Batman: Arkham Knight announced

Yesterday (March 4th 2014), we finally got the news of a new game in the famous Batman: Arkham video game franchise. It's called Batman: Arkham Knight. The game, created by the British Rocksteady Studios, will be the forth and final game in the series. It will also be the first game in the series where players can control the Batmobile.

I have many thoughts regarding this. Firstly, I'm sad that Rocksteady has decided to conclude the series with Arkham Knight, although I understand that it's better to end a series perfectly than badly. Secondly, I'm glad that Rocksteady has to make Gotham City bigger and the streets wider (compared to the ones in Batman: Arkham City) in order to make room for the Batmobile. Thirdly, I'm still disappointed that sexism is still present in the game - I'm thinking of Harley Quinn's provocative outfit.

Although many people - including my countrymen - love and praise Batman: Arkham City, I'm not impressed with the game. Although Rocksteady intended to create the second game about "Batman in Gotham", Arkham City (I'm talking about the prison with the same name of the game) feels small. The prison isn't meant to be large, but since it consists of an older part of Gotham with famous locations like Crime Alley, Gotham Cathedral and Ace Chemicals, I think it should be larger than that. And the streets are narrow like a small suburb! This doesn't feel like a former part of a big city at all.

Regarding the sexism in the Arkham-franchise, I fail to understand why Rocksteady has chosen not to re-use Harley's classic outfit introduced in Batman: The Animated Series. While the male characters are fully dressed, Harley (like in the previous games) still have some parts uncovered - you can see that in the trailer at the end of this post.

In Arkham City, I would say that both Catwoman and Harley Quinn had the most impractical and sexist outfits. Poison Ivy is a "logical" exception since her appearance was that of a "naked-goddess" similar to Aphrodite.

These are some of my many thoughts of the franchise. Now please enjoy the YouTube-trailer of Arkham Knight:

Injustice: I finally got John Stewart!

At last, after replaying all of the four John Stewart Green Lantern Challenges and completing the fifth and final one, I won a golden John Stewart Green Lantern card! Now that I have acquired it, I can always return to the in-game shop later to buy extra cards in order to enhance John. One extra John Stewart-card costs 165,000 Power Credits (the in-game currency). If I still had time to replay all of the challenges again, this time with a higher difficulty, I could have gotten one more card.

Being a golden card, John Stewart is the strongest of all Green Lantern cards in Injustice: Gods Among Us for mobile phones. His second special attack - "Parallell Nature" - is a very powerful attack which is a combination of rapid swiping and aiming compared to other characters' special attacks (which are either activated by swiping, tapping or aiming on the touch screen).

If any of the characters in the player's team get very low health - they are protected by John's Emergency Barrier which makes them invulnarable for 8 seconds. This is very useful if both the opponent and the active hero/villain have low health. Sadly each character can only get benefit by the Emergency Barrier once per match.

If I have any complaints about the card, it would be that John Stewart isn't voiced by Phil LaMarr - his original voice actor from the Justice League animated series and the original console version of Injustice. Instead John is voiced by Adam Baldwin, the same actor who lends his voice to Green Lantern Hal Jordan.

Lantern John Stewart as seen in the shop. (Click to enlarge)

Injustice: I have to restart John Stewart Green Lantern Challenge?!

Those of you who play the mobile versions of Injustice: Gods Among Us, know that NetherRealms every so often holds events where the players can win a rare golden card to his/her deck by completing five challenges.

The announcement of John Stewart Challange Mode in
the iOS-version of Injustice: Gods Among us.

During this event which started on January 23th 2014, the players can win a Green Lantern John Stewart golden card. I've played Injustice everyday and completed four of them. But today a dreadful thing happened: My progress has been deleted and now I have to replay the challenges all over again!

How could this happen? The only explanation I can think of is that the app must to be connected to the Internet at all times. So if you want to play the normal missions offline, turn the Internet off and start the game: You'll get the message that the "Previous challenge has expired". And when you turn the Internet back on, the app will think that you're starting a brand new session of the Challenges!

*Sigh* There's nothing else I can do but to replay the challenges again. I have reached the third challenge and I have only 7 days left. We'll see if I can make it in time. I can't play 24/7 everyday during the coming week can I?

Here is a YouTube-video showing the gameplay of Green Lantern John Stewart in the iOS-version of Injustice: