Top 10 Games of E3 2014 Part 2

Welcome to the second part of Silver Bit's Top 10 Games of E3 2014.  In the previous article, we took a look at the games that just barely made this final five.  E3 2014 saw some great games grace the show floor, but only a handful can walk away as the most impressive games of the show.  While all the games on this list are among the best of E3, the games in this top five could easily walk away with top honours depending on one's opinion.  To reiterate,  the only games eligible for this list are those available to play on the show floor.  Now with that reminder out of the way, it is time to count down the final five games in Silver Bit's Top 10 Games of E3 2014.  Hope you enjoy and feel free to share your favourite games of E3 2014 in the comments.

5.  Sunset Overdrive - XBONE
There are only a select few Xbox One exclusives that really get one hopeful for first-party content on the machine and Insomniac Games' Sunset Overdrive is champion over them all.  All of Microsoft's offerings nowadays seem to fall under the same experiences they delivered last generation, but Sunset Overdrive is the shining example of what happens when you give a team of creative minds full control over their vision.  Sunset Overdrive is pure unadulterated fun wrapped into an open-world third-person action game.  Stuck in Sunset City during the Awesompocolypse, the player is tasked with cleaning up the mess made by the launch of FizzCo's Overcharge Delirium XT, an energy drink that turns anyone who drinks into mindless mutated creatures known as the OD'd.  Sunset Overdrive gives players tons of options to tackle their task through fully customizable characters, a slew of creatively designed weapons and plenty of solo and multiplayer missions to complete throughout Sunset City.  Traversing Sunset City is incredibly fluid as players are able to wall run, grind rails and wires, instantly switch between grinding and zip-lining, bounce off of any surface and use other crazy acrobatics.  Although Microsoft will not push Sunset Overdrive as heavily as Halo or Forza, it is a game that Xbox One owners should not overlook this holiday season.

4.  Valiant Hearts: The Great War - PS3, PS4, XBONE, XB360, PC
The UbiArt engine has proven time and time again that the most beautiful games do not need to have the largest polygon count.  In fact, the art in 2D games can be just as beautiful or even more than their 3D counterparts; just look at Rayman Legends and Child of Light for proof.  Valiant Hearts: The Great War is the next title to use the UbiArt engine and the game looks spectacular in terms of its visuals and gameplay.  Valiant Hearts follows the story of four individuals as they try to survive the horrors of World War I.  Starting in different locations and allegiances, the stories of each character interconnect with one another through a common companion--a dog named Walt.  Throughout the game, the characters are thrust into various situations from sneaking behind enemy lines to blowing up bridges.  Valiant Hearts offers players plenty of puzzles to complete through interacting with the environment and other characters or sending Walt to reach areas the characters cannot normally reach.  The interplay between using the characters and Walt to solve puzzles and the mature tones of the story have me very excited to venture into the world of Valiant Hearts in the near future.

3.  Batman: Arkham Knight - PS4, XBONE, PC
In recent years, The Dark Knight has become an incredible force within the video game industry thanks to the folks at Rocksteady.  One can argue that the Batman: Arkham games are single-handedly the greatest licensed games to grace the market.  As the final entry in this acclaimed series, Rocksteady looks to pull no punches with Arkham Knight as Batman and his world are being supercharged with new abilities and content.  The moment from the E3 demo where Batman steps out onto the balcony of his hideout and peers out onto Rockstady's Gotham City will make anybody's jaw drop.  The expansiveness of this open world is breathtaking and I can see myself drowning hundreds of hours exploring every nook and cranny of Gotham City.  With how vast Gotham City will be in Arkham Knight, Batman needs another way to traverse the city than just his trusty grappling hook and cape.  For this final installment, the Batmobile has been added to The Dark Knight's arsenal.  Aside from the vehicles primary purpose, Batman can summon the Batmobile at will, use it to immobilize enemies, have it clear obstacles and launch himself into the air.  The Batmobile is not the only addition as Batman's combat and stealth abilities are receiving considerable upgrades in speed and precision.  Although Batman: Arkham Knight will no longer be gracing consoles this year, the game looks to be on the road to surpassing its predecessors' legendary quality.

