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EDGE 275 : Batman AK Cover Story, Top10 2014, Reviews:FC4,DAI,ACU,ACR,Smash,Toad...

A

Alienous

Member
The Arkham Knight is such a great character design.

I hope Rocksteady go on to making an Arkham Knight 3rd person shooter.
 
D

dcelw540

Junior Member
TheBIG said:
LxTdpX6.jpg
Click to expand...
Is this real or fake?
 
T

thejazzking

Neo Member
I am usually a huge fan of the Edge production value. This time, my cover was badly cropped and the magazine was upside down inside... It made me laugh and I get some funny looks, but it is still a tad disappointing.
 
K

K.Sabot

Member
I like the list. Seems like EDGE values gameplay over fluff. (sans LBP's poop physics which makes it a bad platformer)
 
C

Chû Totoro

Member
Bebpo said:
I've seen this sentiment a lot. I think a lot of it depends on if you're reviewing a game for what it is, versus what it's done to improve off the last one. It's possible the Edge reviewer who reviewed FC4 never played FC3 so it's an entirely new fresh experience.
Click to expand...

I find your post very interesting and I think reviewers should add a little bit of context around their review. Reviewed previous games of a series, specialist of the genre, source of reviewed copy, online / features similar to what will be available for a day one player (like number of people online approximatively, DLC content available when reviewing or not and what it changes or not regarding the review...).

I don't know if my way of explaining it is good but surely EDGE or others could make something good and make reviews even more comprehensive.
 
K

Kosma

Banned
Chû Totoro;143853634 said:
I find your post very interesting and I think reviewers should add a little bit of context around their review. Reviewed previous games of a series, specialist of the genre, source of reviewed copy, online / features similar to what will be available for a day one player (like number of people online approximatively, DLC content available when reviewing or not and what it changes or not regarding the review...).

I don't know if my way of explaining it is good but surely EDGE or others could make something good and make reviews even more comprehensive.
Click to expand...

Have you read Edge?
 
M

Mr Git

Member
Nice! Haven't bought a copy of Edge in aeons might go and pick this up. Still haven't played Bayo 2 yet, but damn, glad it hit the top spot.
 
M

Messofanego

Banned
Rocksteady is 160 staff.

Sefton Hill gives a great quote which probably applies to many game developers:

"When I'm speaking to someone, if you could Ctrl-Alt-Del my brain, my systems resources are always 90% making this game and 10% having a coversation."​

After reading the Batman Arkham Knight cover story, I'm way more hyped about the Batmobile compared to the videos they've shown where it seems separate. It's not. There are side interviews given to David Hego (art director about going more neon, world broken down into 3 subsections, and not putting a statue too close to a building that you grapple boost bang into it), Jamie Walker (studio director about in-house mo-cap studio), and Nick Arundel (audio director on a generative system for foley like rain sound fx).

Batmobile can be used in conjunction with normal combat. Also, puzzles:

It's why, during one combat section with the Batmobile parked nearby, a new button prompt appears. We press X and Square and dragon punch an opponent into the air before the Batmobile knocks him back to the floor again with a tranquilizer round to the head. Outside of brawls, a built-in winch pulls down heavy doors to let our hero enter new areas, and raises and lowers a broken lift to lead him to hostages. The Batmobile is never more than a button press away from being at our side, and during puzzle sections we find ourselves switching constantly, and fluidly, between the Dark Knight and his vehicle.​

Player choice:

"Batman's not been nerfed to make the car more powerful. In fact, he's been buffed. We've got a really nice balance," Hill tells us. "Internally we have some people who use the car a lot more, and some who use the gliding more. It's up to the player. I'm playing the game at the moment - it's a lovely stage of the project: you're just playing, reviewing, writing up lists of tasks - and I constantly switch up the way I play. I'm not doing it to test the game, I'm doing it because I enjoy it."​

Tweaks to combat to help in flow:

That, too, has been refined. New players will appreciate the spectacle - the Batmobile assists, the context-sensitive environmental takedowns - but veterans will be more interested in the little changes.

