Batman: Arkham City does what any good form of entertainment should – it draws you into another world. Arkham City does a wonderful job at creating a virtual Gotham. More so, if I dare say, than Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, have done. This subsection of Gotham feels more gritty, crime ridden, and dangerous. Granted, Arkham City itself is just an open-air facility where all of Gotham’s criminals, criminally insane, and super villians are allowed to run “free” while Gotham in the movies deals with one problem at a time (so far). But that’s besides the point. Batman: Arkham City provides the means for the player to experience Gotham as Batman himself would.

Batman: Arkham City launch trailer

I’ve always imagined, while reading the comics, that Batman’s world isn’t always as linear as it may seem. As you’re gliding through Arkham City to your next mission point, you’ll find that you get distracted plenty of times along the way. Whether it be from a distress signal, random beatings, or a side mission. (I would have to say that my favorite side mission is the one where Batman has to answer ringing phones all across Arkham City and listen to Zsasz’s stories.) All of it, I find, is thrilling. It makes me feel like I’m Batman protecting the city he loves so dearly. It’s a beautiful thing to behold, in video game terms.

Even the Start Screen is awesome.

Batman: Arkham City is probably the most enjoyable game I’ve played this year. It retains the fun combat system from Batman: Arkham Asylum and improves upon it ever so slightly, has a great story written by Paul Dini himself, and builds a wonderful gritty atmosphere. It’s the sequel any video game fan could ask for. Like Batman: Arkham Asylum, if you’re a fan of super hero games, action games, or just Batman, Batman: Arkham City isn’t a game to miss.

You’ve got to find what you love

You don’t have to like Steve Jobs, or Apple, but you can’t deny the impact he’s had. In the short time that he was here, he was able to influence not only the technology industry, but the music industry and product design (and probably countless others we’re just not aware of yet). His ability to think different raised the bar for other companies to aim for – showing us how things should be done. Nearly every product you own has some degree of Steve’s influence.

I’m not a big fan of Steve Jobs myself – I’ve always felt he was kind of a douche – but I do respect the work he’s done. When I was younger, I always thought of Apple products as overpriced, underpowered, and limiting computers. I was wrong, very wrong. Now that I’m older, I’m able to appreciate the mantra that things should “just work”, that simplicity says more than information overload, and why can’t this thing that I use every day be functional and look good. It’s an aspect of not sacrificing design nor functionality that not everyone can recreate.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. – Steve Jobs

The world will feel Steve Jobs influence for many years to come. We lost a great innovator. So before you watch your favorite Pixar movie, listen to an mp3, go surfing the Internet, read an e-book (or whatever you crazy kids do on your electronic devices these days) on your iPod, iPhone, Mac, PC, Android device, iPad, or tablet take a moment and reflect and send your thanks to Steve Jobs for sharing his crazy ideas with us.

Thanks Steve, you’ll be missed.

(Okay, maybe I will go into some of the more odd changes Lucas has made – but just a tiny bit. I mean, c’mon. You have to, right?)

Let me first talk about the physical set itself. I think this is one of the nicest box sets I’ve seen for a movie collection. The discs are held in a nicely constructed book style case where each disc gets appropriate art work, where just a glance can tell you what disc you’ve turned to. It’s really beautiful art work and just helps to sell the fact that someone put a lot of love and care into designing this set. Who ever you are, thank you! I love the design!

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi each look very good on Blu-Ray. My understanding is that Lucasfilm did not make a new transfer for this release and that these movies are from the same transfer used for the 2004 DVD release. Despite this, fine details are still much cleaner and distinct on Blu-Ray than they were on DVD. Each scrape and spec of dirt on R2-D2 and C3PO are plainly visible – it’s quite amazing. Even more amazing was seeing the texture detail on Darth Vader’s helmet (not to mention the dust specs on his body armor in Return of the Jedi).

