You can always tell when you’ve been away from your console for a while. Updates galore, hardware and software. That fun ten minutes of my life gone, the game begins with a very swank Naughty Dog logo animation that leads to a simple title card of AK-47 sticking up in desert and the now familiar orchestrated music of Uncharted’s sweeping vistas. I pick campaign mode over multiplayer  and co-op(!)  at my standard normal difficulty. It’s like three clicks in confusing menus to save my data; not sure why they don’t have that interface streamlined. And then it’s a LOOOONNNGGG load. I mean, a few minutes of watching the ring in the right corner spin. I’m not sure why that hasn’t been streamlined either.

The game proper starts with a zoom in on a table covered with Indiana Jones style archeology stuff: gun, map, old things, etc., before the camera pans out to a street skyline. There’s a voiceover of Drake talking about dreams and night dreamers and day dreamers — day dreamers are dangerous because they can act out their dream. Turns out that’s a quote from Lawrence of Arabia. As we zoom over the city, we cut to a CS between two guys walking to a bar and the inside of the bar with  lots of close ups on pool players and patrons. The two enter, step up to bar briefly and then go to a back room followed by a thug. The two men are revealed to be Drake (our hero) and Sully (his mentor) as they enter back room and get searched by said thug. They walk to pool table and a guy in a suit named Talbot faces them from the other side.  Talbot brings forward a briefcase of money in exchange for an artifact that Drake got. Drake hands Talbot a silver ring from Francis Drake. Talbot wants to know how they got it, but Sully brushes the whole thing off with a dismissive gesture. Talbot verifies the ring is real, but Drake notices the money is fake. Drake says deal’s off and snatches the ring back. Talbot says they aren’t in a position to negotiate as thugs surround and… FIGHT!

The melee is the old square to hit, triangle to counter thing, but the fight scene feels more like a QTE with all of the button call outs and short CSes. It’s basically button press, button press, button press, CS involving Drake taking down a thug in a cool environmental moment. Standard Uncharted — cool to watch and experience, but not clear how much of this I’m doing or not doing. Case in point: we beat up the guys around the pool table and then a big guy comes in. There’s an interesting moment where Sully jumps on the guy’s back and then Drake CS picks up a stool. He stands there for a second but nothing happens and the guy changes forward and throws Drake through a stained glass window back into the bar below. I didn’t hit a button in that moment — did I miss an action there? Would it have changed me going through the window? I think not given what happens next. There’s a great looking shot of guys at table Drake broke looking down on him from Drake’s position and then Drake is CS thrown back into the middle of the bar. It’s Chapter 1: Another Round. I fight more with a new throw action (circle) and more cut moments. When we take out the little thugs, the big guy CS tackles me into a bathroom. It’s a VERY set-piece fight in the stalls with a couple of dodges and ends with a dodge/hit of the big guy in the face with a toilet lid. It’s a good looking fight overall, but again, not so gaming. More Drake and Sully banter as they walk into the kitchen, all pretty good if not stellar, and then we beat up more guys quickly in the kitchen on way out. They CS walk out into the alley where they notice they are surrounded by more guys. Drake is knocked down by the main thug they encountered inside right away, named Cutter. He says I’m all talk, which is funny since I just beat up like twelve guys. A car pulls up and then Talbot and an old woman with umbrella walk out. Sully recognizes the woman as Kate, and Drake knows her too. She gives some gloating villain dialogue and says that Drake gets off on cheating death. She takes the ring from Drake’s neck. Drake gets up to take the ring back, and Cuttor just shoots him and then Sully.  Didn’t see that coming. Kate is very upset that they’ve been shot, but Cutter gets a great line. “Aw, come on, they were a right pair of assholes.”   I liked that. Kate and Talbot drive off to leave Cutter looking at the bleeding bodies.

We fade out and cut to a bright city scene in Cartegena, Columbia. We pan down to the street to see Drake as a young teen twenty years earlier. He CS walks to Francis Drake museum. I get control inside for Chapter 2: Greatness from Small Things. The game tells me to look at my journal,  and I do to see notes on Francis Drake. I close the journal and then find a treasure on the ground (that’s a collectible — 100 things I am never going to chase.) I then start looking around at the exhibits in the museum. Drake wants to find something in particular. I go upstairs and find an exhibit case with the ring. The case is locked. Drake CS looks in his journal and takes down a code in the case. He then sees guy watching him — it’s a younger version of Sully. Drake walks back to see guy look at the display. The guy takes a quick mold of the lock  and walks away. A guard  then catches Drake and throws him out on street. Drake CS sees Sully on the street, and I get control to follow him and learn my stealth (circle) moves. I follow him through streets to a door, and press triangle to open it and continue following. Sully enters another building that I can’t enter, so I have to climb up the building instead. It’s standard Uncharted parkour, fun but not always clear what the next direction is. I successfully climb the building to CS see Sully get the key made. I have to go back down and climb around the outside of the buildings to go down to street using a big sign. Once on the ground, I follow Sully again as he meets Kate (Drake doesn’t know her yet). I follow them a little further until Drake CS steals Sully’s wallet to get the key. Drake starts to CS run away, but then the guy reappears in front of Drake and talks to him. Sully knows Drake lifted his wallet (he says Drake was broadcasting all of his moves), but Drake’s cocky and stand-offish even as a kid. They realize together that neither one of them wants to call the police. Drake eventually gives the wallet back and Sully leaves.

We cut to outside of the museum that night and Drake CS still has the key. It’s Chapter 3: Second Story Work. I die once trying to jump to interconnecting rope that I then catch the next time easily. Okay. I shimmy across to the museum and then have to find my way into the inside of exhibit. I die when I drop from too high a height and then die again- not sure how to get down off the roof. I finally find way across the roofs, and die once from a bad button push but manage to get to the second floor and enter the exhibit. Drake CS approaches the case and uses the key to open it. He takes the ring and a strange looking compass thing. Drake puts the ring on the compass, and it begins to unwind. But before it completes its unlocking, Kate and Sully enter with a team of thugs. They take the compass artifact, but Drake palms the ring. Kate hits him, and  he runs. This sets up a really nice chase scene across the roofs where I have to stay one step ahead of the guards. When I don’t know where I’m supposed to go next, I lose in a cheap way, but when I know where I’m going, it’s just awesome. At one point, Sully helps me by beating up a guard who jumps out in front of me. The scene ends with a CS of a guy with a gun approaching Drake. Drake picks up a gun from fallen thug and shakily aims it back. There’s a shot, and the thug falls, Sully standing behind him with a smoking gun. Sully helps Drake up, and we cut back to ta bar where Sully gets Drake some food and starts a conversation. Drake wants to know what Sully wants from him. Drake then reveals that the ring belongs in his family and that he thinks he’s Francis Drake’s illegitimate heir. Drake was in a boarding school before he started this quest.  Sully says it’s just a job and he’s just doing what he’s paid to do by getting the ring. Drake reveals that the compass was a decoding device. Francis Drake had five months of missing time when he was in the Indies, and Drake thinks that there are treasures that Francis has hidden there. Sully says he sees great things in their future together.