2.  Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS - Wii U, 3DS
Arguably the most anticipated game of 2014, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS had one of the best showings of the show.  Nintendo went out of their way to make Super Smash Bros. the most important game of the show.  They gave fans three character reveals in Mii Fighters, Palutena and Pac Man, an incredible live tourney held in the Nokia Theatre and multiple kiosks to play on the show floor.  Seeing the two versions in motion is a thing of beauty.  The Wii U version flows at an incredible clip and all the new characters, stages and items look to fit in with the polished gameplay.  While the 3DS version may take some time to get use to the controllers as I have heard from many video impressions on the game, it looks just as polished and refined as its Wii U brethren.  Much like Far Cry 4 in part one, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS are both hard to sum up in words.  I highly recommend watching the Super Smash Bros. Invitational or one of the live demos from Nintendo Treehouse Live at E3 to see how great these games play.

1.  The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - PS4, XBONE, PC

As great as Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS may be, there is one game greater than it this year.  That game is The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.  Not much has been shown of Witcher 3 since its reveal back in early 2013, but CD Projekt RED let the floodgates loose at E3.  The Witcher 3 gives players a living, breathing open world to explore.  In fact, the map is 30 times larger than the previous Witcher games.  Plus the amount of freedom in The Witcher 3 is incredible as players can venture to any part of the map at any time and pick up and put down story and side quests whenever they choose.  On your way to a quest objective and feel like helping a traveler in distress along the way or starting up a whole other quest, you are free to do that without penalty.  The world is shaped around the player's choices in combat, regular conversation and pivotal story moments.  Every piece of media for The Witcher 3 from E3 has been nothing short of phenomenal from the blood-pumping pre-E3 trailer to the show floor demos.  While The Witcher 3 may not earn the same amount of money Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age or Mass Effect rake in, this game and its ambitious scope prove why anybody should spend close to 600 dollars on a next generation console.  The next generation of video gaming truly begins on February 24th, 2015 with the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Looking Past the Surface: The Pros & Cons of CG Trailers

The biggest news to come out of this past week was the announcement of Batman: Arkham Knight.  As the final Batman game in Rocksteady's trilogy, Arkham Knight is being hyped to be more expansive and epic than the previous two entries in the series (one of them being easily the best superhero game of all-time).  Scheduled to release this October, WB Games decided to release a trailer for the game.  Considering the game is less than year away, it would have been nice to see how exactly Arkham Knight would run on the next generation systems with a gameplay trailer.  What we got was a computer-generated (CG) trailer that did a decent job of showing what the game would be about, but did little to impress this writer.  In fact, this trailer got me thinking about the video game industry's love of pre-rendered CG trailers.  There are pros and cons to CG trailers which I would like to discuss in this article.  Personally, I lean more towards the con side of this debate, but I can see the pluses of CG trailers as well.

As the video game industry has evolved, trailers have been given much more prominence than in the past.  Video game trailers are so prominent nowadays that websites dedicate obscene amounts of time dissecting each frame and highlight every big trailers on the front page.  There is even a website which focuses solely on highlighting game trailers in GameTrailers.  With a lot more importance put on game trailers nowadays, game publishers want their trailers to be the best even if the game is not ready to be shown yet.  These publishers employ animation houses to make a trailer that best captures the ideas of the game.  When the game is early development, a CG trailer works as an appetizing teaser for gamers.  It gets gamers excited for the upcoming game as they see all the grand possibilities which they can eventually play.  These trailers work as a great way of eliciting gamers to pre-order the game well in advance.   As a money making machine, CG trailers serve their purpose well.  Another pro of CG trailers is the quality as most of them can easily rival that of Hollywood's best.  The quality of these trailers can produce great amount of hype no matter the actually quality of the game.  The CG trailer for Dead Island is an excellent example of this type of situation.  It easily produced enough hype to put Dead Island as one of the most sought after games of 2011.  CG trailers are a very profitable business for game developers and serve as a form of entertainment for gamers.  They will definitely be the norm of the video game industry well into the future.

