Here At the End of All Things - Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

Swan songs are a bitch.

Done wrong they can be bloated, messy, disjointed, contrived, and deeply, tragically unsatisfying. When it's time for a beloved character to exit stage left, the sense is there's a sacred responsibility not merely to bring him full circle, but to do so with such zeal and flourish as to leave no doubt his tale is done, done right, done best, done for the ages. Often as not this results in the final chapter being overloaded with symbolic 'lasts', a checklist of Things That Have to Happen to wrap the package up all neat-'n-tidy lest a thread be left to dangle. It's a noble sentiment, but it's also a hell to a high-wire act, trying to close the book on an entire franchise without dragging down the story that's in front of you at the moment. I imagine it's even harder when your departing hero is no less an icon than Nathan Drake, video game explorer extraordinaire and the face of Sony Playstation for the last decade. A Thief's End, as the title suggests, is indeed his last adventure (please swallow your grain of salt now), but the good people at Naughty Dog avoided virtually all the pitfalls of a standard denouement to give their signature hero one hell of a sendoff. Once more into the breach, my friends. It's treasure huntin' time.

It's been five years since Drake's last adventure, which is several eternities in the gaming world. In that time the industry has enjoyed a technological leap ahead with the next-gen platforms, as well as a massive expansion of game libraries that include, amongst the thousands of shooters, RPGs, indie start-ups, and open-world sandboxes, several franchises showcasing the same brash run-'n-gun third-person adventure format that is Uncharted's trademark. Since 2011's Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception there has been not one, but two new Tomb Raider games starring a revitalized (and slimmed down) Lara Croft, who pre-dates Drake by a wide margin, as well as seventy-one new Assassin's Creed titles, which are now being released in time with the phases of the moon (and still selling like gangbusters, a fact which continues to confound this writer). Both series incorporate the same trio of platforming, puzzle-solving, and cinema-style combat that is Uncharted's stock and trade, and both have enjoyed the fruits of the new system's beefed-up processors and graphics cards for huge, explosive set pieces and epic presentation. Neither Lara nor the mopey bores with the queer hoods are showing any signs of slowing down. After five years, is Nathan Drake still relevant? For that matter, is it still possible to frame in a story that can compete with the younger, more distilled children his franchise helped create?

Tall order indeed, but Naughty Dog has never been one for half measures. The company that once claimed Crash Bandicoot as its mascot has enjoyed a prime spot on the critic's mantlepiece thanks to 2013's The Last of Us, a masterpiece of a game that blurred the line between video game and first-rate drama. That pivotal effort led to a shakeup in Naughty Dog's top brass, including the departure of Amy Henning, the company's erstwhile Creative Director, Uncharted's head writer and virtual creator of the Nathan Drake character. For a while it seemed that move spelled a inglorious doom for Drake and his future adventures until it was announced the team that filled Henning's absence would take over and give their hero a proper sendoff. I was ambivalent about the notion, for it was no secret that Henning's ousters would be taking the helm and the thought that the same folks who did The Last of Us would be penning a new Drake title filled me with trepidation. The Last of Us was a tour de force, no question, but it was also the single most depressing thing I've ever done, ever. I feared we'd pop the next Uncharted into our consoles to find a haggard, aging Drake not unlike the haunted Joel from TLoU: brooding, morose, and dark as hell. I wanted another poppy frying-pan-to-the-fire bonanza, not a winding commentary on the futility of hope.

So as not to keep you in suspense: my fears were unfounded, and I was wrong. Uncharted 4 is a brilliant piece of game-making, not only a worthy successor to the original trio of games, but a gorgeous effort in its own right, and a deeply satisfying end to one of my favorite game series of all time. In deference to the new writers, it is unquestionably a more mature work, one that favors choice-consequences and character growth over explosions and gunplay, but it is presented in a way that is neither ham-fisted nor out-of-place. Indeed, it is the long-awaited, never-attempted exploration of Nathan Drake the person, and a seriously well-crafted plunge into the things that make him tick. That the game-makers managed to frame it all within a compelling story that is at least as good (and in many spots flat-out better than) Drake's previous adventures is a testament to their skill and commitment. The crow doesn't taste so bad when it's washed down with damn fine gaming.

Storytelling takes center stage right from the start, plunging you in medias res as Drake and his brother – yes, that's his brother, and who knew? – race across a storm-tossed sea toward a foreboding island, pursued by heavily-armed foes hellbent on scuttling them. Then a collision, a fantastic explosion, and we are back in Nathan Drake's life. The narrative leapfrogs from there, sending us back in time to a fateful night when Nate, a lonely tot of ten or so sequestered in a creepy orphanage, busts out for a night of rooftop shenanigans with elder sibling Sam. As they leap and climb and grapple with the skill of professional parkour artists, we glean the close bond that exists between them, the fledgling adventurer and his juvenile delinquent bro (who smokes and wears denim and does all the things juvenile delinquents do). Then another time shift takes us to a hellish Panamanian prison where the story proper begins. The now-grown brothers Drake are on the trail of infamous captain Henry Avery, a seafaring genius and unrepentant pirate who supposedly hid a $400 million dollar haul of gold and jewels that remains undiscovered 300 years later. Joining them is shifty-eyed moneyman Rafe Adler, a fair-weather fortune hunter with a psychotic streak whose impulse-control problems lead to a dead guard and a harrowing, bullet-riddled getaway. Sam is shot and left for dead while Nate barely escapes, reluctantly abandoning the brother who taught him how to be an adventurer.

All this occurs before the opening credits. Only then do we realize that fully fifteen years has passed since the incident in Panama, the period when Drake (Nolan North, in the best performance of his career thus far) became the Anthony Bourdain of lost cities. But it seems a thousand near-deaths at El Dorado, Shangri-La, and Iram of the Pillars has exorcised his wanderlust, and he has finally settled down into a normal life of commercial salvage diving and predictable marital bliss (?) with longtime love interest Elena Fisher (Emily Rose), now a successful travel writer. Naughty Dog takes great pain to emphasize the pablum tuna casserole Nate's life has become, taking us through an entire chapter exploring his lovely normal home (laundry room, living room, office) and his attic stuffed full of mementos from more exciting times (a inside-reference geek's wet dream). It's so bland it hurts, and as Nate gazes distractedly at a wall painting of some exotic locale, we feel his frustration, the old pull of danger, even as our thumbs itch to lead a target and pull a trigger once more. It is a testament to the time and detail the designers put into Nate's here-and-now, if only to contrast the poop storm that is to follow.

