Batman Books by Wiley

   

Terrapin

Location: 6426 Montgomery Street, Rhinebeck, NY 12572
Cuisine: American, Organic
Hours: SUN-THU (11:30am-9pm); FRI-SAT (11:30am-10pm)
Website: www.terrapinrestaurant.com
Prices: $40/person (dinner)
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 10
Service: 10
Value: 8
Environment: 7

Frequency: Unique


Dinner reservations were at Terrapin, a restaurant that features an organic menu and promotes several local farms. Many of the items are vegetarian and can be prepared for vegans. I wish we had one of these closer to the city. I'm sure it would do very well.

I gave this place a rare 10 rating, which might be the first on this blog. We shared a fried calamari appetizer and I ordered the braised short ribs for my entree. It was one of the best meals I've ever had and I didn't even get a drink or dessert!

The service was also the best I've seen and even comparable to a vacation resort. The staff made everything comfortable. The waitress explained all of the dishes to us along with the chef's recommendations for options. She knew all of them off the top of her head. Our water glasses were never empty.

The place is pricey, so it's not an everyday restaurant, but it's worth every penny. All entrees are a good size and all ingredients are organic. If you support this place, you're also supporting the local farms.

The environment was very clean and well designed. The only negative is there are a lot of flies, but I noticed that all across Rhinebeck. So maybe it's a normal thing.

FDR Museum

Squirrels

These guys came out after a short thunderstorm for an afternoon snack.

Auntie Day & Uncle Hal's House

Last year, Auntie Day and Uncle Hal moved from Long Island to Rhinebeck... just before one of our big floods. Over the past year, they fixed up the house and got everything setup. We made it up there this weekend for the first time.

The house itself might be a little smaller, but it seems like it has a lot more usable space. Auntie Day's antiques are all setup nicely with enough room to step back and get a good view.

Vortex - Death from Above

Just adding the Vortex/Decepticon portion of the Transformers: Fall of Cybertron demo. This will bring up even more G1 nostalgia as the whiney Starscream discusses battle plans with Onslaught and the Combaticons.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

POV: 1st
Graphics: 8
Controls: 7
Difficulty: 8


Transformers: Fall of Cybertron really brings back some 80's memories as it takes place just before Season 1, Episode 1 of the G1 cartoon. The Autobots are losing the battle on Cybertron and their planet is on its way to destruction as they try to escape through a portal to Earth. This game covers the final battle before the Ark gets shot down and embeds itself in the Earth's mountainside.

The demo is pretty complete as it offers 3 modes to try:

1. Ground level as Bumblebee (as seen in video)
2. Aerial combat as Vortex
3. Multiplayer and character creation

The graphics are based on the G1 toys/cartoon rather than the Michael Bay movies. I always thought the toys made more logical use of physical space. They're not made of thousands of parts that convert a pure vehicle into a pure robot with little trace of the other form.

I thought I'd continue off my Batman vs Bane video since I just watched Dark Knight rises. In this episode, I'll share my thoughts about the new movie as well as go over Freeflow Combat tips for Arkham Asylum. 

My review is within the video above, but here are the ratings to be consistent with previous movie reviews:

Action: 7

Acting: 8

FX: 8

Durability: 7

DC Universe

Shadowdragon & Batgirl @ JLA Watchtower

POV: 3rd
Graphics: 9
Controls: 6
Difficulty: 5

I think this is the MMO I'm looking for! It's not the medieval fantasy D&D setting that I want, but everything else works so well that it doesn't matter. Oddly enough, it's the only RPG that has character creation options for me to make my main character, Shadowdragon.

Character Creation
The character creation, while not as detailed as Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (KOA), Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) or Dragon's Dogma is really fun. There's not a lot of variety on facial features since it's a superhero game. All of the details are on the costume/armor. There are various character types and combinations of power. The limited palette options also prevents less artistic people from making a bad looking character. For my character, Shadowdragon, I naturally chose Batman as the mentor. His powers are fire-based and he fights with 2-handed weapons. Shadowdragon's weapon, Dragonsaber is a 2-handed sword, but in DCU 2-handed fighters start with a hammer. I checked out the weapons list and they do have swords later in the game. So I made a medieval themed character for a contemporary game!

