Batman, RAGE, and over a foot of snow. In October. In New England

I had an eventful weekend. Friday and Saturday were great, and Sunday was pretty terrible. Let me start with the good stuff.

Batman Arkham City.

Since I went home for the weekend, I finally had a chance to play this year's Batman game. And, oh my Tesla, this game is incredible. Seriously. I could go into lengthy about everything that makes this game so awesome, but I think this is what best sums up my thoughts: This is the Batman game that I have wanted ever since I was a kid. The blend of an awesome story, superb combat, great graphics/art style, well implemented stealth, and most importantly, the city.

See, Arkham Asylum had all of that stuff (well, I wouldn't call the story in the first game "awesome," but it was still pretty good), but not the city. The simple act of being able to glide around as Batman is something that I've wanted for as long as I can remember. I'll never be able to do that in real life, but this is as close as I'll ever get (until the next Batman game, at least). And this may seem kind of silly, but it feels like a dream come true. It works, and it works so incredibly well that it makes me smile every time I zoom up over a building and just keep on gliding.

Beyond that, this game is pretty much Arkham Asylum, but on a bigger scale, and with most of the Riddler Trophies requiring more thought to acquire than in the first game, and with side quests. And a better story (though I won't go into what I like about the story, because of spoilers, and because I'm only about halfway through the game).

Also, Nolan North is in it, both as various thugs, and as The Penguin. And I think it may be my favorite Nolan North role yet. Why? Because he doesn't sound like Nolan North when he does it (well, not usually, there are a few times when his regular voice slips through), and I think the mark of a true voice acting master is when he can sound like a completely different person. Plus, there was at least one instance where I think Nolan North was voicing both The Penguin, and a thug speaking to The Penguin over the radio, so I'm glad to report that the tradition of Nolan North speaking to Nolan North is still alive.

So, that's about all that I have to say about Batman without getting into the nitty gritty, which I'm sure at this point people already know about the details of how that game is played.

Rage

I also played Rage this weekend (the PS3 version). Overall, I think Rage is a really good game. The combat is fun, the enemy animations are incredible (maybe the best I've ever seen), the driving is fast and fun, and for the most part, it looks really nice.

Except when the textures haven't loaded in yet. But I didn't really think that was as bad as most people made it out to be. Yes, there were some spots where it was really noticeable (especially inside the buildings where John Goodman is in the game), but it's not that bad. Especially when the game loads a separate, smaller area, and you're too busy trying to shoot enemies to notice that the textures don't look as good as they could.

But, it's not perfect though, and it is upsetting that it isn't better. It's definitely enough to change this game from being the best looking game I've ever played to a really good looking game. But in the end, it's still a good looking game (though frankly I would have preferred if the game had a lower framerate and no texture problems, but at this point it's too late to fix that (and I don't know if those two things directly correlate anyway, I was just making a comparison because id boasted about the framerate so much (and it is pretty solid))).

So I enjoyed Rage, but I didn't play a ton of it. Why? Because the power went out. Because it snow over a foot. In October. And no, I don't live in Alaska, or Russia, I live in Massachusetts. My dad, who plows driveways in the winter (and thus knows a lot about when it snows) says that he can only remember one or two times when he ever had to plow around Thanksgiving, let alone around Halloween! And unlike a normal snowstorm, which happens after most of the trees have lost their leaves, most of the trees around here were still full of leaves, meaning that a lot of trees fell over. And not just in my town, it happened all over. AND IT'S CRAZY.

Right now I have power because I'm back at college, where they were able to get the power back on fairly quickly. But according to my dad, power only just came back on about an hour or two ago. It's still crazy though. Especially after a freaking tornado ripped up half of my hometown earlier this year. Again, in Massachusetts. We don't usually get these kinds of things. IT'S CRAZY!

Right now I'm predicting that meteors are going to be hitting the town on Thanksgiving. That's the only way this can go (I'm not counting earthquakes or volcanoes, because those aren't weather (no, a meteor shower technically isn't weather either, but it's close enough)). And we've been hit by hurricanes before (this year, but it wasn't too bad), so that's not abnormal.

Anyway, Batman Arkham City is incredible, Rage is pretty good, and having over a foot of snow in October is terrible.