The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
started playing Need for Speed Shift, again, after i rage quit months ago from my save file getting corrupted. still playing angry birds, too. (<- it's my good 'ol stand-by)
It finished better than what i expected. Game was a bit of a mess IMO. The large, fully-open "city" behind the walls was visually great. The concept behind it was a bit too much though.
*spoilers ahead*.
I didn't read any of the materials prior to launch, i wish i had, just to get the actual plot of the game. The opener of the games doesn't describe what Arkham city is, or why it is what it is.. or the factions inside. Without the back-story introduction, the whole thing doesn't make any sense. Even with the back-story, the plot has more holes than Batman's cape by the end of the game.
The fact that there are dozens of side missions is quite nice and adds an element of RPG (light weight) to the game. However, the stories come so quick, or so many at a time, it gets confusing on what is a plot mission and what is a side mission and what priority you need to do them in.
The game itself can be rather confusing at times. They don't really give you much in the way of hints. With an open world, it might be confusing when they put a point on the map and tell you to examin a body "near" here, and the body is 2 blocks away behind a car on the entrance ramp. The same is said of the 400+ Riddler puzzles in the game (no joke). Some are intuitive.. some require gadgets that you have to level up to get.. some.. i will never figure out. Ever.
There are multiple puzzles inside the game too, to advance through the levels. A few left me scratching my head for an hour. (Steel mill, where you throw a guided batarang through a hole in a door, fly through arcing electricity, make a u-turn, fly back through another hole in another door and hit a breaker box.. with no hints!)
Then there are interspersed sections where you play as cat-woman that are just not relevant to the game in any real way.. other than to see the killer eye-candy that is the 3D model for her.
Anyways.. to complete the game you need nimble fingers, an eye for detail, 120+ IQ and Google.
I enjoyed it by the end.. but man.. it can get frustrating..
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
