411 Games Fact or Fiction 09.07.10: Batman: Arkham City, StarCraft 2, Kinect and More

Posted by Adam Larck on 09.07.2010

Are you excited about Arkham City’s multiplayer, Should Kinect know more than three languages? Will Dance Central be better than Dance Dance Revolution? 411’s Stephen Randle and Jordan Williams take these questions on and more inside.

Welcome back to 411 Games Fact or Fiction. I'm Adam Larck, and I finally beat DeathSpank. Also went back through and beat Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light again to get the achievement that glitched on me the first time.

This week we have Stephen Randle, the writer of Four Player Co-op, going up against Jordan Williams, the writer of Working Title. Can these guys do better than last week's 3 for 6? Let's find out. Time for banner!





1.) You're excited that Batman: Arkham City will have multiplayer?

Stephen Randle - Fiction: Maybe I'm just naïve, but I didn't really see anything in the first game that screamed "would be awesome in multiplayer". Arkham Asylum was an amazing single player experience, but I'm not sure the Batman atmosphere was really calling out for deathmatch maps or anything. I keep seeing in my mind a dozen different palette-swapped Batman clones running around a city trying to hit each other with Batarangs. I know it won't be nearly that lame, but the entire idea of Batman, and the original Arkham game, is a single guy using stealth and tactics to beat large numbers of henchmen. Maybe they'll do something really cool and original, but until then, I really don't care about the multiplayer component.

Jordan Williams - Fiction: It's really hard to get excited about something that you really didn't need. Until I see some more details about it overall and how it might work it just sort of seems like a needless add-on to try to put another bulletpoint on the back of the box. Similar to how BioShock 2 had multiplayer, it just seems like it'd not needed.

Score: 1 for 1 - I wouldn't mind seeing some co-op ideas implemented to help with stealth as one person is a diversion, but I agree that a deathmatch type of game is not what Arkham City is suited for.



2.) The new twisting D-pad coming to 360 controllers will help stop complaints people have had with that part of the controller?

Stephen Randle - Fiction: Have you met gamers lately? They'll find a reason why the new D-pad is bad and the old one was better. But seriously, rather than have this whole "twisting" thing, wouldn't it be simpler to just design a controller with the D-pad already elevated? I'm just saying that if it were that big a deal, why keep the old option? Plus, I can see all manner of things going wrong with the new pad, since it involves a) moving parts and b) essentially changing the alignment and directions of the arrows when you twist it.

Jordan Williams - Fiction: I think it'll work, but as far as stopping the complaints...I don't know. I just wonder why they just didn't make it a standard D-pad instead of this twisty thing. I can see that twisty thing getting broken or locked really easily. And people WILL complain about that

Score: 2 for 2 - I'd like to check this controller out, just to see if the D-pad is any better for side-scrolling games or not.



3.) Portal 2 competitive multiplayer would have been awesome?

Stephen Randle - Fiction: Much like the first question about Arkham, I'm not really interested in multiplayer for Portal 2. Co-operative makes sense due to the puzzle-solving nature of the game, but competitive leads to one major problem that I can see: the Portal gun isn't really an offensive weapon, and it's the only one in the game. Sure, you can maybe use it to set people up to fall into traps, and maybe they'd let you put up turrets or something, but as an active weapon, it provides no way to directly kill anyone. Besides, Portal isn't about trying to kill other people; it's about trying to survive while an insane AI tries to kill you. That's probably a spoiler, but if you haven't played the first Portal by now, you deserved it.

Jordan Williams - Fiction: I don't think the gameplay Portal has really lends itself to competitive multiplayer in the long run. And if they somehow changed it away from the Portal/Puzzle model then it would not have been "Portal" enough. It would've been interesting, but I don't think awesome is the word I'd use.

Score: 3 for 3 - The speedball type of gameplay Valve talked about still sounds great for multiplayer for Portal 2.

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4.) A new Dance Dance Revolution is coming to Wii. Dance Central for Kinect will be better than DDR for Wii?

Jordan Williams - Fact: At this point DDR is a thing of the past. While I don't necessarily have super high hopes for Kinect as a whole, Dance Central seems to scratch the same sort of itch that people would want for a party game and a dance game. Plus in all of my experiences with home DDR have been horrible.

Stephen Randle - Fiction: Let's see, the game that's another sequel to a long-running series of popular games that pioneered and have since refined the popular "dance game" mechanic is going to be better than a clone created by Microsoft to show off the new Kinect system? I'm going to stop there before I start being mean.

Score: 3 for 4 - I think Harmonix may be able to take the long standing franchise by surprise just because of the differences in the way dancing is handled.



5.) StarCraft sold about a million units its first year. StarCraft 2 sold 3 million units its first month. It surprises you this game is selling this quick?

Jordan Williams - Fiction: Hell no it doesn't surprise me. People have wanted this game forever and it finally came out and we ate it up like hotcakes. Korean National Sport jokes be damned, the whole fuckin' world was ready to mine additional vespene gas and get back into StarCraft. Now if will people want to buy the other two expansions? Only time will tell, but I have a feeling they will.

Stephen Randle - Fiction: Really? REALLY? Who would be shocked by this? This is Blizzard Freaking Entertainment we're talking about. Creators of three of the most popular game franchises in the known universe, including the 11 million subscribers of World of Warcraft, which is #1 in the MMO genre by…8 or 9 million. The other two previous releases of their other franchises, Diablo II and StarCraft, are still widely played over a decade after their release. In fact the original StarCraft is a major part of the professional gaming scene, and the sequel had been demanded and lusted over by gamers for years. But no, StarCraft II had no chance to sell a whole whack of units. And let's not forget, this is just Part One of Three.

Score: 4 for 5 - I think these numbers just go to show that PC gaming isn't dead, just ruled by two major companies.



6.) Kinect should recognize more than three languages out of the box?

Jordan Williams - Fiction: This one is sort of iffy to me, should Kinect logically support as many languages as possible out of the box? Sure, but the ones they have right now are good enough...for right now. The three common languages is a good start, and then they can roll out more languages as the Kinect sells (and they see where the demand is). Plus with the extent of Kinect's voice commands at the moment, I am fairly sure most video game players have a passing knowledge of basic English for words like "Pause" "On" and "Play". But they definitely should not STOP at those three languages.

Stephen Randle - Fact: I guess? I mean, if they want it to sell in as many places as possible, you'd assume that you'd want it compatible in as many languages as possible. I can see how that might be a huge undertaking, but why would you release the hardware that's supposed to extend the life of the 360 by another few years and put out a totally half-assed effort, especially when you're a company with more money and resources than most small countries that could easily afford to add more languages at the expense of a little more time? And why does that seem like a rhetorical question?

Score: 4 for 6 - Limited languages, a beta that's released only a few months before release and questions still surrounding how many people can be on screen at once. Does this seem a bit rushed to anyone else?



Bonus Question.) It was a bad move for Microsoft to increase the Xbox Live Gold membership price?

Jordan Williams - Fact: I actually have this week's Working Title based on the price bump, but this is a bad move...a bad move people will still pay for but there is no immediate reason for the price jump. What has Microsoft added to Xbox Live to warrant it? Netflix is free to access on other consoles, so is Facebook and Twitter...yet you have to pay for a gold membership just to use it for XBL. So what IS this extra 10 dollars for? I'm not even bothered by the Ads too much but how the hell do we get MORE Ads, pay more, and still get the same service. Something just doesn't add up there.

Stephen Randle - Fact: Not so much the price increase, because let's face it, prices go up, they never go down. But the entire announcement and implementation has left a really bad taste in a lot of peoples' mouths, because the whole thing seemed like they were trying to get it in "under the radar", so to speak. Plus, the manner in which the announcement was detailed ended up making a lot of people read it as "Microsoft is holding your Friends list for ransom", and "hostage taker" is probably not how Microsoft wanted to be portrayed in the public image. Also, PSN (the basic version) is still free, so even if Live is a much better online service, the argument will always be there that "if Sony can give it for free, why can't Microsoft?"

Adam Larck - Fact: I went back and forth a lot on this question. On one side, I understand that Gold members are paying for the bandwidth for better communication with friends, better online game and services. However, on the other hand, if you aren't using all of these extra features (or can't afford it, like Netflix), then it does seem like a waste of money. Especially considering that one of the new features is Kinect video chat, which many people may not get until much later on. Microsoft should have waited until next year to spring this on members so that they could see the new features and understand why the increase was needed.

The guys finish this week with 4 for 6, one better than last week. What do you think? Agree or disagree with their answers? Let us know. See you in seven!