Story/Quests
I haven't gone too deep yet, but the quests have been fun so far. Many of them involve a coop with one of the Justice League legends. When you first wake up in Braniac's ship, you get to fight side-by-side with Superman. As a student of Batman, you're guided through by Oracle, which is reminiscent of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City. There are battle royales all the time on the streets where you fight along side other players who are logged on. I didn't see that in DDO.

Combat
This is one of the few MMOs with a decent combat system. It's not limited to 2 moves like DDO. Your regular attack has a short combo and you also have special attacks. While it's not (as good as) KOA... it's also far from DDO. The biggest selling point is that they made a conscious effort to make the game control pad compatible. Because of the graphics and setting, this game feels like Batman: Arkham City, so I'm often hitting the buttons for that game. I have to get in the habit of not holding X to run... which I did in both Batman games and KOA.

Loot
Treasure comes at an OK pace in this game. Your character already starts out with basic armor in the beginning, so it's kind of OK. The money comes in slowly, but I don't disagree with the pace. A lot of dropped items are weird, but I think it just takes more playtime to figure out what everything is used for. Any armor piece you pick up adjusts itself to your character's color palette, again preventing mismatched looks. This is such a simple feature, but I wish all RPGs had. All modern RPGs seems to split armor into 5 or more pieces. And with a random drop system, you're more than likely to have a mismatched suit. So it's nice to be able to adjust the colors to match. I would have loved that in KOA!

DCU is also free to play with purchasable add-ons and upgrades. Also noteworthy is you have to endure an initial 15 GB download. It's worth the wait though as this is a great game.

Dungeons & Dragons Online

POV: 3rd
Graphics: 8
Controls: 3
Difficulty: 5

With the downfall of 38 Studios, I started looking for other RPGs and MMOs since hopes of a Kingdoms of Amalur 2 single player RPG and Project Copernicus MMO died along with the company. Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) was the first MMO I tried out because I thought I would go back to the basics... back to where it all began.

Character Creation
I had a really good impression of the game from the start because DDO has the best character creation of any game I've played. It has the most detailed options for your character's face. I think if you spent enough time, you could make just about anyone you wanted. It falls a little short on hairstyles, but that's OK. I made myself with hair that was 2 weeks overdue for a cut! Kingdoms of Amalur (KOA) also had a good character creation process, but not as many face options... and most of the male combos look too similar. I played through that game as a female partly because I could only make a combination that looked like my female Dragonlance character. Dragon's Dogma probably has the most options of any game, but somehow I didn't like the art style. If you randomly make a character in that game, he/she will likely look messed up. Very few of the thousands of combos yield a nice looking character. DDO is the best overall here.

Story/Quests
DDO is the most RPG of the modern RPGs. It keeps all of the classic D&D stats and die rolls. So a lot of the weapons and attributes will be familiar. Like all modern RPGs, you have main quests and side quests. There are quests that involve NPCs or you can form a party with friends. This is comparable to KOA, but probably more vast since it's an MMO. Some of the dungeons have puzzles to solve, which was something that wasn't accented in KOA.

Combat
This is where DDO is lacking. It has a very simple combat system. It's hardly the free-flowing combo system of KOA. All you do is hack, block and move. There are 2 animations for the longsword... forehand and backhand. Had I played this game first, I'd probably be OK, but I was totally spoiled by the revolutionary system in KOA. And now I crave that in every RPG! I almost wish DDO went full classic RPG and just had no action at all. I'd love to play the classic D&D PC games again with the 6-character parties. A major negative to DDO is there's no native support for a control pad. You could rig a programmable one up, but it'll take some work. Take that with a  grain of salt though. I'm not an MMO player, so I prefer a control pad.

Loot
Forget the storyline. RPGs are all about nice looking armor and weapons now! Like most games of this type, you start out in underwear. So the first thing I did was loot every treasure chest and crate lying around. The chest drops, unlike KOA seem to be mostly fixed items. I played through the first segment twice and got the same exact crap. The armor in the game looks good in general. It has a realistic look to it and is very detailed. The weapons on the other hand could use some more detail. While the textures look nice, the models lack complexity. The longsword looks like a flat steel ruler with texture pasted on top. KOA got crazy with their weapon detail. Dragon's Dogma also had plain looking weapons.

I'm going to keep this game installed because I like the characters I created and will try to hack a controller setup one day, but I don't think I'll be playing it too much immediately. The MMO shopping will continue! Oh... one more important thing... DDO is free!