However, not all is grand on Blu-Ray. Both A New Hope and Return of the Jedi suffer from weird artifacting at moments. For example, in A New Hope, the scene where R2-D2 and C3PO first land on Tatooine is seemingly rendered at a lower bit rate than the rest of the film. The scene looks muddy, blurry – whatever you want to call it – and isn’t crisp as the rest of the film. In Return of the Jedi, when Han and the rest of the rebels take over the shield generator station for the second time, there is a Imperial soldier in a grey uniform in the background whom looks totally out of place. He’s surrounded by a blue glow and is in a lower resolution than the rest of the actors. I don’t know how to describe it other than looking like it was a bad Photoshop job.

Speaking of Return of the Jedi… Time hasn’t been kind to Episode VI at all. George Lucas has made the most horrendous edits over the years. In the 2004 DVD release, he added a music and dance scene to Jabba’s palace and changed the ending scene yet again to include the planets from Episodes I – III. For the Blu-Ray release, Wicket and some Ewoks now have new eyes that are supposed to make them more realistic and, maybe more famously, Darth Vader now says “Nooooo!!!” before killing The Emperor. I don’t mind Vader saying “Nooooo!!!” all that much. Out of context, as seen on YouTube, it seems bad but works for the most part in the film. My bigger complaint would be the new eyes on the Ewoks – it looks too fake now. By adding new eyes, Lucas has effectively removed any sense of emotion from the Ewoks because they just stare blankly out towards the distance when they’re on screen. Even more odd is that not every Ewok has new eyes – only Wicket and a handful of others do. The large majority of Ewoks still have the regular eyes. But by far, the worst addition to Return of the Jedi was the music and dance scene for the 2004 DVD release. It’s out of place and ruins the mood of the scene that was originally there.

Thankfully, The Empire Strikes Back has had the fewest changes and remains mostly as it was. Most of the edits are cosmetic and only help to clean up the film. Episode V also looks the best out of the original trilogy as it doesn’t have any weird artifacting that are noticeable in Episodes IV and VI. The one thing that I did notice, however, was some weird temporary aspect ratio stretching in some scenes of Episode V and VI when the plane of focus changes from the foreground to the background. They could have been there in the original prints and I just never noticed before. But I noticed them on the Blu-Ray release and thought I’d mention them anyway. Most people probably wouldn’t notice this, as it only happens for less than a second.

A collection showing some of the more noticeable changes.

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith have been, for the most part, left unchanged. Any edits that were made to either film were just for cosmetic purposes. Both Episode II and Episode III look very good on Blu-Ray with Episode III clearly looking the best out of the six films in the Star Wars saga.

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is the only film out of the six to get a new transfer for the Blu-Ray set, all because of the addition of a computer generated Yoda to replace the odd looking puppet that was originally there. This presents an interesting problem for Episode I. While the new Yoda looks great – he has realistic looking cloth, for example, and shows off all the latest of computer generated effects technology – he makes the rest of the special effects in Episode I look very dated. Compared to the new Yoda, the old special effects seem flat and boring. It’s especially noticeable when Jar-Jar and other creatures are walking around on Tatooine. They appear to be floating along the ground rather than walking. They stand out horribly. You’d think it’d be a similar thing as putting all the computer generated creatures into the original trilogy, but it just seems to not work in Episode I. (Or is that a testament to how well the special effects were done in the original trilogy and how poorly they were done in Episode I?)

A larger problem in Episode I, as well as in a lot of recent movies that are being transferred to 1080p HD, is digital noise reduction. Digital noise reduction removes dirt, film grain, etc. from the movie to present a cleaner image for the viewer. This is all well and good unless it smooths the details out of the movie, for example, The Lord of the Rings Blu-Rays. I’m not a fan of this side effect. It needlessly ruins movies. Hopefully, the rest of the Star Wars films can avoid going through similar digital noise reduction processes.