We cut back to the alley with Cutter. We look at the bodies for a beat and then CS Drake and Sully get up. They faked the shots, and Cutter is working with them. Drake says Cutter didn’t need to be so rough, and that becomes a running joke for the scene. Drake gave them a fake ring, and it turns out the whole thing was a set-up to draw Kate out to find the decoder. They need to get moving before the cops arrive, and that’s the start of Chapter 4: Run to Ground. I get control to start running with Sully and Cutter. We run and climb for a while, along the way learning that  Cutter is claustrophobic when we try to crawl through a tight alley. We then reach another climbing part, but as I start to climb, Cutter just muscles his way through the door I’m avoiding  — nice irony there. We get to a rendezvous point where there’s a van waiting, and surprise surprise Chloe (from the previous game) is here. Huh, what happened to the blond that Drake ended up with last game? Anyway, there’s some witty banter about beating up Drake before Chloe reveals that she saw the building that Kate drove into. They are going to sneak in to get decoder, but they arm up with guns anyway. Drake wants to be stealthy, but Cutter and Chloe don’t want to take chances. I get control to walk down the alley with the crew. Drake’s head tracking as we walk down the alley is annoying — he keeps looking around, making me think I’m missing something on the ground when there’s nothing there. The team doesn’t want to go in blazing, so Drake volunteers to go in first to check it out. I get control to start climbing – monkey that I am. Halfway up the pipe, it comes loose and I have to make a jump to another pipe, and I die once going up because the game doesn’t register my command. I get inside the building from an open window and it’s completely empty. I die from a drop when I don’t know where to go to get back to the ground floor, but then I do it successfully. I open the garage door to let the team in and they CS start looking around to figure out where the car went. I get control to search and I find some pressure spots on the ground  near a wall. It turns out there are four pressure points (one for each tire) and Drake has everyone stand on one. Nothing happens and I get control back to figure out what we have to do. Regaining control, I shine my flashlight and see a glimmer on the wall. It turns out we have to shine our flashlights on the light sensors on wall, and when we CS do it, it opens a fake wall to reveal a large tunnel. The team CS confers and they decide that Chloe is going back to get the van as the rest  go in.

I get control to run through the tunnel. We eventually find a locked door which I get to shoot the lock off of. We enter into a narrow room, and there’s a weird moment where Drake says they have to slip through a narrow passage, but I’m not sure what to do. I try every button until I  push forward and that leads Drake and company to slowly make their way through the passage. As they go, the three guys make a Macduff joke where Sully gets the quote wrong and Drake doesn’t even know who he is — interesting moment of establishing their characters. We wander around more tunnels and shoot four guys who appear in front of us. We then climb down long shaft, jumping from pipe to pipe and finding another treasure. When we get to the bottom, we enter another corridor and shoot a couple of guys. I’m kind of crapping up this shooting (L1 to aim and R1 to fire) but I’m getting better as we go.  We climb up the inside of dome to open a passageway, and  wander the passageway to a dead end. We double back to enter earthen tunnel and start Chapter 5: London Underground. The earthen tunnel leads to some old underground room. The gate is shut on a door out, but the counterweight is stuck. Drake has to climb to loosen it. I climb around the room to do so and get to the weight.  They lift the gate and go through as I climb over the gate and start running along the rafters in the giant stone room we enter next. As I do, Drake sees guards and shouts down a warning to Cutter and Sully. They take the guards out as I continue to move forward. Rounding a corner on the rafters, Drake sees the car and Cutter says no more guns. I jump across some chandeliers and start climbing down as a guard spots Sully and Cutter coming up on the ground. I stealth behind the guard and take him out with a stealth attack (circle) move. We’re now in some kind of Francis Drake tribute room. We stealth take out a couple of guards and enter a tutor era room. At this point, they now asked who these people are about fifty times. I get it guys; the tunnels are weird. We then go up some stairs to a set of archeological displays. The game cuts to a CS of them looking down on Kate and Talbot talking in a huge library. Kate puts the ring in the decoder and realizes it’s a fake. They figure out that Drake switched the ring and that Cutter is a traitor. Kate says to find them and get the ring, and the group scatters. I get control to stealth take out the two remaining guards. In CS, Drake, Sully, and Cutter approach the table with the decoder. Drake goes through a journal of Lawrence of Arabia on the desk. Cutter and Drake argue about how Lawrence died before Sully reminds Drake he’s been waiting twenty years to find the decoder again. Drake puts the ring in decoder and decodes the message. The message is”long hidden” which is an anagram for the Golden Hind, Francis Drake’s ship. Drake realizes that they have to search room for the ship exhibit to find the next clue, but that’s enough for me and I call it a night.

I begin again in the tunnels, and wandering quickly gets me back to a predation scene in a subway terminus with another radio guy blocking something or other. I honestly cannot remember what these guys do, but I know I have to talk him down first. I creep up to the radio guy in a subway car and take him out silently in a very nice crawling stealth move. From there, it’s clean takedowns of the other five or so guys. I walk further down the tunnels and take out some shield guys in a fist fight. You have to do a special move to disarm the shield guys, which is annoying in a big fight but not a big deal. I keep going and kill a few more joker teeth; it’s really good to have those as a path to know where I’m heading. I navigate ducking and sliding through the tunnel to then enter a grating that leads underneath a big group of thugs waiting for guns to arrive. I jump out to takedown the leader and then beat the rest in a decently handled fistfight. When I finish the fight, I get a radio message that the Mayor has been arrested and brought to Arkham City. WTF? What kind of sense does that make? How did he get here? Why does Strange have that authority? Why for that matter is this the first time I’ve ever even HEARD about the mayor. Well, at least Oracle and Batman also talk about how weird it is.

My next mission is changed from getting back to Freeze with the cure to having to go save the mayor. I run around the world until I get to the objective marker. There are a bunch of thugs there, including a couple with guns, but I fist fight them all down. Once all the thugs are done, I hear the mayor talking to me,  but I’m at the spot I’m supposed to be and I can’t see him. I end up coming in and out of this area about fifteen times looking for my target and hearing Batman say that I shouldn’t leave. Oh, he was on the ground. That’s great — make him look exactly like a thug I just beat up. That’s clear feedback for you. I hit the button to pick him up, and we cut to a CS of Mayor Sharp hanging upside as Batman interrogates him. Sharp tells Batman that he let Strange take charge of Arkham City in exchange for campaign money to get votes. Wow, this might have been meaningful if the game had started with any logical sense of what Arkham City was. Batman lets the mayor go and wants to find out who Strange used to make the donations, but Oracle tells him he has to get cured first. The new mission is to go to where Freeze is and I do. A bunch of Joker’s men are trying to get into the frozen over building and I have to take them out. I die in the fistfight the first time because I’m sloppy and there are three different kinds of enemies (normal, big guys, and shields) in the battle. I die several times more; it’s a hard fist fight for me to be this sloppy in. I finally win when I use tactics intelligently to take out all the normal guys first, and I’ll give the game credit for a very interesting fight. As soon as I’m done, a payphone rings and I have to go get another Zsazs phone. This one is very far away and I get there with literally 1 second to spare. It’s a nice emergent moment. I play the tracking mini-game and get about halfway to catching him.

I go back, zap icy door open and go inside. This immediately cuts to a CS of Freeze. Freeze takes the blood I have and then centrifuges a cure. (I know, I know. Don’t ask — if you really wanted to pick on science in Batman, comic book narratives are not for you.) Freeze puts some of the cure in a safe, but then shatters the other vial in his hand. He tells Batman he wants Batman to retrieve his wife from the Joker first. When did the Joker get Freeze’s wife? When was that plot introduced? Forget it. Asking for consistency at this point is almost unfair to this dumb story. Anyway, it’s fight time. Oracle says that Freeze is too powerful to fight directly, but she gets the suit telemetry whatever that means which shows me in a small interface whether Freeze sees me or not. I have no idea what to do in this fight and die once, but then I realize  I have to hide and take him down with traps. When he falls for a trap, he’s vulnerable for a quick beatup before he attacks again. He then destroys that trap so you have to do a new type. I die once because I can’t remember the explosive commands. I die again because I can’t find anymore traps in the room. This fight is annoying. A lot of the traps are one-shot, so if you get them wrong they are wasted, and it’s a little silly to see Freeze just stumbled stupidly following my warm footsteps into really simple traps.  I’m calling it a night.

I start where I left off: following the blood trail from the assassin that happened to be in the museum. I like that I’m doing this using detective mode, but it’s kind of annoying because whenever it gets to a ledge or jump, it’s impossible to find the trail again without a long search. I finally  see the assassin when I get to the end of the blood trail and now I have to chase her. Eh — the chase is mediocre. The rubber band is pretty obvious, in that whenever I slow down a little bit, I see her waiting for me around a corner. The dynamic difficulty adjustment here is failing the way too obvious test. It makes the chase scenes in Assassin’s Creed seem that much better. I catch her and then dodge a knife attack to put a tracer on her as we fight. She takes me down CS and the scene ends with her over me with sword ready. Then Robin shows up, ready to fight. Batman tells him to stand down and he does. The assassin says Batman’s only alive because Ghul wants him to be, and they leave. Robin says that Alfred sent him to help Batman. Batman tells him to go back to Gotham and get the blood of the people in Gotham tested to see if they are poisoned. Robin says he’ll come back. Batman says Robin’s needed in Gotham and just about tells him to get lost. Wow, Batman was kind of a dick to Robin there. I guess that’s consistent character. Still, you can’t help but see the homoerotic between them. There’s a tension I think you can’t miss. Anyway, as Robin leaves, I get a new line launcher tool from the last game that lets me zipline across spaces.

Back to assassin hunting. I follow the tracer in circles having several good fights with random thugs. When I get close to the target, I die because I don’t see that one group of thugs has two guns instead of one. I do it again to beat them and then enter an underground tunnel. I contact Oracle to make sure my signal stays good, and she comments on my fading health. More fighting and then I die in a fist fight where I can’t find the rhythm right. I take them down the second time. Apparently, Joker’s men are rounding up Penguin’s now that he’s down. And there’s the return of the chattering teeth. There’s another big fight that I take out smoothly, and then, oh hey, I’m back where I took out the last disruptor in the Penguin plot. That’s pretty interesting. I traverse more tunnels and as I do, there’s a CS where Batman collapses from the poison and then recovers. I walk into another fight in which I get a nice takedown where I use smoke bomb smartly, and then a predation scene with some kind of jammer that disrupts my ability to track which enemy is which. I die because I don’t know what to do with the jamming guy, but then the second time I take him out and predate them in a really sloppy set of punch and run moments.

Winning the predation scene has me save a nurse, and talking to her reveals that the Joker isn’t stealing the weapons – Strange is giving them to the Joker. I blow up a Titan container that’s nearby before I go. There’s another CS of Batman coughing as I approach a closed door. It’s an electric door and when I use my tool to open it, I see a room full of strung up thugs. There’s a series of corridors behind doors which end with a large room filled with small amusement park size buildings and a number of deactivated robots. I get a Riddler trophy inside crevice and then I suddenly teleport outside for a CS. Batman sees a long sealed door and then says I should scan the robots for video memory of another way in. When I start scanning the first one, its head explodes so I have to scan multiple robots to get what I need. In the middle of the scanning, I fight two ninja in a quick fist fight. I find all the robots and learn about a secret door off to the side. It’s got a keyhole that looks like it needs a scimitar to open it. And, lucky me, a guard shows up on cue. I beat up the guard to use sword to unlock the door.

I run around through more tunnels until I reach a ladder to climb up ladder. When I get to the top, Batman CS collapses. There’s a very cool CS of Bruce’s parents calling to him from a bright beam of light. I can’t do anything but feebly walk forward so I do. Then in CS, guards suddenly appear and Talya, daughter of Ghul, stops Batman. She tempts him, and he does his no-nonsense Batman thing. She tells him that to get the blood he needs, he has to do the assassin’s trial. She says as part of the trial, he’ll have to take a life. They walk down a staircase to the trial together, and as they walk, she warns him that many have tried and failed the trial. He says he won’t. He then asks if she’s trying to dissuade him, and she says no hesitantly. Finally, they arrive at the door to the trial and he enters.

Ras al Ghul is speaking in a voice over throughout this scene, and he says the first trial is to drink from the chalice in the small room I enter. This causes the walls to crumble to reveal a new colorful desert world of high platform with huge chasms between them. I then have to glide along a path without touching the ground or any other objects. I basically have to dive bomb then climb to make it to an unknown destination. It’s kind of unfairly hard because it is impossible to judge distance from this perspective. After several deaths, I finally realize that I just have to make it to a blue platform, and as soon as I realize that, I do it right away. I glide a second time to get to a next tower, and when I land, I have to beat up two guards. After beating them,  I glide a third time to go through portal to a slightly different weird desert world. The next glide is hard because I can’t judge depth, and I fail many times trying to weave through a lattice. When I land on the next platform, there’s another fight and a glide to enter a final portal.

I reappear in the tunnels, and I’m told that I passed the gauntlet of ninja. I talk to Talya, and see Ras in CS who says Batman must kill him to get the blood. Batman says he won’t kill. Ras dives back in his Lazarus pool and comes out regenerated. This triggers a stupid boss battle against Ras. I beat him in the room, and then teleport to a fight in desert with multiple and a giant sandstorm Ras. Why when Batman does everything else so well does it always fall down on the bosses? I beat this dumb desert scene pretty easily and then cut to a CS of Batman with a sword at Ghul’s throat. Talya says Batman has to kill him, and Batman says no. Tayla says Ghul has to die and then we cut back to the desert. There, we literally repeat the whole desert battle. Sigh. I beat him again and we return to the room. Ghul takes Talya hostage and says that if Batman won’t kill, he will. The scene is resolved with a cheap shit win with new tool  I receive at this moment (reverse batarang). That’s nice — beating a villain with a tool that I didn’t have until this moment. Batman then uses a syringe to take some of Ghul’s blood. Newly freed, Talya says that she thinks they both betrayed them. Ras says he’s gone mad from continued resurrection and Batman tells him he has to kick the Lazarus pit. I leave back to go back to the street. Man, was that subplot filled with stupid turns and obvious crap. I beat up guys with shields and CS tell Oracle that the trial has cured the poison for me. I find my way out of the Ghul area, but I’m not out yet because I can’t remember this maze. I’ve been playing a while so I call it a night.

I start again with the stupid fuse box thing again, and what’s the best thing about it is I have to do the whole batarang the button behind the electrified fence again. Another ten minutes of my life gone forever. I am pretty much ready to give up on this puzzle, and despite how much I HATE doing it, I am almost looking it up online to see what the solution is. However, I decide give it one last go and realize that the Riddler trophy I found was under an elevator. I this time get in the elevator and take it up. There’s a explodable ceiling above the elevator, so I blow through it and then another wall to a balcony over the room I was trapped in. I turn off the electrical fences, but I don’t go back. I just continue moving on this new floor. There’s one more wall to explode, and doing so cuts to a CS of Batman walking into a room and getting his arm frozen to a wall. I see the Penguin with Freeze’s ice gun, saying he’ll kick Batman’s ass again. He then freezes a cop who is running away and runs out of the room. I get control when Penguin leaves.

I’m in room with a large half frozen lake in the middle. I  have to walk slowly on the ice to not break it. The frozen cop is calling for help, so I head to him first and hit A to save him. I thus save the first guy and he CS tells me that there are two more cops in here. I get control to go back to my search. About halfway through the room, the ice stops and it’s just water and I can’t enter it. To traverse the lake, I have to batclaw down a pallet, jump on the makeshift raft,  and then use my batclaw to grab hooks on the wall to pull my raft around the room. Penguin over the intercom points out that’s there a big shark in the water which then briefly appears near my raft. I raft over to a platform and  save two more cops. In CS, one of them tells me there are more deeper inside. I stat rafting toward an exit to the room, but I die once because I stupidly drop into the water. When I respawn, I get up to a ledge.  I hear down a hallway to a new room, outer ring of a hallway with open walls facing into some pillar in the room center. On the pillar, I see Penguin on a central pillar with freeze gun. I can’t reach him because he’s constantly strafing at me with the freeze gun. Since I can’t take Penguin yet, I go back out and across the ice room to another exit. In that doorway, I beat up a few guards in a pitifully handled fight. I then find Freeze in a museum display case. He’s alive so I need to find a way to free him. Looking around, I notice a wall I can blow up wall. I spray the wall with my gel and then in CS a big guy grabs Batman and throws him into the room. Said big guy and thugs enter the room to fight. I die once because of my low health from the previous pitiful fight, but then I win, taking out the big guy with multiple feedback-less beatdowns. I free Freeze and he and Batman have a CS conversation. The Freeze model is awesome, by the way. Batman threatens Freeze about how to stop the ice gun Penguin has, but he won’t talk because he doesn’t want to give batman ways to hurt him in the future. Batman becomes a complete dick in this scene, first threatening Freeze’s comatose wife and then pulling the cold gel thing (presumably keeping his temperature low) out of Freeze’s chest, effectively torturing him. This gets Freeze to say that there’s an override chip in Freeze’s suit. Batman gives Freeze the cold thing back and goes to get the chip. I get control to leave, pausing to ponder (to no avail) how to get a Riddler trophy that blocked by a steam pipe.

