The Real Arkham Horror. Let's Play Batman: Arkham Origins

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > The Real Arkham Horror. Let's Play Batman: Arkham Origins

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I really like Alfred. He's like, the only guy who is really, genuinely aware Bruce is a nutjob and that this is all kind of silly. Shame he enables him instead of helping him.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2015 02:31

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 07:48

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Doctor Reynolds posted:

It also makes the interrogations... odd.

"WHERE ARE ENIGMA'S FILES?!"
"What? Who the heck is that?"
"DON'T PLAY GAMES WITH ME, I KNOW YOU WORK FOR HIM"
"No dude seriously I do not know who you are referring to"

Like his would ever stop Batman. I wish they'd make the guy a bit less of a dick. Would it really be so hard to have him put people down after he interrogates them and let them go? He's got what he needs, no need to crush the poor guy's orbital.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2015 07:23

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Hobgoblin2099 posted:

Too bad that similarity was lost on Batman.

Batman's powers are human peak physical condition, incredible detective skills, gadgets, and a complete lack of self awareness.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2015 21:50

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

A lot of this game seems like really genuinely good ideas and then bad executions. Like, the seeds are there, but so much seems scrapped, unpolished, or bugged.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2015 06:31

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

At the same time, as an antagonist, he certainly works. After all, 'Mentally ill person who puts on a ridiculous outfit and tries to solve the world's problems via violence' is basically the definition of superhero, so having someone with sympathetic goals who goes too far is a good way to provide some contrast and help show where the line is.

# ¿ May 1, 2015 21:40

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Arcade Rabbit posted:

I think Anarky is best summed up by his final speech there, where he asks to be Batman's apprentice. He brings up the valid point that Batman really doesn't listen to anyone, and while he is very strong he is also very clearly disconnected from the people he is trying to save. But then he turns Batman into a scapegoat and takes it too far, raving about how Batman must be looking down on everyone and has gone mad with power and whatnot. Again, also possibly true but certainly not to the degree that Anarky insisted and the sudden 180 of opinions between sentences made it very clear that Anarky really needs help. He's very well written in that you almost agree with him or are at least interested in what he has to say, but then he turns around and starts up the crazy again. It paints a very interesting picture of someone who very clearly needs mental help.

The best villain is one you agree with for the first minute or two he's talking. And then goes places he really shouldn't.

# ¿ May 2, 2015 02:03

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

berryjon posted:

"You have an accurate view of the problem. It's your solution that needs to be stopped." - Kidd Radd

Kidd Radd was the coolest comic and yes, that is the best way to put it.

Seriously, everyone read Kidd Radd. It is well worth the time.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 07:09 on May 3, 2015

# ¿ May 3, 2015 07:06

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

anilEhilated posted:

It's cheesy as gently caress and spells everything in a way that'd make even a complete idiot feel insulted. But I freely admit I never was a Joker fan.

It would help if it wasn't a constant barrage of 'The Joker Is So Dangerous Guys, You Don't Even Know!' from Batman and all the supporting characters.

# ¿ May 15, 2015 22:03

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Snipe Man makes me wish even more this was just you vs. 8 themed bosses and them their master and his doom castle.

# ¿ May 21, 2015 01:00

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I think every scene I see where the Joker is mugging around being 'oh so crazy' and threatening superhumans and killers, I'm surprised none of them just throw him out a window or shoot him in the face.

Like, sure, he can get away with that with Batman, Batman doesn't murder people. These guys are explicitly a bunch of crazed killers. You'd think 'This poo poo ain't worth it, just take him out and take his money.' would cross their minds. Or that he wouldn't be able to intimidate them.

I mean, it was nice to see Bane just shove him in a chair and tell him to shut up, but you'd think it'd be a common occurrence. The guy just isn't as scary as the writers think he is.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 19:10 on May 22, 2015

# ¿ May 22, 2015 19:07

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Basically, the Joker (as he shows up in the games) a guy who only has one joke, and the punchline is 'and then I tortured and killed a bunch of people for no reason except that I enjoy it'. It gets old. Really fast.

# ¿ May 22, 2015 19:28

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Crystalgate posted:

If you do intend to shoot him in the back, he will magically have figured that out.

This is actually called lovely writing.

# ¿ May 22, 2015 23:55

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Iretep posted:

I think every time Joker gets killed it is made out to be a super sad thing or the guy who kills him turns into mega hitler.

See: The entire plot of Injustice: Gods Among Us. "Hey, Joker managed to nuke Metropolis so Supes finally hauled off and ripped his guts out. NOW HE HAS A TASTE FOR BLOOD AND MANFLESH!"