There are more enemy animations - Doherty points out that every opponent in Arkham Asylum and City shared the same punch and kick. Some enemies charge at you, and must be taken down with a quick Batarang throw, something that has long been optional in Arkham's combat but is now frequently essential. A tightly executed counter will push your opponent back, knocking down any enemies behind them, something that, in in previous games, could have meant the end of your combo, since a downed enemy could not be struck except with a knockout blow. Now, you can land a lightly damaging hit on enemies while they're down, or pick them back up for another pummelling, ensuring Batman's flow remains unbroken.

"I think our secret is primarily an obsessive attention to detail," Doherty says. Every move that goes in, we make sure it has a purpose and we make sure that all the timings are just perfect. And there's always a window after a move where you get an opportunity to counter, no matter what they're doing - they'll just slow down their animation a little bit. We want the player to feel like what they're donig is awesome, regardless of how good they are."​

Stealth more chained like combat:

That ethos extends to Arkham Knight's stealth, too, where the new Fear Takedown sees Batman taking out three enemies in quick succession. We drop onto the first from the ceiling, point the camera to the next and press Square to take out the second, then do the same to the third. What would, in Arkhams past, have been a drawn-out process of isolating and dispatching the group one by one has been completed in seconds. It adds a note of the combat system's fluidity to something that has always necessarily been more staccato and thus feels, Doherty believes, more appropriate to the character.

"You can play the whole thing like Metal Gear or Splinter Cell - do everything silently, perfectly, without alerting the room. But in some ways, that's not particularly Batman. If you watch the movies, he never does a Silent Takedown. Someone always hears it. We wanted a way to empower the player to aggressively take on groups of enemies."

There's a fine line between empowered and overpowered, and as a concept the Fear Takedown leans towards the latter, but it's been balanced cleverly. It has to be recharged with a Silent Takedown, you have to get up close to be able to use it at all, and if you take out three mooks and the fourth has a rifle, you're still in a pickle. It's the kind of gentle refinement to a core system that can make all the difference for a sequel, but getting such tweaks right is a parlous balance that requires an awful lot of work.​

If they did cross gen:

"Very, very early on, we had discussions about doing cross-gen," he says. "When we were looking at it, we realised that there were compromises we would need to make with the layout of the city. There were certain areas we could only have Batman get to, and certain areas we could only have the Batmobile. 'Compromise' is not a word that sits well with me. If we're doing it like that, we may as well not do the Batmobile; if we want to integrate it fully then it has to be on a machine that can deliver it. It was a really bold decision by Warner. At the time [we made the choice], no one knew what the uptake on next-gen was going to be like. It's been brilliant, which is great for us and great for the industry, but it was bold."​
 
S

Spring-Loaded

Member
Messofanego said:
Rocksteady is 160 staff.

Sefton Hill gives a great quote which probably applies to many game developers:

"When I'm speaking to someone, if you could Ctrl-Alt-Del my brain, my systems resources are always 90% making this game and 10% having a coversation."​

After reading the Batman Arkham Knight cover story, I'm way more hyped about the Batmobile compared to the videos they've shown where it seems separate. It's not. There are side interviews given to David Hego (art director about going more neon, world broken down into 3 subsections, and not putting a statue too close to a building that you grapple boost bang into it), Jamie Walker (studio director about in-house mo-cap studio), and Nick Arundel (audio director on a generative system for foley like rain sound fx).

Batmobile can be used in conjunction with normal combat. Also, puzzles:

It's why, during one combat section with the Batmobile parked nearby, a new button prompt appears. We press X and Square and dragon punch an opponent into the air before the Batmobile knocks him back to the floor again with a tranquilizer round to the head. Outside of brawls, a built-in winch pulls down heavy doors to let our hero enter new areas, and raises and lowers a broken lift to lead him to hostages. The Batmobile is never more than a button press away from being at our side, and during puzzle sections we find ourselves switching constantly, and fluidly, between the Dark Knight and his vehicle.​

Player choice:

"Batman's not been nerfed to make the car more powerful. In fact, he's been buffed. We've got a really nice balance," Hill tells us. "Internally we have some people who use the car a lot more, and some who use the gliding more. It's up to the player. I'm playing the game at the moment - it's a lovely stage of the project: you're just playing, reviewing, writing up lists of tasks - and I constantly switch up the way I play. I'm not doing it to test the game, I'm doing it because I enjoy it."​

Tweaks to combat to help in flow:

That, too, has been refined. New players will appreciate the spectacle - the Batmobile assists, the context-sensitive environmental takedowns - but veterans will be more interested in the little changes.

