This night of Gotham has never seemed so blighted, congested with the echoes of Joker’s maniacal laugh as the world turns upside down with a semblance of ordered chaos. Rocksteady Studios’ Batman: Arkham City takes elements of Batman: Arkham Asylum and pushes it to a level which unfathomably creates one of the most heroic and daring licenses to make a name for itself in the video games industry through a sequel. The realm of licensed video game content has always seen its shares of abhorrent titles (Batman Begins in particular) or disastrous game to film transition rights. Batman faces the greatest challenge of his time, coupled with a level of combat that is smoother with its share of button mashing melee repetition. Through a rampageous contrast of the night’s wonders, Batman: Arkham City takes The Dark Knight’s veil of black justice with fervor, expanding it to a new definition through extraordinary free-roam and a storyline that is as memorable as the definition of a plot itself. Arkham City may just be the end for Batman, or at least the psychotic personalities within hope for this outcome to spill the blood of The Dark Knight.

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Battlefield 3 is the most anticipated first-person shooter game to be developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and the wait has been in the aptitude of extraordinary vain for Battlefield 2 hardcore fans of the series and lovers of fulfilling first-person shooters alike. Battlefield 3 does try to holster its weapon into the satchel of justice, particularly besides the realm of disappointment. There are guns, vehicles, multiplayer modes, and even a single-player storyline haphazardly thrown in for good measure but sadly all of these things create a sense of disillusionment; The level of action and intensity is bland with every shot no matter what mode considering most are hardly differentiated, and the vehicles along with the storyline prove the dimensional analysis that a video game can be beautiful visually and still play out with a mediocre thump. While Battlefield 3 will find its solace in the hands of those who enjoy bad company with a little thrill, it will find itself sooner in the comforting embrace of a bargain bin come December.

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Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One is the latest thrilling title in the Ratchet & Clank series to emerge out of Insomniac Games newly relocated North Carolina HQ for fans everywhere waiting to play an adventure that is cooperative entertainment realized. “Mayhem” is hardly the word when it comes to Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, which combines beautiful scenery and over-the-top boss battles to bring together rivals and friends alike. Despite the length of the game as relatively short, there is a lot of fun to be had fighting baddies or latching onto your cooperative partner to save your life. Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One is an exciting adventure that any fans of Ratchet & Clank will find enjoyable.

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Step into the world of death and monsters. Third-person action Role Playing Game (RPG) Demons Souls, debuted by publisher ATLUS and developer FromSoftware with sound game mechanics, but unfortunately lacked any real substance; there was a missing concept of a true online system, supplanting orbs for people, and finally a death experience that heightened difficulty of the gameplay to an extreme high. While difficulty is surely a subjective experience, the implementation is hardly anything but objective, which previously gave the Demons Souls creators the inconceivable notion that extreme difficulty is something more than a boorish attempt at making a game discernible in a market where most games. The sad fact is, lack of balance aside in Dark Souls, difficulty has clearly been made a tool that serves as a spectrometer for a a terribly aggravating game experience not based on actual complexity of difficulty, but rather in the Neanderthal notion that difficulty “just makes a game better.” Monsters are endless in their boring dungeon-raid assaults, certain gameplay design elements with huge bosses are flawed in the design aspects to kill them properly without backtracking for better equipment, and moreover Dark Souls lacks any strong rewarding experience other than the satisfaction of having finally completed an aggravating 15+ hours of gameplay.  Dark Souls does have solid elements in terms of visual aesthetics of enemies, traditional inventory and button mashing, but even these are hardly enough to keep it from appearing more than a button mashing disaster of massive proportions.

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Imagine a wasteland that appears beautiful, winds roaming around the crevices of a vast mountainous terrain; now, imagine this place completely and utterly devoid of a good storyline and gameplay and you end up with RAGE. While the title provides mediocre action at best, RAGE carries a ragingly disappointing gameplay style as it is a game which lacks a lot and delivers very little for its price other than an online simplistic rodeo racer through a huge Motorstorm-like designed world. Bethesda Softworks and id Software have tried to make RAGE something unique, given the characters are dressed in a outlandish way and the environment itself is beautiful, but sadly a disconcerting storyline with gameplay mechanics next to nothing but point and shoot make it stale beyond belief than just a deserted region.

