Batman: Arkham City Harley Quinn's Revenge Review

SPOILER WARNING: Harley Quinn's Revenge takes place after the ending of Batman: Arkham City. This article mentions how the game ends.

I've already declared that Harley Quinn's Revenge is what downloadable content should be based on a 30-minute preview of the single-player story expansion for Batman: Arkham City. Luckily, after playing through the entire two-hour campaign, I'm not going to try and weasel out of that statement. Although I wish the ending was a bit more satisfying, that's nitpicking. Harley Quinn's Revenge offers a fresh take on the gameplay we love and expands the narrative developer Rocksteady has worked so hard to create. This is the type of DLC story-driven games should be pumping out.

Picking up a few weeks after the events of Batman: Arkham City, Harley Quinn's Revenge opens with Batman missing. Seems Harley took over the Joker's old haunt in Arkham City, Batman went to investigate, and now the Caped Crusader hasn't been heard from in days. As such, we start as Robin investigating the scene, jump back to Batman to see what went wrong, and then flip flop to tell the tale.

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This is the type of DLC story-driven games should be pumping out.

Needless to say, that's rad. Harley's DLC is familiar but fresh. Robin's moves (his bo staff becomes a shield, he can grapple to people's chest for a zip kick, etc.) are the same from his downloadable challenge missions, but this is our first chance to try them out in a story situation. We get to hear Robin talk to Oracle, see him use detective vision, and become Batman's savior. That's a nice shakeup after dozens of hours patrolling rooftops and looking for Riddler trophies as the Dark Knight.

Make no mistake, this is the same gameplay I lauded back in October with its reversal system, combos and gadgets, but viewing it through this new lens makes it exciting all over again. Using a shuriken instead of a Batarang is a bigger deal than you might think, and as someone who hadn't really played since the game came out, I enjoyed slipping back into the game I loved so much. It was like seeing an old friend again.

Save him, Boy Wonder!

But it's worth pointing out that you can't ignore the mission at hand here and go scope the city for side quests as the Boy Wonder. Harley Quinn's Revenge is a standalone mode off the main menu and doesn't tie into your previous saves or the open world, although it does have a collectable set of Harley balloons to find and a bunch of new Trophies/Achievements.

The missions you'll tackle drop you right back into taking out snipers and wailing on guys with stun guns, but they can be a bit fetch questy, focusing on collecting keycards and diffusing bombs. Still, I never got sick of heading out on the next leg of my journey because the enemies are always varied. Even though I'm taking on room after room of guys as I make my way around the steel mill, Harley Quinn's Revenge tweaked the formula with each group.

Switching out the enemy types is great, but the continuation of the Arkham City story kept me playing and justifies the purchase. Challenge rooms and costumes are enticing to some gamers, but I wanted to know what happened to these characters after Batman walked out of that theater with Joker's dead body. To pick up here and find the Dark Knight's friends concerned about him emotionally -- as if he's for the Joker -- is alarming and intriguing all at once. Batman's always been unhinged, so how crazy is he now that his partners are this concerned for him?

However, that question is the DLC's major downside. It's never answered. We're teased with the information that Batman is struggling with the loss of his arch nemesis and his lover Tala, but we never get to see it. We never get to see him deal with it. I'm not going to spoil the ending here, but don't expect to have any more closure than you did before. In fact, this might even raise more questions for Batman's character than the original Arkham City ending.

But that's not the worst thing in the world -- just something for us fans to obsess over until the next game, piece of DLC or comic book chapter.

Source : http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/05/29/batman-arkham-city-harley-quinns-revenge-review

House "Everybody Dies" Review

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen the final episode of House, please watch before reading this review. Full episode spoilers follow.

One of the most difficult things in television is to deliver a series finale that summarizes the message of an entire show, ties up loose ends, and gives a satisfying conclusion to the folks who have poured hundreds of hours of their lives into following the story. With that much pressure on a single episode, it's no wonder that many series finales are often divisive or mediocre.

That said, it's doubtful that the final episode of House will inspire much controversy, and that's a bit of a shame. For a show that often pushes buttons and boundaries (or at least features a title character that does), the series finale played things very safe. It didn't ultimately betray the time investment of its audience, but it didn't take any risks, either.

After a prank that threatens to put House back in jail after violation of his parole, House finds himself in a burning building next to a dead body. The episode constantly returns to this location as we flash back to find out what put House in this situation. The gist of the main story is that House takes one last case, a drug addict (James LeGros) who finds more joy in taking drugs than living. House saves the addict (momentarily) even though the man, thinking he has nothing left to lose, offers to take the fall for House's prank. In saving the patient, House damns himself, proving he is less selfish than he claims... at least for the time being.

House takes up with the addict and eventually ends up waking from a heroin haze to find himself in the abandoned building with the dead addict. The main problem with this story line is that ultimately, House's bad behavior end up killing the patient, which undercuts his sacrifice back at the hospital (a main motivating factor in his decision making later in the episode). Of course, it's all just set-up to put House in a life-or-death situation in the burning building (it's never explained why the building is on fire), so he can start reflecting back on his life as the flames creep closer.

This allows the show to trot out a litany of familiar faces in a Scrooge-esque analysis of House's life: each ghost emerges to dig deeper into House's motivations for self-destruction in light of Wilson's impending death. The carousel of guest stars has long been a series finale cliche, but here it feels unnecessary. For some, it may provide closure to see Kal Penn or Olivia Wilde or Andre Brauger return, but it feels like a move that is made purely because this is the last episode of the series, and not because it is essential to bring these characters back to tell this story.

Having everyone back also puts a harsh light on the absence of Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) in this finale. She exited the series between seasons and never got a satisfactory farewell, so it was disappointing that among all of the characters we see, the one who needs her story wrapped the most, and one of the folks who could have helped explore House's fractured psyche the best, does not get a swan song of her own.

Then there's the matter of the ending. Again, if you do not want to be spoiled, do not read further. Just as House has chosen to live, and change his life (it's Scrooge's revelation without the happy running through the streets hugging Tiny Tim bit), the building he is in explodes. Wilson and Foreman have tracked House to the warehouse and are there to see it go up, and by the time all the flames are out, virtually the entire staff is collected outside the smoking building waiting to hear House's fate. Eventually, a stretcher is wheeled out and later House is identified as the body. Dental records confirm it. But it's a little too coincidental that there was another body in the building that is never discovered, and so by the time we get to House's funeral, it's already pretty obvious he is pulling a Huck Finn.

Of course, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the false ending, or with House faking his death to avoid jail time and hang out with Wilson in his last days... it all just feels a bit tidy and safe. There is a braver ending out there, but not one that is as audience-pleasing, perhaps.

And the mere fact that the episode is safe does not make it bad; it just does not make it transcendent. But it does cap a comeback season; after getting bogged down in some wacky, wayward episodes last season, House snapped back to form this season and delivered a solid suite of farewell episodes.

This show has been a great success due to clever writing and great performances, especially the anchoring presence of Hugh Laurie, who has been excellent throughout the show's run. House has become one of the most memorable and unique characters in TV history, in large part due to Laurie. Despite a somewhat disappointing finale, the show will be missed. There's nothing on TV quite like it.

Source : http://www.ign.com