There are more enemy animations - Doherty points out that every opponent in Arkham Asylum and City shared the same punch and kick. Some enemies charge at you, and must be taken down with a quick Batarang throw, something that has long been optional in Arkham's combat but is now frequently essential. A tightly executed counter will push your opponent back, knocking down any enemies behind them, something that, in in previous games, could have meant the end of your combo, since a downed enemy could not be struck except with a knockout blow. Now, you can land a lightly damaging hit on enemies while they're down, or pick them back up for another pummelling, ensuring Batman's flow remains unbroken.

"I think our secret is primarily an obsessive attention to detail," Doherty says. Every move that goes in, we make sure it has a purpose and we make sure that all the timings are just perfect. And there's always a window after a move where you get an opportunity to counter, no matter what they're doing - they'll just slow down their animation a little bit. We want the player to feel like what they're donig is awesome, regardless of how good they are."​

Stealth more chained like combat:

That ethos extends to Arkham Knight's stealth, too, where the new Fear Takedown sees Batman taking out three enemies in quick succession. We drop onto the first from the ceiling, point the camera to the next and press Square to take out the second, then do the same to the third. What would, in Arkhams past, have been a drawn-out process of isolating and dispatching the group one by one has been completed in seconds. It adds a note of the combat system's fluidity to something that has always necessarily been more staccato and thus feels, Doherty believes, more appropriate to the character.

"You can play the whole thing like Metal Gear or Splinter Cell - do everything silently, perfectly, without alerting the room. But in some ways, that's not particularly Batman. If you watch the movies, he never does a Silent Takedown. Someone always hears it. We wanted a way to empower the player to aggressively take on groups of enemies."

There's a fine line between empowered and overpowered, and as a concept the Fear Takedown leans towards the latter, but it's been balanced cleverly. It has to be recharged with a Silent Takedown, you have to get up close to be able to use it at all, and if you take out three mooks and the fourth has a rifle, you're still in a pickle. It's the kind of gentle refinement to a core system that can make all the difference for a sequel, but getting such tweaks right is a parlous balance that requires an awful lot of work.​

If they did cross gen:

"Very, very early on, we had discussions about doing cross-gen," he says. "When we were looking at it, we realised that there were compromises we would need to make with the layout of the city. There were certain areas we could only have Batman get to, and certain areas we could only have the Batmobile. 'Compromise' is not a word that sits well with me. If we're doing it like that, we may as well not do the Batmobile; if we want to integrate it fully then it has to be on a machine that can deliver it. It was a really bold decision by Warner. At the time [we made the choice], no one knew what the uptake on next-gen was going to be like. It's been brilliant, which is great for us and great for the industry, but it was bold."​
Click to expand...

MuDmUIY.gif


The part about how they "want the player to feel like what they're donig is awesome, regardless of how good they are" would worry me if it weren't clear Rocksteady knows how to do that in a substantial way, not in a restrictive, non-player-agency focused way.
 
G

Gleethor

Member
Messofanego said:
Rocksteady is 160 staff.

Sefton Hill gives a great quote which probably applies to many game developers:

"When I'm speaking to someone, if you could Ctrl-Alt-Del my brain, my systems resources are always 90% making this game and 10% having a coversation."​

After reading the Batman Arkham Knight cover story, I'm way more hyped about the Batmobile compared to the videos they've shown where it seems separate. It's not. There are side interviews given to David Hego (art director about going more neon, world broken down into 3 subsections, and not putting a statue too close to a building that you grapple boost bang into it), Jamie Walker (studio director about in-house mo-cap studio), and Nick Arundel (audio director on a generative system for foley like rain sound fx).

