Naturally, there were a lot of skeptics when Batman: Arkham Asylam was announced. Games based on movies (or comics for that matter) are notorious, which by now, I’m sure everyone is aware of.  However, that didn’t stop anyone from becoming excited when the first screenshots came out, followed by the first gameplay footage, which was in the form of a challenge room.

I didn’t even realize how anticipated this game was until I found out that my local EB Games opened at 8 AM (those poor employees) just to start selling early. I bet some people were even camping outside, as if a new Harry Potter book was being released. The last time I saw craziness like this for a video game, it was last year, when stores opened at midnight for GTA IV.

Now, I read some reviews the day before the game was released. All of them sing nothing but high praises . Honestly, they’re all true. I absolutely loved every minute of this game…well, maybe not every minute. I’ve got a few gripes with the game that I haven’t really seen anywhere else, but I’ll get to that later.

Graphics:  The whole game is absolutely gorgeous. Taking a page out of Bioshock’s book, Arkham Asylum is a run-down, sinister, haunted place. Many years of pain, suffering, and death paint the walls with a macabre energy, and while it would be interesting if those walls could talk, you wouldn’t really want them to. The look and feel of the entire game (which all takes place on an island with an insane asylum on it, for those who don’t know) really makes you feel like the place has a lot of awful, gruesome history, history you’d rather not explore.

The characters all look fantastic too. Textures are all highly detailed, allowing you to see the fabric of Batman’s suit and the shimmer of his cape, and every wrinkle on the Joker’s intimidating face. Also, to show off the attention to detail even more, Batman’s look changes over the course of the storyline. As he survives more and more encounters, his uniform shows tears, his cape becomes sliced and tattered, and his face shows cuts. At the end of the game, I even realized that his stubble grew more and more, because he hasn’t left the island for the whole night.

Audio: The voice actors from the animated series all return, and even though I was never a huge fan of the cartoon, even I know who Mark Hamill is, and he does an intimidatingly good rendition of the Joker (never would have thought). Pretty much all the voice acting is top notch, and I didn’t really have a problem with any of it, except for a few times that the Joker was a little bit too obnoxious, but then, that’s the point of the character. Harley Quinn sometimes comes across as a little too over-the-top, but all that is nitpicking.

The music is very atmospheric throughout, and the pacing changes according to what’s happening on the screen. Although Rocksteady has said that their game is completely independent of both the movies and the comics, I could swear to hearing a few scores taken straight from Batman Begins. I’ve got no problems with that though, it works just as well in the game as it did in the movie.

Story: The game begins with Batman bringing The Joker to Arkham Asylum after having captured him during an attack on the Mayor’s Office. Batman is no fool, however, realizing that The Joker seemed a tad too easy to capture compared to previous encounters, but he tries to think nothing of it, as Commissioner Gordan reassures him that he’s finally where he belongs.  Suddenly, Batman’s suspicions come true, and Joker escapes the guards, setting his plan into action. From there, Batman is trapped on the island with psychopaths being let out of their cells, mutants, thugs, and more.

The entire story is basically the backdrop, and even though it’s expertly crafted and paced, with plenty of twists and turns, it mostly serves as an excuse to release some of Batman’s worst villains on him, but I won’t spoil anything. All you really need to know is that the story never runs out of steam, and you’ll be excited to follow it all the way through to the end. It should last you around 12 hours to beat on normal difficulty, if you take the time to explore, which is basically a few solid days of playing. Once it’s over, you’ll wish it was longer, but in the age of short, uber high budget games lasting 6 hours at most, Batman: Arkham Asylum spoils us.

Gameplay: Batman would suck if it didn’t play well , and luckily, it’s the best part of the game. The entire game is split up into 4 categories: stealth sequences, brawling, exploring, and boss battles. These basic outlines are regularly mixed up for some variety, but I’m glad there are no driving missions, on-the-rails sections or quicktime events , typical of every action game these days. It really shows that Rocksteady has a product they’re proud of, and they don’t need to look towards standard motifs to increase variety.

Their stealth sequences really make you feel like Batman, as you swing from statues on the ceiling, hang upside down behind opponents like in the movies, and generally try to pick off enemies one by one. As you do this, the thugs will get more and more intimidated, and will start making mistakes, like drifting away from their buddies. As soon as your enemies start grouping together, your life gets a little harder, because if there are two or three guys sticking together, attacking one will get you shot, and Batman can’t take more than a few bullets.

I would have liked a more Splinter-cell style system however. Noise is never really an issue unless you’re running, so you can just calmly walk behind your opponents, no sneaking necessary. It would have been nice to have to monitor your noise levels a bit, which would make the sequences a tad more methodical. Also, line of sight is spotty at best. Your enemies will only be able to see what is level with their heads, so if you are above, below, or behind them, they are completely oblivious. I’m fine with that, because the alternative would likely make for a more frustrating game, but lighting has absolutely no effect. There’s a reason why Batman’s suit isn’t neon pink. He should be able to hide out in the shadows, but such an option is mysteriously absent. Despite these complaints, stealth is so fun in this game. Everything else you can think of, it gets right, and there’s a definite satisfaction to hanging over someone upside down, and suddenly snatching them up and dangling them from a statue.

The brawling is a mixed bag for me, just because it can be immensely exhilarating if you’re doing well, but if you’re doing badly, it can be very frustrating. Rocksteady has created a fighting engine called Freeflow (trademarked, so we’ll undoubtedly see it again in future titles), and it does what the name suggests. Batman can attack in 360 degrees, almost regardless of the distance of your next target (he could be at the other end of a small room, and Batman would simply flip over the distance and continue his combo), and then he can immediately move on to the next target. If you get a bit of practice, you’ll find yourself stringing together 40-hit combos, as you attack your enemies and knock them down in a circular sweep around the room. It looks and feels fantastic, and the countering is great too. Whereas in other games, countering is usually dependent on precise timing, which I usually avoid because I’d rather go on the offense, Batman gives you a slightly bigger window by having a sort of Spidey sense. As an enemy is about to attack, a blue icon appears over his head (or a red icon which means it cannot be countered, but only dodged), and pressing Counter will give you immediate results.

When you’re doing well in combat, everything seems to fall into place, and before you know it, you’ve wrecked a room of thirty thugs  without being hit a single time. When you’re doing badly however, everything goes downhill. If your timing gets a little bit off and you lose your concentration, you’ll find yourself being cheap-shot’ed left and right, as your enemies quickly try to surround and overwhelm you. When you knock down an opponent, you have the option of finishing them off, but there are several different animations for this, and some of them take a lot longer than others. This means that more often than not, the crowds will attack you before the animation finishes, and the tables turn as your life meter bleeds away. It just always seems that when you’re getting your ass handed to you, it’s because of the AI throwing cheap shots, and whenever I lost, I felt a bit cheated.

The same goes for Boss Fights. They’re all imaginative and well-thought out, but they just aren’t that fun. In fact, I think they’re the worst parts of the game, and I was always happy to be done with them and continue to beat and prey on faceless thugs, because that’s where the game is at its best. Batman simply isn’t nimble and fast enough to make the boss fights seem fair, and it seems like every encounter is just harder than it should be. Batman adopts a GTA IV-style control scheme where pressing A (or X on PS3 I imagine) sprints, but the analog stick alone simply makes him walk dramatically. Navigating just isn’t as smooth as it should be.

Exploring is exactly what you think it is. You unlock gadgets which slowly allow you to access areas that were previously unavailable, which makes back-tracking worth it to find secrets, which maybe be Riddler trophies (Basically hidden packages, which unlock goodies) or secret nods to the comics or movies, such as references to characters not featured in the game, like Ra’s al Ghul and even Harvey Dent. Of course, if you don’t bother to explore, you might have missed these things completely and never even know about them. I still have not found every secret that the Asylum hides.

Maybe I should have put this in the graphics section of the review, but I have a small gripe which has to do with the HUD, or lack of one. The most you’ll ever see resembling a HUD is your life meter and your inventory if you’re switching gadgets. I know it’s the great new thing in games to be immersed by not having a HUD on the screen, but now that it’s gone, I think I’m beginning to realize why it was there in the first place. Especially as the game went on, I found myself wishing there was a minimap of some kind on the screen. Navigating the maze-like corridors of Arkham is tedious when constantly having to press the Back button (or Select) to see the map to know where the hell you’re going. Even if you’re back-tracking, you’ll have to navigate platforms, vent networks, and criss-crossing corridors, and there’s no way you’ll be able to memorize each area. This means you’ll have to navigate a menu each time you want to navigate the game… and all this can be solved so simply. Give me a minimap, give me an arrow pointing to the next objective, hell, even a simple compass. Anything will do, really.

After you beat the game, you’ll have challenge missions to try your hand at. Nothing special here, the challenge rooms are basically encounters from the single player campaign, which you can try to complete with a highscore which will land you on online leaderboards. Not much to say about this. I tried a few, and they’re definitely decent diversions.

I would have liked a feature to replay actual missions, but in a semi-sandbox game, I can see that as being difficult. Still, there should be a way to replay through the various Scarecrow hallucination levels, which are amazing and creepy, but I won’t spoil anything.

In the end, this review can be summed up by saying, I really really tried hard to find anything to nitpick about and this is the result. I could have saved you a bunch of time by just saying “Stop reading, go out, and buy this game.”, but then it wouldn’t be a very good review. I was really looking forward to this game, and I got my wish: that it would turn out fantastically. It really delivered, and gave the fans what they wanted after a flurry of crappy Batman games spanning decades. Plus, as a cherry on the sundae, the ending leaves room for a sequel, and I’m already eagerly waiting for it.

This game might even be one of the best I’ve played in years, maybe my whole lifetime, and while that’s dependent on individual taste, I guarantee you won’t be disappointed by Batman: Arkham Asylum. It’s a 9.0 for me.

Rating:

People were all intrigued by the teaser on Lionhead’s site that draped over the screen pictures of leaders, like Che Guevara and Joan of Arc. It got us thinking deeply about what that crazy Molyneux could have thought of next. My guess was that it would be some sort of awesome revolt simulation or Lionhead’s take on a Total War-style game. Unfortunately, I was wrong, and instead, it was just a teaser for Fable 3. While I’m happy to see that the series will continue , I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t superbly disappointed. Fable 3 was inevitable. It’s like if Rockstar put a teaser of…oh, I don’t know, references to historic battles, and then it turned out to be another GTA game because of a loose connection, which is gang warfare. It would be cool ‘n all…but…it’s a bit of false advertising. And now, so is this. The teaser actually meant to show leaders, making the reference that you too shall become a leader in Fable 3. The new mechanic, while not explained in detail whatsoever, will allow the player to become a king/queen of Albion, and in classic Fable fashion, you will be able to be good or evil.

Lionhead couldn’t have just announced this on a normal day? Rumors have spread and Molyneux has confirmed that they are working on other games, but this is the best they could come up with to justify the hype they created? Oh well, we’ll have to see what comes of this.

I just applied for beta testing of the elusive and mysterious MMO, All Points Bulletin. For those of you who don’t know about it, APB is a game designed by David Jones, one of the original designers of the first Grand Theft Auto. APB is the MMO equivalent of GTA, as gangs battle cops for control over a city, 24/7. Gang members can do things like rob a convenient store, which will send a notification to cops of roughly equivalent skill level to try to kill or arrest them (don’t quote me on that, I’m not sure that arresting is an option). Players will be able to use the deep customization features to make their characters completely unique, down to weapons and custom vehicles.

You can check out the Wikipedia article here for more info, and apply for the Beta here. You can also visit the rest of the official website.

By the way, I found out about the Beta through Destructoid’s post so don’t forget to give them a visit when you can.

As you may already know, the Lionhead website is now teasing us with a simplistic picture of Che Guevara, one of his quotes underneath, and under it, a thumbs up and a thumbs down. Clicking on the thumbs up will lead to the normal site with a red background. Clicking on the thumbs down leads you to…the normal site, with a blue background. No more info is provided as to what this is hinting at.

Peter Molyneux, despite being overly ambitious and enthusiastic sometimes, has never really made a bad game. In fact, he’s always trying to do things that no one has ever done before. Could it be? I’ll finally get to realize my dreams of playing a Revolution Simulator? Or perhaps, a Revolt Tycoon? I’d love to see what Molyneux  comes up with. I’m hoping it’s non-linear, and strategic. Che certainly didn’t have an easy life, and I hope that’s portrayed in whatever game this turns out to be.

OR, maybe I’m completely wrong, and this turns out to be Black & White 3: Red and Blue Backgrounds. But remember, you heard it here first.

You can check it out right here. I saw it this morning and it only confirmed my suspicions: 2009 has been by far the crappiest year for video games in a long, long time. 2007 was said to be one the best years ever, and 2008 was even better in my opinion, but with the highs, come the lows. This year gave us such masterpieces as GTA: Chinatown Wars for the DS, Plants vs. Zombies, and Wii Sports Resort. Oh my.

Almost all the decent games have, of course been delayed to 2010. Upcoming games for the year include Batman Arkham Asylum, and NHL 10, and those are the only good ones I can think of off the top of my head that I’d buy without hesitation. Others include Section 8, a rather by-the-numbers looking shooter, Dirt 2, which will no doubt be delayed for more polish or somethin’, Tropico 3, Alpha Protocol, Operation Flashpoint, Borderlands, Forza 3, Dragon Age, COD Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed II, and…that’s about it. They’re all big releases but as the delays are piled up, I’m skeptical as to how long I’m really going to have to wait to play them.

2009 was a terrible year for virtual entertainment, and when one of the biggest releases is a GTA game for the DS that’s meant to look like the old school original GTA, then there’s a serious problem. 2010 is looking pretty amazing so far though, so we’ll see what the future really holds.

Wii Sports Resort…Ugh.

I’ve got this game pre-ordered already and I can’t wait to play it when it’s released at the end of the month. The demo did nothing to satisfy my craving, in fact, it only made it worse when it confirmed that this is the Batman game we’ve been waiting for.

The whole demo exudes atmosphere. Everything is gritty, and dirty, and dark.  The beautifully made main menu shows a dramatic Batman overlooking Gotham from a vantage point, and it really sets the tone for the game, which is supposed to be very grim compared to previous incarnations of the Dark Knight. This game is not based on any movie, or any of the comic books specifically. Rather, the developers have decided to write their own original storyline, which, in a nutshell, is that The Joker traps Batman in an insane asylum with all the villains we know and love.

The graphics are gorgeous, and I love Batman’s look. His cape is especially impressive, the way it freely flows, reacting to the environment, and draping across the floor when Batman isn’t moving. It’s an amazing touch. The audio is also pretty great. The voice actors from the animated series are all back, and although I didn’t really watch the cartoon much, even I can appreciate Mark Hamill as The Joker.

The gameplay is relatively simple, and what you’d expect, but it’s all solid. The Batman, naturally, is a cross between stealth, and beat ‘em-up. The stealth aspect is just…downright cool. In any other game, it would be passed off as standard and rather unoriginal. You sneak around in the shadows to get behind guys, so you can take them out silently. A big focus of the demo is rappelling to high vantage points where you can pick off your enemies one by one and survey the area. It’s so satisfying to hang upside down and stare at a completely oblivious henchman, just like in all the movies and the cartoons.

What I’m trying to say is, there’s nothing revolutionary about this game or its individual components…except that you’re Batman.

The action portion of the game involves this “free-flow” combat, basically meaning that Batman can strike in all directions, animations can be interrupted, and you can pull off spectacular counters and finishing moves. It all works well and looks great, and I especially love the close-up cinematic camera angle when you finish off the last opponent in the room.

What I didn’t like is that health doesn’t regenerate, and the Batman is relatively weak head-to-head against armed opponents. Only a few shots will empty your life meter. It’s like if you took one of the old Splinter Cell games and added a fighting engine, so Sam Fisher could unleash combos on his foes, but that still leaves the problem of him being underpowered and unable to take more than a few shots.

In the demo, I constantly found myself making little mistakes like trying to finishing off an opponent silently, without his buddy noticing, but then he switches his patrol pattern, spots me, and everything goes bad. Before I know it, I’ve been shot to the point where my life is in the red, and I’m still not sure how to regenerate health. Once I got into that situation, and a few minutes later I realized my health had, in fact, increased again, and I have no clue how I did it.

Anyway, the demo really had me impressed. I’m not sure how developers before now could have possibly messed up Batman, because he’s practically made for video games, but Rocksteady seems to have nailed the look and feel of it. I’m very excited for the August 25th release of Batman: Arkham Asylum.

P.S. Rocksteady is rumored to be developing the next game in the Hitman series. It would be a bizarre twist, and a questionable decision. I’m not sure if I like the idea of Hitman being in the hands of anyone other than IO Interactive, because they made it what it is, and if it went to anyone else, they might fail to meet the standards of fans. Hitman has a very unique look and feel, and I hope no one messes with that formula. If the property goes to anyone…make it Rockstar Haha

Unfortunately, I wasn’t even able to finish it. I wrote a day or two ago that I had been trying to download the demo, in vain. It took a total of five attempts to download the demo, from File Planet, Gamers Hell, and Strategy Informer. My download was always interrupted by silly things like Mozilla crashing for no reason, my internet connection randomly cutting out, etc etc. When I FINALLY got the demo, I installed it, and I got all excited. I played the demo for maybe 10 minutes, before it crashed. I don’t just mean crash to desktop, it crashed my computer.

Boom, no error message, no blue screen of death, nothing. The screen just went black, and my monitor tells me it doesn’t have a signal. I glance over to my tower, and I see that the power button is illuminated, indicating that the computer is still technically running, and doing something. I Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Alt+Tab, Enter, Escape, you name it. Nothing.

I restart my computer. I run the demo again. This time, I get five minutes out of it. It crashes my computer again. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. I try to isolate the problem by playing other games and seeing if my computer does the same thing again. I play Oblivion, Grid, The Witcher, and the Batman Demo, and I played Grid for about half an hour in total. It went completely smoothly, no hiccups.

That means there’s something about my computer that this demo simply does not like. All my drivers are updated, the few minutes I got out of it ran very smoothly with easily 50 FPS. I checked the official site. Their Support section doesn’t exist yet, it’s a link that goes no where. I head to the forums and discover that my problem is completely unique, as some people report crashes, but only immediately at the launcher, or as the game starts, and both situations crash to desktop with an error message.

I don’t know what it is about this demo, but it has to be cursed, because it seems like no matter what I do, it just doesn’t want me to play it. Oh well, I’ll have to wait until the full game comes out and see if it works a little better

What I DID get to play however, impressed me. I didn’t even get far enough to try any futuristic weapons, but I did get to use the old ones. I particularly love the musket, just because it’s so unlike anything I’ve seen in a game before. The graphics are actually quite nice, and while some of the models look a little last-gen, there were some nice effects like the hazy, under-water effect of the portals.

I didn’t like the font and subtitles though, as they are all in orange and placed exactly at the part of the screen where your weapons are held. Because of this, against most backgrounds of the environment it’s difficult to read and I find myself looking up at the sky so I can read them more clearly, and even then, my large musket or revolver is always blocking parts of the sentence. It’s so simple to fix and yet, such a nuisance.

The weapons all feel and sound very satisfying, and I actually think the futuristic sci-fi elements are disappointing to add to that. I’m so tired of the conventional machine guns of the future. Gears Of War, Halo, Bioshock, Perfect Dark, Mass Effect, and the list goes on indefinitely. Is one more sci-fi game really what we need? I’d be content just using civil war weapons, honestly.

It’ll be interesting to see how this game turns out. I don’t think it will blow any minds, and my guess is that it’ll get a 60-70% on Gamerankings and Metacritic. Remember, you heard it here first

This game is…annoying. I decided a few days ago to see what it’s like, and to see if the ambitious claims on the website were true. Supposedly, it’s the most realistic hunting game out there today, and it’s free to play. Don’t let that fool you, however. You must pay, with real money, to access any remotely interesting features, such as more hunting equipment, ammo, weapons, and clothing. If you get a free account, you get almost absolutely nothing except, quite literally the shirt on your back, along with a bolt-action rifle, ammo, GPS, and a deer call…thingy.

Now, I just finished playing another session of the game, clocking in at about an hour and a half. Guess how many deer I killed. Zero. I spent an hour and a half wandering about aimlessly. The system works in a practical fashion. You look around for signs that a deer has been in that location, whether it be footprints, dung, or blood trails from when you shot the poor animal from a mile away with no rhyme or reason. The more clues you pick up, the better you can track the little bastard through the forest. However, the game does absolutely nothing to help you along. With a hunting area miles long, your virtual instructor gives you the most vague of instructions to find deer. He says things like, “Oh, just go north from the camp. Or, hmm, if you’re brave, you might even go…south.”  *gasp* Oh my.

The game is supposed to be a simulator, but like so many simulators, realism drains out any possibility of fun from this game. Your character inches along at a snail’s pace even when running. The game encourages stealth, and always moving slowly, but running at full speed is the only way you’ll ever get anywhere, ever. As always with simulators, this one too assumes that all humans take 5 full minutes to execute the smallest, simplest of tasks. In The Hunter, each animation is uninterruptible, stops you from moving, and takes for bloody ever. Stopping dead in your tracks to pull out binoculars is a chore, and it’s mandatory to survey the landscape, so you’ll have to do it often.

Another problem: the landscape itself. The graphics in this game are, honestly, gorgeous. The forest is the lushest I’ve seen in a game. Tall grass and flowers gently sway in the wind, rays of light shine through the canopy, and everything looks gorgeous, and I’d love to see a big game company steal this engine. Unfortunately, it’s detrimental to gameplay, as the excessive vegetation makes it almost impossible to spot deer in any situation. Light reflects off of plants in the distance, along with small birds and insects flying through the air, and it all makes the illusion of movement in the distance, making for a lot of false alarms as you whip out binoculars.

The one thing I was thinking of during most of my time playing was, “Wow, I wish there was more hunting in this hunting game“, because it seems like you could just keep walking forever, until you find a sign that a deer is close. Then, you could spend another half hour following its trail, and it turns out that the animal is nowhere to be found. You’ll have no idea whether you’re just bad at the game, or if the deer spawned out, or died somehow. In my case, “all of the above” is a more likely possibility.

But that shouldn’t stop me from having fun, and it this point, I start to realize there really isn’t much to this game unless you’re willing to pony up cash, and at that point, there are much better subscription-based games you could be playing at the same price point. The game isn’t even an MMO, and to my knowledge, only has a single-player mode, although I didn’t even take a passing glance at the competitions, and don’t know if you can actually hunt with other people, live, and at the same time. I doubt it, because then it wouldn’t be realistic with teenagers making a hunting simulation into a deathmatch.

Also, I wanted to say that I actually feel a bit guilty playing this game. I’m strongly against hunting, but I was willing to make an exception in a virtual environment. Still though, when I’m told to do things like “aim for the lungs” or “follow the blood trail and find the body to harvest your kill”, I can’t help but feel like it’s all…just wrong. I was half expecting it to tell me to aim for the legs so the creature can’t run away and escape its fate. It’s a little disturbing, like the Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, or if someone made a game called Puppy Mill Tycoon.

…why?

Your character customization is also extremely limited. You can choose your screen name, but you must choose from pre-determined portraits, and the name of your actual avatar is randomized. The only control you really have is over the merchandise you buy, which again, you cannot access at all unless you pay up.

Audio is fantastic. Deer calls, birds chirping, wind making the plants sway to and fro, it’s all very convincing and you really do feel like you’re in the middle of a forest that humans haven’t touched. That is, until you spot one of many sniper towers…I mean, erm, outposts, scattered around the area. You can actually climb to the top of these towers to look for deer, and, if you’re lucky, shoot the sucker from a mile away. He’ll never even see it coming.

Anyway, I don’t have much else to say about this game. The review is short, because there simply isn’t much depth in The Hunter. I didn’t expect much from a hunting game, but I did expect more than what I was given. The game doesn’t do enough to hold the hands of newcomers, and the hunting area is too vast with too much vegetation, while at the same time, there aren’t enough animals to actually hunt. All these factors together amount to a lot of wandering and not much else. It’s…a little bit more like birdwatching, or hiking, than hunting.

Sneaking cyanide into the watering hole…they’ll never suspect that.

Even long journeys in submarine simulators can be tense and engaging, and if not, there’s always the time speed controls. This game does nothing to alleviate the tedium. It’s barely a game, and it definitely isn’t fun. It gives you no reason to come back for more. It gets a 4.5 from The Sanctuary, and as promised, it’s one for the Trial By Fire section.

Rating:

The Pirate Bay is still not up and running, and now, you can’t even see the front page at all. The connection keeps timing out when trying to visit the site. The problem is looking more serious by the hour. Hopefully it’s not the death of the site or anything, because that sounds awfully paranoid if it turns out to just be a minor problem or a server overload, but I’ll check back when I can.

I’m in the process of downloading the Darkest of Days Demo as we speak. Unfortunately, I’ll apparently have to wait another 3 hours to play it, according to my ETA. I’m excited, but for now, I’ll have to stick with The Hunter…

Update: Pirate Bay is now up and running again, seemingly a false alarm, with no indication or reports as to what the problem was. Also, my browser crashed and I have to restart downloading the Darkest Of Days demo, ALL OVER AGAIN. I’m trying to find a torrent of it instead.

The Pirate Bay, infamous BitTorrent tracker that’s been the centre of many a debate, and controversy whirlwinds between politicians, freedom-loving teenagers, people who like free crap, and every shade of grey in between, is experiencing technical difficulties.As on the front page at the time of  writing this post:

The Pirate Bay

Something is broken, we are working on it, check back in a little while!

Could they be hacked somehow? Is the site finally dead and going legal? Many recent news articles speak of the site being blocked in some countries, plus the more-than-likely acquisition from a big company who plans on turning the site legit. Who knows what’s wrong with the site, it could be anything, but when a site as big as the Pirate Bay goes down because something is “broken”, it can’t be good news.  I’ll be following the cheery little message’s advice and checking back periodically.