If you ask me, Star Wars: The Complete Saga is worth picking up. Yes, there are unnecessary changes. We don’t have to like them at all, nor buy the new movies.  They are George Lucas’ movies to edit however he pleases and it’s not like he’s forcing us to buy them. I personally enjoy seeing these changes, as it makes each film unique in some way. It’s not that big a deal to me, as I’ll always have the countless other versions on hand to watch if I really want to. (Someday, Lucasfilm will just release those lovely THX versions they made in 1995 on a digital format, right?)

While Lucasfilm’s first Blu-Ray release wasn’t spectacular or mind-blowing, it offered the fans what we’ve been asking for – Star Wars on Blu-Ray. Each movie is presented in the highest quality currently available (until a new transfer is made) and there are three entire Blu-Ray discs filled with hours of extras and behind the scenes footage. What more could a Star Wars fan ask for?

Transformers, the movie (not the animated one), was released back in 2007 to much surprise. Transformers as a whole has never been known for its clever or thought provoking media and coupled with the fact that the movie was directed by Michael Bay, well, I thought it didn’t have a chance at being good. Well, I was wrong and Transformers (2007) turned out decent and did what Hasbro was hoping it would do: reinvigorate the franchise and sell toys.

There's no guy in the world that doesn't love this scene.

With the success of Transformers (2007), the hype machine was immediately in full force for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. “The first movie was better than we all expected, how can they do wrong?”, the Transformers community asked themselves. To the dismay of Transformers fans across the universe, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen turned out to be a huge mess of a movie. While it did improve on the robot on robot violence, it was strung together with one of the most incoherent plots I’ve ever seen and needless things such as Devastator’s balls and John Turturro’s ass. Once seen, they can’t be unseen. Thanks Michael Bay. On a more positive note, the action scenes filmed in IMAX were freaking awesome.

Being let down by the second movie, I had reservations about how good Transformers: Dark of the Moon would be. Even after seeing the teaser footage at BotCon 2011, I was skeptical. Sure, the action Hasbro showed was great, but other than that would it be good?

Well, the good news is that Transformers: Dark of the Moon is much better than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Not only is the story better, but the action makes more sense in this movie. Michael Bay tried really hard to make this movie his best yet and it shows. Just keep in mind that it’s still not a perfect movie or best picture material.

Some will complain that Rosie Huntington-Whitely is no Megan Fox (she isn’t), or that certain events don’t make any sense at all (I won’t go into full detail – I hate spoilers in reviews), how some Transformers aren’t utilized to their fullest potential (Shockwave), or that Sam Witwicky is nothing but a whiny spoiled little punk in this movie. But, you know what? Take it all in stride for what it is.

The Transformers franchise has been around for 25 years now and goes through reboots every 2 to 3 years or so. The film trilogy (or saga, depending on if they’ll make more in this universe) set out to introduce new fans as well as re-introduce fans that are now adults to Transformers. In that respect, they did their job, as the Transformers franchise is more successful than ever.

If you take it for face value and go in to the theatre willing to suspend your disbelief, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is 2 hours and 40 min of pure adrenaline-filled entertainment. This Transformers fan recommends that you see it.

Oddly enough, for no particular reason, I’ve never played a Pokemon game until recently with Pokemon SoulSilver. My understanding is that the core Pokemon games have not changed all that much from their Pokemon Red/Blue debut in 1996. Pokemon SoulSilver reflected this, as I felt that it played like it was still a Game Boy game with hacked on touch screen controls. I do have to admit though, the Pokewalker was a neat alternative to leveling up your pokemon.

After my poor experience with Pokemon SoulSilver, I was ready to call it quits with the Pokemon franchise. That is until Pokemon White/Black was nearing release. The games were getting positive previews, with an emphasis on updated game play mechanics, so I decided to give Pokemon another try (it didn’t help that my friend Jeffrey was encouraging me to pick up the game).