Batmobile can be used in conjunction with normal combat. Also, puzzles:

It's why, during one combat section with the Batmobile parked nearby, a new button prompt appears. We press X and Square and dragon punch an opponent into the air before the Batmobile knocks him back to the floor again with a tranquilizer round to the head. Outside of brawls, a built-in winch pulls down heavy doors to let our hero enter new areas, and raises and lowers a broken lift to lead him to hostages. The Batmobile is never more than a button press away from being at our side, and during puzzle sections we find ourselves switching constantly, and fluidly, between the Dark Knight and his vehicle.​

Player choice:

"Batman's not been nerfed to make the car more powerful. In fact, he's been buffed. We've got a really nice balance," Hill tells us. "Internally we have some people who use the car a lot more, and some who use the gliding more. It's up to the player. I'm playing the game at the moment - it's a lovely stage of the project: you're just playing, reviewing, writing up lists of tasks - and I constantly switch up the way I play. I'm not doing it to test the game, I'm doing it because I enjoy it."​

Tweaks to combat to help in flow:

That, too, has been refined. New players will appreciate the spectacle - the Batmobile assists, the context-sensitive environmental takedowns - but veterans will be more interested in the little changes.

There are more enemy animations - Doherty points out that every opponent in Arkham Asylum and City shared the same punch and kick. Some enemies charge at you, and must be taken down with a quick Batarang throw, something that has long been optional in Arkham's combat but is now frequently essential. A tightly executed counter will push your opponent back, knocking down any enemies behind them, something that, in in previous games, could have meant the end of your combo, since a downed enemy could not be struck except with a knockout blow. Now, you can land a lightly damaging hit on enemies while they're down, or pick them back up for another pummelling, ensuring Batman's flow remains unbroken.

"I think our secret is primarily an obsessive attention to detail," Doherty says. Every move that goes in, we make sure it has a purpose and we make sure that all the timings are just perfect. And there's always a window after a move where you get an opportunity to counter, no matter what they're doing - they'll just slow down their animation a little bit. We want the player to feel like what they're donig is awesome, regardless of how good they are."​

Stealth more chained like combat:

That ethos extends to Arkham Knight's stealth, too, where the new Fear Takedown sees Batman taking out three enemies in quick succession. We drop onto the first from the ceiling, point the camera to the next and press Square to take out the second, then do the same to the third. What would, in Arkhams past, have been a drawn-out process of isolating and dispatching the group one by one has been completed in seconds. It adds a note of the combat system's fluidity to something that has always necessarily been more staccato and thus feels, Doherty believes, more appropriate to the character.

"You can play the whole thing like Metal Gear or Splinter Cell - do everything silently, perfectly, without alerting the room. But in some ways, that's not particularly Batman. If you watch the movies, he never does a Silent Takedown. Someone always hears it. We wanted a way to empower the player to aggressively take on groups of enemies."

There's a fine line between empowered and overpowered, and as a concept the Fear Takedown leans towards the latter, but it's been balanced cleverly. It has to be recharged with a Silent Takedown, you have to get up close to be able to use it at all, and if you take out three mooks and the fourth has a rifle, you're still in a pickle. It's the kind of gentle refinement to a core system that can make all the difference for a sequel, but getting such tweaks right is a parlous balance that requires an awful lot of work.​

If they did cross gen:

"Very, very early on, we had discussions about doing cross-gen," he says. "When we were looking at it, we realised that there were compromises we would need to make with the layout of the city. There were certain areas we could only have Batman get to, and certain areas we could only have the Batmobile. 'Compromise' is not a word that sits well with me. If we're doing it like that, we may as well not do the Batmobile; if we want to integrate it fully then it has to be on a machine that can deliver it. It was a really bold decision by Warner. At the time [we made the choice], no one knew what the uptake on next-gen was going to be like. It's been brilliant, which is great for us and great for the industry, but it was bold."​
Click to expand...

Thanks for the highlights. That quote about cross gen is great to hear, and hell we even got a second game out of the decision (Origins) which wasn't half bad.
 
S

swazzyswess

Member
Where do you guys buy Edge? do any chains carry them? I've always loved their writing but never read a physical issue. Kinda want to find one in a store and browse through it before I subscribe.
 
V

Vena

Member
swazzyswess said:
Where do you guys buy Edge? do any chains carry them? I've always loved their writing but never read a physical issue. Kinda want to find one in a store and browse through it before I subscribe.
Click to expand...

B&N carries it on their magazine rack if you need a quick issue.
 
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