Recent reviews by Blackarrow

Good little digitised Boardgame. many quality of life features. Especially fun with friends. DLC adds more characters, cards and mechanics and is worth picking up, especially when discounted. However they do allow you to play with a different dlc for free each week with is a great suystem.

The Easiest Paradox grand strategy game to get into. Endlessly replayable, plus its very fun in multiplayer.

Hands down the best total war game. Total war warhammer 2 continues to expand the series by adding more units, more lords, more lands to conquer and more innovative gameplay mechanics that continue to make the game intresting through many, many enjoyable playthroughs.

The best video game analogy for the 'Batman arkham' series would be the assassins creed series. The first game was great but never realised its full potential. The second game prove to out perform the first and is regarded as a high for the series. This makes the thrid game in the arkham series 'Origin', to be very similar to Assassins creed brotherhood. Although it couldn't be said that these are worst than thier predecessor, neither of these games really offer any ground breaking innovation to the series. let's break Arkham origins down game down into some key compenets and compare it arkham city.

Firstly the environment, The Map in Arkham origins is considerably larger than in Arkham city , giving you access to what is apparently the whole of Gotham City. Despite its size however its a pretty dull map. one third of the map looks like it has been copied and pasted from Arkham city, another third consists of a colossal bridge which you have to cross every time you want to get to the other halve of Gotham, unless you use the new 'quick travel system'. This leaves only one third of the map that is new, which is fairly disappointing. The developers have added the bat cave, however this only serves as an access point to ranked challenges and training exercises and you only interact with in a couple times in the main campaign.

Speaking of the main campaign, the story line of Arkham origins is as expected top notch. The only criticism I can think of has to do with some of the villains. firstly some of them are rather obscure. I know some die-hard batman fans will know who some of they are, but if the majority of people have to Wikipedia half of the villains in a batman game, it means your scraping the bottom of the barrel. Secondly you only fight most the villains once and then that's it. Death-stroke for instance was the first of the 8 announced assassins for the game and there was a considerably amount of hype about the fight between him and Batman. They when you get to the game you fight him in one boss fight and then he is totally defeated. These assassins are suppose to be the best in the world and are getting paid $50 MILLION to kill the batman, yet all of them seem to lack the tenacity and motivation to try more than once to kill batman. The reason behind this I believe is because the developers are trying to cram the entire story line into the time frame of one single night, surely stretching it out to a week or at least a couple of nights wouldn't kill the plot.

Finally there is the combat which for the most part is left untouched and retains most of its inherit awesomeness. The developers worked off the idea that 'why fix something that isn't broken' and instead opted to simply make the combat 'different'. This has meant the implementation of three new mobs to beat up: The martial artist, who is basically a regular mob that requires more countering in order to defeat; The Venom thug, essentially a mini Bane, where you have to disable his venom pack before beating him to a pulp; And finally the Enforcer thug, who act like the Abramovici brother in Arkham city only sometimes the have armour which you need to remove, before you take them down. There are also some new gadgets that can be employed in combat such as the shock gloves and the ability to do two special combo moves, however this only makes the fighting easier as this give the player a very easy way to beat all the mobs that are suppose to make the game difficult. There are also some gadgets such as the remote claw and the glue grenade which are exact rip offs of the line launcher and freeze grenades, respectively.

Yet another similarity that Arkham origins has with Assassins creed Brotherhood is the fact that it is the first in its series to introduce multiplayer. This consists of a 3v3v2 system where two gangs (Joker's and Bane's) fight over 3 control point while a third team of Batman and Robin (which is unusual as Robin is not featured in the main game) attempt to take down the teams silently, in order to build up an intimidation metre and scare the thugs away. Although this is a fairly unique game concept it is at the best of times glitchy. FPS aspect of the game is somewhat stale and isn't terribly exciting. The matchmaking system is fast to get you into a game, but you often have to wait for the necessary 8 people to join before the game starts. Despite the fact that 8 people have to be in the game in order for it to start, there always seems to be two or three people that leave the game while its loading, usually resulting in on team having an unfair advantage over the over. This is particularly noticeable when the super villains become available for either villain team to grab. Unless the hero team or the disadvantaged villain team is really good, the team with the most numbers will generally gain access to their teams villains, which are considerably over powered . One game it took my team 4 lives to kill an enemy Joker and I have yet to see anyone successfully kill Bane. There is also a system where you can buy, with either in game or real world money booster backs. This in itself is a sin considering I already bought the game. It is more so a sin when the game suddenly decides to wipe all your statistics including your level, unlocks and purchased goodies!

In summation, Batman Arkham city is indeed a good game by most standards and arguably it is as good as Arkham City , however it is certainly not any better than Arkham city and leaves a lot for the next Arkham title to rectify. In my opinion however Batman Arkham Origins is still a worthwhile game with plenty of the unadulterated goodness that makes the Arkham series of of the best in its genre. 7.5/10

Most fun 3rd Person shootier EVER!!!!

Truely the pinnical of the Civilisation series

don't listen to the narrow minded, cretens who say the game is bad. This is a supurb example of 21st centuary RTS gaming at its best. easily my best RTS game of 2011

Its the game for the man whom owns everthing else on steam ( or is just a major nerd)

21/20