I head back to the ice room and sail on my batclaw powered raft across the room to a new area where the suit is. At the door to this area, I talk to two cops who say they gave info to penguin under torture. I move on to listen to penguin torture a guy as I go across the room to see a room filled with guards. This is a predation room, but the twist is that there are thugs with thermal vision and bombs so can’t hide on gargoyles. I die once in this scene because I don’t remember what those thermal things do. To win, I have to run around the level, crouching and hiding in tunnels. Right, THIS is Batman fun. I stealth takeout one guy, jump two more when I roll out behind a pillar and use a smoke bomb to stop their shots, I glide kick out one, invert snag one from a gargoyle, and finally sneak up behind the last guy as he holds a hostage. Oh that is so very fun. The room is clear. I level up and get thermal protection to keep me invisible from that vision in the future. I talk to the cop hostages, and then find the freeze suit. Batman CS takes a cold cell out of the suit and tells a cop to give it to Freeze. Batman then takes something out of suit and make Freeze override device. There is a very Mass Effect style audio reward track for the new tool back.

Now ready to take down Penguin, I head back to the center room. It turns out the ice is beginning to thaw. I pull my raft across the room when the shark attacks. I have to qte beat it up, and I do so easily with some simple attacks and get across the room. Back in the room with Penguin, I don’t know what do with this disruptor. It’s not in range when I try it but I can’t seem to get closer to the Penguin. After a couple of minutes running in circles and experimenting, I finally find a corridor to Penguin. I get close to him with a well timed dodge and use the disruptor. As the Penguin wonders what happened to the weapon, Batman CS knocks Penguin to the ground. They taunt each other for a spell, and then Penguin blows up the ice pillar Batman is on. Batman falls into pit with giant giant guy. Penguin shocks him awake in a long CS of shocks. Turns out it’s Solomon Grundy. He’s nice and scary as a villain. FIGHT! I have no idea what I’m supposed to do at first, but oh a tip tells me. Grundy is periodically shocked by three power cells in the ground that recharge his health. The key is to blow up the generators with gel. It takes a few tries, but I do take him down without dying, blowing up all three cells and then punching the crap out of him.  I have to go finish him off with one more blow before I can leave the room, but of course he wakes up again and I have to use the set of explosives all over again. It’s a boss fight, and it’s kind of dumb that way all these game bosses are. I do beat Grundy and then charge an armed Penguin to take him down.

We cut to a CS of Freeze beating up Penguin and then throwing him into a glass case. Freeze tells Batman that the cure for the disease he has is too unstable. Any vaccine needs an enzyme to bond it to DNA. Batman thinks of Rash Al-Ghul (AND WE HAVE A WINNER – VILLAIN # 10!!!!) because his longevity shows that he has enzymes to keep things stable. At this point, a servant of Al-Ghul (who happens to be hanging out in the museum — sure, whatever) runs away from the space, with an insult for Batman and warning him that Al-Ghul will be waiting. Batman can follow the blood trail from the agent breaking out of the case. I see the blood trail in detective vision and CS contact Oracle. Oracle brings up that Batman had some history with Al Ghul daughter — that’s just want a Batman game needs, romance. I head outside to start the game, but it’s late call it a night.

So something didn’t work when my game crashed last time, so I have to do whole Catwoman fight over again. Sigh. I win again and go back to Batman. He CS recovers on a roof. He gets up and the Joker talks to him through a PDA taped to his chest. Turns out the Joker poisoned Batman, and he only person working on a cure is Mr. Freeze. Sigh — what villain is that again? Eight? So I have to find Freeze. There’s no clear location where Freeze is, but I can follow a temperature gauge to find the coldest part of Arkham City. I start heading there, and I hear a phone ringing. I answer the phone and it’s again Zsazs.  I guess that’s the role of payphone’s here — to have a psychopath talk to me. When I get on the phone, there’s a scanning animation to look for Zsazs’s phone. He hangs up before the trace completes, but he tells me that I have to find the next payphone he rings or he’s going to kill someone. It’s a race across the city against a clock. I do it with almost a minute to spare,  just as a thug comes on me. When I pick up, there’s another scan as Zsazs talks about his parents and his psychosis, and oh, there’s a mini-game here where I have to follow Zsazs’s cellphone marker with my reticule to slowly complete the trace. Then the phone hangs up. I start heading back to Freeze, but there’s another side quest on my map, so I get distracted and go to it instead. I find political prisoner there who tells me that Dr. Strange had him setting up things around the city. The prisoner suddenly gets shot and killed. I have to set up a crime scene to find out what happened. I scan to reveal the line of the shot and then I follow to a ledge where I find a bullet casing. I scan the casing and GOOD GOD ANOTHER VILLAIN?!? Ok Dead Shot fired the shot. Fine. Can I PLEASE get back to the plot now?

I keep following Freeze by temperature, having to restart once because of an unclean disc. When I get to where Freeze is supposed to be, I have to predate some guys who are camped out here. I die once because I don’t remember the button commands, but then I take them down easily the second time.Once they are down, I find my first Titan container and blow it up with my explosive gel. I then waste a lot of time trying to find another one in the Steel Mill before I give up. I answer another Zsazs call, and race successfully to the next phone in time. Right after I complete the second call, I die in a fist fight because I’m sloppy. I go back to Freeze and finally head inside the building where he’s supposed to be. I find my first Riddler trophy here under some stairs. I see a gate I can power up, and then I slide under the partially open door to get to the main room. (And thanks for the reminder about sliding, Greg.) From a fallen guard, I get a radio signal for Penguin. I get to a main room where I find five thugs that I have to predate, which I do handily. I interrogate the last one and find out that the Penguin has Freeze for some reason I frankly don’t pay any attention to, because really, how could this possibly make sense? Joker poisoned me to get a cure from Freeze who was kidnapped by Penguin? Oh this is such a dumb story.

I try to go back outside to find Penguin, but Penguin locks me in this building. I have to use my detective mode to trace wires then use my cryptographic device to unlock the door. It’s a little confusing to do, as you have to rotate the L and R sticks until you fill vibration, but I get it. I work my way back to the museum where the Penguin is. I get to the museum, beat up the guards outside, and creep in. Inside are a couple of guys with knives. There’s some command to dodge the knife that makes no sense to me, so I take my cuts and just beat them up. I find a motion sensor that locks a door I need to go through as soon as I walk through an archway. There’s a terminal to hack to turn the motion sensor off,  but the Penguin is blocking my cryptographic device’s signal. I need to find the disruptors to stop the Penguin’s hack. I go back outside to find them. I find the first one quickly, and after a fist fight to take out some guards, I then punch my way through the three monitors on the disruptor to destroy it. I find the second one after quick predation, but there’s a third one being quickly set up in a subway.  I find an entrance to the underground and I fight way through a bunch of guards, finding a couple more Riddler trophies on the way. I predate my way to the last jammer and take it out.  That sequence was pretty fun.

