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It’s weird. Some time ago it was announced that Ninja Gaiden Σ2 would contain less blood than its Xbox 360 original. I remember applauding that stance back then. I had played Ninja Gaiden II at that point in time and the amount of blood in there seemed unnecessary. Especially when I also recalled how stylish and elegant the original Ninja Gaiden for Xbox was in censored shape and how jarring the gore was in the sequel.

It was a bit of a no-brainer to me; it would take away the focus on juvenile gore and provide a more clean environment befitting of the graphical style of the game. But when I played the demo of Ninja Gaiden Σ2, I found myself reversing my stance. Weird…

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Daredevil / Daredevil-Seeker

According to BrainHex.com I’m a class Daredevil gamer. Even better, my sub-class seems to be a Daredevil-Seeker, or in plain English:

You like rushing around at heights or high speed while you are still in control as well as finding strange and wonderful things or finding familiar things.

Which corresponds quite well with how I play games. High-speed efficiency in games is something that really provides a kick; playingSuper Metroid in one continuous flow of perfectly executed abilities is one of my most loved game experiences. Getting a perfect lap in WipEout HD also has that same feeling attached to it.

Not so surprisingly, according to my scores I’m not quite the Achiever:

• Daredevil: 18
• Seeker: 18
• Mastermind: 15
• Conqueror: 12
• Survivor: 10
• Socialiser: 9
• Achiever: 3

Explaining neatly why I don’t care that much about Achievements and Trophies I guess. Though why did I collect all blast shards in inFamousthen? Questions, questions…

If you want to discover your own class and sub-class, take the BrainHex Test found here and discover its meaning on BrainHex.com.

In Soviet Russia, Red November plays you!

After sampling Pandemic, there remained a nagging question: are there any other cooperative board games and do they have the same quality? One of the titles that got mentioned was Red November, a board game in which the players are gnomes that need to survive for 60 minutes on an experimental submarine where everything goes awry. The theme sounded perfect, the coop element was there, what could possibly go wrong?

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It’s actually quite hard to pinpoint exactly what makes Batman: Arkham Asylum so good. That’s not to say that there’s nothing to point at, but rather that there is so much to point at. Instead of reinventing the wheel,it seems developer Rocksteady just copied the original plans for that wheel four times and created a muscle car with it.

Moody doesn't even begin to describe it.

Hidden within its play areas are: Metroid‘s hidden items guarded by skills to come, a brutal combat-system that seems to understand God of War, Shenmue‘s Quick Time Events used in ways that make sense and don’t frustrate, stealth sections from Splinter Cell that empower you rather than annoy, Zelda‘s ‘overworld’ linking everything together andBioshock‘s atmosphere told through a powerful art direction and scattered audio-files. There’s so much in there that you can trace back as a successful experiment from another game. And then this is all covered in a thick Batman-sauce.

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