Troy Baker brings his puckish charm to Sam Drake

Said storm arrives in the form of Sam Drake (gaming's golden boy Troy Baker, here affecting a slight Chicago twang), not dead but lost this last decade-and-a-half in the prison where Nate left him. Seems Sam's last cellmate was notorious drug kingpin Hector Alcazar, who instigated a daring escape for the two of them in exchange for Sam's share of Avery's swag, about which Sam very indiscreetly chattered nonstop for fifteen years. Failure to remit payment in three months will result in Sam's painful, torturous death. Nate finds himself caught between the promise he made to Elena to leave adventuring behind and saving the life of the brother he's only just found again. All they have to do is pick up a trail close on twenty years cold.

What follows is standard Uncharted fare, albeit presented in about as taut and nail-biting a framework ever attempted. Together again and as unstoppable as ever, Nate and Sam resume their fortune hunting escapades in grand fashion, first crashing a swanky auction at an Italian villa then raising Hell at a Scottish cathedral before the clues lead them to Madagascar and a fateful rendezvous at a forgotten island in the Indian Ocean. Their foil, no surprise, is none other than Adler, who never stopped looking for the treasure but, for lack of Sam's knowledge or Nate's je ne sais quoi, compensated with manpower and explosives, carving a swath of destroyed tombs and false leads with the help of Shoreline, a private mercenary company and this outing's hapless redshirts, doomed to die by the score. As usual, the treasure is protected by any number of ludicrously elaborate puzzles (although Naughty Dog did, for a little while at least, conjure a somewhat plausible explanation for the assorted Rube-Goldberg death traps this time) judiciously seeded with equally ludicrous gunfights in which Nate routinely bests a dozen armed foes, all while running, tumbling, leaping, rope-swinging, and butt-sliding through a living obstacle course of gorgeously-rendered environments. Familiar territory to any Uncharted vet, but the designers cranked the dials to eleven this time, upping the challenge factor in all of Drake's requisite skill sets. Plan to die a lot in this game, as the platforming elements will require crackerjack timing and and the shooting encounters will tax even seasoned gunners. Foes will actively (and successfully) attempt to flank you at every turn and cover will dissolve amidst a fusillade of lead, demanding constant repositioning, reloading, and improvising. Stealth-minded gamers will be happy to see Naughty Dog borrowed a page from The Last of Us, allowing Nate to stalk and disable enemies for added battlefield advantage, something he could always do in previous games but here seems almost essential to the outcome of a fight. It's the little concessions to...well, not realism, but we'll say 'fidelity' that makes this title something special.

Views like this won't be the same without Nate by our sides...

But at its heart A Thief's End is a rumination on bonds – those of brotherhood, of friendship, of love, of shared joys and divided loyalties. Not unlike but at least significantly less like the other games in the series – which always ended with Drake choosing honor over booty – fortune and glory take a back seat to the squaring of emotional debts and figuring out once and for all what is most important in life. Hint: it ain't some dead sailor's gold. Naughty Dog uses the entire width and breadth of the game's 15-20 hour story to explore Nate's relationships with each of his supporting cast in turn – Elena, Sam, and even irascible, invincible old salt Victor Sullivan (Richard McGonagle). Every character shines, exposing more facets and foibles than ever before, never once resorting to stock stimulus-response antics or predictable dialogue. This is especially true of Sam Drake, who, being new and untested, had to work that much harder to win us over (he does) while avoiding the easy pitfalls of being the the “bad brother”. But the writers chose not to make Sam bitter or brooding, but rather driven, and armed him with a kind of gruff panache that is decidedly different from Nate yet endearing all the same. As the hunt for Avery's treasure morphs into the unearthing of a lost pirate utopia ruined by infighting and madness, the specter of “gold fever” looms in background but never takes over the narrative. When Nate uncovers the desiccated bodies of forgotten fortune hunters, it isn't lost on us that their dying words scrawled on foolscap unfailingly mention wives, children, sweethearts, and the quiet comforts of home, all abandoned on a fool's quest ending in lonely death. Nate gets the message, but he still must see it through to the end if he's to save his brother.

I can't abide end-game spoilers, so I'll only say the ending is deeply satisfying and, while textbook Uncharted in any number of ways, all the more profound for the patient, layered story the Naughty Dogs cared enough to give us from the very start. It is easily the most beautiful looking game I've seen on the PS4 thus far, and loaded with collectibles, unlockables, and easter eggs to merit several replays. And replay you will, if for no other reason than to remember the good times before old-fashioned adventure went out of this world. While we are very sorry to see such a likable hero ride off into the sunset, we can't help but feel happy that his swan song was indeed one for the ages.

Why We Can't Have Nice Things - Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice

You really have to admire Zach Snyder. God knows he does.

The last decade and a half have given us so many superhero films they've become a full-fledged genre in their own right. Rapidly evolving CG tech and big investors like Disney have transformed the comic book-movie, once a dodgy prospect for even the most solvent studio, into a cornerstone of the international box office; a budget-saving big stick every Brylcreemed exec aspires to have in his back pocket. Most of these flicks, happily, have been good. A few fell short (Amazing Spider-Man), some wandered and lost focus (The Wolverine), and a handful even surprised us for being WAY better than they had any right to be (Guardians of the Galaxy). But most were good, and the ones that were better than good, well, they made us dyed-in-the-wool geeks swell up with a pride that could almost be described as parental. Our little corner of the universe had made it to center stage and they liked it; they really liked it! Alas, there's a hidden danger to such a stellar track record: it breeds complacence, and it skews perspective. When the bar is set at a perpetual seven, how does one recognize true greatness even when it's staring one in the face? More to the point, how does one recognize a real loser, an Edsel, a craptacular pile of crap, a superlative boner that never should have breathed free air, when one of those comes a calling?

That's why I thank Zach Synder. For no one man has better filled the role of devil's advocate of the cape-'n-spandex genre than he, thanks to his consistently monstrous offerings of five-alarm, turd-powered dreck. With 300 we thought we might have found an idiot savant – he handled that sweaty testosterone-fest ably enough with Frank Miller holding his hand (and racked up more reviews with the word 'spattered' as an adjective than ever mine virgin orbs have beheld since). By the time we reached Watchmen we suspected we were dealing with a more garden-variety idiot. Man of Steel all but confirmed it, giving us a Superman who moped and brooded through 2-plus hours of constipated nonsense and Christ allusions so bald-faced I expected Clark Kent to have stigmata. But Batman versus Superman:Dawn of Justice brings it home true: this is the bar at a big, fat one. And Zach Synder is awful. And this movie is awful, and no amount of wordsmithing on the part of Yours Truly can express it better than that.

Not that I won't try.

The film is such a mess it's almost impossible to structure a review. How do I examine it chronologically from start to finish when the plot made no sense? How do I start big – targeting only the most egregious sins – and work my way down to the quibbles when it was all an egregious sin and the smallest quibble still constitutes a rage-inducing trespass fit to make grown men weep? It's a quandary. But to succeed, I must do something that Zach Synder didn't do with BvS: I must make an effort.

It can't be a secret any more what happened behind closed doors at Warner Brothers: Man of Steel had underperformed – badly – grossing less than $700 million worldwide, falling well short of 2009's other tentpole comic-flick Iron Man 3, which logged a cool $1 billion-plus on a listless script and Gwyneth Paltrow's abs. Superman – that's SU-PER-MAN, couldn't carry the day, so it was time for WB's only sure thing, the Batman, to save his – and their – collective butts. We couldn't know just how bad a demotion the Son of Krypton received until the projectors rolled on the follow-up, which sees the Dark Knight claiming not only the lion's share of the screen time (and a 1^st credit-listing for Ben Affleck), but also every one of the best lines, action sequences, and set pieces. Indeed, Superman is almost an afterthought, hardly necessary at all save as a standoffish foil at whom Bruce Wayne can shake his fist until the much-ballyhooed fight in the second act. This is the Man of Steel at his least manly or steely, a wincing, knock-kneed killjoy who wouldn't inspire a drunk to drink, much less ordinary people to make heroic choices. His handful of 'super' moments are ruined by Synder's ham-fisted photography, saturating the action with haloed backlight and enough slow-mo to expose the glut of who-gives-a-shit CG that renders every scene a study in cartoonish fakery. So forget any hope that you'll root for Superman; I rooted for the fire alarm to go off, and that was only the beginning of my disappointment.

So, in brief: the wholesale slaughter at Metropolis ground zero last film inspires Wayne, now a 20-year man in the cowl (and still an urban myth [?]) to challenge Superman on behalf of all humanity. He lifts a lot of weights and absconds with a chunk of kryptonite with the intent of flat-out murdering another person because he's not 'one of us' and he might be a threat later on. For the sake of brevity, I'll ignore how many fundamental contradictions that arrangement reveals in the character of Batman, to the point where at times it feels we're looking at a purely speculative Elseworlds version of the Dark Knight, a Batman who willingly exposes himself to public discovery and jeopardizes his own quest to go off on a childish bug hunt more likely to kill innocents than save them. Affleck, God bless him, does his best with what he's given, which is damn little. He captures the brooding pathos of the Dark Knight admirably well, and stays true to this version of the character throughout. He's helped along by Jeremy Irons, one of a handful of stoic British thespians, like previous Alfred Michael Caine, who could add gravitas to a public phone book reading. Points for writing and playing him as more of world-weary veteran instead of a fussing den mother – this is an Alfred who is long past trying to convince Wayne to give up the fight and is more interested in helping his master improve combat effectiveness. In their down moments they drink alcohol and talk shop like old soldiers and rattle off a handful of lines from The Dark Knight Returns, thus ensuring Snyder fell asleep with a shit-eating grin at the end of each day's filming.

Things fall apart the instant Lex Luthor is introduced. He is supposed to be the author of a grandiose anti-Superman plot, the cogs and gears of which are too numerous for mere mortals (or movie-goers) to decipher, but his approach is so labyrinthine and the script so shoddily assembled it is almost impossible to determine what constituted his original plan, his Plan B, his on-the-fly improvisations, and what we're told was his true, ultra-ultra SUPER genius plan all along. He wants kryptonite, Batman wants it worse, so he steals the corpse of General Zod instead, and whether that was supposed to happen or whether it was just a goose-poop slick means of introducing Doomsday, we'll probably never know. Adding by volumes and degrees to our torment is Jessie Eisenberg as Lex, who spent every second of his too-generous screen time invoking Tweak from South Park, playing the classic arch-villain as a spazzing, tic-riddled crackbaby who belongs not in mansion but safety mittens and a padded helmet.

Separated at birth?

Heath Ledger's ghost has become a weary gunfighter, wanting to rest but endlessly called out by young, hungry actors who think emulating his Joker-style is a fast track to accolades. Maybe it's not 'too soon', but Ledger was simply too good; he made the quirk-tastic psychopath permanently ironic. Most of my theater's most audible groans were reserved for Eisenberg, not as a killer but a scene-killer, to quote Batman: “Best forgotten, Superman.”

So, they fight. Even that is a disappointment, as by the time the film painfully, achingly gets around to it, the motivation of the contenders has become so muddled in cross-purposed subplots and scattershot cutaways you truly don't understand why they're doing it at all. The only thing worse is the horror-inducing revelation that, when the fight is over, there is still 40 minutes left in the film. Some of that is spent – wasted – on the tacked-on DC Universe-building, in which we are introduced via surveillance tapes and found footage to The Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg, thus seeding the franchise for future Avengers-style team-ups. It produces a feeling of bathos I've not encountered in a film in years, a sudden jarring shift from the deadly serious into a laughable sidebar of super-cameos. By then, there are simply no fucks left to give. A better film and a better filmmaker would have staged this segment to elicit awe and excitement; here it is merely uncomfortably funny, like watching a nun slip on floor wax.

Wonder Woman is there. She has about a dozen lines and there's some foreshadowing of her solo film. We see an old black-and-white photo of her from WWI and go “Is that...is that Chris Pine?” Yeah, it is. No one cares. She joins in the fight with Doomsday. Her shield can't be broken, her lasso can't be undone, and her sword cleaves through the juggernaut's limbs like a laser scalpel. The only 'wonder' here is why she can't simply cut the guy's head off and be done with it. I give exactly one prop to Gal Gadot for enduring Doomsday's barreling fists with a self-satisfied smirk, something Wonder Woman is known for in the comics. That's about it.

In the end we're supposed to come away with the notion that Darkseid is coming and that only a League of Justice will prevail in the face of his darkling machinations. Supposedly the Flash shows up in a dream sequence (or time travel-induced hallucination), warning Batman of the coming struggle. Word of advice to Synder: if you're going to tease another iconic DC superhero - one who has his own TV show, for God's sake  – make him recognizable. The Asian with the wispy beard and five-o'cock shadow covered in armor is not any Flash I recognize, and I had to have a complete stranger tell me who it was supposed to be. This movie is that bad, folks.

Much has been said already of this film's joylessness. More deserves to be said, for it is pervasive, a pall, a miasma of enervating gloom that weighs on you like jury duty on an empty stomach. We see Thomas and Martha Wayne die – again – not once but twice, in slow-motion, then half-slow-motion, the camera lingering on every bullet casing and broken pearl string like it's a college art project. The temptation to stand up at the start of Hour Two and scream “For God's sake, it's a comic book, people!!!” is overpowering. We get it, we get it, Jeezus, Zach, we get it. It's not easy to make a PG-13 film pornographic, but you'll see it here, in spades. It might be forgivable if it had a purpose, but there is no purpose to this movie save to indulge Snyder's massive, unjustifiably huge ego. He over-tries with every tired frame, browbeating us with his bloated pap at every mortifying turn, viciously insulting our intelligence more with every agonizing minute. The studio stepped not one foot outside of their echo chamber for this one, convinced, it seems, of the right-ness of their misguided efforts. But their tunnel-vision has served only to drive another nail – and it's a big one – in the Warner Brothers/DC coffin.

Ten dollars bills are wonderful for unclogging toilets. Spend your next Hamilton on that instead of this. You'll thank me.  

Old Friends, New Days - Star Wars: The Force Awakens

First the bad news.

What follows will not be profound. There is nothing I can say about what Star Wars means – has always meant – to me that will be wholly original. Litanies have been written on the topic lately, many more sublime than anything I can hope to best. Heck there's no shame in it; a lot of folks just have better stories. I wasn't alive in 1977, so I can't claim to have been there the moment the first Star Destroyer crawled (and crawled...and crawled) across the screen, changing cinema forever. I can only join the ranks of the millions around the globe who confess without shame or compunction that I love Star Wars, and like those countless millions who share that love, I faced the premiere of The Force Awakens with a mix of excitement and trepidation.

The moments before the curtain fell were to me like waiting on the platform of a train station, or in an airport, anticipating the arrival of a long-gone love. My palms were sweaty and my heart just wouldn't climb out of my throat. Nervous? About a movie? Hell, yes. We had a history, Star Wars and me, and it hadn't always been good. We grew up together, after all, but we also grew older together, hit rough patches together, and eventually, perhaps inevitably, grew apart. Sure, I'd check in on her once in a while, perhaps read a review of the latest video game or a blurb on the new season of Clone Wars, but mostly I kept my distance, twitchy about her new look, fearful she had drifted so far from the Star Wars I knew I wouldn't recognize her if I tried. Besides, we had fights; we disagreed. I told her she looked lazy in those prequels, like she had phoned in 10 years worth of hype for a quick billion and some new action figures. “Tough beans,” she said. “8 year-olds love it. And Greedo shot first.”

But a love that storied isn't so lightly tossed aside. I carried a torch for Star Wars even when it seemed to all the world like I had moved on. It was the good times, you see, that kept her tethered to me: VHS marathons; reams of comics; stacks of paperback novels, their pages compulsively dog-eared, the corners torn; not to mention endless conversations and scrupulous analyses with my fellow Star Warriors. Those moments were aging like good wine in the cellar of adolescent memory (along with SATs, driving tests, long car rides, and snowbound weekends), and the temptation was to entomb them forever, never chancing to taint them with new input. There they'd be safe from my encroaching cynicism toward the world, that metastasizing snark that comes naturally, I think, with the passage of time. There they might stay, perpetually aglow in the rosy gauze of good feelings.

It was not to be. And to have it – all of it – dragged out and thrown back on the fire was cause for more than a few butterflies. I knew it was coming. The Mouse paid 4 billion for this; they were going to get their investment back. I just didn't think it would happen so blasted soon. I'd read the stories. I'd seen the trailers. I knew the work of J.J. Abrams. It seemed as though he'd followed through on his (carefully phrased, politely worded) promise not to repeat the (hundreds) of missteps and baffling calls George Lucas made in Episodes I, II, and III. The shots carefully doled out to the public looked real-ishly gritty instead of cartoon glossy. The cast was solid. Lawrence Kasdan was back on the typewriter. The actors betrayed no hint of that anemic, glassy-eyed glaze they get when working against naught but acres of green-screen. Yes, Disney was at the helm now, and sure, they own about a quarter of the planet by now...but they didn't get where they are by making crap or alienating their audience. Right?

Still, Star Wars had broken my heart once – no, three times – and I couldn't shake the thought that The Force Awakens would be the last dagger in my pincushioned backside, already stabbed half a hundred times by grabby pretenders who mutilated my love and turned her against me. Et tu, Mr. Abrams?

Now the good news: it didn't happen.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is an excellent film. It is even a wonderful film. On its own it would easily stand as one of the most entertaining of the year, a triumph of cinematic equilibrium, balancing sensational effects and eye-popping action with grounded characters and solid story-telling. But as a Star Wars film, it is magical. Why? Because it did what many of my generation believed impossible: it returned my love – our love – to us hale, whole, and more beautiful than ever. The expression “Episode VII” was something my grade school chums and I used to say with the same buoyant fancy reserved for topics like flying cars, moon colonies, or Crusade being renewed. We'd nod and sigh and look down at the comics in our laps and think “If only...”, and knew it would never happen.

It happened. And seeing “Episode VII” crawl across the endless field of stars to the thundering cadence of the London Symphony Orchestra was something akin to transmigration, as if I were seeing another world through some cross-time analogue of myself where the impossible became real.

What a relief it turned out to be a damn good flick.

Some thoughts (caution: this constitutes very mild spoilers, but purists be warned; I dabble in some insider intel):

• The joy is back – 3-dimensional characters drink deep and – more importantly – share from a wellspring of broad and believable emotion. It contrasts so starkly with the woodenness of the prequel trilogy, it is like a gust of warm light cleaving your chest again and again. I grinned, I cried, I laughed out loud often and unexpectedly. Even in the low moments, when the heroes were heartsick or imperiled, I beamed inside because Star Wars made me feel something again, and the cumulative emotion enveloping all others was joy, utter knee-weakening joy. It stayed with me for a long time, well after I'd left the theater and resumed my day. Certain scenes replayed hourly, each time reforming in my head at a different angle, sometimes – even often – allowing for fresh insight. It's a testament to the emotional footprint the film leaves.
  
  
• Comparisons to the prequels are a fool's errand, or at best, too easy – It's true. Despite what I said above, it will be my last cheap shot. The temptation is go the easy path, the critical Dark Side if you will, and hold TFA up to Lucas's efforts from a decade ago by virtue of the fact they were 'the last Star Wars'. But just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. J.J. Abrams is not George Lucas (clearly), and these films were made almost entirely without Lucas's input. When The Man did weigh in, uncorking his whispery reticence for the first and possibly last word on the matter, he said he would have done it differently. I don't doubt it. But what of it? Love or hate them, the prequels are in the past. It's a new day; we shouldn't carry the weight of old ghosts.
  
  

• Abrams brought his A-game – While he might be accused of horsewhipping his plots along (Lord, but he does), for me Abram's frying-pan-to-the-fire style only started to grate during the second Trek film, largely because he seemed more interested in set pieces and action than the little moments in between (I still can't remember why Khan and Spock were having a fistfight on a...was it a train? Some kind of flying space train? Does it matter?). Here the character bits and quiet interims, still brief and brutally economic, flow more naturally and serve a higher purpose than to simply cleanse the palette for the next exploda-ganza. Abrams has a leg up in that the movie is filled with characters we already know and love; thus our emotions are already perched on a high dive, ready to plunge the moment our fan faves appear. But the newcomers are never sold short, either for quantity or quality of screen time. When the action kicks in, it kicks like mule but stays coherent – no easy feat for a director, even harder in a SW film. There isn't a single scene that feels wasted, tacked on, egregious, or dumb. Space battles remain a strong point for Abrams, and here he seems to have borrowed not only from his Star Trek playbook but also from Lucas's purer efforts, throwing us head-first into the cockpits for rapid-fire snapshots of the unfolding melee, then pulling back for the occasional sweeping shot sure to elicit awe.
  
  
• The cast – new and old – has exceptional chemistry – Those character moments I talked about are best when two or more of the cast are on screen at once. The actors seemed to have tapped an open circuit of mutual good feeling, feeding off one another and belting out their lines with confidence, relish, and potent humanity. An early scene in which turncoat Stormtrooper Finn and debonair Resistance pilot Poe join forces to escape a Star Destroyer creates a delightfully tenable sense of fraternity between the two men, such that you know they will remain friends for life though they've known one another for 5 minutes. Similarly, Finn's John Boyega and Rey's Daisy Ridley have an instantly authentic rapport, a throwback to the hot-blooded sword-dance Han and Leia had in the first trilogy before that kiss in the asteroid (I think poor Finn is smitten, and who can blame him?). The Originals, meanwhile, feel like they've been been frozen in amber all this time, as they jump straightaway back into the jabbing humor and cocksure banter we'd recognize in any language. Han and Chewie, well...they're Han and Chewie. Need I say more?
  
  
• The villain is the boldest choice of all – Despite a gap of 32 years, TFA elected to go bare-bones on the backstory and not dwell on what happened while we were away. Again, it's Advance the Plot or Die! Tall order, one that demanded a ready-made antagonist whose motivations were clear from the outset and who wouldn't confuse the audience with subtler things like spycraft and deceit. We got that in Kylo Ren, a Sith-wannabe whose ominous black cloak and armored fright mask leave no doubt of his loyalties or his intentions. But is he trying too hard? After all, he wields the Force like a drug and brandishes his showy cross-guarded lightsaber so frequently we wonder if it isn't some sort of surrogate safety blanket. He might have been still another flat, throat-constricting mannequin there only to growl and puff. But before long we realize things about him that turn our perception of him on its ear. Ren is a deep dude: conflicted, burdened, hesitant even – a man whose mask is less an homage to Vader than a means of hiding heady misgivings about the choices he's made. “Look how old you've become,” he says to Max von Sydow's Lor San Tekka in an attempt to unnerve the stoic hero. “Something far worse has happened to you,” Tekka replies, and we swear we feel Ren shrink a little. We're used to seeing Jedi tempted by the Dark; here we see a villain tempted by the call of Goodness, and his rage at his own weakness translates into a violence that is terrible to behold. Still, we can't help but pity him. After all, we've been there, he hasn't; we know that no matter how much death and destruction he rains down on his foes, he'll never find the solace he so badly craves. What an angle.
  
  
• Opinions will differ, but the parallels with A New Hope are undeniably intentional – Armchair critics and next-morning know-it-alls have cited the pervasive sense of sameness with Episode IV as a shortfall with this film. Yes, TFA contains dozens of similarities to the original, including the central plot, but that should not be viewed as a bad thing, nor as a lack of originality. Lucas and Kasdan speak often of their love of heroic tales, epic poems, and episodic adventure series. All of those things are sometimes called by a different descriptor: cycles. Star Wars is fantasy, and all the best fantasies spin their yarn in a cyclical fashion: Beowulf, Arthur, Gilgamesh, the Arabian Nights, Flash Gordon. Stories repeat themselves with tidal regularity, ebbing and flowing, and eventually dredging up the bones of the past again in new flesh. Why? Well, part of it surely stems from the comfort of the familiar, the easy fit of a script that feels like old sneakers, but more importantly because the themes Star Wars explores are universal and immutable: love, friendship, power, faith, redemption, good, evil. 32 years on, Han and Leia and Luke finally realize our successes are never so complete that we can hope to leave the hard lessons behind. As they wrestle with the specters of their colorful history and the consequences of their actions, we feel a thread of affinity with them, these fictitious characters in a galaxy far, far away. So yes, the Starkiller base is another Death Star. Supreme Leader Snoke? He's the Emperor. So what if it's old wine, so long as we're enjoying the company we keep while we're drinking it? But Abrams never lets us get too comfortable; he turns every convention 5 degrees off-kilter and lets the friction blow sparks in every direction. It keeps us – and our heroes – on their toes.
  
  

• The lived-in Universe is back – One of the very first things Abrams set out to do – from the first picture he teased out on his Twitter feed – was to reaffirm his commitment to conventional effects wherever possible. He delivered. TFW is rife with puppets and rubber masks (and have you heard anyone bitch about it?). But even more powerful than the return of the spit-varnish effects was the...I'll say resoiling of the SW universe. The place looks used. Ships built for interstellar flight are covered with dings and dents and patchwork paint jobs. Characters recovering from fistfights have blood on their knuckles. The denizen of Jakku have sunburns and crow's feet. Dust clogs doorways. People sweat, for God's sake. This is as it should be. The original SW was shocking because it dared to show us a galaxy that depreciated with time. It was Firefly before we saw that again to any serviceable degree. Only the fanatical First Order bothers to polish their chrome (and Brylcreem their hair), and they look the appropriate douchebags for doing so.
  
  

• Harrison Ford looks happy again – and his performance reflects this. Best Han Solo ever.
  
  
• Fate, spirituality, and unseen hands play a large role – however grounded TFA seems in the action and the emotion, an undercurrent of the supernatural is ever-present. A careful read of the events as they transpire suggests there are no “allowable coincidences” in this film (though the conventions of fiction usually allow one per script), but rather that everything is proceeding on an ordained path. Yes, the right characters are always present at just the right times, and their actions prove correct no matter how many blind plunges they take into seemingly unwinnable frays. Conversely, the bad guys, no matter how many trump cards they possess, can never quite get the job done. Bad writing, you say? Or something greater? If you're conflicted, there's a clear marker for reference: about halfway through the film, the series of unfortunate events that has tossed the unlikely heroes together takes a turn for the nigh-paranormal, in which simple scrounger Rey receives what appears to be a mandate from the Force itself to stop (literally) hiding in the sand and become something more. From then on she ceases to be a desert scavenger and becomes more Joan of Arc, even brandishing her own version of the Sword in the Stone. As Gandalf once observed: “There is more at work in this world than just the will of evil...and that is an encouraging thought.” After all, Luke never would have blown up the Death Star if he had gone to Tosche Station that morning to pick up his power convertors.

Though the list could go on, the greatest critic will be you, dear reader, when you have the good fortune to sit comfortably and watch this great film for yourself. I encourage you to be zen about it, to let the story reveal itself in the fullness of time, and to not let what I hope will be an appreciation of this movie translate into retroactive rage at Mr. Lucas. For all his foibles, he is the father of it all, and I suspect even he is privately beaming with pride at how far his baby has come.

A final note on my TFA viewing experience: there was a time, when I was a young teenager, when I had my life planned out. I was convinced I was going to move to San Francisco and live as a professional writer. I could not have known 20 years ago how ludicrously expensive San Francisco as a dwelling spot would become, nor how the following two decades of economic mutation would reshape the landscape of jobs, money, opportunity, and the arts in this country. At 14 I was crazy enough to think I might actually one day work for George Lucas, (though I was at least sane enough to acknowledge it was an outside chance). The idea that he would retire never occurred to me. The idea that he would sell Star Wars to someone else would have been blasphemous. Suffice to say, things didn't happen the way I expected, and it was no coincidence my long “break” from Star Wars coincided with the realization my 14 year-old self didn't quite have all the answers. San Francisco just seemed like a happening place, and the fact that my future employer, the creator of Star Wars, lived just a scenic commute north of there...well!

But the Universe has a strange way of bringing us to the finish line by way of the most bizarre backroads. I did go to San Francisco, and when I did, it was for Star Wars. My host was not George Lucas, but one of those dear grade school chums I mentioned earlier, who invited me into his home and into his work, which just happened to be a refurbished theater in the heart of San Fran's Mission District where The Force Awakens was the debut film. My companion for the trip was another blood brother from the old days. Together we witnessed the future, and though it was a very different future from the one I imagined long ago, I wouldn't trade a single hour of it for anything else in the world.

Ready Novel Two - Ernest Cline Deploys More Nostalgia-With-A-Twist in 'Armada'

A billions-strong alien invasion force is bearing down on hapless Earth and only an angst-ridden teen from suburban Oregon can save us.

If you're wondering why that sounds like the plot of a hundred sci-fi movies and TV shows over the years, you're not alone. Zack Lightman, high school senior and unlikely savior, wonders it, too, to the point that he almost can't take the threat seriously. The planet is neck-deep in trouble, to be sure...but why is the impending really real-world assault – and certain extinction event to follow – playing out so much like an old episode of Star Trek? For that matter, why are the aliens behaving like the classic dumb bad guys, giving the heroes ample opportunity to fight back when they could just as well – as Ellen Ripley might suggest – nuke us from orbit (it's the only way to be sure)? It is a eyebrow-tenter of a mystery that teases playfully at the edges of Armada, Ernest Cline's second novel, and keeps the intrigue on slow burn for what is otherwise a wall-to-wall alien action tale. Cline's sophomore effort doesn't quite reach the bar set by the first book, but we can hardly blame him for that given the stratospheric standard he set for himself.

Cline burst on the scene – and the New York Times Bestseller List – a few years ago with his sensational debut novel Ready Player One, an uber-geek's wet dream brought to life with a heavy dash of wistfulness for the Reagan era. It was also, as luck would have it, damn well written. Though its appeal stemmed from a hip take a classic hero's journey, the nucleus of the tale was something to which all bookish introverts can relate: escapism, spontaneous reinvention, and breaking out of life's cruelly narrow molds to sate that supernatural craving for adventure just beneath the surface. Cline, a child of the 80's raised on pizza parlor arcades and pre-CGI fantasy, makes no bones about creating heroes that are thinly-veiled versions of his younger self: book smart but socially stunted, meek, slightly self-loathing, great at video games, unfit for cliques save a perhaps a basement-based D&D club, and generally nursing a grudge with Things The Way They Are. Armada is no different, and like Wade Wells, the likeable hero of Ready Player One, Zack is suddenly and unaccountably handed an epic adventure that allows him to realize all his deepest yearnings – for good or ill. Once again there is a heavy draw on the 80's for inspiration, with a plethora of references to popular culture of the era, movies, TV, music, and a topic in which I'm convinced Cline would have a doctorate if such a thing existed, classic video games.

Zack Lightman – there's a reference right there, for you War Games fans – finds his boring life in Beaverton, Oregon suddenly turning weird when he spots a UFO hovering near his high school. That's troubling enough, but even more distressing is that the ship is identical to the alien foes of his favorite video game, Armada, a sci-fi aerial combat simulator. What might be dismissed as a stress-induced daydream by most is not so easily cast aside by Zack, who fears he might have inherited a penchant for delusion from his long-dead father. Zack's Dad was the 80's child this time, a Cline-like caricature, and before he died under mysterious circumstances he filled a few dozen notebooks with paranoid screeds about the government monitoring gamers throughout the world and allowing the film and TV industries to seed our culture with references to alien invasion. It all seems a demented fantasy...until Zack is recruited by a shadowy government agency that confirms his father was on the right track. Aliens are real, and they're really invading, and its up to every man and woman and pimply teen to take the fight to them. Thank God the worldwide sensation video game Armada was actually a cleverly-disguised training simulator...and Zack just happens to be the sixth-best pilot in the entire world.