The basics of Pokemon White/Black haven’t changed a bit. You play as a new adventurer setting out to grow up by becoming a pokemon training grand champion. Along the way you encounter other pokemon trainers, wild pokemon, and a requisite bad group which is, in this case, a semi pokemon rights activist group. This sounds all well and good, but the story surrounding the pokemon rights doesn’t really go anywhere and only serves a purpose to give the player more opponents to fight against. And besides, you don’t play a Pokemon game for the story, you play it to collect and level up all the available pokemon. In this respect, Pokemon White/Black (and any of the core Pokemon games) does its job just fine.

Much of Pokemon White/Black doesn’t feel as outdated as Pokemon SoulSilver did – many issues I had with how the game played was addressed. The biggest problem in this new game is the UI. Despite being on a touch screen enabled device, I found that the UI was too menu heavy. In many cases, the player has to traverse several submenu items to do simple tasks such as pokemon management or item use. You do get used to the UI eventually, but this is something that will hopefully be fixed in the Nintendo 3DS games.

Speaking of the Nintendo 3DS, why Nintendo didn’t release Pokemon White/Black for their brand new system? Instead, Nintendo released two Nintendo DSi color bundles. I believe they would have sold way more Nintendo 3DS consoles if they had a brand new Nintendo 3DS exclusive Pokemon game at launch, but that’s just me – I’m sure Nintendo knows what they’re doing.

On a side note, Pokemon White/Black plays and looks better on a Nintendo DSi than on a Nintendo 3DS. It loads faster, has faster save times, and the lower resolution LCD (not to mention larger) of the Nintendo DSi makes the game look better and crisper. The game itself even assumes the player is playing on a Nintendo DSi and refers to the system as such in the menu and tutorial systems. Finally, the game has a battery meter on the touch screen which is tuned to measure the remaining battery on the Nintendo DSi. When played on a Nintendo 3DS, the remaining battery isn’t measured correctly and incorrectly informs the player that they’re running out of battery.

With all that said, Pokemon White/Black is an enjoyable game. It does have issues with UI and a lack of a driven story, but my issues are just minor considering the target audience ultimately wants to just collect and trade pokemon. The core mechanics of the game play are tried and true, having remained unchanged for the most part since 1996. I guess Nintendo figures why change something if it isn’t broken, right? If you want to give Pokemon a try, picking up Pokemon White/Black would be your best choice. But if you can wait, the Nintendo 3DS versions are just around the corner…

Design wise, Words with Friends is visually appealing and responds to input fairly nicely, that is, when it’s not loading a screen. Zynga programmed the game in a way where, upon initial launch, the app must send a wave to the server and see if there are any updates to any of the games that are currently being played. This is understandable, but this check can take a while depending on your signal strength. Even with my Nexus S on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network (full bars), it took up to a minute to check the status of 6 games. A minute to load something on a mobile device feels like ages to the user, and should be considered unacceptable.

Even more unacceptable is the fact that your Settings are stored in the cloud, thus you’ll have to wait for the app to load your settings before you can make any changes. In versions previous to the build that I’m reviewing, version 3.34, this took up to 2 minutes to load! As of 3.34, the load times are bearable – no more than 5 seconds. Though, why should I wait at all for a Settings screen to load?

While I’m talking about Settings, it’s interesting to note that Zynga doesn’t follow Google’s style guide for Android. Every Android device has a dedicated Menu button, where upon being pressed, should open the app’s menu. Normally this is where an on-screen button pops up so the user can access Settings. Words with Friends has no functionality mapped to the Menu button, instead the Settings button is located at the bottom of the “Your Move” tab.

Also, on the Settings screen there is an option called Background Notifications where you can set how often the app will check for game move updates. I found that setting this to Never resulted in the app notifying me every single time someone made a move. It even notified me when someone didn’t make a move. Now, shouldn’t ‘Never’ mean that there are zero background notifications?

My biggest complaint about Words with Friends on Android, are the constant and consistent crashes (in Android terminology, crashes are where the app has stopped responding and the OS has forced them to close). These crashes happen on every third time that you launch the app, give or take an app launch. This would be fine if you could just simply re-launch the app and start playing, but instead of that, when you re-launch the app it informs you that it was forced closed and needs to be restarted. After it restarts, you find that it deleted all the local data and you have to sign into your Words with Friends account and wait for the data to be synced from the cloud.

