Batman: Arkham Asylum review and screenshot

Batman: Arkham Asylum is unquestionably the best licensed game I've ever played. At the end of the day, however, that's a fairly low hurdle to clear -- it better reflects the game's quality to say it's one of the best stealth-action games ever made, and easily the best video game 2009 has had to offer thus far.

Considering Rocksteady's extremely limited pedigree, the amount of polish and detail present in Arkham Asylum is remarkable. I'm not referring to the game's graphical detail (though Arkham's visuals are impressive in their own right) -- but rather, the unsettling atmosphere which pervades the titular institution. Arkham Island is realized in a very imaginative way -- what was once a soulless "supervillain deposit box" in Batman's theatrical outings has become a living, breathing world. It's very much a character in the game's proceedings -- akin to how Rapture became more than just a series of underwater pipes in BioShock.

                  

Arkham's underlying menace is personified by Batman's anarchistic foil, the Joker, who's expertly voiced by Batman: The Animated Series veteran Mark Hamill. He's eerily omnipresent from the very first scene in the game, where even when strapped to a stretcher and wheeled through the halls of Arkham like a death row inmate, he playfully pesters everyone within shouting distance.

As his role shifts from captive to captor, the Joker's presence becomes even more overbearing. He constantly jeers at his subordinates over Arkham's PA system, his dispatches mostly consisting of harmless bat-puns and empty threats. As time elapses, more hints of the bile which has accumulated during his career of countless thwarted plots begin to slip into his messages. It's very, very unsettling, and adds even more gravity to Arkham's hopeless atmosphere.

I wish all of the game's characters could have received the same amount of exploration -- though most are simply given sizable bios. In addition, the main villains' deeply troubling psychoses are revealed in recorded interviews with Arkham's too-helpful (see: naive) staff. Every single one of these interview tapes is worth locating, from the puzzle-filled ramblings of the Riddler to the downright terrifying admissions of Mr. Zsasz.

The Batman franchise's lore doesn't just lend itself to the game's rich storytelling -- in fact, all of the players' arsenal and combat mechanics are dictated by a timeless, completely inflexible tenet of Batman's credo: He can't kill anyone. Even in self defense, Batman doesn't kill people. When placed inside a madhouse, chock-full of the scum of the land, being stripped of one's lethality is an alarming prospect.

Fortunately, his credo doesn't prevent him from punching, kicking, bataranging, or batclawing people. Heck, it even permits him to pull people off ledges, provided they can survive the fall.

The aforementioned methods work well enough when pitted against a group of pugilistic thugs, lending themselves to long, stylish combos -- but things start getting complicated when said thugs start packing heat. The necessity of strategy in these precarious situations is one of the best parts of the game -- and amazingly, never fails to feel fresh.

You've got a number of ways of neutralizing the roomfuls of gun-toting thugs you'll often encounter -- stringing them up by their feet on gargoyles overhead, swooping down on them and knocking them out, incapacitating them with explosive charges and pulling them off ledges are just a few possible outcomes. However, if you fail to mix up your strategies -- or carelessly saunter into their field of vision -- you will be shot. Most likely to death.

Once you start executing these stealth segments with finesse, there's no way to describe the exhilaration you feel as you effortlessly shatter the fragile bravado of a group of Joker's lackeys. You almost feel bad for these nameless guards as their numbers begin to dwindle -- especially once the unseen Joker begins to laughingly root against them.

While not stylishly dealing with the Joker's henchmen, you'll spend a fair amount of time simply exploring the Asylum. The Riddler has sprinkled 240 secret items across the island, ranging from tucked-away trophies, the aforementioned interview tapes, and actual "Riddles," simple clues pointing out environmental objects you'll need to locate and scan. Most of these riddles involve references to other Batman nemeses -- an additional treat for fans who're disappointed that their favorite baddie didn't make it into the game.



The game's weak points are few and far between -- the largest misstep being the boss fights, which almost universally fail to be as intense or dramatic as the non-boss slugfests. There's a mercifully small number of these repetitive encounters, but the ones that are present somewhat subvert the game's seamless storytelling. There's one notable exception which is less of a boss fight and more of a lengthy, terrifying subterranean showdown -- but again, I don't want to spoil it for you.

Also, about halfway through the game, you'll realize that Batman spends a startling amount his day ripping grates off of walls. I get it -- Batman's gotta climb into some ventilation ducts to get the job done. Still, regardless of how much I appreciated the game's constant attempts to stay relatively within the realm of realism, I would have had no qualms with equipping Batman with some kind of futuristic grate-bolt dissolving goo.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is completely delightful, and definitely warrants your hard-earned money. It's a crisp, refreshing oasis tucked within the mid-year drought -- fortunate, as its lowly licensed trappings would have surely drowned it in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.

I certainly hope it does well -- if only so Rocksteady can continue to take the Caped Crusader in other bold new directions. Whether DC knows it or not, this franchise is Rocksteady's now -- and while its potential future Batman titles might not possess the uniquely unnerving backdrop that Arkham Island provides, I can't wait to see that Batsignal illuminate the sky once again

Assassin's Creed 2 Review

Assassin's Creed 2 is a much better game than its predecessor. For one thing, it's actually a complete game, possessing a beginning, a middle, and an end, where the original Assassin's Creed had a very interesting beginning and a satisfying end connected by 20 hours of interminable grey tedium. And while this sequel may not feel quite as fresh as the first game's handful of exceptional moments did, it serves up a more consistently enjoyable experience from start to finish.

AC2 has some flaws, but it benefits from a completely reworked structure that keeps the pace snappy and makes those minor issues fairly unnoticed. Without a doubt, the most important improvement here is the way Ubisoft Montreal revamped the core mission design. The first Creed offered a sharply limited palette of objectives: Scout the area, undertake a set of investigative assignments, kill a guy, repeat. It was just so boring to do the same tasks again and again. ACII offers more varied primary tasks, largely relegating the previous game's toilsome errands to the sidelines. You may have a friendly chat with Leonardo da Vinci one minute and kill a politician at a gala event the next, while events like races and extracurricular assassinations are almost entirely left to the player's discretion. One could conceivably play the game strictly for the story missions, which would result in a lean, cinematic, eight-hour adventure.

The great thing about AC2 is that you don't have to play it that way. You don't have to play it any particular way, in fact. At any moment, the game is bursting with available objectives, both mandatory and optional, spread across half a dozen beautifully rendered city-states of Renaissance Italy. These range from the obvious (advancing the story) to the obligatory (hunting for cash and collectibles) to the exceptional (exploring a number of self-contained tombs crammed with Prince of Persia-style platforming challenges). Completing any of these tasks results in a real sense of accomplishment with tangible rewards, giving AC2 an addicting, just-one-more-mission appeal.

The story keeps things interesting, too. The game's overarching plot admittedly goes a bit off the rails in this chapter, building up to a cliffhanger ending that seems to channel Dan Brown and Xenogears in equal parts, but the whole thing is carried along nicely by the game's leading man, a young Italian noble named Ezio d'Auditore. Unlike Creed's surly cipher of a hero, Altaïr, Ezio is charming and good-natured, driven by a desire for revenge but never consumed by it. Ezio is likable enough to sell the game's goofiest plot twists, even if his character development grinds to a halt in the latter portions of the game.

As for the limitations of the control interface? Ubisoft's workaround was to create a game that's almost preposterously easy. Constant in-game text prompts guide your actions from start to finish, generously placed checkpoints soften the blow of screwups, and Ezio can build up his health and healing items to the point where the prospect of losing in combat is unthinkable. It's definitely the right approach, since failure in AC2 so often seems in no real correlation to player error, but it makes for a game you play to have a bit of carefree escapism rather than a challenge. The tricky Assassin's Tomb platforming missions are a welcome change of pace, albeit few in number.