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FIFA Soccer 2012 is back and with a vengeance from its 2011 counterpart, which was impressive as much as it was crisp in visuals and gameplay. FIFA 2012 brings back the skills of the team-gameplay coordination with newer realistic animations, engaging online modes, and finally a presentation style that is still iconic regardless of any problems the game mechanics itself has. The formula has been tried, tested, and proven and Electronic Arts really felt the need to keep to the same formula. Whether or not this was a great decision is meant to be seen.

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Gears of War 3 passes down a legacy in the long-awaited trilogy of the Gears franchise, completing one of the best third-person shooter franchises in history.  Operation: Hollow Storm brought an alluvion of hope, aiming to end the 15 year-long war with the Locust forces. Unfortunately, this Operation failed to decimate the Lambent and Locust forces, keeping the world of Sera in the brim grips of a constant strife. Gears of War 3 coalesces fluid gameplay mechanics with detailed destruction, meticulously rampant action, and sleek visuals to create the final title of a series that is powerful as much as it is defining. The level of quality has dramatically improved since Gears of War 2, the multiplayer is purely, excitingly fun while the cinematic direction is stunning. Gears of War 3 creates an indelible legacy that is sure to be remembered for a long time through the triumphalism of Marcus Phoenix, and the remembrance of the heroes that have kept mankind’s existence from plummeting to a dim fate.

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The sky is recrudescent red: smoke fills the gloomy backdrop of a fallen nation with remnants of freedom nonexistent in the eyes of the Chimera, a visceral alien race dedicated on the genocide of what we call Earth. Resistance 3 provides the next cinematic Chimeran action adventure first person shooter title by Insomniac Games and Sony Computer Entertainment, gracing the world with a trilogy that composes of history of the world in an outer realm where aliens invade earth in the mid-1900s. Resistance 3 develops a smart and sophisticated single-player campaign that honors the name and the series. Resistance 3 is immaculate in presentation, style, music, and the online cooperative gameplay with a 16-player competitive Human vs. Chimera mode brings everything to a graceful and powerful base note. Resistance 3 is the metamorphosis of a series from great to superbly graceful, showing everyone that alien invasion titles can come in multiple depths of substance and are without undying vehemence and power.

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Dead Island is a gruesome feast of zombie blood, terror, and the lovely soundscapes of the ocean concocted in a horrifically brutal mix of excitement, intensity, and guts. The earlier CG cinematic of Dead Island has an uncanny resemblance to the opening sequence of Dawn of the Dead, and Deep Silver revealed this CG opening as just a teaser to their game in which they wanted to show a preemptive dedication to the zombie-tropical apocalypse title. Many fans have been aching for Left 4 Dead, a similar zombie title by Valve Software, to provide a storyline that is cohesive and connected, which never came to complete sense.  Dead Island does have problems in terms of mission pacing and gameplay mechanic variety that easily become linearly stale at times, but there is also action, dialogue, leveling and music  that stand out from any other zombie game ever created to this point. All of this tropical survival instinct within the island of Banoi is something to take a sight of in this tropical-zombie apocalypse.

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Madden 2012 heralds another beginning into the world of football, and another year EA Sports finds a way to make their game truly incredible again. Madden 2011 revealed a bevy of improvements from A.I. to the newly dubbed GameFlow feature that made calling passes more intuitive than ever before. Equally as impressive, Madden 2011 brought a tremendous level of presentation style by Emmy winning announcers, splendid graphical upgrades, and moreover sheer online gameplay in Franchise Mode. With a lot of potential improvements for the next year on an already decisively beautiful title, Madden 2011 led the way for Madden 2012 to be something deserving of the wait. Madden 2012 brings better defensive A.I., hundreds of in-field visual improvements, voluminous Broadcast appeal to a new level, and moreover the dynamic skillset of player confidence. EA Tiburon’s Madden 2012 reveals that fans of Madden 2011 will find an extraordinary amount to love, and even more of what they have come to crave from the Madden franchise quality.

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution tells us we can all dream to fly, to be ultimately powerful in a powerless world where chaos and the foundations of revolution are taking place on the very streets, while we display newfound and reinvented human abilities through the gift of DNA augmentation. While the mitochondria or evolution itself might not consider DNA augmentation to be a relatively successful possibility of variance, Deus Ex: Human Revolution prevails in doing just that: it shows how powerful the game truly is in storyline, mood, and moreover raw science fiction purity.

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