While there are plenty of pluses to the use of CG trailers, they are not all that they seem to be.  With CG trailers, the quality can serve as a double-edged sword which many a game have fallen to.  Sometimes, the CG trailer is too good that it overshadows the quality of the game when it finally releases.  Dead Island fell into that trap as the game was marred with numerous glitches, some that even halted gamer's progress indefinitely.  Another example is Killzone 2.  The infamous trailer shown at E3 2005 had such amazing graphical fidelity that Guerilla's game could never achieve those great heights.  The expectations brought on from Killzone 2's first trailer caused many gamers to feel betrayed by Sony and Guerilla Games.  As these CG trailers are created by animation houses outside of the actual developers, it is easy for these trailers to include certain aspects such as supposed mechanics or weapons that are not even in the main game.  This mixed messaging can deceive gamers into believing that exactly what they see in the CG trailer will be in the actual game and most of the time that is not true.  As much as CG trailers can help boost the hype and possibly sales of the game, they can be just as damaging if games rely too much on them.  As game graphics continue to advance, an argument can be made that in-engine graphics can be used without hurting the quality of video game trailers.  Already there have been many games that use in-engine graphics for their trailers to great success.  Every trailer for Grand Theft Auto V including the very first one from 2011 was produced with in-engine graphics.  Mass Effect 2 and 3 used in-game graphics for both of their launch trailers and produced some of the best video game trailers in years.  The Mass Effect 2 launch trailer was the sole reason I hunted down a Collector's Edition of the game the weekend after launch.  Using in-engine graphics for trailers might not always be a possibility especially earlier in development, but they can alleviate some of the trappings of relying on CG trailers to convey the concept of the game.

 Although this writer would love to see in-engine gameplay trailers become the norm, CG trailers are not going anywhere.  In the early years of this new console generation, CG trailers will become more prominent as publishers build hype for games that are years away from completion.  As CG trailers become more prominent, gamers need to become more critical of these trailers rather than taking them at surface value.  Gamers need to stop blindly getting excited for a game because it had a great CG trailer.  Instead, they need to start taking them as they are, just proofs of concept, and waiting on gameplay footage, previews and possibly demos before making a definitive decision on how these CG trailers represent the game they are promoting.

Launch Station: The Amazing Spider-Man

A week after Lego Batman 2 hit the scene, Marvel's web crawler hits the consoles.  Just one week before the corresponding movie releases in theatres, The Amazing Spider-Man hits game consoles.  While there has been a steady stream of quality superhero games in the past few years, gamers are still very cautious with superhero games because they end up as bad as the last Spider-Man game, Edge of Time, more often than not.  With the stinker that Edge of Time was, Beenox has to prove to the gaming world they are not one-hit wonders.  Beenox has to prove that they can make quality Spider-Man games each and every year or Activision will run them out the door and not look back.

Much different than other movie tie-ins, The Amazing Spider-Man game will serve as an epilogue to the movie.  So be warned to those planning to buy it during the first week of release because there will be spoilers.  During the opening mission of The Amazing Spider-Man, cross-species experiments from Oscorp escape into New York City.  In order to combat the cross-species that are running amok in New York City, expert in nano-technology and newest executive at Oscorp Alistair Smythe creates a bunch of robots to hunt them down.  It is up to Spider-Man, which is also a cross-species, from both the escaped Oscorp experiments and Alistair Smythe's army of killer robots.  While Alistair Smythe may be the main villain in The Amazing Spider-Man, the game also includes classic Spider-Man villains such as Rhino, Felicia Hardy, Scorpion and The Lizard.  The Amazing Spider-Man sees the return of the open world gameplay that was made popular in Spider-Man 2 (possibly one of the best movie tie-in games of all-time).  As Spider-Man, you are able to explore New York City to your hearts content.  Swing around, complete side missions and challenges, fight random thugs or take part in multiple different mini-games in addition to the game's main story.  The two major changes to the Spider-Man open world formula are found in the combat and new Web Rush mechanic.  First, the combat has been retooled to be more fast-paced and free-flowing.  The combat in The Amazing Spider-Man is very similar to Rocksteady's Batman games.  Next the Web Rush mechanic makes travelling across New York a little easier.  When you activate Web Rush and highlight the place where you want to go, Spider-Man smoothly transitions to said location.  When Web Rush is activated, control is taken away from the player, but you can break from the animation and go off in another direction altogether.

