BATMAN ARKHAM CITY

Great game, for sure. Best thing I can say is when I finished the story mode I thought it was a little short, assuming I finished it in 6-8 hours. Later I checked on Steam and it took me actually 14.

I enjoyed Arkham asylum, and was tempted about this one. Again the combat system was a main reference for Ryse, and the free roaming approached seemed a good fit for the IP. Now I think it's a remarkable sequel since it builds onto the previous one. Practically every game system from Arkham asylum can be found on this one, plus some new gadgets, open world (although relatively small)... and Catwoman.

The pacing is similar to the original, combining combat with stealth & investigation challenges. I may be wrong but I believed there were some more bosses but less exotic gameplay sections (in Asylum you had several scarecrow levels, while in this one you one have one 'dream' section). The story works (although they put together so many villains that I found it a little confusing, and somehow unfinished) and the new free roaming systems (hook / wip) work like a charm.

Some new enemy types, same multiple collectible options and arena challenges makes me think they must have a mature and solid design team, who didn't go crazy but instead kept the foundations from the original, added some well-selected new options and created a decent sequel without excessive ambitions. They knew where the gold was, and mined selectively.

Highly recommendable, in any case. These Rocksteady guys are really something...

DEAD SPACE

aaaaand another game I got very cheap thanks to a work mate. I did play it a little bit back in 2008 at a friend's console, but I'm not a big fan of survival horrors in general so I passed. But since I also have DS2 waiting, I gave it a chance.

I found the game extremely well crafted, and as I usually say "very mature". The devs didn't try to excel on every area, and instead focused on where they thought they would get more gold: The monsters. The enemy design is smart, varied and features a new dismemberment tech. I suspect it sucks most of the rendering power, so the level dressing is very repetitive and doesn't have much windows. But that works fine with the horror genre.

They not only reuse most graphic assets in levels, but also you re-visit 2 scenarios as well. The story was good enough to me (I confused both female characters) and sometimes engaging despite the lack of charisma from the player character. The weapons design is intelligent (they use classic weapons with a Sci-fi twist) and I believe they were pioneers in the integration of the HUD within the game world, since health / statis / ammo are displayed onto the player character.

In summary, lots of little good decisions and well-measured ambition that offer at the end a rounded and mostly satisfying experience. If any, a little more variation on systems out of the basic combat would have been appreciated, and since the game doesn't have MP the 13 hours of gameplay felt a little short, but nothing major.

SAINT'S ROW 3

Thanks to the Xbox gold subscription I got when Ryse was finished, I'm enjoying some free games I had no real intention to buy. I was intrigued by SR3 because of the college humor you could see in promotional videos, but other than that I always took it for another GTA look-alike.

I can't say my opinion has changed much. There are indeed some funny missions and bizarre game options which can make you laugh, but I suspect they'll be more effective in the co-op mode. The game world is glitchier than any Rockstar game, and some of the missions doesn't seem to have been tested enough. But the overall experience is entertaining, as over the top as the developers intended (I attended to one of their GDC talks in which they explained their tools for concept phases, quite interesting) and very varied.

Can't really recommend it unless you're a big fan of free-roaming games, but it's not a waste of time. It holds an 84 in metacritics which I think it's a little inflated, but not too much. In any sense it's worth it particularly if it's on sale (or free) ;P

TEAM FORTRESS HOMAGE

Here's a little homage to Team Fortress 2 (I believe the second game I've played the most) and the country that has been hosting me for the last 2 years.

You need to have some basic knowledge of German to understand the joke. Also, it's funnier if you are aware TF2's spy is supposed to be French, and the medic German.

The end of Steam?

Interesting article about how Steam is more and more crowded, and developers are getting it increasingly difficult to stand out of the ocean of new games released every day...

Click here: How the surge of Steam releases will affect game developers

UNCHARTED DRAKE'S FORTUNE

Back in the days I wasn't impressed by Uncharted 1. I played the company copy for some hours and eventually concluded there were no new game systems that I hadn't seen before.

For some reason I can't remember I bought Uncharted 2, and liked it. Then I went for Uncharted 3 as part of the Ryse research and liked it too. So I thought: "What the heck?", and since it was very cheap at Cash Converters (just 6 euros) I purchased it last time I was in Cordoba, and I've just completed it.

Aside from the lack of MP, the game is very similar to the sequels, only more unpolished. The team mate presence is reduced and as a consequence you lack the witty dialogues from U2 & 3. The melee combat system is unnecessarily complex (it was simplified later) but the platform and shooter sections are pretty similar. Well, to be fair some of the combat layouts of U1 are poor in my opinion, with enemies spawning behind the player without warning, or at different height levels which is generally an issue. I believe those were much more refined in the subsequent games.

But aside from little details, I think the value of Uncharted is to be one of those games that began what some call 'Adventure genre', in the sense of a game that is not based on one system in particular, but in many. That way you simulate the multiple challenges the hero of a movie faces on a high-octane action flick. And it does that very well.

Looking forward to Uncharted 4. I could be the reason for me to buy a PS4...

WANTED - WEAPONS OF FATE

I left Grin Barcelona with a lot of frustration. Lack of time and expertise caused the project to struggle when building even the most basic systems. But above anything else, the careerists preying on the team caused us to spend more time on backstabbing instead of making the game better.

I'm 100% sure that if our focus would have been improving the game instead of kissing asses Wanted - Weapons of Fate would have been a fairly good game. Instead, it has a 61-62 on metacritics. Probably a fair rating. There was a lot of unfounded optimism in Grin at that time, but the tools were good and the employees were hard workers, experienced and most of them with the best of attitude.

Anyway, I finally built enough emotional distance with that project to buy and play the final game (I hadn't since 2008), and here are my impresions on the PS3 version:

In general, the game is super-short. Not to be surprised since some of the levels were re-designed up to 10 times from scratch. Only 9 missions made it to the final game, and the final difficulty balance is fairly easy. You can finish it in 4 hours without problems. On my side, I believe our game mechanics were not enough, and not particularly exciting. Half way through you get tired of the same player actions. We didn't have that much time to build more, but truth is we failed in the implementation of some of the ideas we had. I have my own share of responsibility on that.

Another issue we had was in my opinion an ill-conceived flat structure, that allowed up to 13 people to actively change the design (including tweaking game parameters), which at the end created a design with a thousand fathers and none of them really proud of it.

Back at the time I was very fond of the game story. It was written internally (and I was in no little part a major player on that) and we were given great freedom to approach the IP however we wanted. Our story expanded the Wanted lore a lot, and although I keep thinking it's much better than most other games (particularly those based on movies) after playing it altogether you probably won't understand the player motivations unless you've seen the movie beforehand. Since that doesn't need to have happened, you probably won't feel any empathy with the events told.

I learned a lot on that game, but the most important lesson is that I cannot deal with political animals. Or simply I don't want to. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure they'll continue existing, multiplying and destroying good projects and companies.