Architecture

Batman: Arkham Knight--Great Game or Greatest Game?

I billed just over 89 hours across an 11-day pay period, but didn't get 1.5x my hourly rate for that last hour. I asked my manager and was told the company doesn't pay 1.5x overtime, so I decided to do some research. Apparently there are exemptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act, which I might fall under. However, a lot of the wording seems nebulous at best and the Department of Labor's site kinda sucks. Does anyone have experience with this sort of thing? I don't want to quibble over a handful of bucks, but our business ramps up in the fall season; last year, I was routinely working 50+ hour weeks. (This wasn't an issue last year because I was brought in by a staffing agency which paid out overtime, but I have since been hired on permanently.)

I forgot how frustratingly brutal some of the boss battles are. I'm currently stuck on the rock-thing (which I believe drops the spider-ball upgrade). I don't think I have enough missiles to defeat him, but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Nintendo just has to announce a new, lower MSRP for the Wii U and they will have "won" E3.

So Origins looks fantastic, but it certainly isn't as polished in its presentation as City or Asylum. DX11 effects are amazing, however. It's also a sight better optimized than City was.

Oh yeah? Well then what is, Mr. I-know-a-better-game?

Cuphead is the best thing anyone's shown thus far:

I just finished Arkham City on PC, what a fantastic game. It's been nice to replay these games. I guess I'll move on to Origins, which I have yet to actually play. Some people I know claim it's the best of the three.

Did you ever see a frigate rise up from the depths while 'er crew floated in suspended animation thirty feet above the waves? Because I have.

Earn...citizenship? To Space America?

It's not a dual-stick shooter...the left stick moves you forward and backward, but also turns you left and right. The left trigger enables a lock-on aim in which you can circle-strafe around a target (a la Z-targeting), and the right trigger lets you stand in place and free aim. Jump is mapped to B (or X on the 360 pad), so occasionally I forget which button to push when trying to jump. Sometimes the shooting controls feel a little clunky, but overall the control is pretty solid and everything about the game holds up. It's a wonderful transition from 2D to 3D and has some of the best game music I've ever heard (some of it is remixed versions of classic Metroid tunes as well). The game still looks fantastic, and Dolphin's texture filtering and up-rezzing capabilities mean it looks better than if I pulled my GC out of my closet and hooked it up to my TV downstairs. Prime 2 is also fantastic, though I never finished it. (And technically I never finished Prime, though I gave up on the last boss, so I saw everything there was to see.)

Honestly, Bioshock's near-pornographic revelry of its violence really put me on edge. The first time you mangle the cop's face with the skyhook was just more grotesque than I wanted or needed.

Has his quest for Video Fame finally concluded?

Dear lord, top of page.

I don't think I agree with this in totality. In the short term, yes--hype drives sales. But did you hear the figures Nintendo released for Mario Kart titles across the board? Mario Kart Wii has sold in excess of 35 million copies. 35 million. I'm not Michael Pachter, so I'm not sure what we can realistically expect Whirling Dervishes to sell over its lifetime, but I would have to imagine that a large percentage of its potential audience has already purchased the game. Sure, it's somewhat apples & oranges; they are vastly different products. The potential customer base has to at least be equal (if not slanted heavily in Ubisoft's favor), however. Anyway, let's compare this to GTA V. I'm sure GTA V was more costly to produce, but it was done in four years' time (as opposed to Wash Rags's five), and I think most would agree that GTA was a far more polished product. Unfortunately, Rockstar only discloses sold-in numbers, but they've probably sold somewhere around 30 million copies since September (and they sold a third of that in 24 hours!). GTA's day-one business was three times better than Hot Dogs, and it managed that on 40% fewer platforms. It certainly seems bleak at times, but I honestly do believe that a game's quality leads to a better ROI than its marketing budget in most instances.

To each his own, but I feel that sacrificing player agency for "cinematic" style is one of Ubisoft's many transgressions in the past decade. None of their games play as well as Prince of Persia did 10 years ago. I'm not trying to argue that every game should enable the player to jump, but when you spend $50 million to develop a sandbox game, the least you can let me do is hop around. The restrictive artifice of "press _ to clamber" plain sucks; imagine if Bethesda only let you jump in context-specific instances? The video I posted is admittedly reactionary, but I think the message is important; publishers care more about marketing their mediocre sludge than building a great product and trusting it'll perform in the market. I don't think it's too much to ask for a sound file of bullets zipping through water when you're playing a game surrounded by water wherein you shoot everything. Or for the L-Train to, you know, do anything other than come to a complete stop on a dime because there's a car on the tracks.

"We used to build things in this country, damn it." Anyway, they are definitely misinterpreting the law here and I'm certain I've got a legitimate grievance. What's the best way to approach this situation? I do not want to lose this job, but I have a feeling that an indelicate touch will make me the office pariah. I don't believe any staff is salaried, so this is potentially a company-wide issue.

C'mon, price drop!

We'll see, I guess.

Going to disagree with that, too. The level design of Tomb Raider is so pedestrian next to something like Uncharted. Nothing can match climbing the giant statue in Nepal, or the ice caverns in Tibet, or even the discovery of a U-boat in the middle of the jungle. The combat was well-designed, but all the environments just deflated any interesting possibilities. Poor story, finicky controls, bland settings, too much combat and not enough exploration. I'd rather play Uncharted 2 every six months than ever play a game like that again.

Can't wait for Nintendo to put out a Mario game in which he cannot jump.