Personally, it has been hard to tell if The Amazing Spider-Man will any good.  I have not really cared for a Spider-Man game since the last generation of consoles.  I do want to pick up Shattered Dimensions sometime because I have heard many good things about it.  Other than that I am not that interested in The Amazing Spider-Man game.  I do hope Beenox has made a good enough game in The Amazing Spider-Man to get Activision to possibly give them more time to develop future Spider-Man games instead of pumping one out every year.

Launch Station: Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes

Ever since the original Lego Star Wars came out in 2005, the Lego gaming franchise has had incredible success with every entry.  From Star Wars to Harry Potter to Indiana Jones to eventually Lord of the Rings, Traveller's Tales has legofied many great franchises.  The first Lego Batman was the best selling Lego game in the series so Traveller's Tales has created one of their most ambitious games in Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes.

Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes begins with Joker breaking out of Arkham Asylum to join forces with the nefarious Lex Luthor.  Batman and Robin must team up with Superman and the Justice League to take down Joker and Lex Luthor.  Lego Batman 2 has many similarities to other Lego games such as collecting studs to buy new characters and items or constructing objects in order to solve puzzles.  Lego Batman 2 does have some different aspects that make it stand out from other Lego games.  Lego Batman 2 is the first fully voiced Lego game in the series.  No more mime acting and grunts that all the other Lego games used to convey their story.  Also in the audio department, Lego Batman 2 uses of Danny Elfman's score for Batman and Batman Returns and John William's score for Superman along with some original music to make up the game's soundtrack.  Outside of the linear story missions, Lego Batman 2 allows you to explore Gotham City to your heart's content as any character you have unlocked while playing the game.  Lego Batman 2 includes new gadgets for Batman and Robin to use and new vehicles to drive around in.  Lego Batman 2 also features the two player dynamic split-screen co-op that was introduced in Lego Star Wars III where the more you move away from each other the more the screen splits.

Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes looks like another good Batman game.  While I personally enjoy Rocksteady's Arkham series to the Lego Batman games, Lego Batman 2 looks to further evolve the Lego game series to keep up with modern gamers.  Lego Batman 2 is a perfect way of introducing the younger generation to one of the most popular super heroes of all-time compared to the more mature Christopher Nolan movies and Arkham series of games.

On the Download: Harley Quinn's Revenge Review

For this edition of On the Download, I want to do something different.  Instead of highlighting the biggest downloads of the week, I am going to review the biggest download of the week as I picked up the Harley Quinn's Revenge DLC for Batman: Arkham City and subsequently beat it.  I thought long and hard about how I would rate DLC as this will be my first review of any DLC whatsoever.  If I would rate it on the number scale or a completely different more simple scale like thumbs up or thumbs down approval rating.  After debating it long and hard, I came to the consensus that I will be reviewing all DLC like I review games on a scale out of 10.   Without any further ado, let us get to my first DLC review.

Harley Quinn’s Revenge serves as an epilogue for Batman:  Arkham City.  It is a standalone adventure that allows players to experience the aftermath of Arkham City’s incredible and controversial climax.  Harley Quinn’s Revenge is an excuse to play more Batman: Arkham City, which is always a good thing, but at the end of this two hour story mission you are left with a little more to be desired.

Set a couple weeks after the events of Batman: Arkham City, Harley Quinn has escaped the psychiatric ward of Arkham and has kidnapped a few Gotham City Policemen as well.  Batman returns to Joker’s steel mill in Arkham City to save the kidnapped policemen only to be trapped by the rather insane Harley Quinn.  Now it is up to Robin to infiltrate Harley’s secret base in order to save Gotham’s Dark Knight from the clutches of Joker’s insane girlfriend.

Harley Quinn’s Revenge features the same incredible gameplay featured in Batman: Arkham City.  The biggest addition comes from being able to play as Robin.  Robin plays a little differently than both Batman and Catwoman.  Robin has a bo staff, which he uses for combat, and other unique gadgets such as the Snap Flash and Shield.  If you did not pick up the Robin Challenge Map DLC, it will take little bit of time to get used to how Robin plays.  After a little time, Robin is just as satisfying to play as Batman and Catwoman are.  You play as Robin for the majority of Harley Quinn’s Revenge, but at two points you will be able to take control of the Dark Knight himself.

The main pull in Harley Quinn’s Revenge is the story.  With great acting and fun moments, there are glimpses of the greatness found in Arkham City’s story, but Harley Quinn’s Revenge ultimately falls a little short.  There are some nice hints at Batman facing some depression and who Batman really carried out of the opera house at the end of Arkham City, but nothing more.  Personally it felt like a missed opportunity as I believed this DLC will be the bridge between Arkham City and Rocksteady’s next Batman game.  Also not being able to freely roam Arkham City as Robin after beating Harley Quinn’s Revenge feels like another missed opportunity that could have added more lasting value to this piece of DLC.

Everything established in Batman: Arkham City such as the excellent environment, atmosphere, puzzles and combat, all carryover to Harley Quinn’s Revenge.  At the end of the day, it does feel like Rocksteady could have done a little more to take Harley Quinn’s Revenge from good to an incredible addition to Arkham City.  For what it is worth, Harley Quinn’s Revenge is good two hour, possibly three if you search for all the hidden balloons, romp back into Arkham City.  There is just enough content here to justify the 10 dollar price.  Harley Quinn’s Revenge is a worthy adventure for those who love Arkham City.

Batman: Arkham City Review

Arkham City starts not in the tights of the Caped Crusader of Gotham City, but in the pristine suit of Bruce Wayne as he holds a press conference to announce his opposition of the Arkham City prison.  Immediately following Wayne’s announcement, TYGER mercenaries arrest Mr. Wayne.  Wayne wakes up chained up.  Bruce tips over the chair and tries to escape, but the guard hears him.  The guard goes to kick Wayne, but he counters thus breaking the guard’s leg.  Another guard hits Bruce with the butt of his gun and pushes him out into the processing center as other inmates ridicule him and Hugo Strange’s voice booms over the intercom.  As Bruce Wayne enters Arkham City, Penguin and his thugs jump the millionaire and knock him out.  You wake up kneeling in front of the Penguin.  The diminutive crook starts wailing on Wayne with brass knuckles.  A well-timed counter and Wayne breaks the Penguin’s hand.  With the Penguin hurt, his goons jump into take Wayne out, but to no avail as the millionaire playboy of Gotham City takes them down with ease.  This series of events just described is the opening minutes of Arkham City.  In this opening, Rocksteady introduces the player to the story, the main villain, the core mechanics and the atmosphere of this new Arkham prison in one neat package.  It makes for one of the best openings for any video game as Rocksteady puts you in the shoes of the vulnerable Bruce Wayne before letting the player loose as Mr. Wayne’s alter-ego, Batman.

Once you get a hold of Batman’s suit and gadgets, you are dropped right in the thick of Arkham City.  Given the reins to do what you want when you want in this expansive setting with lots to do.  This amount of freedom is extremely refreshing considering how linear Arkham Asylum was even with the openness of Arkham Island.  You are free to go complete story missions, find side quests, collect Riddler Trophies (which you need to collect all of them to complete one of the side quests) or just beat up some inmates.  You can easily lose hours upon hours just exploring this incredibly rich setting without even touching the main story.  Speaking of Arkham City’s story, it is better paced and put together than Arkham Asylum’s plot.  Rocksteady has seamlessly woven a large gallery of iconic Batman villains like the Joker, Mr. Freeze Two-Face and many more into a one epic plot worthy of the Caped Crusader.

Along with fixing the flaws with Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady also made some improvements with the combat and upgrade system and one big addition in a playable Catwomen. Rocksteady did an incredible job making the combat in Arkham City more satisfying than its predecessor.  It is much easier to chain together strikes, counters, special takedowns and gadgets into one crazy combo, which makes even fighting lowly inmates that much more rewarding.  The upgrade system has been totally revamped.  Instead of just being long line of upgrades, you can choose from upgrading Batman’s batsuit, combat or gadgets.  The upgrade system gives players a little more freedom to build the Batman they want.  The biggest addition in Arkham City is Catwomen.  At certain points in the main story, you will get to play as Selina Kyle.  These segments are pretty short, but act as refreshing breathers from the World’s Greatest Detective.  Catwomen is much more agile than her burly counterpart allowing her to traverse corners of Arkham City that Batman just cannot reach.  After beating the main story, players are able to switch between Batman and Catwomen at certain locations around Arkham City.

