We know that Jim Lee is a busy guy. He does the art for Batman: Dark Knight. He consults for Sony Online Entertainment. Oh, and he is the co-publisher of DC Comics. Well, that doesn't mean he doesn't have time to share some art with fans. Yesterday, Lee showed fans his latest project, the cover art to the collector's edition of DC Universe Online. You can check out a video here. In the meantime, check out the Joker.
Posted by Dustin
Arkham Asylum will be getting a special edition treatment later this month. Well, at least that's what the ad says. This website questions this and it's more likely we'll see a later release date.
This will be the "Game of the Year" edition". As you can see by the above ad, it will have six extra challenge maps. Don't worry, you won't have to re-buy the game. Most of these are supposedly ones that were already downloadable content. The exclusive ones? If I know video game companies, even if they say it'll be exclusive, you can bet that we'll be seeing these as downloadable content within the next year.
Interestingly enough, one of the challenge maps will be Crime Alley, and it doesn't seem to be a dream sequence like we got in the game. This is interesting because in the game we only fought inside Arkham and it's sewers. Going into Gotham would be a good preview for the eventual "Arkham 2" game that is being developed.
3D glasses? Video games in 3D rarely work. I doubt this will do much better. Save your money and download the maps later.
Yesterday, some very big news was announced over at Warner Bros. and DC Comics. If you didn’t read the official press release, head over to the news post here. To summarize a really long PR statement, WB is creating a new company called DC Entertainment, Inc. This division will still obviously be owned by Warner Bros., but will report directly to Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. The main job of this new company is to prioritize the DC properties into all forms of media by specifically focusing on them alone.
I know a lot of people are going to immediately associate this announcement as a reply of what happened last week with Disney and Marvel. For those of you who strictly stick to the DC Universe, let me inform you of what happened. Disney announced that they were buying Marvel for around $4 billion. Now while the internet blew up all over the place about that, the range of feelings towards that announcement ranged in every direction. Some thought that Disney could ruin what Marvel has been doing, while others believed it was just a way for Disney to reconnect with the younger male audience. My thought is that we probably won’t see very much come out of this for awhile, mostly because Marvel has things spread all over the place with all kinds of different studios. While the marketting giant that is Disney will probably help Marvel in an area that they need little help in, we are still years away from seeing any kind of major impact.
The reason why I tell you all of this, is so that you understand why some have immediately made this out to be a counter measure of that deal. While at first glance it seems that it just might be, according to Deadline.com it has something that has been in the works for awhile:
I know what everybody is thinking: that this move is in response to the announcement August 31st that Disney is buying Marvel. You can think that, but you would be wrong. This change has been in the works quietly for two years ever since Robinov moved into the top slot. "It was Jeff’s idea to have DC Comics reporting to him, and DC will be his direct responsibility with Diane Nelson," an insider confided to me. I’ve also learned that Robinov for months has quietly gone to producers like Chuck Roven and Joel Silver and Akiva Goldman and "called back" all their high profile DC titles in development like The Flash and Wonder Woman. Not only was that shocking to the producers, but even more so when they found out this was part of Robinov’s strategy to severely limit the number of gross participants on the projects. Because the producers were told that they may get the titles back to develop, but with far less rich deals. "Jeff always wanted some kind of oversight of DC, and now he wants Warner’s to hold onto ownership," my insider explains.
Now with all of that said, could this be the reason why so many DC properties have been announced and then have completely fallen of the map? It just may be. It seems as if this was something that they may have been planning for awhile and be that it just comes off the heels of the Disney/Marvel announcement. If so what does it all mean?
First, let’s go over what this means for the DC Universe in general before we get to Batman. Basically, what I interpret out of the press release is that DC Entertainment will get a lot of our favorite superheroes on to the silver screen, the small screen, or into video games. We have been wondering for quite some time why WB has not been working with comic book characters, especially since there are so many they could capitalize on. WB has owned DC Comics for over 40 years. It all started with Superman back in the seventies. Batman came into the late 80′s. But besides the two big names, there really has not been much in terms of use of the rest of the Universe. We are just now starting to see more heroes come out. Putting aside the animation aspect of things for a moment, we will finally be seeing some other characters break on to film. With Green Lantern and Jonah Hex already underway and announcements last week about Deadman and Lobo attaching key production members. We also know that Human Target is getting it’s own show that will start airing in January. Could more things be announced in the future? Only time will tell, but my money is that we hear some big news about a truckload of properties come Q1 of 2010.
