress shield goons)
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May 11, 2015 22:02
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Discendo Vox posted:Hostage-takers are a cool concept (I'm not sure if they appear in AC challenge maps). They do appear in AC challenge maps. I remember the Lost City (Extreme) map having one.
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May 11, 2015 22:14
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Discendo Vox, there is one other opportunity but it's at the same bank except now as a side-mission later on. If you complete this challenge there you will probably finish the challenge tree on the last pred map of the game but there is a tiny bit of leeway here anyway. This challenge does take the cake for unnecessary roadblocks for sure tho.
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May 11, 2015 22:22
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