After Bat-week , a long weekend here in New Zealand , a little bit of intellectual property drama and me being too busy in Arkham City to write anything, State of Play returns to normal. Well sort of, as best it can in this game encrusted run-up to the Christmas holiday. 

Even though I’m still getting down and dirty with Batman in Arkham City and taking Battlefield 3 through its paces, my attention is turning towards the next triple A title, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception which launches in little over a week’s time, exciting stuff. After Nathan Drake’s outing we then have Modern Warfare 3, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Assassin’s Creed Revelations. Busy, busy, busy.

Anyhoo, with two weeks work of goings on to summarise, I’d better get cracking.

Taking a break from reviewing video games, I took a look at Frank Miller’s Holy Terror graphic novel, which proved to be an interesting read. I’m a fan of Frank Miller from way back and I’d go as far as to say he’s my favourite comic-book creator of all time. One thing I love about his work is that he doesn’t mess about; his tales are gritty and take you to a place that you’d never want to actually visit. In September 2001 a vicious world, similar to that which Frank Miller creates in his head broke through into ours.  Clearly upset with what happened on 9/11 and the subsequent “War on Terror”, Miller has vented his frustration though 120-odd pages of terrorist arse-kicking. If only it was that easy to sort out.

Even more interesting than Frank Miller’s unique art style in the book were all the easily offended PC types getting all worked up over the fact that Miller’s protagonist was killing Muslims and not terrorists. The obvious connection, albeit via a work of fiction, between the two seem to be considered rather unsavoury by our overly sensitive society. Miller’s tale is rough and brutal, and I needed more than one read-through before I could put anything on paper. It’s not Miller’s best work, but it isn’t the racist, Muslim-hating tome that some elements would have you believe, either.

I posted up my review of Frank Miller’s Holy Terror here as part of Bat-week. If you want to read it, head over to Mark One Comics and they’ll sort you out with a copy.

Over at Game Console, I reviewed the Xbox Live Arcade game, Renegade Ops. Taking a lead from the coin-ops of the 1980, it’s a rather unforgiving, but nice-looking looking isometric vehicle combat game that screams to be played with others. Check out by review here.

In the mail this last week came Dance Central 2 and Kinect Sports: Season Two for the Xbox 360 and Kinect. Whilst I don’t have the required amount of alcohol available to put Dance Central 2 through its places at the moment I did, however, have a good go on Kinect Sports: Season Two.

Generally, the more games I play on the Kinect the less I like it. It’s as if the technology just isn’t there yet for it to be useful for anything other than for Microsoft’s bragging rights over Nintendo. Thus I wasn’t holding my breath for anything good from Kinect Sports: Season Two. As it turned out, I ended up having quite a lot of fun with Kinect Sports: Season Two.

I reviewed Kinect Sports: Season Two for Game Console, which you can read here.

I finally finished reading the last issue of DC Comics’ Batman: Arkham Asylum prequel, just in time for the new game. If you are fan of the game, I’d suggest you take a look. It’s not the best Batman story ever, but to does allow you to hit the ground running when you play the game. Still, I was pretty impressed that even though I’d read the comic, I still wasn’t prepared by the awesome start of the game. I posted a review of the review of the 5-issue series at part of Bat-week, here.

I’m currently about 75% of the way through Batman: Arkham City. I picked up the Xbox 360 collector’s edition with the fantastic-looking Kotobukiya figure and the Dark Knight Returns skin. The combat is just as thrilling as the first game and, whilst imposing at first, Arkham City provides a great open world setting for you to play in. I’m looking forward to getting back into it after a few days of with Battlefield 3.

On the subject of Battlefield 3, fans of the previous game should make sure that they have their veteran status up-to-date by linking all their EA accounts. There’s a page with the links here. Unfortunately, whilst I got  BF2, BF:BC2, BF:1943 and BF:Hero veteran status, there’s something up with the system where it throws a wobbler when I enter my BF:1942 CD-key. For some reason it won’t accept that fact that I’ve player the first Bad Company online, either. Still bragging rights back to BF2 is not to be sneezed at.

That’s all for now. Have a great week!