With all the constant crashing, all the load times, and the ads after each move you make, Words with Friends makes up for one of the most annoying experiences on Android. It’s quite possibly the one of the worst programmed apps available on Android Market.

For this review, Words with Friends (version 3.34) was played on a Samsung Nexus S with Android 2.3.2.

The Nintendo 3DS isn’t as sleek as the Nintendo DSi, it feels very much like a mix of the original Nintendo DS and the Nintendo DSi. It feels sort of bulky, like the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite, which makes the system easier to handle and much more comfortable to hold than the Nintendo DSi. The new circle pad is very responsive and offers very nice control. It’s much better than the PlayStation Portable’s analog nub, in comparison. Lastly, both of the new higher resolution LCD screens are very bright and offer crisp details.

Unfortunately, with every release of a revised Nintendo DS design, the L and R buttons have gotten smaller and smaller and for the Nintendo 3DS, the L and R buttons are even smaller. The positioning of the d-pad makes it somewhat uncomfortable to use for long periods, though your level of comfort will vary depending on how big your hands are. I also wish Nintendo would go back to using the d-pad they used for the Nintendo DS Lite. I prefer the “mushy” d-pad feeling over the “clicky” one – it just feels better in my opinion.

But what about the 3D? Unlike what the above video will have you believe, the 3D imagery does not pop out of the screen but goes into the screen to create depth. If you’ve ever watched a movie in 3D, you know how the movie extends outside of the screen? Try to imagine that instead of, let’s say, snow falling inside the theatre, you see that snow falling within the movie character’s world. That’s the kind of 3D that the Nintendo 3DS is capable of. Yes, the 3D effect is much less pronounced, but it is there.

On a side note, in my opinion, the 3D effect that the Nintendo 3DS is capable of is best in short bursts. During my play time, I could only stand to play 10 minutes tops with the 3D effects turned on before I started to have eye strain and headache. Your mileage may vary, but Nintendo advises that you rest your eyes every 30 minutes.

Nintendo has spent a lot of time designing the user interface, as well as the online integration (more on that later), for the Nintendo 3DS. The user interface is clean and very easy to navigate – a huge improvement over the Nintendo DSi. A real neat trick that the Nintendo 3DS does is instant suspension/resume of the current Nintendo 3DS game when you press the Home button. This allows you to access the Friends list, Notifications screen, and, in my opinion one of the best features, a Game Notes app which lets you jot down info that you need to remember for the given game you’re currently playing.

The Nintendo 3DS feels like it is meant to be an always online device. It has a friend list (which still uses Friend Codes, but this time around there’s only one code per device rather than a unique code per game), a web browser (coming May 2011), and an Nintendo 3DS e-store (coming May 2011) which will sell Virtual Console games as well as downloadable Nintendo 3DS games. I’m impressed with how well the Nintendo 3DS keeps a connection to my wireless router, as I can be outside the house and be online. My experience with the Nintendo DSi would result in frequent connection drops – even if I was standing right next to the wireless router!

My only complaint right now would be that the Nintendo 3DS has no sort of messaging system built in to send messages to your friends. Instead, you can write a very short message as a status update for all your friends to see. I found this to be disappointing and hope that a messaging feature will be added in a future update down the line.

3D is all the electronics industry talks about these days. They want to sell you their latest 3D TVs, 3D glasses for their 3D TVs, digital cameras that can take 3D photos, etc. What makes 3D so great? I don’t know about you, but I would have gotten the same experience watching James Cameron’s Avatar in good old reliable 2D, if not a better one, than I did watching it in 3D. Some say 3D enhances the user’s experience and draws them further into the movie (or game). I say, however, a well made movie (or game) can do the same, if not better.