With an epic story, excellent gameplay and a fully faceted open world setting, Arkham City is the ultimate superhero and ultimate Batman game.  Any gamer no matter if they are hardcore fans of the Dark Knight or know nothing about the Caped Crusader will enjoy the amazing experience Arkham City offers.  It puts you in the shoes of a superhero like no other game has ever done before and few could possibly do after.  In Arkham City, you are Batman.  You are the Dark Knight.  You are the World’s Greatest Detective.  You are a superhero.

Batman: Arkham Asylum Review

When you play a superhero game, be it Spider-Man to even Superman, you want to feel like you are the superhero.  You want to be in control of all his/her super powers, abilities or gadgets.  You want to fight all his dastardly enemies.  Ultimately you want to be the superhero; something that few superhero games have actually achieved.  Finally after a long time of being placed in some of the worst games of the last few console generations, the Dark Knight has reclaimed his glory.  With Arkham Asylum, you can finally say, “I’m Batman” with pride as it stands tall as one of the best superhero games of all-time.

Arkham Asylum starts off with the Dark Knight transporting the Joker to the iconic Gotham prison, Arkham Asylum.  After a brief cutscene, you are introduced to the inner halls of the asylum as you accompany of restrained Joker to cell.  Right before you can lock Joker away for good, Batman’s eternal nemesis with the help of his girlfriend, Harley Quinn escapes and takes over Arkham Asylum.  As the World’s Greatest Detective, Batman must explore Arkham Island, figure out what the Joker is up to and stop him from using it to take over Gotham City.

Joker is not the only super villain that the Dark Knight will fight during his adventures on Arkham Island.  Batman will fight the likes of the Scarecrow, Bane, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, Harley Quinn and Mr. Zsacz on his way to the Joker.  Also the Riddler plays a role in Arkham Asylum as well.  You will not fight the Riddler, but the man obsessed with riddles has left a bunch of collectables for you to find during your time on Arkham Island.  Like mentioned above, Arkham Asylum makes you feel like the Batman and that comes from the gadgets you receive throughout game and the hand-to-hand and stealth combat.  Batman receives a good number of gadgets that you can use to traverse the dangers across all of Arkham Island from your trusty Batarang to a Line Launcher to cross large chasms.  The combat is very awarding.  Depending on the situation, you will have to take one of two approaches.  The first being the hand-to-hand combat against a group of thugs.  Bouncing from thug to thug combining attacks, counters and Batarangs to the face into one flowing combo is one satisfying experience.  The second approach is stealth, which you can use against groups of unsuspecting or gun-wielding enemies.  You can perform a stealth takedown from many different places such as hanging from a ledge or sitting on a gargoyle.  It is very fun picking off enemies one-by-one and seeing enemies start panicking as they might be the next to face Batman’s harsh  justice.

With all the great stuff Arkham Asylum offers, there are a few flaws.  First and foremost is the fact that the game is far too linear when Rocksteady gives you all of Arkham Island to explore.  It would have been nice to see a few side missions interspersed here and there.  That leads into my other flaw as the game just felt too short for my liking.  The story is great, but when it just got going that was the point Rocksteady decided to end it.  They could have easily kept the game going a little longer with a faceoff with the Riddler or another villain from Batman’s rich comic book lore.  Also the final boss battle against Joker was less of a boss battle more of a fight against three groups of 20 thugs.  Other little flaws include the lack of variety in the enemies; the mutant enemies get a little too tedious after the third of fourth time facing them and the over reliance of the Detective Mode, a great feature that helps you throughout Arkham Asylum, but it takes away from seeing the gorgeous art and variety in the hallows of the environment in Arkham Asylum.

Even though my big complaints about the game’s length and linearity, Rocksteady achieved something many other studios have failed at, creating a great superhero game.  Batman: Arkham Asylum does the Dark Knight and his long storied history justice.  It is a game that truly puts you in Batman’s suit and should be in any superhero, Batman or action fans library.