# ¿ May 23, 2015 15:30

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Cythereal posted:

Maybe it's because I'm American, but I really, really don't get Batman's refusal to kill when it comes to people like the Joker. Refusing to kill mooks, sure, and people who are just victims of another villain (this is Harley, in my opinion), okay, but Batman always says that if he kills that will make him no different from the Joker et al which feels like a hell of a false equivalency and implies that Batman already is just like them he simply hasn't acted on it yet.

But then again, I'm probably overthinking comic books and the need to have recurring villains.

Yeah, my example was meant to be about how silly that feels. No matter how liberal the society, there are some people they just put an end to. I remember at the Occupation museum in Norway, they have an exhibit on how Vudkin Quisling sold out the country to the Nazis. After the war, they voted to reinstate the death penalty for exactly as long as it took to execute him, than made it illegal again.

# ¿ May 23, 2015 17:04

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

"The only people who stay dead in comics are Bruce Wayne's parents."

# ¿ May 23, 2015 20:12

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Some of Batman's villains genuinely getting better would do a lot to solve this issue and be super cool.

# ¿ May 23, 2015 23:39

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I think the best bit of unintentional dramatic irony in the Dark Knight movies is that Batman blows up the monorail his parents tried to build while fighting a supervillain, destroying it completely.

# ¿ May 24, 2015 00:35

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

What is Bane's deal exactly? Why would killing Batman finally give him peace?

# ¿ May 24, 2015 16:43

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I do not understand why this game's writing got any praise at all. It's somehow even worse than City, which was already kind of a pile story wise.

Asylum was pretty great, though.

# ¿ May 28, 2015 02:04

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Discendo Vox posted:

League of Shadows. Holdings roughly equal to the United States, including a Yellow Panic version of its armed forces.

Comic books also kind of rely on all official authorities being incredibly complacent, corrupt, or incompetent to necessitate a man in a silly costume beating the tar out of criminals.

That isn't even necessarily a criticism, more that it's one of the chief things you have to suspend disbelief in for the genre to work.

# ¿ May 28, 2015 08:33

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Everything Black Mask has done has shown the guy has balls of steel and a cool head on his shoulders. Everything that happens with the guy just makes me regret it more that the Joker stole the villain slot from him.

It would even fit to have Batman, a guy who ostensibly relies on intimidation, up against a cool, badass mob boss who basically can't be intimidated.

# ¿ May 28, 2015 18:57

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

He's also one of the first guys to explicitly call Batman out on something: "Sure, you beat the poo poo out of me, but they call guys like me untouchable for a reason."

I mean, I can't imagine how that trial goes. "You were found beaten up in a church with a bunch of exploded drugs." "Yeah, because some psycho in a suit dragged me there after attacking me." I mean, considering their money, the effectiveness of high powered lawyers, and the fact that Batman doesn't really follow any kind of procedure (and isn't yet being treated as a part of law enforcement like he is in Asylum) I wonder how many of the people he beats just get out of it on the trial at this point.

# ¿ May 28, 2015 20:25

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

WFGuy posted:

Did... did you just use taser fists on a man with a pacemaker?

I think it was established that Batman really doesn't care if he hurts Sionis when he threatened to turn his pacemaker up to 245 bpm.

The only reason Batman doesn't kill is because he's tremendously lucky that no-one he throws off buildings, tortures, or cracks the skulls of provably dies as a result of his actions. It's a superpower.

# ¿ May 28, 2015 22:17

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Kal-L posted:

Now I'm incredibly curious where in the world you live

Detroit. I know real world authorities have their share of corruption, complacency, and incompetence, but they don't actually allow private citizens to build massive concentration camps cum doom fortresses in the middle of major metropolitan areas.

In the real world, they just keep imprisoning people on drug charges to keep them from voting and exploit them for cheap slave labor.

# ¿ May 29, 2015 06:38

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

JT Jag posted:

Actually Alfred lies about waiting at the Batcave for Bruce. He follows behind Batman wherever he goes, cleaning up after him by providing rudimentary emergency care to the most brutalized criminals he comes across and setting up trampolines at street level of buildings that Bats does his hold people by the ankle interrogation schtick (just in case). He's a butler ninja.

I really want this to be true.

Also that Chicago prison thing is incredibly hosed up.

# ¿ May 29, 2015 20:22

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Shei-kun posted:

If you notice, the Venom users also get bigger and (according to at least one Bio of bane in the Akrhamverse games LPed so far, I think) significantly heavier when being pumped by a backpack that first has to fill these giant tubes that go into their bodies, but also don't allow for them to bleed when the tubes are yanked out from the backpack.

