Holy Pause Button, Batman!

Some more pause screens from Batman: Arkham City.

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.)

Character Inspiration Math

Arleen Sorkin...

plus Virginia O'Brien...

equals...

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).

Superheroes Committing Homicide

I recently saw the season finale of "Arrow", and the movie "X-Men: Days of Future Past". Both shows involved at least one character faced with the dilemma of killing the villains of the feature. A while ago I posted about what I call "gladiator endings", in which the hero has the villain at their mercy, and then (usually) declines to finish them off. I thought the subject was worth revisiting, particularly in the light of Superman killing Zod, the Arrow now not killing anyone, and Mystique wanting to kill Dr. Trask.

To kill or not to kill, that is the question. Is it nobler to take, or spare the life of a monster?

For me, it depends both on the circumstance, and the players involved. I believe it is justified to kill in situations such as self-defense (or defense of others), as combatant to combatant in wartime, and legal execution of those who are simply too dangerous to ever permit in free society. To kill in defense, you or someone you are with must be under assault. To kill in war the victims must be legitimate targets that advance the war's objective, (civilian deaths must be avoided as much as possible), and executions must be staged in a humane manner by authorized personnel. Any killing outside these rules damages society and, I believe, the soul.

Superman's killing of Zod was justified because there was simply no other way to stop him. He was too strong to be contained, and there was simply no reasoning with him. I realize that this goes against Superman's typical "ultimate good-guy" image, but in this case, it was the "good guy" thing to do. Refusing to kill Zod no matter what would have been selfish. "I don't care how many people suffer or die as long as I don't personally get blood on my hands." They can still have the Man of Steel show forbearance in future episodes, when he may be tempted to take a life because it would so easy (and who would bring him to justice?) but he doesn't because this new scenario would be different.

Zod was a near-invincible conqueror who threatened the entire world, which I think satisfies the wartime requirement, what about more human criminals with a more scaled-down agenda? That would bring us to either defense from imminent harm, or legal execution. For me, any other type of killing wouldn't be right, and shouldn't be sanctioned. In the first season of "Arrow", Oliver Queen tended to drop bad guys right and left. His reasons why are understandable; these people had already escaped legitimate justice, and from what I recall, most everyone who was actually shot was an active threat to the Arrow or others at the time. Others are threatened, but not killed, as Ollie tries to coerce his targets into making amends first. However, I can understand the Starling City PD not liking the Arrow's activities. Even if most deaths are caused in defense of the Arrow's person, the fact remained that they would be threatening him if he hadn't shown to gather evidence or threaten their boss. He basically went looking for trouble, and appointed himself judge, jury and executioner to those who got in his way. At least the show acknowledges the bad precedent this sets when copycats appear which show less restraint than the Arrow. Another good point is where he stops killing by the second season. However, this only shows he had the capacity to do his job without homicide the whole time, but just didn't bother. 

What particularly troubles me about the Arrow's vigilante killing was the mask and hood. When a regular civilian, or even a police officer kills someone, there is an accounting and investigation. The killer is expected to cooperate with authorities, who then verify their version of events. This can't happen with a masked vigilante. If a masked "hero" merely beats a crook up and leaves them for the cops, it's still not exactly proper, since they didn't stick around for a police report (which could hamper the felon's eventual conviction) but at least the felon's alive to reflect and possibly repent, plus the legal system put in place by elected officials gets the last word. No killing is the price the likes of Batman and Green Arrow pay for not having to answer to anyone.

In the season finale of "Arrow" I thought that when Slade's henchmen chose to take the miracuru drug, and go on the rampage, they chose the consequences, to be put down by whatever means necessary. Fortunately the Arrow and his allies got the cure to shoot them with, but absent that, anyone who was capable would have been justified in terminating the member's of Slade's army. Amanda Waller was certainly not justified in the drone strike (I wish they hadn't included that cliche); a few grenades, RPGs, and heavy machine guns could've done the job just as well, particularly when the henchmen were gathered together in the tunnels.

As for Slade himself, I think he would simply be too dangerous, even without the drug, to merely keep locked up. Even in real life criminals in prison don't always stay put, and even if they do, if they're killers they're a danger to anyone who works at the prison, as well as their fellow inmates. However, if I were Oliver, I wouldn't have wanted to put him down either, not before at least giving him the chance for sanity with the cure first. This is because the Arrow was simply too close to the situation. After everything Slade had done up to that point, it would've been too easy to kill him out of hate. Justice would've been better served by some Joe-shmoe executioner just doing his job. We see a similar scenario with Luke Skywalker in "Return of the Jedi". When he finally takes down Darth Vader, he refrains from delivering the killing blow, because he had become dangerously close to doing it just out of hate, rather than justice and saving the galaxy.

So that's my thoughts on justifiable homicide. Do you agree with my musings or disagree? I'd really like to see other people's thoughts on this one.

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.