The Nintendo 3DS is one of the best handhelds Nintendo has ever made. It’s rich with useful and fun features, as well as seemingly being future-proof for a good while. The biggest hurdles it has to face are the high cost ($250 is expensive for a handheld console), 3D not being a proven long-lasting or beneficial technology for gaming/entertainment, and most importantly a lack of AAA games being available within the first couple of months after launch.

And that’s what bugs me the most about the Nintendo 3DS. Where are the games? Sure there are a handful of decent games available, but where’s Mario? Where is the single game that says to the gamer that they NEED a Nintendo 3DS? Right now, I don’t see one.

I really do think that the Nintendo 3DS has the potential to be a great gaming system, but it’s held back by Nintendo’s seemingly need to rush the system to market without any AAA title to help it sell. Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition is the best game that’s currently out that successfully shows off all of the available features of the hardware, but in my opinion Street Fighter is best played with an arcade stick. That just leaves me with using my fancy new Nintendo 3DS to play Pokemon Black/White instead.

World of Warcraft, for the past six years, has been the MMO to beat. Several companies have tried to beat World of Warcraft with none of them coming remotely close – many of which utterly fail in the first couple of months after release. In order to keep things interesting, and to keep their subscribers subscribing, an MMO can never be finished and must release new content continuously. World of Warcraft gets its new content via patches and expansions, with World of Warcraft: Cataclysm being the third expansion for World of Warcraft.

In order to make the experience fresh for its 12 million subscribers, Blizzard has made several changes to World of Warcraft. From top to bottom, nearly everything about World of Warcraft has been changed in some way. The biggest change is the lore; all of the races have brand new starting areas and story lines to keep up to date with the events that happened in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and in the World of Warcraft novel The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm. If you’re big on Warcraft lore, then checking out the new areas and story lines is pretty neat.

The problem is that, even with all the changes, World of Warcraft still plays the same. It’s the same grind to the max level resulting in the same grind to get epic quality gear. I can understand that the game is six years old now and that anything significantly drastic to the game play would require a massive redesign to the game engine, but doing ‘hey go over here and kill X-number of [insert bad guy]‘ quests at levels 80-85 is fundamentally redundant. Blizzard can do better than this.

If you haven’t played World of Warcraft yet, you’re not likely to start now and if you’ve been playing since day one, you bought Cataclysm at one of the midnight launches. So this review is for the those that used to play World of Warcraft but quit somewhere along the way. Is it worth it for you to buy Cataclysm and resubscribe? If you’re big on experiencing Azeroth after the death of the Lich King and after The Shattering, then I would say it’s worth resubscribing for a month. Though, you’ll save a lot of money by just doing the 10-day trial that Blizzard offers. You’ll be able to check out most of the starting areas for free. For every other gamer out there, Cataclysm isn’t worth your time or money. It’s the same continuous grind with Blizzard holding a carrot on a stick just out of reach.

So, when’s Diablo III coming out?

Games Radar posted an excellent article about the history of the Marvel vs. Capcom series and how it has evolved since X-Men: Children of the Atom. Highly recommended reading, though I would have liked it if they went further and added the titles that weren’t from the Marvel series, such as: Capcom vs. SNK, Capcom vs. SNK 2, and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom.

Capcom vs. SNK 2

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom

Including Tatsunoko vs. Capcom would have made a lot of sense, in my opinion, as the newly released Marvel vs. Capcom 3 takes its core game play from Tatsunoko vs. Capcom and adds a little bit of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for good measure. It makes one wonder why Tatsunoko vs. Capcom has been overlooked so much. The game is, quite in fact, very much fun. My guess is that half the cast is unfamiliar to the western audience. I myself am prone to choosing the Capcom characters over the Tatsunoko ones purely because I have some emotional attachment from my gaming past to them. If you have a chance, try out Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. (A bonus of trying it out now is that a brand new copy of the game is relatively cheap.)

Now only if Capcom and SNK would make Capcom vs. SNK 3…

[Games Radar]

You can purchase Christopher Tin’s album Calling All Dawns from the following retailers.

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[ChristopherTin.com]