Marc Kusnierz | Wednesday, April 23, 2025 at 11:00AM
If Road Redemption was a pleasant surprise, Road Rage was a crashing disappointment. It didn't help that I played Road Rage immediately after playing Road Redemption, but where Road Redemption found a few elements to focus on and refine, Road Rage went the other route and tried doing too much. I can see a version of Road Rage that's good, but the Road Rage we have fails on all fronts and only manages to frustrate and bore instead of giving players anything to enjoy.
For a game with drift in the title, the drifting in KartRider: Drift felt terrible. That could be excused if everything else was good to great, but that wasn't the case. Sure, there's a lot of content there, from a large cast of drivers to a decent selection of tracks, but none of that mattered when the game wasn't fun to play, and when you're in a crowded genre full of some very big hitters, you need to be more than fine to stand out. Unfortunately for KartRider: Drift, that never happened. Now KartRider: Drift is dead in all forms except on PC in Korea and Taiwan, so let's toast to it one last time in this here episode of The Last Call.
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This was a surprise. Early this year I wasn't sure what to play and wasn't quite ready for anything too big, so I perused my various libraries and picked out a few games that caught my eye. Road Redemption was one of those games. As someone who grew up with Road Rash and loved every iteration of it up to and including Road Rash 3D, any game that looks like Road Rash is going to get my attention. That said, I wasn't expecting much from Road Redemption based on the visuals, but as soon as I started playing, I fell in love. It may not be the prettiest game out there and it's rough around the edges, but it's great where it counts: it's just a lot of fun to play.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League isn't a bad game, it's just a bad Arkham game. If you asked anyone what they wanted out of a sequel to Batman: Arkham Knight, I doubt a single person would say, "I want a co-op, live service Suicide Squad game," but that's what we got: a perfectly fine cooperative shooter with enough cutscenes to rival the runtime of The Return of the King: Extended Edition and four playable characters who feel mostly the same outside of unique traversal mechanics. But I guess it could have been worse; it could have been Gotham Knights instead.
It's unoriginal to blame negativity towards Batman: Arkham Knight on the batmobile, but hear me out. While most (all?) complained about the batmobile from a direct gameplay standpoint--how it felt and the repetitive missions--my complaint is an indirect one: I think the batmobile ruined Arkham Knight by forcing Rocksteady to change the way other aspects of the game controlled in order to accommodate the batmobile controls. It may seem like a small complaint to most and something I should've have "just gotten used to," but I never got used to the small changes in how Arkham Knight controlled and that ultimately ruined the game for me.
As my full Arkham playthrough continues, we find ourselves at a new low with the game most people forget even exists: Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate, the downloadable side-scrolling Metroidvania that's 90% tedious, 10% interesting. In many ways it feels like a bonus little side story to Arkham Origins and not an essential entry, so it's easy to see why it's often forgotten about; though, the fact it isn't that great of a game (probably) doesn't help either. It's biggest crime, however, is its desire to stay too true to the Arkham formula, instead of trying to find an identity of its own.
I thought I played Batman: Arkham Origins when it originally came out. I was wrong. When I booted up the game on my Xbox 360, all I had was a 5% completed save file from 11 years ago to the day, so what I thought was going to be another Second Run was actually an Attack the Backlog. I don't know if it's because it was all new to me or if it's just a better game (or maybe a little of both), but I had a significantly better time with Arkham Origins than I did with Arkham City. Arkham Origins takes what Arkham City did and simplifies and focuses it, delivering an overall more satisfying experience for someone like me who isn't a Batman super fan. It may not reach the heights of Arkham Asylum, but it's a worthy addition to the Arkham saga and should be treated on an equal footing with the Rocksteady-developed Arkham games.
I always preferred Batman: Arkham Asylum to Batman: Arkham City, but the gap this time was much larger and I have to assume it's at least partially due to the time gap between playthroughs being so small this time around; I just think playing these games back to back does Arkham City no favors. That said, and regardless of how time affected my feelings, I still think Arkham City is a worse game in almost every way, going for quantity over quality (except when it comes to the main storyline, which is actually shorter than Arkham Asylum's). It is by no means bad, man, but unlike its older brother, it's no "greatest game of all time" contender.
Marc Kusnierz | Sunday, February 23, 2025 at 11:00AM
It's been a while since I've replayed a game, since I put out an episode of Second Runs, but when I decided it was finally time to play Batman: Arkham Knight, I knew what needed to be done first: replay every Arkham game that came before (and play the ones I never played for the first time). That brings us here, with me revisiting Batman: Arkham Asylum for not the second time, but the third time--which I only learned after booting up the remastered version and seeing a 72% completion save in front of me. Long story short: Arkham Asylum is not only a great Batman game, but one of the greatest games of all time, and if you want the long story long, check out this episode and enjoy.
Marc Kusnierz | Sunday, February 16, 2025 at 11:00AM
Welcome, everyone, to a brand new show: The Last Call. (I technically called it Attack the Backlog because I recorded this episode before coming up with the new name, but every episode forward will be correctly branded). What is The Last Call? It's really quite simple: The Last Call is a show all about games that have received their final papers, their death sentence, the final nail in the coffin, however you want to phrase it, and are not long for this world; this can be due to being delisted, having their servers shut down, or any other finality in between. This inaugural episode is all about Hood: Outlaws & Legends, a PvPvE heist game that feels more like a mode in a full game than a full game on its own. The real question, though, is will Hood: Outlaws & Legends be remembered for everything it did, or forgotten for everything it didn't.
Marc Kusnierz | 