That's it?

"I want everyone to know that I really appreciate all the hard work. You know, watching you guys is like a night in, watching my favorite movie. What was the name of that movie again? Oh, yes. Attack of the stupid bungling idiots who can't find an bigger idiot running around dressed like a bat! Now get to it! 

[Yawns]  

I'm getting bored."

The Joker, Batman: Arkham Asylum

I recently purchased a copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum, the critically acclaimed award-winning 2009 PC game in which the Joker orchestrates a takeover of the asylum with the eventual goal of modifying the serum which gives Bane his strength, using the resulting Titan formula to create an army of monstrous henchmen, and then dumping the leftovers into Gotham's water supply: result, chaos.

Batman, who has just delivered the Joker to the Asylum when the action begins, has a challenging night ahead of him.  He must fight off an army of inmates from Blackgate Penitentiary who are temporarily at Arkham as part of the Joker's plot, subdue escaped Arkham patients, go mano e mano with Bane, recapture the Joker's equally twisted girlfriend Harley Quinn, deal with an infestation of mutated plants created by Poison Ivy, overcome the effects of the Scarecrow's fear potion - oh, yes, and defeat the Joker, too.

As you might imagine based on Batman's approach to crime fighting, Arkham Asylum is primarily a hand to hand combat game, which kept me from purchasing a copy for a long time (well, three years anyway).  I have a substantial background in first-person shooter games, with the accent on the word "shooter", but as a PC rather than console gamer I haven't been terribly interested in mastering the multitude of keyboard commands that are involved in punching, blocking, dodging and kicking.  However, with the Mac version of the game on sale for $20, I decided that it was worth the investment just to see what all the fuss was about.

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed playing Arkham Asylum. In spite of my doubts about the fighting system, I was able to hold my own against all comers, but the game doesn't simply require that a player memorize complicated keyboard combinations in order to knock out evildoers.  Batman is outnumbered and alone, surrounded by armed criminals. He levels the playing field by concealing himself and picking off his opponents one by one, swinging from the rafters or making his way through air ducts and hidden tunnels, a strategy which requires careful thinking as much as actual combat skill.

In order to help him accomplish his goals, Batman's utility belt is equipped with the usual array of helpful items:  batarang, grappling gun, explosive spray-on gel, a decoder for electronic locks, and so on.  He also has the option of viewing the environment in "detective mode", which activates scanners in his cowl and allows the player to see hidden elements and scan the capabilities and locations of opponents. The integration of the grappling gun to make the game a three dimensional experience is brilliantly done, and in fact the entire interface - fighting, moving, hiding and investigating - is simple and elegant.

But in spite of all that, I was ultimately disappointed by the game, for a very simple reason.  As I mentioned above, I've spent a lot of time playing first person shooters, and that experience has taught me to expect a certain pattern in gameplay: increasingly difficult scenarios punctuated by boss fights, culminating in a final boss fight which is the most challenging part of the game and which very likely requires multiple attempts to achieve victory.

In Arkham Asylum, I was more aware of the villains that I didn't fight than the villains that I did.  There's no sign of the Penguin, no Catwoman (although, come to think of it, Selena Kyle may not end up at Arkham when she gets caught), Clayface remains behind bars, the Riddler is a constant voice-over presence but never physically appears in the game, and Two-face is just briefly mentioned at the end of the game in a radio call from Gotham.  Batman never actually fights Killer Croc, he just runs away from him, and although the Scarecrow appears several times, his role is more psychological than physical.

When I reached what turned out to be the end of the game, with Batman confronting a Titanic Joker in a makeshift arena, I was actually a bit puzzled and wondering what was going to happen - how the Joker would escape, where the game would go next, how the plot would deal with the Joker's sudden physical dominance, where and how he'd change back. When Batman defeated the Joker and the credits began to roll, I was completely surprised to discover that I was finished, without even really breaking a sweat in the final confrontation.

I can make a case for wanting to avoid following the mainstream, and overall I enjoyed the game, but ultimately I ended up feeling like the Joker:  I appreciated all the hard work, but at the end, I was bored.

- Sid

A Boy and His Spacesuit - Part Three

Show Time.
And finally, the debut of my Hallowe'en spacesuit build.  My apologies for not having a full range of pictures, but by the time I reached the end of the process I was more interested in finishing up and getting to bed at a reasonable hour than in thoroughly documenting the process.

Like any good Canadian, I own a hockey bag, which was just barely big enough to fit everything in for the trip to work.  Even without adverse weather conditions, I literally couldn't see my way clear to wear this outfit for the bus trip downtown.

Some shots from my day at work*:

Overall, I consider this to have been a semi-successful project.  I regret not having time to do more elaborate footwear, the paint didn't really adhere to the plastic bucket that made up the collar, so there was a lot of peeling and flaking, and I would have liked to have added lights and sound effects.  So, not perfect, but still good enough to be one of the prize winning costumes.

Sadly, there wasn't a lot of competition.  As I commented to a co-worker's tweenage daughter who was in attendance, Hallowe'en is the only time of year that you get to dress the way that you really want to dress all the time. Why would anyone pass up that kind of opportunity?

- Sid

*  My apologies for the quality of these shots, or more accurately, the lack thereof. If you've wondered if it's really worth it to buy a digital SLR instead of just using your smartphone, wonder no more.

Oh, and in the interests of mild irony, the young woman in the Top Gun outfit posing with me is the previously cited new employee who is unfamiliar with Jean-Luc Picard's standard handoff to Commander Ryker.

 
Postscript

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to wear a spacesuit, I'll be happy to lend out my outfit to the curious.  It's not as much fun as you might think.  Peripheral version drops to zero, the helmet and coverall raises your body temperature, the gloves limit your manual dexterity, and the weight of the whole thing - boots, backpack, armpieces, helmet, etc. - starts to become a burden surprisingly quickly.

And let's not forget, my creation is a pale imitation of the real thing.  The current NASA EVA suit - the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU - weighs 109 pounds or 49.5 kg.  It will keep an astronaut alive for 8 hours, with a 30 minute backup life support unit in case of problems with the main system. The main limitation of my hamster habitat helmet was lack of air flow, even with the ventilation holes in the top.  But all I had to do was open the visor or take off the helmet - neither one of which would be a viable option for someone working on the outside of the International Space Station.  If something goes wrong in those circumstances...trust me, it takes very little time to use up all the air in a domed helmet.

A Boy and His Spacesuit - Part Two.

Paint, Epoxy, and Bolts.

My god, it's Steampunk Barbie's spacesuit helmet! was my first thought when I saw this odd item sitting in a recycling bin as I made my way home from a Sunday gym visit.  Provenance aside, it looked as it might be a perfect solution to the helmet problem for my 2012 Hallowe'en spacesuit, so I scooped it up along with a variety of other intriguing bits and pieces of plastic and acrylic from the bin, stuffed it in with my water bottle and towel, and headed home with a renewed interest in costume creation.

A bit of research revealed that my new collection of material was the remnants of someone's discarded Habitrail® dwarf hamster habitat.  (I include this evidentiary screen grab as a response to the mild scepticism with which that information was greeted at work.)

However, I wasn't entirely certain that this unexpected find would actually work as a spacesuit helmet.  In other words, would it fit on my head?  By carefully carving away at the bottom of the habitat, I was able to create a suitable opening, and tried it on.

To my relief, it was a perfect fit.  Now all I had to do was figure out how to make it work...

Obviously I couldn't use it the way it was - some people might be able to work with a pink spacesuit, but my approach to this sort of thing is more old school, so a good coat of paint was in order.  I decided that a mix of classic NASA spacesuit white with orange accents would go nicely with the blue coverall that I'd purchased, so it was off to Home Depot™ to do some shopping for paint, masking tape, and whatever else might catch my eye as a possible spacesuit accessory (which, as it turned out, included a pair of black and white work gloves.)

Before starting to paint, I did basic assembly on the vambraces - forearm pieces, for those of you with no background in the terminology of medieval armour.  I trimmed out the ends of the plastic covers, epoxied them together with some segments from toner cartridges, and the basic pieces were ready to go.  I also chose a selection of ornamental bits and pieces to be painted orange, and I was ready to go.

The only part of the costume that would require special care during the painting process was the helmet, since I wanted the visor left clear. I carefully masked the appropriate area, nominated the far corner of my living room as the paint booth, and started painting.

As the saying goes, don't try this at home. Seriously, don't.  If you live in an apartment, partitioning off and drop sheeting an area for painting is not really a practical thing - if I didn't live alone, or if I still had a cat, I don't think I would have attempted something that resulted in paint fumes, overspray, and general mess to the extent that this project did.

As October 31st came closer, I decided that I'd need to make a few compromises.  My original plan included some kind of elaborate boots and greaves to match the look of the arm pieces, but prudence dictated something more modest - a ten dollar pair of nylon winter boots from the Salvation Army store filled the gap instead. I also had to come up with some kind of collar and backpack for the body of the spacesuit.

One of my Home Depot™ purchases was a four gallon bucket, more for future utility usage than as a costume element, but a quick check showed that the helmet would fit perfectly into the top of the pail.  I sketched out an approximate profile to fit over my shoulders, starting chopping away with a utility knife, and voilá, one slightly retro spacesuit collar, ready to be painted white.

In fact, the whole thing was starting to develop a bit of a retro 50s spacesuit feel, so I decided to continue in that direction with the backpack and the collar.  The chassis for the backpack was a chopped-down infant car seat that someone had put out for pickup, and I added in a selection of colourful bits and pieces to suggest oxygen tanks, a sort of regulator, and so on.  I added some lengths of white plastic hose to connect the air supply to the collar, bolted the collar to the backpack, glued some decorative bits to the outfit, and I was pretty much ready for Hallowe'en.

- Sid

 (And then there were the parts that I didn't use...)