That all being said, what does this mean for us Bat-Fans? In my opinion, not much at all. Batman is currently the most successful property coming out of DC right now for WB. Batman has the billion dollar plus film franchise, a critically acclaimed video game, and a TV series that is being adored by fans of all ages. I don’t think that the new DC Entertainment will be super concerned about what Batman needs to do to become more successful. They just need to get Chris Nolan and his team back, make a sequel to the now world-record holding video game, and keep making more episodes of BTBTB. Could we see more? Yes. But I think their focus will be more on the under used properties over at DC. Wonder Woman. Flash. Aquaman? Well, maybe not all of them.
In closing, I think this is a great thing for all DC fans. This will be what most have been waiting for in one way or another. Many fans have asked themselves, "Why are we not getting the same treatment for our characters as Marvel is giving their characters?" Wait for the announcement coming in January 2010. Then DC fans, we will.
Posted by Dustin
We all know that we are only about a week away from the release of Batman: Arkham Asylum. But there have been a lot of rumors surrounding which characters will in fact be in the game. Some of the characters that have been rumored have included: Maxie Zeus, Amygdala, Alfred, Blue Beetle, Catwoman, Firefly, Hugo Strange, Hush, Killer Moth, Mr. Freeze, Penguin, Ra’s al Ghul, Ratcatcher, Scarecrow, Tweedledum and Tweedledee. and Two-Face.
Now you are probably thinking to yourself, "Man, that lineup would be awesome." Well, from my perspective do not get your hopes up too fast. Out of the list above we know only know one that will be in the game for sure. That character is Scarecrow. Now Edios has not confirmed this at all, but we know he will be in the game because of the commercial that GameStop is running right now about the Scarecrow challenge map. So that is a pretty good sign that Scarecrow will be in the game. If you don’t know what I’m talking about here is the video:
Alright in the commercial, they specifically say the Scarecrow challenge map. So we can bank on him being in the game for at the very least a challenge map.
Alright so moving on to the other rumored characters. The first one I want to address is Amygdala. A lot of people first assumed that the creature we first saw in screenshots months back was in fact this character. Now since we have learned a little more about what to expect in the game and kind of bits and pieces from the storyline, we now know that venom is a factor in the game and is used on various thugs throughout the game since we have seen many different "creatures" that look like Amygdala. Some of them have face paint on their faces, and some do not. So we can assume that the character we first thought was Amygdala might not be him after all.
As for some of the other characters that have been rumored…. Wait, before I go into that, let me just say that this is all pure speculation and should not be held as truth or assumed that I have some sort if inside information when it comes to this. I don’t want someone to blow this OPINION piece out of proportion.
Some of you may have not gone too in-depth when it came to the Demo that was released, but then again that is why you have us, to do that in-depth research that you may not think of. Well, when diving into all the info that was available on the Demo, I noticed that they had the credits available for viewing. Now before you rush over to your PS3 (which i know all of you have one) I took the time to get screenshots of the English cast that was listed for the game. Here they are:
Now the first image is not as good as the second one, but it took forever to get these screenshots. You can see on the list of characters that there are only so many characters that are listed. Most of them we already knew, but it mentions Scarecrow. So he is in fact confirmed. Now if you look at the list you will notice a shortage of villains. There is no one on that list that we already did not know about besides some supporting characters. Well, besides Jack Ryder. (Wait, who is Jack Ryder? Maybe just The Creeper?)
Now my question to all of you is, if there were going to be a ton of villains that were going to make significant appearances in the game, than why aren’t there voice actors for them. If they list the voices for the supporting characters such as the Arkham guards, why not list the villains? Before you get all upset with me for ruining your hopes of a villain extravaganza, I still do believe that there will be a ton of hints and clues that will reference different villains. I just do not think we are going to see as many as we had originally thought. I might be completely off and Rocksteady and Edios knew that we Bat-fans dig very hard for info, and they purposely made sure that there were no clues as to who else we would see in the finished game.
Is this going to be a great game? Yes. Is it going to be received well by the fans? Yes. I just want to make sure that you do not get your hopes up because of all kinds of rumors floating around that your favorite obscure character is going to appear in the game. Leave any comments below, because I’m sure this will start a commotion.
Posted by Dustin
You may or may not have seen this video. it is part of Batman: Arkham Asylum and it features the level where you have to protect the Batmobile. It posted up back in June but was not publicized. Check it out:
Posted by Dustin
GameSpot has a commercial running for people to put a pre-order in for Batman: Arkham Asylum. If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is: