Fer realz, dog.

Have you ever said to yourself, “Self, I sure do wish there was a third-person stealth game where I played the goddamned Batman, trapped on Arkham island, fighting all of the major baddies like Bane and the Scarecrow, where I could hang upside fucking down from the rafters, watching thugs and seeing their fear levels, only to swoop down on top of them, grab them, punch them in the nose, and leave them hanging, trussed up like a thuggy pig?”

If you ever asked that question, prepare for an orgasm, baby, because this game is the answer to your . . . needs.

I cannot begin to describe the visceral thrill that engaged my spine as I took out a room of ten thugs without any of them ever seeing me. You know that scene at the docks in Batman Begins where he takes out all the goons in darkness? One of them shouts, “Where are you?” and Batman just whispers, “here.” Bam.

It’s like that. YOU GET TO DO THESE THINGS.

But hey, say you’re not so into the creepifying ninja type stuff. That’s cool, too. You can just swoop into a crowd of goons and go to fucking town. You’re the fucking Batman, right? So you can do this, and do it well. Combat is both absurdly simply and absurdly complex. If you do it right, it’s a fluid, bone-crunching ballet of broken noses, busted ribs, and cape-swirl induced stuns. If you do it wrong, there’s still a lot of bone-crunching.

As you progress in the game you get more . . . bad-ass (I was going to say “more lethal” but the Bat is never about killing). Your initial equipment load is “just” unlimited batarangs and the grapple gun (which, by the way, never gets old). As you progress, you’ll unlock new abilities (throw multiple batarangs, better combos, armor, etc.) and abilities (grappleclaw, detonation gels).

These ability increases are where the “Metroid” bits come in: you’ll see areas you can’t quite get to. Yet. Once you have the grappleclaw, you’ll back track to where you saw that grate up high on the wall and pop it open, which opens new areas to explore and be a predator in.

But all that shit seriously fucking pales in comparison to “Detective Mode”. Detective mode is a switch, like one of Metroid’s visors. Flip it on and all of a sudden your perceptions of the world change. You have better night vision, for one. But you know, that thug lurking in the darkness over there? Now you see him bright as day (though in a skeletal form). Further, you get a read out of his emotional state, whether or not he has a weapon, etc. Grates, doors, other special things start standing out.

Previous Batman games had focused entirely on fighting, which, you know, makes sense given that Bruce is a fucking ninja. But the most important bit to Batman – the thing that makes him the Baddest Dude Walking – is the fact that he’s the world’s greatest detective. And that’s hard to put into a game and make “fun.” But Arkham Asylum pulls it off, and does it well.

For example, early in the game, you’ll have to track down a guard. You cordon off a “Crime Scene” area and do some investigation. Eventually you find his hip flask, sample the booze, and then, using the bad-ass detective mode visor, can follow the scent of the whiskey in the air to find him.

And then there’s a whole series of Riddler-based sidequests. These run from hidden-package collectibles to real “riddles”. Find the solution, take a photo, bam, XP. Hunting down Riddler quests alone is half the fun for me.

The boss fights are hella good, too. I mean, like, fighting Bane is pretty typical (dodge his charges, jump on his back and fuck up his venom injectors, etc.) but he’s kind of a super-strong thug. The Scarecrow boss fight is clever as all fuck. I haven’t run into the Joker yet but I shiver in anticipation.

The voice acting is gold-star all the way. They got Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin to reprise their roles from the old Batman: The Animated Series. Since each of them have played those characters longer than anyone else in history, they’re kind of definitive. I love me some Heath Ledger, but Mark Hamill’s Joker is a different breed, and Kevin Conroy is the best Batman.

(It also doesn’t hurt that the story was written by Paul Dini, who masterminded the DC Animated Universe.)

What I hate: Nothing. This is one of the best games I’ve played in many moons. You will love it.

Plus: The Goddamned Batman.

I am enjoying the game immensely, though I find it has flaws.

This next bit is going to be tediously boring if you’ve ever played a Lego videogame before. If you have, feel free to skip down to “Hey, Dumbass! Start Reading Again!”. Otherwise, continue.

Like all previous Lego games, Lego Batman is a 3d platformer where you solve puzzles to continue, either by using special powers inherent in each character or building shit out of Lego. You will always have at least two characters with you (in this case, usually Batman and Robin, but more on that later) and can switch between them at will.

Overcoming obstacles is an exercise in the correct application of each character’s unique abilities.

There is a lot of replay in every level. Certain powers or characters are only unlocked later in the game, or are not given to you during “normal” play. Thus, you can replay any level you’ve beaten in “free play” mode, where you have pretty much ALL the characters available to you. And in this way you can get into secret hidden areas you were unable to reach before (because, say, it was behind glass, and you needed the Sonic Suit to get through it, or it was across a toxic waste pool, and you needed Poison Ivy to get there [she’s immune to poison]).

Along the way, you collect a bunch of Skittles and then have boss fights. It’s pretty typical in that regard.

Of course, where the game shines is the co-operative 2 player mode. And I can’t really describe the awesomesauce that is, so you’ll just have to find out for yourself.

‘Kay. Kindergarten over.

Hey, Dumbass! Start Reading Again!

It is patently obvious that Lego Batman was built upon the backs of its predecessors. The game play and puzzles have become fine-tuned at this point, and there is a polish to everything. I thought Lego Indiana Jones was polished but Lego Batman makes it look like neglected silverware.

There are many “powers” that I think the designers probably wanted to include in Indiana Jones but were hampered by, you know, “reality.” Like, oh, being able to control plants, or freeze people, or fly like a fucking bat. Or walk on walls (with Robin’s “magneto-suit”).

This is the game’s second biggest strength: the variety of characters and abilities. There are a metric ass-ton, and they come in combination on different characters (for example, Mr. Freeze has the “freeze shit” power, the “walk in toxic sludge” power, and “super strength” while The Riddler has “control minds” and . . . well. That’s it. But you don’t want Freeze in a fistfight, because he’s slow as a frozen dog-turd rolling uphill, while the Riddler is crazy fast.

There is a neat mechanic regarding powers that applies only to Batman and Robin: they can change “suits”. Different Batsuits have different abilities. One allows you to glide/fly, another allows you to blow shit up with bombs, another protects you from super heat, and so forth. Throughout the levels you’re given the option to sometimes switch suits, which you usually need to do in order to progress.

The game’s greatest strength, however, is the fact that you get to play the story from both sides.

Again, as in the past, the story is broken up into three main parts, each of which contains six levels. However, in Lego Batman, we really have six main parts (for a total of 36 levels), because you can play through each of the three story parts again as the bad guys.

The best part: the villain levels are totally different maps, with their own puzzles and secrets. You just get to see the bank heist from a different perspective. Strands unlock once you’ve completed it in “good guy” mode.

Further: playing the bad guys is more fun.

Little irritants have been thrown out, too. For example, in previous Lego games, the vehicle levels were seriously painful if you were trying to collect studs (points). Now, if you destroy something in a vehicle, you’re just automatically awarded the points, which is excellent.

However, the game is not without flaws. The “boss fights” are frankly too easy and usually amount to “beat the shit out of someone for a minute,” “beat up a wave of goons,” repeat until boss dead. The “boss challenges” (the bosses you ‘fight’ when playing a bad guy) are frankly frustrating because they usually involve trying to solve a strange puzzle while fending off an infinite amount of re-spawning cops. This detracts from the overall flow.

Story and atmosphere-wise, this is not the Dark Knight. It’s more like the child of the 1990’s animated series and the campy teevee show from the 1960s. It’s not asking “why so serious?”; it’s kid-friendly in that regard.

….

Seriously, that’s about as simple as we can get. And it doesn’t say anything, because trying to describe the . . . experience . . . of the film is probably nothing that can be accomplished in the English language.

Well. The Joker would understand, maybe. He seems to be looking at things on a different plane.

I’m going to try to be spoiler free here, but I never really remember which parts of the Batman mythos are “public knowledge” and which ones are “geek cred”. So.

I’m going to start by saying that I love Batman Begins. It is one of my favorite films and I probably watch it at least once a month. I feel that it is the first time that Batman was taken seriously on the big screen (the animated series of the 1990s did as well, but the 1980s/1990s movies turned to camp and crap).

I loved every frame of it, beginning to end.

So I am (almost) sad to say that The Dark Knight turns Batman Begins into a lesser film by comparison.

You know how The Empire Strikes Back is head and shoulders above Star Wars? It’s like that. And this film is absolutely Batman’s Empire: it is dispassionate and unrelenting in the way it assaults our hero, his loved ones, and his world.

Make no mistake: this is a dark film. It is darker than Revenge of the Sith – and that film is about the hero turning to evil, slaughtering everyone he loves, murdering his wife, having all his limbs chopped off, burned alive, and ultimately rebuilt into a grim machine of death.

It is darker than that.

I seriously do not know how they got away with a PG-13 rating – especially with Two Face’s makeup.

Much has already been said about Heath Ledger’s performance in nearly every media outlet on the planet. I don’t really know what I can say to add to it save this:

Watching his Joker is mesmerizing in the way that watching a King Cobra dance is mesmerizing.

He owns the screen. Every twitch, every word, every shrug. He moves like broken clockwork and speaks hypnotically. At one point, he explains to the Batman his philosophy about rules and freaks and it comes across so bold and so well that he made me believe. Every breathe is filled with . . . well. I don’t want to use the word “menace” because that’s not right. “Menace” implies a moral code and an intent to evil. Ledger’s Joker has neither a moral code nor a motive of evil.

He simply is. He is a force of fucking nature. And that force just happens to be pretty damned evil. He is a terrorist, and he sure as fuck knows how to make a pencil disappear (This is quite possibly one of the best bits in cinematic history. You’ll know it when you see it.)

All the Jokers before him: Cesar Romero, Lennie Weinrib, Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill, Kevin Michael Richardson – they are mere stewards to the role. Ledger is, and probably always shall be, The Joker, forever and ever, a-men.

But the Joker is only half of the story. The rest of the story begins and ends with the White Knight, Harvey Dent.

Dent’s story arc is wrought with the care and detail of a Fabergé Egg. It is the pinnacle of tragedy, and (forever and ever, a-men) the ultimate victory of the Joker: the corruption and destruction of the most noble human being ever to walk the streets of Gotham City.

He is handled brilliantly by Aaron Eckhart (who looks disturbingly too much like my friend JQ). Through three quarters of the film, I was sucked in by his words and deeds. I believe in Harvey Dent. So does Bruce Wayne and Jim Gordon – which makes what happens to him so much more a tragedy on the scale of Romeo and Juliet in the end.

This is a grim, dark film. But it is, I think, an important film because at its core it is not an “action” film nor is it a “comic book” film. It is an exploration of the psyche, and the limits that people are willing to be driven to. We watch as Bruce Wayne teeters across the edge, violating each of his principles one by one in order to combat his polar opposite: Batman is the representative of pure order; the Joker that of pure chaos. And the further Bruce falls from his ideals in order to defeat the Joker, the closer he comes to being defeated.

It is a film about the Prisoner’s Dilemma (and, in fact, this scenario is visited several times, but most blatantly during the film’s climax).

I will absolutely see it again.

While the film is rated PG-13, I. . . I disagree with that rating. It is an R rated film in PG-13 clothing. So think very carefully before bringing children to the show.