Batman: Return of the Joker (NES)

Developer:

Sunsoft

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Release Date:

1991

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Systems:

NES, Genesis

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Today on Super Adventures I'm taking a look at Batman: Return of the Joker, the sort-of sequel to Sunsoft's Batman: The Video Game, which was released for the NES two years earlier.

Batman: The Video Game was a tie-in with Tim Burton's 1989 'Batman' movie (thoughtfully given a subtitle so that people wouldn't get them confused and end up shoving the cartridge into their VCR), and this also shares the movie's shiny golden 'BATMAN' text so I'm presuming they're part of the same continuity. But ~SPOILERS~ The Joker didn't just get locked away in Arkham or go into hiding at the end of the movie, he got dropped off a giant gothic church tower to his very definite pavement-assisted demise. In fact in the end of the NES game Batman punches him off the church roof, which is kind of hardcore for a man that never kills, but the end result is much the same. So if The Joker really has returned here, then he's come back from the dead.

Incidentally this has nothing to do with the 'Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker' animated movie, as that came out about a decade later and has its own set of games. Though it's still about The Joker coming back from the dead.

The guy is like... weeds or something.

Alien: Isolation (PC) - Part 2

Click this link if you want to return to where this all began: Part one.

Alien: Isolation (PC) - Part 1

Developer:

Creative Assembly

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Release Date:

2014

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Systems:

PS3, PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Windows

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Today on Super Adventures, I'm taking a look at scary, stealthy, 'Alien' sequel Alien: Isolation.

Isolation was in development at The Creative Assembly around the same time as Gearbox and friends were working on Aliens: Colonial Marines, but while that project was very public (with expensive consequences for Sega when the finished product failed to live up to the trailers), Isolation remained hidden in the shadows until the year of release. Another big difference between the games is that everyone loved this one! It was a huge success with both critics and players!

I watched both 'Alien' and 'Aliens' in preparation for looking at Colonial Marines the other day, so I'm in a bit of an Alien mood right now. The thing is though, I'm coming from the perspective of someone who's never gotten on with survival horror games, doesn't like pure stealth, hates replaying levels, and doesn't appreciate too much of a challenge, so the game might not be the perfect fit for me. On the other hand it was a Christmas present from someone who reads the site and I kind of know a couple of people employed at Creative Assembly so I can't actually say anything bad about the game. I'm sure you understand.

But It's a first person sci-fi game with amazing visuals and critical acclaim practically across the board, so chances are that I'm going to end up liking it. I'll give it a couple of hours either way, sharing my thoughts as I go.

BEWARE OF SPOILERS FOR THE GAME AND MAYBE THE MOVIES TOO I DUNNO.

(Click screenshots to view them at a very reasonable 1920x1080 resolution with all the graphics on high.)

Aliens: Colonial Marines (PC) - Part 2

Click the highlighted text to return to the horror of part one.

Aliens: Colonial Marines (PC) - Part 1

Developer:

Gearbox, TimeGate, Nerve

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Release Date:

2013

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Systems:

Windows, PS3, Xbox 360

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Last year on Super Adventures I decided that April 1st would be the perfect day to give a critically mauled Duke Nukem Forever a fighting chance to win me over. Because if I ended up liking it I could always pass my opinions off as being a joke and escape with my reputation intact. So today I’m going to pull the same trick with the hated Aliens: Colonial Marines and see if I can find the good in it too.

Like DNF, this is a first person shooter famous for taking ages to make and impressing absolutely no one by the time it finally came out, though it wasn't in the oven for quite as long before it got rushed out and served undercooked. It started late 2006 and finished early 2013, with folks saying that it spent 4 years at Gearbox, then around 18 months outsourced to TimeGate, and then 9 more months at Gearbox. Apparently huge chunks were reworked each time it swapped over, which left Sega agreeing to pay out $1.25 million to settle a class-action suit when people discovered to their dismay that the demos they'd been shown were demonstrating content and visuals that hadn't survived to the final product.

Anyway I'm playing the PC version here, which I've heard is the least crap of them. I usually only play games for an hour or two to get an impression of what kind of game they are, but this time I’m going to keep playing the single player campaign until either I start liking it or I really can’t take any more. I even watched both 'Alien' and 'Aliens' in preparation so I can nitpick about every tiny thing it gets wrong! I could end up spoiling elements of any of the films in the series though (plus a decent amount of this game, obviously), so if that's an issue you should get out now while you're still safe.

(Click screenshots to view them slightly bigger.)

Mr Blobby (Amiga)

Developer:

Freestyle

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Amiga

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Blobby blobby Blobby Blobby, Blobby blobby blobby blobby blobby Blobby Blobby blobby blobby Blobby! Holy shit I hate this character and everything related to him.

If you're one of the lucky ones who've gone through your whole life blissfully unaware of this guy's existence, Mr Blobby started out as part of a segment called 'Gotcha' on 90s British light entertainment program 'Noel's House Party', where celebrities would get punk'd in a manner not unlike American hidden camera show 'Punk'd'. Mr Blobby was one of the practical jokes, designed to deliberately wind up a celebrity who thought they were interacting with a legitimate established character for an episode of a kid's TV show. Blobby would drive the unwitting guest to the very edge of homicide with his antics, then take off his head to reveal that it was famous TV host Noel Edmunds in the suit the whole time!

Obviously the series couldn't keep up the joke past the first airing as everyone would know Blobby was a fake... but the character kept turning up anyway! Then he started turning up in other shows too; he had become a celebrity in his own right. Mr Blobby merchandise filled the shops. By 1995 he had TWO top 40 songs in the UK charts, the first so bad that one critic accused him of trying to "kill music". He had no less than THREE failed theme parks! And he also had a video game, which I've been asked to play for you.

James Bond 007: Blood Stone (PC)

Developer:

Bizarre Creations

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Release Date:

2010

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Systems:

Xbox 360, PS3, PC

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Today on Super Adventures, I'll be playing some Blood Stone 007, or perhaps James Bond 007: Blood Stone if you want to believe the manual.

This came out in 2010, so chronologically it slots right in the middle of the four year gap between the movies 'Quantum of Solace' and 'Skyfall' caused by MGM's bankruptcy issues. In fact Skyfall spent so long in production that this may have actually started out as a movie tie-in, so lucky escape there perhaps. Sure GoldenEye 007 is the exception that proves that movie licences don't have to be terrible, but it's also exceptional in that it stayed in development until two years after the film came out. It wasn't as rushed as they usually are.

It's been years since did my 'Every Old James Bond Game' marathon, but I remember that when I got past Goldeneye and moved onto the EA era, I started seeing the same few developer logos show up over and over: EA Redwood Shores (AKA Visceral), Black Ops Entertainment and Eurocom. But EA passed the licence to Activision in 2006, Black Ops vanished that same year, and Eurocom were busy making three other games (and got shut down two years later), so this has a whole new logo at the start. Blood Stone is the first Bond game created by Wiz 'n' Liz, Project Gotham Racing and Blur developer Bizarre Creations, and also the last as they went and closed down four months later as well! I guess that's why there hasn't been any Bond games since 2012, as every developer the franchise touches ends up dying.

Activision only put out one more Bond game before getting bored with the licence, which incidentally is probably why we haven't been able to find Blood Stone on Steam since 2013. Fortunately I was able to find it on eBay, so I won't have to draw sketches of the game from memory. Oh right, should probably mention that I played this before a few years back, so I'll be slightly less ignorant than usual and will be able to mention stuff from later in the game. Like how it plays the Bond theme about 700 times in a row on the end credits.

(Click images to view them in a slightly higher resolution.)