November 26, 2011, 8:32 AM — When we first started doing the Cool Yule Tools holiday gift guides, our "After Hours" section used to cover all of the "entertainment" devices, toys, gadgets and video games. With the explosion of home entertainment, personal entertainment and other consumer electronics, the entire guide is practically an "After Hours" section. Still, here are some of our picks of favorite video games and other "after work" distractions for you or your family:
Watch a slideshow version of some of these products.
Products reviewed in this category:
Batman: Arkham City
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Gamecom X95 wireless headset for Xbox 360, by Plantronics
Once Upon a Monster for Xbox 360 Kinect
Ready, Set, Grover for the Nintendo Wii
Charge Base 3 for Playstation 3, by Nyko
Kinect Zoom for Xbox 360 Kinect, by Nyko
Atari Arcade joystick controller for iPad, by Discovery Bay Games
The reviews
Batman: Arkham City
The sequel to the best Batman video game ever created (Batman: Arkham Asylum) ups the ante in this year's release by giving you more - more areas to explore, more villains to fight, and more puzzles to solve. If you loved playing the original game, you won't be disappointed in this sequel. If you didn't play the original, you can still enjoy a great action/fighting game as you take on the role of Batman. And come on, who wouldn't like being Batman?
The original game had you roaming around the hallways and rooms of Arkham Asylum to take down the Joker and other baddies from the Batman universe, so the sequel needed something bigger, so they give you part of Gotham City. Without revealing any spoilers, the newly elected mayor (the former warden of Arkham who claims credit for Batman's victory) seals off a part of the city and turns it into a prison. All of the prisoners from Blackgate Prison (the 'normal' criminals) and the inmates from Arkham Asylum (the 'super-villains') now reside inside Arkham City. As Batman, you play the game to find out what's going on inside, and to then complete several missions (because, as is the case with video games, something always goes wrong).
Gameplay is relatively open-ended - as Batman you can do pretty much anything you want, even if that means just hanging out on the rooftop to view the city streets. All of the gadgets from the first game are back, and some new ones are included, such as a remote electrical gun that can fire electricity to start generators or garage doors or just to fire at random criminals (the closest thing that Batman will get to shooting a gun). You can run around on street level to get around, or you can utilize your grappling hook and swing around on the tops of buildings, a la Spider-man (in fact, the swinging from building to building reminded me of the really good Spider-man 2 game a few years back). Unlike Spider-man, Batman can glide with his cape, and that's fun as well (especially when you see a criminal on the street, you can then do a glide kick to take him out).
Like the earlier game, fighting is accomplished by repeatedly hitting one button (in the Xbox case, the 'X' button), causing Batman to punch or kick or do other things that only Batman can do. You can chain together moves if your timing is right, causing Batman to fly around from bad guy to bad guy like a pinball. There are a bunch of combo moves you can do if you want, and some are required to fight off some enemies (like the guys who wear armor or carry shields), but for the most part Batman can handle it. You'll definitely need to utilize all of the different moves in the normal or harder modes, but if you play on Easy (the game kind of mocks you for it), you can button-mash your way through most of the game.
Even though the game is open-ended, it does a pretty good job at keeping you aware of the main plot missions, and you'll want to do at least some of the main missions before wandering off on side missions, mainly because of the new gadgets you achieve or other things. Like the first game, there are a ton of "Riddler trophies" to collect, which include different puzzles and locations to figure out. In this game, you also have Riddler missions, in which you need to solve more elaborate puzzles to rescue some emergency workers, so getting through those should satisfy the "detective" part of your Batman personality.
