I've finished another two games since my last blog. First up was Lego Batman. I've had this game for ages and made a brief start before getting bored. It's not my favourite type of game but Lego Indiana Jones was fairly good so thought this was worth a try. I played through it as quickly as I could, I wasn't too fussed about getting the achievements but I just wanted to experience it through to the end. It's not a difficult game by any stretch of the imagination but there are a few tough puzzles to get through as they left me stumped for a good while before figuring out what to do. As always in Lego games it's the cutscenes that provide most of the entertainment. Although all of the humour was basically the same it still made me laugh. Thankfully it provided a much different Batman experience than Arkham Asylum as nothing will compare to those games. All in all I didn't think it was bad. I don't think I'll be playing any more Lego games for a while as they are all basically the same with different characters. I did like getting to play through with both heroes and villains - that was an improvement over Indiana Jones. I gave it a 7.0 as although it wasn't a bad game, I felt like I was going through the motions until it ended.
I also started and finished Rage which I thought was a great game. A lot of the negatives towards the game seem to be aimed at how long it took to make, compared to how much content you get and also how it's not as open as it's made out to be. I'm not one for overly exploring a game and hate massive RPG games that rely on constantly trudging around looking for the next task or side mission (saying that though, I've got Fallout 3 and New Vegas in my pile of un-played games so I suppose Ill give them a go eventually). This game actually reminded me more of Red Faction: Guerrilla which wasn't an open game but required driving between locations.
The visuals of this game are incredible and I spent a good amount of time just staring at the scenery. I don't do that on many games but it's hard not to when there's so much detail in everything. The locations are pretty standard although there is a good array of different places to visit to not worry about that much. They all had a distinctive look to them which made for some variety. Apart from the few different weapons a couple of enemy types, combat was pretty samey throughout. I did enjoy the way they mutants were able to move and evade and made for some interesting shootouts. The human soldiers were not so interesting and were pretty standard like any shooting game.
I didn't spend much time on the side missions and races aside from getting an achievement or two. The races weren't particularly interesting and are my least favourite part of any shooter so spending extra time doing them didn't appeal to me. I did a few of the side missions as it meant I got to go to a few locations not visited in the main quest but I only really did enough of them to get the achievement.
Story wise it was pretty much non-existent and although there was a story to move you to the next level, they were mostly dressed up fetch quests or clear this area of bad guys. They were done well enough to make it exciting enough, but spending all your time in a game trying to please the next major or town leader can get a bit dull. That being said though, I never got bored and was always ready to have a go at the next level.
I gave the game a score of 9.0 as I really enjoyed it. There were a lot of great moments and not many set pieces so felt a bit more organic and not set up for the next major action sequence. The second disk was a lot weaker than the first and consisted mostly of enemies respawning in what can only be described as a kind of horde mode. Overall though I'd say it's one of the more enjoyable games I've played recently.