I head back to the museum and beat up more guards outside. I get inside and deactivate the motion detector. As I head deeper into the museum, I beat up more guys inside (including a guy in body armor that I have to do some weird beat down command sequence to defeat) who are threatening a hostage. When the thugs are down, I talk to Officer Jones who is held hostage. Jones knows a code to convince me he’s actually a cop. He tells me that there’s more of his team inside. I continue on through some hallways to be blocked by a gate. I have to use stupid remote batarang to get past gate (by hitting a button behind the gate) and it takes me like twenty tries to get right. Your camera follows the batarang and it’s impossible to tell where you are at first. I finally get the gate open and keep going. I arrive in a new room to see a CS of Penguin killing one of the cop hostages. I see more of the cops held hostage. Penguin and Batman CS trade credible and decently written threats. When that conversation is over,  the Penguin lets loose a hoard of initiate gang members on me and I take them all down easily. The Penguin then lets loose a big Titan-drugged guy along with some new thugs. I beat up the big guy, jumping on his back to charge him into the other thugs, and pretty easily take them all down. Penguin leaves and locks the doors. So, to keep going, I have to do ANOTHER FUCKING REMOTE BATARANG to hit the button to get past the electrical fences. The great part of this is the place where the batarang has to go, the SCREEN IS TOO DARK TO SEE. FUCK YOU GAME!!!!!!  I finally get the button, but past the one gate that opens, it’s nothing but a Riddler trophy. It turns out that to actually proceed after the Penguin, I have to disable fuse box from behind the main gate. I try hitting it with batarang and it doesn’t seem to work. I can’t get anything through the gate that I can tell.  FUCK YOU GAME. I’m done for the night.

I start off back in the chimney. It’s more crawling through tunnels. There’s more steam blocking Batman from walking. Steam is kind of weird as a set piece blocker. There is fire in this game; isn’t that a more threatening danger? To turn the steam off, I have to use my batarang to turn off some switches. Not the most interesting gameplay, that. As I continue, I overhear Harley talking to huge room full of guards about how the doctor failed and as I approach a window on the room, she (standing on a ledge high above the room) throws the doctor into the mob in a CREEPY moment. A lone tied up woman in front of a room full of male thugs — the imagination goes horrible places. But then Harley changes her mind and tells them to try to get more info out of the doctor first. It’s a set piece and I can’t get into the room to interrupt it. Another steam blocker forces me to backtrack to turn off a series of switches with my batarang. I finally end up in the room for a big fist fight I handle passably well. When the fight is finished, there’s a CS of Harley up on her ledge whining that I should be dead,  but then says she’s locking me in this room to burn before exiting through a closed door. It’s a nicely acted scene.

I wander around to find a new way to get to Harley. I end up in another room where I predate (my short hand for the stealthy predator scenes) out three guys. This is feeling more like the Batman I love. As if answering my prayers, the game follows this with  another longer predation scene that is quite good. You can hear the doctor screaming for help throughout and it’s very nicely creepy. Thugs defeated, I rescue the doctor, and she says that the Titan in Joker’s blood is killing him. It turns out that Harley is listening to them remotely and has some thugs seal them in the room. Batman CS says he has to get back to Joker. He then pulls something random off of some machinery to make a new tool. It makes no sense, but whatever. I basically get a new tool to remotely control electronics. The controls for it are a little confusing, in that the button you push to shoot the remote also controls what the remote does, so you have to guess which of the two buttons you need to hit to do what you want the electronics to do. For now, it involves opening and closing doors.

I return back to where Harley was, and after some experimentation, I use my new tool to throw a hook on a chain up to the door on the ledge where Harley disappeared. Once the hook is up there, I pull it down to rip the door open. I grapple up there, but then Batman is CS kicked off the ledge by a big sub-boss with a hammer. He comes out with a bunch of thugs. I kill the thugs quickly, but the big guy does seem to react to my beatings. The tips tell me that I need to use shock to kill the hammer guy, but when I shock him, he just seems to spin and I can’t figure out how to knock him down. I die once trying. The second time, I waste a lot of time causing the hammer guy to spin only to realize that I just have to beat him up enough to take him down. Wow some feedback on that would have been nice. Anyway, I grapple up to the ledge and enter a new room. I see a CS of Harley crying over the Joker’s dead body. I’m suspicious and some is Batman. He CS scans and it is a dead body, but then the Joker jumps him from behind with some kind of gas mask. Batman throws him off but succumbs to the gas as Harley knocks him out.

We cut to Catwoman talking on a ledge, deciding if she’s going to help Batman or rob Strange. She decides to rob Strange and says she needs Poison Ivy’s help to do it. I now get to play as Catwoman. It has got some nice new mechanics as she more jumps around more than she grapples. To climb a building, she jumps up in steps and use a whip to swing to other ledges. It’s a nice change of pace. I’m first going back to her apartment to get some stuff and on the way, I fight as her — she’s quicker but weaker, and otherwise combat is the same. I run around city to get back to apartment, fighting two groups of guards. Climbing in the apartment, I get caltrops and bolos. I go back to Ivy’s place (hello villain#8) and Ivy’s goons are all around it. I get in another fight on the way and I’m finally remembering how to fight in Batman, jumping from opponent to opponent with some grace. I find way into Ivy’s base, but as I approach it, I don’t realize that I walk into predation scene and get shot to death something quick. Predation is much harder out here without Batman’s grappling hook to make quick getaways. I take these thugs down and level up, buying Batman a bunch of new armor.  I go inside to a CS of Catwoman entering Ivy’s lair and Ivy saying she’s upset about some flowers that Cat killed. Boy, Poison Ivy is a stupid villain. Anyway, Ivy wants me dead, so I have to fight a series of guards on a set of different levels going up, having to jump up to the next level each time I defeat one group to avoid a poison gas. I beat these guys handily and get up to see Ivy. We cut to a CS when I do where Ivy captures Cat. We cut back to the Batman story, but the game crashes so I call it a night.

It’s kind of a minor point to start this session with, but I really don’t like the game icon for Arkham City on the Xbox. I know the current story does a lot with Catwoman and Batman, but the image is one Batman facing to the right with Catwoman on his back facing the opposite direction. Batman is holding some kind of Batcable that’s somehow connected to Catwoman; it at least implies that she’s tied up. It’s way too bondage for me. Why is Batman a sexual character?  His Wayne persona is a playboy — the whole point is that is a ruse. I don’t want the Dark Knight to be sexual. I want him to be bad-ass. Boy, I hope this point ends with the icon.

Another 6 MB download? What’s up with this game and the updates? I get started again, parkouring my way to the church where the Joker should be. On the way there, I’m overhearing the radio chatter of the guards there and learn that Harly is inside. Hello villain number 5! Not even an hour into the game yet. I get to the church and beat up the guards outside. Guards down, I go in. I enter into a large hallway where Harly flips forward and attacks. I fend her off quickly, but then armed guards threaten some hostages so I’m kind of CS frozen. She tells me that the Joker is recovering and some doctor was taken to help him. She leaves, telling the guards to keep me here. Batman CS thinks that he can’t charge armed guards, so I get an instruction to throw a smoke bomb. I do and Bat-grapple my way into the rafters. It’s predator time. I’m told to use my X-ray like detective view and learn that there are four guards altogether. I take down the first two under careful instruction by getting behind them, dropping to the floor and then hitting Y to knock them both out. I get a third guy through a thin wall with another Y takedown. To take the last guard down,  I have to glide across the room to a ledge in order to take down him from behind so that he can’t kill the hostage in front of him. But I don’t know the glide controls and I get it wrong like three times, dropping in front of him leading him to kill the hostage and making me replay the scene. The fourth time I finally figure it out. I take the guy out and the hostages are free.

