Game Review - Batman Arkham City

During the course of the break I recently played Batman Arkham City for the Playstation 3. It was an amazing experience as it had a good variety of things a player could do during gameplay. It takes place 18 months after the first game Batman: Arkham Asylum and it is set within the walls of Arkham City, a prison that holds the most dangerous people in Gotham.

Batman Arkham City

The gameplay was very smooth and easy to grasp. Since the game is in an open world environment the player controls Batman’s every move. I found this very interesting since I love super heroes and controlling Batman’s gadgets and being able to fly around allows me to be one with Batman, the Dark Knight.

Batman Arkham City: Batman gliding through the sky

The presentation of the game was flawless. It had a dark atmosphere, the colour scheme of the game fit it very well and the sound was appropriate with everything that was happening. Something I really enjoyed is when defeating an enemy a loud smash sound plays, it distinguishes when the player defeats someone compared to a regular hit, and this helps the player build their combo bar.

The balancing of the game between Batman’s strength compared to the enemy’s difficulty is well proportioned. The player can level up his or her defense, gadgets and other specialty moves but the strength of Batman never changes and as the game progresses the enemies become more difficult, adding guns and night vision. This forces the player to become better at the game and use the gadgets to their advantage.

Batman Arkham City: Batman taking on a bunch of street thugs

 
Since the game is a sequel the game developers had a chance to fix most of the bugs and problems players had from the first one. I believe they successfully accomplished this and because they learned from their mistakes this game was worth every penny. Overall I recommend this game to anyone that enjoys a good superhero game.

Overall the appeal of the game was great, it was very aesthetically pleasing, with great sounds and voice acting. The gameplay was amazing, I felt like I was walking in Batman’s shoes. The game has a lot of things to do, from side missions, to missions that allow the player to progress in the game, to beating the hell out of bad guys for no reason. A person could play this game for a very long time.    

PS Vita

Recently I purchased the Playstation Vita and have played it for couple hours. I believe the vita is ahead of all other handheld devices out there. The features the Vita has are insane! It can connect to your Playstation account to allow you to send messages, check trophies and even play games from your Playstation 3. It has a touch screen and a touch pad (located on the back), two joysticks, 3G or Wifi, front and back camera and six axis motion sensors. This hand held console is far superior to its predecessor the PSP.

I believe from a game design point of view, they created a system that would blow users away. The PSP Go that was release before the PSV did not earn many sales and let down a lot of the fans and users of Sony (including myself) so with this new and innovative product releasing, they had a lot of prove. Its vibrant OLED screen allows for beautiful images as well as crisp quality from games and videos. They created a device that would stand out from previous creations by Sony and also stand out from its competitors.

The creators of the Vita sat down and brainstormed ideas on how to create a product that people would enjoy, they expanded their target market to lure in more consumers so that sales would increase and costumers would be happy. The look and feel of the Vita needed to be balanced as well, it could not be too bulky or have too many features on it or it could become overwhelming and confusing. The style of the PSV is very sleek and easy to understand from the moment a player picks it up.

As of right now the only bad thing about the Playstation Vita is that there are not enough titles for the gaming device. However, this is to be expected as it was just released. Exciting game titles will be released in the future and I believe the Vita will be prosperous.

Magic the Gathering - Card Creation

I have created three cards for Magic the Gather and I believe they are balanced using the system we have created in class. Shelled Gator is a blue card that needs two blue and one colourless mana in order to summon it. Therefore the cost of the card would be seven (one cost point is added because the total amount of mana is five or more) this means that it would need seven benefit points to be balanced. I gave it three power points and three toughness points, because this card is a blue card it also gets one extra benefit point. The next card is Ninja of the Hidden Mask, his point system is four cost points and four benefit points. Shadow Assassin’s point system is seven cost points and seven benefit points. These cards are considered balance because both cost and benefit is equal for the player. 

Magic the Gathering - Created Card #1

Magic the Gathering - Created Card #2

Magic the Gathering - Created Card #3

Point System

Costs:

             Baseline                                          +1

             Each colourless mana                     +1

 Each colour mana                           +2

 Total mana cost of 5 or more          +1 (+2 for Green)

Benefits:

            Each 1 Power                                  +1

            Each 1 Toughness                           +1

Being a Red Creature                     +1

Being a Blue Creature                    +1