Back with Batman

Sorry I've been away for so long, things have been hectic with school and work, and I haven't been doing much to blog about the past few weeks. But now I'm getting back into the regular groove again.

I was playing Batman: Arkham City yesterday, and I found some fun little details in the city that I never noticed before.

Dr. Leslie Thompkins is one of Bruce Wayne's confidants in the comics, and runs a medical clinic for Gotham's addicts and criminals in the slums.

As you can see in the top picture, when you look at the police station from a certain distance away, it looks like the Bat Signal is on, but when you zoom in, or move any closer, it turns off.

After Batman and Freeze finish fighting over poison antidote, and discover that Harley Quinn stole it, you can see the hole in the wall she made to take it out of the safe.

 I thought it was funny to see an Arkham mug in the GCPD, as I would expect the Gotham police wouldn't have cared for the place (what with it's lax security and all). Somebody start making these for real!

And here's another pause screen!

Face Your Fears...

Here's another pic from my trip through Lehman Caves. Don't remember Arkham Asylum's Scarecrow being there, it must have been so scary, I blocked it from my memory.

Arkham Trailers

Since Batman: Arkham Knight is coming out soon, I thought we'd take a look through the history of the Arkham games.

Pause Screens are Cool

These "Pause" screenshots are from Batman: Arkham City. I like how they did away with the highlights and refined the details a bit.

Back From the Loony Bin!

Sorry to miss two posts, the last couple of weeks were rather crazy, but I'm getting back to a semblance of sanity. I've nearly been driven mad trying to get this batch of screenshots!

Anyway, I thought I'd pause for a bit to reflect on a black and white issue. I've been playing more of Batman: Arkham Asylum and I thought I'd show off some of the pictures I've taken with the game on Pause, which weren't easy to take, since I had to hit the screenshot key just at the right time to capture the fancy color filter, before the menu pops up. Batty, aren't they? (OK, I'll stop now.)

Arkham City Predator Challenge Loading Screens

The only two predator challenge screens I don't have yet are the police station and wonder tower final score images (which are different from their loading images).

More Arkham City Combat Challenge Loading Screens

Batman: Arkham City Combat Challenge Loading Screens

These are screenshots of the loading graphics of each combat challenge in Batman: Arkham City. Taking these (as well as the title screenshots I featured a while back) was like taking a picture of a bird, I had be fast before the subject went away.

    

Exploring Gotham

A while back I discovered a YouTube video explaining a glitch in Batman: Arkham City that lets you leave the Arkham City compound and fly around Gotham. Basically you settle onto a ledge, (I find that corners work best) and start throwing freeze bombs like crazy. Batman will rise higher with each throw, and after about 100 throws you can glide over the boundaries without being turned back. However, you can't land on anything in Gotham, so the higher you go initially, the farther you can glide, but eventually you'll drop below the ground into the abyss.

Below is good old Arkham Asylum from the first game. Obviously they didn't clear away all of Poison Ivy's plants, lazy bums.

Video Game Photography

Long-time readers may recall my Pang 96! background collection which I've posted on here. Over the past few years I've also collected quite a few other screenshots from video games and online shows. It feels a bit like real photography, especially in the act of trying to set up shots. I often use Microsoft's Snipping Tool, but plenty of games allow one-button screen shooting. All games offered on Steam, for instance, allow you to take screenshots with the F12 key. Even this can be tricky though, depending on the shot you want. To get an action sequence, you have to time it right, to get the scenery, you want the right position, and it can be tricky to get the game to cooperate.

For the next couple of weeks or so I'll be focusing on shots I've taken from Batman: Arkham City. Following are screenshots I've taken from the menu section. There are a bunch of three-dimensional stills of Batman in action, and clicking through the options advances the sequence, picture by picture. Each time you cycle through the action sequence, there's a different villain at the end. There's a brief period where the buttons disappear and the scene is most uncovered, but only for a fraction of a second, unless your computer is slow.