I talk to the doctors and the guards. I learn about one doctor that cut his face off when he went mad. He’s clinging to a box they can’t get out of his hands. There doesn’t seem to be anything to do with this, but it seems way too intricate to not be a plot point. Oh well. I also learn that have to find a doctor that Harly kidnapped. The next step according to my mission list is to get to the bell tower to see if the Joker is there. Not sure how to get there, so I explore around the rafters a little while. And helpful guy that Batman is, he reminds me periodically that the gunshot came from the bell tower. Periodically here being every 45 seconds or so. For ten minutes. With exactly the same line. Imagine how fun that is. Finally, I find a way to climb up when I spot a door I missed. I climb for a bit and enter the top room. There I find rifle that’s being remotely controlled. The Joker comes in over televisions and taunts me. He then sets off some bombs. I jump out as the tower explodes and as the tower burns, Batman says that he has a radio signal on the Joker and can find him.

I start heading to that location by jumping from roof to roof, but as I go, I notice there are a couple of side quests. It’s kind of annoying to find them because the map in the game doesn’t show height and so there’s no way to exactly find my way to them, and I’m not currently sure how to make them show up on when I’m running around on the main game screen. Despite the frustration, I do find my way to the first side quest. I beat up some random thugs on the roof and enter a building. Inside, I find Bane. He and Batman CS talk and he says he’s looking to destroy the remaining Titan containers to keep it away from others. Batman agrees to find six while Bane finds the other six, but he warns Bane not to lie to him. It’s a nice scene. The barrels now appear on my map, but they are just as much a pain to find as the side quest was. I also stumble across something called an AR challenge. They are gliding challenges where I have to glide through a series of circles in the air. There are four altogether in this side quest. I get through the first two paths pretty simply, but the third one involves a big drop that I’m not getting so I give up for now.

Between the first and second AR paths, I hear a phone ringing. I do the map search to find it and then have to beat up some guards (sloppily this time) to pick it up. It’s Zsasz saying he’s got something set up for me, and it is creepy as hell. Zsasz is a great villain. Still, that’s three side quests in one trip. It feels scattered. I don’t really want to play GTA here. I liked Arkham Asylum with a very strong main plot and some very simple side quests that I could take care of afterwards. There is a story here and I want to follow it. I don’t want to be distracted by a hundred other things. Anyway, I find the Joker’s signal and it’s an amusement park, a very nice setting. There seems to be a Titan container here, but while I’m looking for it, I jump into a chimney by accident which turns out to be the entrance to the Joker’s base. Ok, I guess I’m back on mission then. There’s a CS of Batman falling into the active furnace and landing on a wire over the flame. I jump off the wire on to a ledge and then wander around the inside of the chimney. Along the way, I get introduced to my other tools by using them to keep going: the Batclaw to open a pipe to cool an overheated steaming barrier, the explosive gel to blow a hole in a floor. There’s clearly a bit more of this furnace ahead, so I decide to call it a night.

Ok, there are just too many good games coming out to waste time on crap like Deus Ex, so I’m giving up and going on to something I’ve been looking forward to: Batman! Starting it is a bit weird. Good god there are so many updates. Didn’t this game just come out? After about ten minutes of Xbox and game updates, we actually start. It’s got a nice familiar title screen from previous game, Batman on a roof with a grayed world. He jumps when I pick a save slot, and as the game loads and goes through the interface, there’s a nice set of animations between still shots that the camera slowly rotates around. It’s nice that this is a cool effect, because I am waiting FOREVER for the game to save the first save slot. There’s also some very nice orchestrated music, by the way. My god it’s still saving — what the hell?!? I didn’t DO ANYTHING yet. Oh, it’s not saving; it’s just showing me what the save animation looks like and waiting for me (as indicated by a few words in the lower left) to hit the button   to continue. FUCK YOU INTERFACE. I decide to redeem my Catwoman code for some downloadable play later. That loads in the background. I choose to start the game at normal difficulty with no subtitles. So, am I in for some Batman goodness?

We start on white as an unseen man says Mr. Wayne has much to discuss. The scene comes up on Vicky Vale, reporting outside Arkham City. Bruce Wayne shows and walks off stage behind her to see the Arkham City prison.  We’re back in the white and the unseen man says no one is untouchable. It turns out that Arkham City is an out of control, walled off part of Gotham where criminals are basically thrown in and left to their own devices. Wayne takes a podium and says that he wants to close Arkham City down, and suddenly a swat team like group appears and Wayne is captured at the podium. We cut back to the white which fades out to show some doctor who has captured Wayne (because Wayne is easier to catch than Batman, he says). The doctor goes on to say that he has something called Protocol Ten that he’s going to initiate and that Wayne shouldn’t stop him because he knows Wayne’s secret. Umm…didn’t this game just start? How does this guy know that I’m Batman? Anyway, turns out he is Professor Hugo Strange and he is informally in charge of Arkham City. He leaves, and when he does, I’m given an interface cue to  use the left joystick to “escape”. I wiggle the joystick and break the chair I’m handcuffed to. A guard runs in and I counter him by hitting the y button on command to knock him down. I’m then CS knocked around and thrown into the street by another guard. The street is very Half-Life-y with a bunch of fenced in pens and guards corralling prisoners.  I’m told to go to a line and I do while being mocked by other prisoners for being Bruce Wayne. I cross the line after being threatened by a random convict, and when I get to the end of the line, I’m thrown into an elevator with reporter who doesn’t want to listen to me because of my playboy image. Wayne tells him to stay close as we wait for the elevator to open.

The elevator opens and there are a bunch of thugs on the other side waiting to pound us. The reporter runs the second the door opens and gets jumped by a thug, and I have to fight my way through a few guys to rescue him. I start carrying him away, and I’m CS knocked out by guy with pipe. I come to in a new area being brought to the Penguin. He wants to beat Wayne up as revenge for something about his family. He tries to hit me with a pair of brass knuckles, but I counter him and start fighting his horde of about six guards. Ack — I’m kicked out of the game for the stupid downloadable content. Oh Xbox, why would you interrupt my game for that? If I wanted the downloadable stuff so badly, I would have just waited for it. Anyway, I reload to the Penguin fight scene and it’s exactly the kind of awesome Batman brawl I want, where I beat up a room full of guards in a set of strikes and counters. I leave the Penguin behind (umm, why?) to climb to the roof so I can call Alfred. I climb a bit and then CS tell him to drop the package at the Ace Chemical building.  I have to go there next. I continue to climb the tower parkour style, and when I get up there,  I see a jet fly by and drop the Batman suit at the top.  I suit up and then use a key I stole from a guard during the fight to tap into Strange’s radio signal. It’s a little mini activity where I have to hold A down over a circle on my Bat-wrist-computer-display to hear that Dent is holding Catwoman and may kill her. Wait, Two-Face AND Catwoman? How long have I been playing this game? 30 minutes? That’s already FOUR different costumed foes, if Strange counts. How about some focus, RockSteady? At this rate, you’ll use the whole DC pantheon by hour five. Anyway, Dent’s holding her in a courthouse and Batman thinks, for some reason unknown to me, that Catwoman will know what’s going on here. The camera zooms to said courthouse, so I guess that’s my next destination.

I glide over to the courthouse in what is always such a beautiful shot in these games. I land in a crowd of goons and beat up them up, taking more damage than I should as I’m still rusty on the controls. Once they are down, I go into the courthouse. I go in the front door, but the main courtroom door is locked. I climb up to a window to look into the scene in the central room. I see Two-Face holding court and Catwoman tied up and hanging over acid. I take out a gunman on this balcony first, and then climb over the courtroom on a wire on the ceiling. I jump down and beat up the guards in another good fight. At the end,  Dent shoots me and then he turns to shoot Catwoman, but she’s free and cuts him with her claws. He pulls out a second gun to kill her, but Batman CS strings him up. Batman then jumps down to Catwoman and asks her about Protocol Ten. I am feeling a narrative whiplash from how fast this is jerking around. You know, the game is going to be several hours long. You could breathe a little in the storytelling, guys. Catwoman says she doesn’t know what that Protocol is,  but she thinks the Joker is working with Strange. Oh of course, the Joker. I mean, we only had THREE villains in this game so far. We can’t stay THAT simple. And hey, didn’t I relock up Joker in Arkham Asylum at the end of last game? Is there any consistency here? Be glad I like your gameplay, Arkham City, because this story is just silly.

As Batman and Catwoman talk, the  Joker CS is aiming a sniper rifle (although we only see his perspective through a scope) at Catwoman, but Batman sees it and CS saves her from the shot. They talk more and boy her flirting, jokey dialog is getting old already, and this is the very first time I’ve encountered her. She leaves and I use my detective mode (hitting the right shoulder button) to see where the sniper bullet came from. Batman needs to find the Joker to get more information, and I need to follow the bullet trail to the source to do so. I find a way out of the courthouse and when I hit the street, I call it a night.

So, I have been traveling just a ton lately and my console gameplaying has fallen off a cliff. (I should point out I’m always playing casual games and I did finish Ghost Recon on the 3DS in the meantime, so I still have my chops.) When I got back, I decided that Brotherhood is just like AC2, but with far too much cipher-guy Desmond in the present, so I’ll go back to it. I want to try a good narrative experiment first, and thus Deus Ex go! The title screen is simple with a Deus Ex line and an animation of techno-face being built. This leads to a  simple menu on an orange background, reminding me a bit of Mass Effect. There are three modes (story, challenge, Deus Ex) of difficulty, I guess. Calling the last one Deus Ex really biases me, but i’ll go normal (challenge) mode as always. My character looks different in each difficulty mode and I wonder briefly if this choice will affect the way my character appears in the game. There are typical tips on loading screen. The game starts with a standard CS intro. In a futuristic apartment, a guy looks at statue and then a display. The display has some kind of anonymous conference call, and they are talking about hospitals and some plan. The guy goes on talking to the hidden conspirators regarding something about cybernetics. A text conversation on the same screen is talking about some woman. We cut to a news report with crazy stupid reporter who says someone named Sarif invented cybernetics but people are protesting. We then cut to two people in room talking. The woman is Dr.Meg Reed. Boy these costumes are stupid — they are so CLOTHING OF THE FUTURE style. They talk to some boss guy over a display. Have to interrupt to say that these characters are UGLY. I’m playing Adam,  the guy, apparently.  The conversation turns to how she’s going to walk me halfway to the transport we need to take to Washington so she can dazzle Washington with her cyber tech.

(This is probably a good point to say that I only played the first Deus Ex, and that only a tiny bit a long time ago. I literally don’t remember anything about it except that you could choose how you played, it was in some corporate future, and cybernetics were a part of the story. It’s entirely possible I am just tromping through Deus Ex canon here, so sorry if so. You may as well treat this as my first impression of all of these games.)

I get control, and choose to read some of her emails at a terminal. There is no great revelation there; she works on cybernetics. She tells me we need to get going. I talk to her and open door to lose control. It’s a 1st person CS and I watch her talking to scientists. I see a military weapon at work as we walk. Wow is she an ugly model; she looks like a monkey. We cut to a weird elevator shot.  Some guy named Pritchard enters the elevator. He’s some hacker and a complete dick. I reveal that I’m ex-SWAT. Wow, really? An ex-SWAT member? I thought I was in the 21st century, where games that were story-driven tried to have interesting characters. But a gravel-voiced, serious ex-SWAT agent? Be still, my beating heart.

Anyway, I enter an office CS, and Safris here – he has a metal arm so here’s clearly on the cyborg side. We’re talking about nothing when some alert goes off in lab AND I HAVE TO GET DOWN THERE to find out what’s going on. I get control and use the elevator. Emma was in lab and Adam seems concerned, so I guess they are connected. Pritchard over mic tells me to get down there. The elevator opens, I run around some violence-ruined hallways, and get a little stuck because I don’t see a grate to climb through. I do and enter another room with my first enemies. This of course becomes a fight and wow do I SUCK at this cover based combat in this game.  I’m not sure what it is, but these controls just feel completely foreign and I can’t get this cover locking or releasing at all. It takes me forever to kill the first two guys, and even when I do, I get immediately killed by next two guys. It’s pitiful. Once I finally complete that combat, I see some camouflage guy kill a scientist in a dumb CS-like thing. I continue to more fights and I’m finally getting better at combat. After killing several more guys, I enter a room to a CS of guy beating me up as Emma hides in a corner. Emma throws chemical at him and burns him, but then more guys come in and shoot me. We cut to a montage of credits as they medical up Adam. That montage is kind of neat gory. But umm seriously? They kidnapped my girl and shoot me up? That’s the motivation for my EX-SWAT character? Is this a Steven Seagal movie from the 80s?  Ugh.

We cut to a CS of the city 6 months later. There’s some high tech lobby. Adam enters as his cybered up self. I get control here in Sarif Industries. I apparently have to do something in Chicago. I go to Pritchard in a lab to get retinal implants. We talk and  I have a choice to confront him or not about his dickish attitude. I do and I idly threaten him. Wow is this dialogue bad. Bad in the overly affected, “Here is my emotion!” “Oh yeah, here is MY emotion!!!” way.  And my choice seems to have had no effect at all. I get out of that torture to go to the helipad where I have to talk to the pilot. Man I cannot stand this dialogue. And these characters are terrible, one-dimension cut-outs. How is this good narrative? I get some simple choices while talking to Jensen (the pilot) but nothing interesting at all. I get in the heli in CS and they take off. I have a conversation with Safris in the copter and have to endure my stupid gravel mouthed protagonist for even longer. In CS, I’m told some guys are looking to get the military weapon (Typoon) and I HAVE TO STOP THEM. I have a choice to use lethal or non-lethal force on them, and I choose non-lethal force for no reason.  I also choose a up close weapon (again for no reason). Safris reveals that there are hostages I can free in the base,  but the Typhoon is number one priority.

We land and I get control to walk into the building. Inside, I talk to the cop, which is a dialogue tree of information hunting. There are hostages in office near assembly labs, and the cops kind of hate me for keeping them from going in. I might care of there was any realistic emotion in this conversation at all.  I go inside the building, and ha, I accidentally walk off an edge inside area and die. That’s hilarious. I walk correctly this time, not just killing myself ridiculously. I take down the first guy I see in a decent stealthy way, although I do notice the total lack of feedback in the game about whether I’m hidden or not. I then die fighting next group because the lack of said-feedback means I don’t know when I’m hidden. Ugh do I hate fighting in this game. On the second try,  I stealth kill them all by taking them down with my stun gun one by one. I leave the hallway and enter the next room. I die there because I rush in. Again, the second I take them out in a predator like way, one by one, stun for stun. Once the room is clear, I start looking for the hostages. I don’t see them or the weapon. I don’t know where to go next and I’m starting to get frustrated, so I’m done for the night.

I needed something interesting to play that I knew I would like, and AC2 was OSSIM, so I had no doubt I would like Brotherhood. Here we go. The game is pretty old now, so I have to update first. It starts with the familiar white loading screens and the simple title screen with logo and start button. I start story mode and cut to lab flashback, which reexplains the war between two organizations: the Templars, now known as Argo Industries, seeking world domination; and the Assassins, who safeguard humanity’s free will … by wantonly massacring people. I now remember how silly the morality in this game is. And oh right, love interest Lucy is an UGLY model. There’s all this backstory, but all I can think is that this Templars taking over the world thing is so dumb, and the modern character Desmond is the most boring action hero I’ve ever seen. It’s like wtaching a popsicle save the world. Anyway, I cut to a medieval war in scratchy quasi-computer-looking load. I get control of Ezio briefly for a  quick time event to kill somenoe that Maria Auditore told me to. What that actually means is that I hit x a lot and then cut to a  CS of Ezio overviewing a battle. The screen shifts to  weird computer space as Rebecca (another stupid modern character) covers diagnostics, and we cut to a flashback of AC2 where Ezio being told by the gods that Desmond is the future. It’s going to be a dull future, I guess.

I get control back in the Vatican. It’s interesting to take the story from the very last moment of the last game. There’s a CS of Ezio noticing the pope got away. You have to read my post from AC2 to know why that is pissing me off.  Ezio goes to take the staff, but it sinks into the ground and the whole platform he’s on descends and walls come in and rotate. Ezio’s uncle Mario shows up at the top of the pit to tell him to climb up so they can leave. I get control to climb up and after a minute of relearning the controls, I get out. We leave the room and there’s a CS of monks condemning us as we run through them and out of the church. We fight a bunch of guys in the next room and defeat them easily. We then get to the top of a tower. In CS, Ezio weighs dropping the orb but hesitates. He gives it to Mario to hold for him and they CS jump off the tower in a leap of faith. That is still OSSIM.

We cut to Monteriggioni, Ezio’s manor. Mario and Ezio ride into town after seeing the manor’s new artillery fire. They see Ezio’s sister (the past models are SO much better looking) who tells Ezio that the Countess of Forli is here to see him. I get control and enter town following Mario. Once inside, there are a bunch of mission alerts on the lower left hand map. I take the first one and find mercenaries at the cannons. They CS say that they need to find the guy who made the cannons to get them working. I get control to find the engineer and after a short CS conversation of no importance, I escort him to the mercenaries. When the cannons are fixed, I get to fire them  — they are awfully slow moving. I hit 5 targets to finish the quest. The next quest is to bring flowers someplace. Ezio flirts with the girl I’m following and she doesn’t know who he is and accidentally reveals a surprise party for him. It’s just a follow the girl as she walks kind of quest, so it’s trivial. The final quest guy has lost Mario’s favorite horse just outside the manor. I get on the horse and bring him back. The horse handler tells me to not spend so much time in battle.

I go back into the manor. There’s a CS with Countess Catherina.  She wants an alliance to defend Forli against papal armies. I then talk to my family about what happened last game. Machiavelli is here and he says Ezio should have killed the pope. AND HE’S RIGHT!!! You tell me, Machiavelli. Mario backs Ezio up for no good reason. I go up to the bedroom. There’s a CS of Ezio removing armor and talking a bath and then the Countess enters to massage his shoulders. To cut to the chase, Ezio gets some from the Countess. It’s a pretty unimaginative suggestive scene that’s kind of the standard sex scene of  “serious story” games today. When that’s done, there’s a CS of them talking as they hear cannons fire and then a cannonball flies into room.  We’re under attack. Ezio CS throws a shirt on and runs outside for a nice long shot of a tower being destroyed.  Mario tells Ezio they need to hold the invaders off with the residents escape. He rides off as Ezio tells him to take care of himself, and it’s plain as day that Mario will be leaving his earthly concerns behind before this battle is over. I get control and I have to use cannons to blow up enemy artillery while people escape. There’s a count in the right corner that counts down as I blow things up. I’m not sure I can lose this scene. However, at the end, the enemies breach the wall and I have to fight them. I run along the top of the wall into a fight, and kill a bunch of them but I die against a knight a couple of times because I don’t remember the controls very well. I finally beat them to see a CS of Borgia (he’s a Templar bad guy) entering with the orb I gave Mario and see Mario on ground.  Borgia shoots Mario in the head and Ezio gets shot off of the rooftop here’s standing on.

Ezio dragged away by his men to another part of the manor and then calls some mercenaries to continue the fight. I’m not sure why we needed that cut. I kill some guys and then save my sister and follow her, protecting her from guards to get back to the manor. They CS enter a hidden tunnel, run to an antechamber and see their mother. We escape to a field, and there’s a CS of Ezio telling his sister to take their mother to Firenze.  Ezio is going to Rome. His mother reminds him to remember for whom the assassin’s fight, and he rides off.  We cut to another later CS where Ezio collapses as he rides at night. We snap back to the present where our cipher-heroes are in some truck. They are looking for the other pieces of Eden, and they need to get Ezio’s apple first. The van stops and they are at the Monteriggioni manor in the real world. They all start talking some nonsense about synchronization and some memory of Ezio’s they can’t access, but I can barely listen to this horribly paced dialogue. Man, these  modern women are ugly. How do they get this so wrong with the modern characters when the Renaissance characters are decent?  I get control to follow a ghost of Ezio through the villa to a basement. Lucy and Ezio are going off alone to get the rest of the team inside the ruined manor. This is a very Prince of Persia climbing sequence, but it is coupled with terrible, TERRIBLE writing of the flirting between Desmond and Lucy. It is hard to express how bad this exchange is. It’s like the developers had no sense of timing at all, that they just triggered lines at random. The characters crack jokes while they are in the middle of other actions, and their attempts at humor are painfully overdone. Desmond sees ghosts of people running out of the manor, and Desmond then explains exactly what we are looking at for the stupid audience. I do my parkouring, and  they make a bad joke about the last game I can’t even remember even though I’m writing this AS I PLAY. There’s a CS of them shooting up a pulley system, more running and trading off pulling levers.  There’s one really annoying room where I have to jump into water at points, but it’s totally not clear when and the room takes twice as long as it should. There’s more climbing and trading off bad flirts until we get to the sanctuary at the bottom of the manor.

When they arrive, there’s a CS of Desmond looking at ghost of Ezio. I get control as Desmond and use eagle vision to see a set of numbers and get the lock open to let the rest of the modern team down here. We cut to a CS of conversation among the team, and cut again to setting up a lab in the sanctuary. They CS joke about me running through sewer, which is awesome since I had no choice in doing it. I have to follow Sean to get power for the lab, which is a quest where I have to use eagle vision to find all the boxes around the manor. I do so and we cut to CS of them finishing the lab. I get control to go into the animus. There’s an interesting moment here where Rebecca controls the actual game interface and sends me into a virtual training mission. That’s pretty cool. This training mission has something to do with chaining enemies, but I can’t remember how to do that so I fuck that mission up completely. I select the memory interface and pick a memory. The codes we found coordinate to spots in the animus for me to check that Sean will highlight. We cut to CS of someone cleaning Ezio’s wounds. He’s told some guys left him here with his assassin gear and told him to find Machiavelli. I have to climb a church to find him, but I first have to find doctor because I’m really hurt. I do so, and the doctor mentions Ezio being older. Ezio is a bit put-off by that and comments on it. See, guys, you can do good characterization in the past. Why can’t you do it in the present? Ultimately, the doctor gives me something to dull the pain. (I don’t heal, but I can run again). I climb the church and get a feather. Oh, it’s a VIEWPOINT!!!!! I love these!!! I get my cool look around and dive off. I’m then instructed to tail guards for a long while, which I do, until I find them attacking some random guy. I kill the guards to save him, because I guess that’s my morality – save this random guy, kill that random one.

Once I save him, I see he’s a father mourning over his daughter who was hung.  He wants me to kill the executioner perp. I say, why not? I accept the quest and run to the spot where the target is. I jump in and fight off the guards to kill him. When I’m done, I only half sync because I didn’t kill him with an aerial attack. Oh, I was supposed to kill him a certain way. Umm…ok.  I didn’t realize those things were tracked. I do it over and this time I kill him first with an aerial. We cut back to Ezio in Rome. I now have to get to a new unknown goal.  On the way, I see that I can buy buildings in town. I also see that I have to unlock certain buildings by killing Borgia captains first. I try to but that area’s not unlocked yet. Oh well,  back to quest. I find Machiavelli. He CS tells Ezio he did not send for him. I have to follow Machiavelli around town and face “dangers”. I accept the quest (of course) and on the walk,  he gives me money to buy stuff which I do. There are no other dangers. In CS, Ezio wants a horse because Rome is big. Machiavelli says that the Borgia control these stables, and Ezio gets an idea. I get a mission to kill the captain. It says to throw him into the scaffold, but I have no idea what that means. I make an attempt, but I alert a lot of guards and I die trying to find the scaffold. This is getting frustrating so I call it a night.