Dark Knight Rises iOS

[bluemeanie]

So I picked this one up after a mate raved about it. Wouldn't normally pay that much for an ipad game but I was slightly drunk at the time 

Anyway, its amazing! Well. Kind of.

Visually it's all kinds of impressive. You glide and grapnel round an open world gotham city that is about the most impressive thing graphically I've seen on a mobile device.

The fighting is a little button mash-y with just hit, jump and counter, but you do also have your grapple gun,  batarangs and smoke bombs to play with. You also get stealth takedowns and vehicles to run around in, tho I havent got that far yet.

Most missions put you in an area with snipers, cameras, turrets and lots of bad guys and have you work your way to a specific objective taking out thugs as you go. It's all kinda based on the film but with lots of "Clear this area of Bane's men to weaken his hold on Gotham" type stuff to pad it out.

Usually with mobile games I just play the 5 minute burst ones. Peggle, Angry Birds etc and when I do get the longer ones I kinda dip in and out for a while then move on. Really think I'll be playing this one through to the end and just spent an enjoyable 45 minute lunch time rescuing some police hostages. Probably sunk about 3 or 4 hours into it so far and not bored of it yet.

Its not quite Arkham City but it's a lot more varied than the last Batman game which was basically a thinly disguised Infinity Blade clone.

Should add I'm playing this on an ipad2. Dunno how it fares on other models or phones.
Should also probably add I'm a big Batman fan so may be biased

[IndigoPrime]

"Might be biased".

Heh. I reviewed this for a mag recently and, well, I thought it was utterly dreadful. Horses for courses, I guess.

[bluemeanie]

Be interested to see the review.

I'm admitting I'm a bat fan but I didnt like the Ocean game on the spectrum or Batman RIP. Not totally blinkered or anything

Finding it a really enjoyable open world action game

[bluemeanie]

Here's a proper review that sums up what I think of it... well, so far anyway

http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/28861/game-review-batman-dark-knight-rises

Not saying this negates what Indigoprime thinks obviously. Sure if I look I can find a contrary review but this was the first I came across

[IndigoPrime]

Be interested to see the review.

Not sure when it'll be up—a couple of weeks, I think. I just found it tedious, tenuously linked to the source material, and awkward to control, and I thought the sandbox aspect was poor. It was also horribly buggy—I carefully knocked out all the bad guys in the bank, for example, and the game didn't then provide the means to continue. Despite being a fairly open game, you're apparently only meant to off certain bad guys in a certain order, or the in-game logic fails, creating an end point.

There were a few nice bits here and there, but in the end, I just got fed up with trudging through the game and figured Bane could have Gotham.

EDIT: I should also say my 'heh' isn't a response to your being biased (I wasn't trying to say that, and I'm not inferring that's the case at all), but that your response to the game was so wildly different from mine.

[bluemeanie]

Have had one buggy bit to be fair. Took out everyone at one location but had triggered an alarm. Wouldnt let me progress saying I hadnt cleared the area. Turned out there were two bad guys still stuck inside a van full of reinforcements that had turned up.

Had to re-do the level but didnt overly mind to be honest. Just did it BETTER!! 

Getting the feeling all the action bits from the film will be there but with lots to pad it out as it'd be a pretty short game otherwise. I mean the film was looonnnng but lots of that was talky stuff.

I'm still occasionally fucking up the controls, even on the larger ipad screen, but having way less trouble than I usually do with virtual joysticks etc. Am even managing to glide where I want to now whereas at the start it was all a big daddy-long-legs erratic

[bluemeanie]

Ouch... got to the batpod bits
Drives like a brick! Luckily though its just a "get from A to B" thing. If I had to do anything tricky I'd be screwed

[bluemeanie]

Finished this last night. Would still say its a fun ipad game.
Bit samey but then it works when you have 15 minutes to kill as you can just clear out one of Bane's "hotspots" which'll be an area of badguys with hostages to rescue or bombs to diffuse etc

End battle with Bane was laughably bad though. You literally just walk up to him then its a 5 minute button mash punch up. Didnt mind the limited combat in the other parts as it was mixed in with a bit of stealth etc but this was really bad.

Think I'll be keeping it on the ipad for a while and have the occasional chip at it to get it to 100%.

[Link Prime]

Currently €0.79 / £0.69- defo worth picking up for that price.

[Mr Walter the Wobot]

I'm still yet to complete this, and think it's really impressive ... but since I downloaded Dredd vs zombies its taken a back seat!