Changing the bone structure of the user is one of the lesser crimes against science that the world of Batman (at least Arkhamverse Batman), and through it, Venom/Titan, commits.

Seriously, it throws conservation of mass right out the goddamn window.

When Batman got Titaned in Arkham Asylum I was seriously hoping for a Titan Bats vs. Titan Joker throwdown. I was very disappointed when I didn't get to see Huge Monster Batfight.

# ¿ May 30, 2015 05:13

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

grandalt posted:

Well, it wasn't quite that simple. It did result in Alfred being for a time a supervillian.

Wouldn't this result in all of Gotham being destroyed? He's like the one level-headed, competent person in the entire city. He would wreck everyone else were he their enemy.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2015 23:45

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Cythereal posted:

Gordon seems like he has his head screwed on straight, just understandably reluctant to trust one of the masked psychopaths running around the city.

Yeah, but Gordon eventually gives in to completely trusting Batman, which is a terrible idea. Then again, I suppose Alfred makes the same mistake.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2015 00:03

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mr Phillby posted:

I know it's a comic book videogame and all, but Batman electro-punching his butler back to life just seemed comically absurd.

THE BEST WRITING IN THE SERIES!

I think this, following City, has convinced me not to touch Arkham Knight. Asylum was a fun, self-contained story about crazy growth serums that had no business being developed by a psychotherapist and an insane clown, but City was too ridiculous to accept and this one is even worse.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2015 19:53

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I know, it's more that at a certain point, it gets too dumb to keep going for the fun combat and stuff, you know?

There's fun dumb and then there's 'oh god will the Joker just get the hell off the stage and why is this so boring' dumb.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Jun 4, 2015

# ¿ Jun 4, 2015 20:31

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

inflatablefish posted:

This is why they should make an Adam West version of the game.

I would be down as hell. Adam West Batman was great.

I mean there was an episode where the Joker made vending machines spit out free money and candy, and Batman had to explain to the kids why this was actually a sinister plot to make them sympathize with communism. :allears:

# ¿ Jun 4, 2015 20:40

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Hobgoblin2099 posted:

Well, Joker is apparently a near immortal Slenderman in the New 52, so who knows?

Look, he needs to have access to a time machine, he needs to be louder, and whenever he's not around, every other character needs to be asking 'Where's Joker!?'

# ¿ Jun 7, 2015 18:18

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The worst thing about the 'Batman Doesn't Kill' thing is how all these stories turn that one legitimately positive character trait into a weakness by hammering it over and over. They make it entirely too easy to agree that yes, Bats just really enjoys his dances with his buddies and doesn't really care who else gets hurt. 'I don't kill people' should not be something that should be made to look like nothing but foolhardy weakness.

I've said it before, but the biggest thing Bats needs is some successes. People who reform and stay reformed, or even just stay in prison successfully. Something to vindicate the Not Murdering Policy rather than Joker getting off on getting beaten up and laughing about how many more dudes he's going to murder once he's out of here.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2015 18:47

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The problem with the Joker is every time he shows up they make the Punisher look like a reasonable person with a better approach to crime-fighting than Batman, which is insane and counter to the intended point of both Batman and the Punisher.

At least, that's the sense I get from the Punisher thread, that the intention with him is that he's supposed to be genuinely broken, fighting symptoms instead of causes, and that his brutality might be cathartic to an audience used to the Batman not only letting the Joker live but going out of his way to stop him from dying, but doesn't really accomplish anything.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2015 21:22

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Cythereal posted:

they keep making Harley Quinn lesbian-but-not-really-because-she'll-never-leave-the-Joker with Poison Ivy, who's a godawful mess of issues depicting women herself without making her Harley Quinn's on-and-off lover.

What. Why.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2015 22:09

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

a cartoon duck posted:

i like the part where, after vowing to put a stop to prison brutality, batman kicks a man in the neck

Brutality is only fun when he gets to do it, damnit.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2015 23:07

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

berryjon posted:

Look, the only reason Alfred took that bump on the head was because he saw Bruce was there and didn't want to show him up with his slick moves. What we don't see are the other 30 thugs he's beaten up to now as the game engine removed them to allow Bruce to pass.

Isn't Alfred ex-SAS or something?

# ¿ Jun 18, 2015 06:10

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 07:48

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Now that was some good batmanning. Sympathy, drama, some actual compassion to go with all the brutality, that was some good poo poo.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2015 08:39

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > The Real Arkham Horror. Let's Play Batman: Arkham Origins