The book unfolds at a breakneck pace from there, whisking us through the events of a decades-long fight with an implacable alien foe, a cover-up perpetuated by some of the world's greatest (and most famous) scientists, and a global effort to harness the geektastic skills of nerds and introverts everywhere for a desperate defense of Earth. Zack leapfrogs from one jaw-dropper of a revelation to another until he can no longer be certain of anything but his trigger finger, inevitably – and yes, predictably – finding himself the lynchpin of humanity's salvation. And in the great tradition of getting more than he bargained for, he discovers his life prior to the alien death force wasn't really all that terrible...even as he can't shake the sense that everything playing out before him seems a bit too convenient. The action is frequent and furious, but every time the story threatens to veer into a tad too much Top Gun – and it veers dangerously close a couple of times – Cline teases our puzzle bone with more nuggets of the alien's true motives and the sordid timeline of humanity's first contact with the other-worldly intelligence. Hint: it happened during the Nixon administration, so nothing could've possibly gone wrong with that.

One of the greatest strengths of Ready Player One was its pacing. Cline took extraordinary pains to meticulously plot his story, creating an airtight universe where not a drop of narrative mojo escaped (an observation that stood up to a second read from Yours Truly). Wade's journey is a patient one, taking well over a year to reach fruition, and the final act and action-packed climax plays out like brilliantly-crafted battle plan. Armada by comparison seems a bit rushed, as though Cline gave himself less time on the front end to hash out the details and (perhaps) suffered deadline fatigue on the back end to boot. A couple tantalizing threads laid out early on are abandoned, which wouldn't have been as frustrating if they hadn't been so intriguing. The last 50 pages fall together so fast they seem manic, and are only saved by Cline's clean, pragmatic style of writing and his (admittedly enviable) penchant for cinema-worthy reversals and sudden 'oh, crap!' moments. Indeed, a cynical reader might even think Cline stages his books in an unavoidably cinematic fashion, the better to get his stories optioned for big-budget film adaptations. An unworthy and mercenary suggestion, and I do not – let me be clear, do NOT – mean to suggest Cline is guilty of ulterior motives. But at the time of my writing this, a film version of Ready Player One is currently in pre-production, helmed by none other than Steven Spielberg himself. Geeks everywhere would kill for the honor.

Cline loves his tropes, and if you do, too, you'll find plenty to love in Armada. Many of the best-realized conventions from his first novel (themselves tropes from the movies and TV shows from which he drew inspiration) are reincarnated here – the Yoda-like mentor, the badgirl love interest, the geek sidekicks forever squabbling over comic book minutiae - but they, too, feel a tad shoehorned this time, with no element shining forth as fresh or as pure as they did the first time around. One can't help but notice there's an aspect of meta-fiction at work here, with Cline's heroes expounding at nearly every chapter on the idiomatic elements found in genre fiction while he himself is writing a book chock full of such things, tossing his hero into one 'classic' scenario after another with outcomes about on par with what we've been conditioned to expect. It's up to the reader to decide just how self-aware Cline is being with this approach, whether he's being at least partially ironic in his presentation, or whether (my take) he's having the time of his life writing stories that are just like the ones on which he was raised and not presuming to improve on perfection. There remains a very respectable attention to detail here, with oodles of half-formed questions conveniently and satisfyingly answered almost the moment they form in our heads. That's a sure sign Cline understands his audience, and though there's less here for the 80's children to love, there's still a strong, and very universal, appeal to the frustrated loser in all of us yearning to be something more.

A Knight to Remember - 'Arkham Knight' Brings the Rocksteady Trilogy to a Glorious Conclusion

Four long years after the gates swung shut on Arkham City, Rocksteady Games has returned with a vengeance to put the cherry on top of one of the greatest gaming franchises ever conceived. Batman: Arkham Knight is everything we've come to expect from a threequel – it's bigger, louder, ballsier, and DARK like you wouldn't believe – but it's also quite a bit more. Specifically, it's things a last chapter often isn't: it's smart, it's complicated, it's bold, and it refuses to coast on past successes or phone in another easy payday on naught but brand loyalty. Whether you like the damn Batmobile or not (I'll get to that), the immutable truth is that the man hours Rocksteady put into this one seeps from every immaculate pixel. To spend even five minutes playing it is to know a labor of love. And it is a beautiful thing to behold.

I gush. I do. That's because 2008's Arkham Asylum and 2011's Arkham City were, and still are, two of my favorite platform adventure titles of all time. That Batman was, and still is, one of my favorite fictional characters of all time was almost incidental to my enjoyment of those games; that's how good they were. Every element was inspired: the brooding uber-gloom of the environments, a delirious melding of gothic and art deco; the punchy, action-packed stories; the exceptional voice work; the clever, varied gameplay; and most of all, the seamlessness of the universe, the Arkham Universe, one that neither ignored nor pandered to seventy-plus years of Bat-history. Each game was a story in its own right. Now, with Arkham Knight, the disparate pieces unite into a cohesive whole, and the result is something that has every right to be called a singular, standalone epic.

It was a long wait. True, between Arkham City and Knight we had 2014's ho-hum Arkham Origins, assembled by WB Montreal and not directly tied with Rocksteady. They did a competent job telling a story that didn't need to be told, ultimately offering a modest thrill full of empty calories that added little to the Arkham mythology (a few of the more inspired elements from that game have been carried over, credit where credit is due). There was little doubt when City pulled down the numbers it did that a final, definitive chapter was coming eventually, but it was also a given Rocksteady would hold off until next-generation hardware came along to give Batman the send off he deserved. They did, and now instead of the claustrophobic walls of a psycho ward or the cordoned ant farm of an open-air prison, the lightspeed processors and extra RAM of our consoles allow us all of Gotham for a playground. And it is a beautiful thing to behold.

When last we left the Caped Crusader, he had just survived one excruciatingly long night in Arkham City, the draconian 'final solution' to Gotham's pervasive prison problem. The walled ghetto built from the dregs of Old Gotham was supposed house every loony toon in the city, but it turned into a nightmarish battleground overrun by Batman's rogue's gallery and a quartet of savage gangs killing each other Running Man-style. Hugo Strange, the enigmatic genius overseeing the gulag, turned the inmates loose on one billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, waylaid by Strange's men and tossed behind the walls like a common criminal. Batman saved the day, but not before one final confrontation with his arch-nemesis, The Joker. The Clown Prince of Crime died – actually, truly died – in the end, a victim of his own fiendish poison concocted during the events of Arkham Asylum. Now the thugs and murders, the cutthroats and wackjobs, are all free, released on a legal technicality. Gotham is back to Square One, which is when none other than Scarecrow, the fear-obsessed madman thought dead after the asylum riot, reemerges with a vengeance. In the opening minutes of Arkham Knight he unleashes a horrifying wave of delusion-inducing gas, with a promise that more will come unless the city empties itself and turns the streets back over to the armies of chaos against which the Batman so long fought. In 24 hours the Dark Knight finds himself all but alone, surrounded on all sides by thousands of vengeance-crazed bad guys, and a private army led by a mysterious armored a-hole calling himself the Arkham Knight. Cowls on, dudes and dudettes. Time to go to work.

But if you're going to work, you're going to need a car.

So, yeah, for the first time in Arkham history, you get the Batmobile. Of all the Dark Knight's iconic weapons and gadgets, nothing – not the venerable batarang, not the grappling gun, not the shark repellant – is as instantly recognizable as the matte black rocket car with the lion's roar. Though it has seen innumerable iterations through the comics, cartoons, games, and movies, here it is as close to perfect as I can imagine, essentially a hybrid of a Ferrari and an Abrams tank.

The generous play map, which divides Gotham into three huge islands, contains wide, looping roadways so you can skid, drift, flip, and blow afterburners on a straightaway to your heart's content. A feather-touch control switches the Batmobile into combat mode, causing it to sprout cannons and mini-guns for (non-lethal) crowd control and yardarm-to-yardarm exchanges with the Arkham Knight's drone tanks. 

But more than that, the Batmobile is an indispensable part of the gameplay. Many areas are inaccessible without it, many trials unwinnable, and a sizable chunk of the Riddler's puzzles cannot even be attempted without it. You'll need to make use of a power winch and electric charger, as well as the impossibly fun ejection seat, which propels the Dark Knight like a missile into otherwise unreachable spots. An extended prologue mission, the contents of which I will not describe for fear of spoilers, put you through a proving ground of car-specific challenges that help you appreciate the versatility of the Batmobile not only as a weapon but as a tool, a companion, and extension of the Batman himself. The car can be summoned (almost) any time with the push of a button, and with a little practice you find you can drive, arrive, shoot, eject, fight, and be back in the saddle in a series of seamless moves that resemble the most dangerous ballet you've ever seen.

Batmobile aside, veterans of Asylum and City will find a ton to love here. As before, the main story is sweetened with more than a dozen complex side quests and a hundred wonderful distractions. But there's a interconnectedness this time around that was missing from the previous titles. Where in the last games it was possible to pursue many quests separately (limited only by periodic advancements in the story), here several of the meatiest parts of the game are threaded together in a manner that has the Dark Knight multi-tasking with a vengeance. The Riddler is back, of course, seeding Gotham with his fiendish puzzles, but his contribution this time around is woven into the story, all but demanding you attend to his lunatic conundrums in tandem with the other tasks that face you. A few of the missions are standalone, and pay homage to choice episodes in the Batman mythology, including the 'Man-Bat' and Azrael of the Order of St. Dumas. These vary in appeal and mostly exist to test your evolving skills in one or more Bat-disciplines such as melee combat or stealth. The others are tied in with the main quest and largely involve a series of engagements with the legions of militia overrunning the city. Consequently, the tasks feel more urgent this time, and the resulting emotional impact is palpable. The villains are more proactive, too; crueler, colder and more pissed at the Caped Crusader than ever. Have they simply smelled blood in the water and rightly chosen this moment to rise from the shadows and strike back? Or perhaps, given the persistent rumor that Batman actually killed the Joker, are they truly fearful of their old nemesis and the disquieting rumor that he's breaking his sacred code in exchange for a villain-free Gotham?

Like any good closing chapter, it is ultimately a story about consequences: Batman made choices for good or ill, all of which led him to the crossroads at which he now stands. He has not gone unscathed or unscarred (and numerous side references allude to the Dark Knight's advancing age), and neither have his allies. Indeed, much of Arkham Knight is not so much about Batman as it is about his comrades and loved ones, and how his tunnel-visioned holy war for order in Gotham has caused awful collateral damage to those with whom he is closest. Has it all been worth it? Is Gotham any safer now than it was when he first donned the mask? It's difficult to comment on the specifics of those questions without ruining the plot, but I'll say this: there are twists and reversals, and a few outright shocks, in this game that play out so beautifully it puts Arkham Knight on par with some of the better graphic novels.

If I elaborate, I'll spoil, so I won't continue down that road. Instead I'll comment on Gotham's design, and the graphics powerhouse that allowed Rocksteady to craft a city worthy of the World's Greatest Detective. It isn't the largest playable environment ever – certainly not a Tamriel or the verdant hills of Witcher 3 – but it makes up for it with dense acreage of glorious architecture and oodles of detail, and a sense of depth that makes the streets and sewers as intriguing as the rooftops. You never feel constrained in this Gotham, and while, no, you can't take the Batwing over to Wayne Manor for evening tea, you certainly won't be bored with the multitude of passageways and train tracks, the statuary and the skyscrapers. And man, can ol' Bats move in this game, such that he could give Spider-Man a run for his money. From the top of Wayne Tower you can peer across Gotham Harbor to the remnants of Arkham City, which is a profound experience: the playground from the last game, so huge and so immersive compared to Arkham Asylum, looks like nothing more than an abandoned amusement park, forlorn and neglected and...and small. But looking down on it from the lofty heights of a billion-dollar high-rise, you can't help but wonder if Gotham's winged defender isn't thinking back to that delirious night and rueing some of the decisions he made.

Is this a perfect game? Nah. Some missions are repetitive and the tank combat, while fun, gets old after a while. The upgradeable skill trees feel swollen, demanding you turn in your hard-earned XP for enhancements you'll hardly ever use. Finding key items and locations, and those confoundedly elusive Riddler trophies, can be a pace-killing chore. And the henchmen with the stun sticks are back. You remember, those guys with the cattle prods whose sole function is to break your combo chains because they can only be hit from behind? Yeah, we hate them, and they have no place in this game. But quibbles in an otherwise ecstatic Bat-sperience.

So, the disc tray hasn't even cooled yet and already the fan community wonders: will there be another? Likely yes, though Rocksteady is sure to pass the torch and try something else on for size. Like Christopher Nolan, they've probably decided three in enough, and will be only too happy to let another studio stand on their shoulders and (hopefully) carry on the greatness they achieved. One thing is certain: you can't keep a good (bat)man down, and where evil lurks, so the Dark Knight shall venture.

And we'll be there to help him.