AC2 is everything a sequel ought to be: An improvement on the original in nearly every way. Perhaps more impressively, it actually has me interested to see where the series goes from here -- something I wouldn't have expected after I slogged my way through the original. Anyone who enjoyed the first game will definitely like AC2, but the real accomplishment is that people who didn't enjoy it will likely have a good time, too.

SCREENSHOTS

(IMAGES WILL ADDED IN THE COMINGDATES)

How to Crack a Wi-Fi Network's WEP Password with BackTrack

 You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA encryption because WEP is easy to crack. But did you know how easy? Take a look. Today we're going to run down, step-by-step, how to crack a Wi-Fi network with WEP security turned on. But first, a word: Knowledge is power, but power doesn't mean you should be a jerk, or do anything illegal. Knowing how to pick a lock doesn't make you a thief. Consider this post educational, or a proof-of-concept intellectual exercise. Dozens of tutorials on how to crack WEP are already all over the internet using this method. Seriously—Google it. This ain't what you'd call "news." But what is surprising is that someone like me, with minimal networking experience, can get this done with free software and a cheap Wi-Fi adapter. Here's how it goes.

What You'll Need

Unless you're a computer security and networking ninja, chances are you don't have all the tools on hand to get this job done. Here's what you'll need:

• A compatible wireless adapter—This is the biggest requirement. You'll need a wireless adapter that's capable of packet injection, and chances are the one in your computer is not. After consulting with my friendly neighborhood security expert, I purchased an Alfa AWUS050NH USB adapter, pictured here, and it set me back about $50 on Amazon. The guy in this video below is using a $12 model he bought on Ebay (and is even selling his router of choice). You won't go wrong with the Alfa, but do your research. There are plenty of resources on getting aircrack-compatible adapters out there.
• A BackTrack 3 Live CD.  Download yourself a copy of the CD and burn it, or load it up in VMware to get started. (I tried the BackTrack 4 pre-release, and it didn't work as well as BT3. Do yourself a favor and stick with BackTrack 3 for now.)
• A nearby WEP-enabled Wi-Fi network. The signal should be strong and ideally people are using it, connecting and disconnecting their devices from it. The more use it gets while you collect the data you need to run your crack, the better your chances of success.
• Patience with the command line. This is an ten-step process that requires typing in long, arcane commands and waiting around for your Wi-Fi card to collect data in order to crack the password. Like the doctor said to the short person, be a little patient.

Crack That WEP

To crack WEP, you'll need to launch Konsole, BackTrack's built-in command line. It's right there on the taskbar in the lower left corner, second button to the right. Now, the commands. First run the following to get a list of your network interfaces:

airmon-ng

The only one I've got there is labeled ra0. Yours may be different; take note of the label and write it down. From here on in, substitute it in everywhere a command includes (interface). Now, run the following four commands. See the output that I got for them in the screenshot below.

airmon-ng stop (interface)
ifconfig (interface) down
macchanger --mac 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)
airmon-ng start (interface)

If you don't get the same results from these commands as pictured here, most likely your network adapter won't work with this particular crack. If you do, you've successfully "faked" a new MAC address on your network interface, 00:11:22:33:44:55.
Now it's time to pick your network. Run:

airodump-ng (interface)

To see a list of wireless networks around you. When you see the one you want, hit Ctrl+C to stop the list. Highlight the row pertaining to the network of interest, and take note of two things: its BSSID and its channel (in the column labeled CH), as pictured below. Obviously the network you want to crack should have WEP encryption (in the ENC) column, not WPA or anything else. Like I said, hit Ctrl+C to stop this listing. (I had to do this once or twice to find the network I was looking for.) Once you've got it, highlight the BSSID and copy it to your clipboard for reuse in the upcoming commands.
Now we're going to watch what's going on with that network you chose and capture that information to a file. Run:

airodump-ng -c (channel) -w (file name) --bssid (bssid) (interface)

Where (channel) is your network's channel, and (bssid) is the BSSID you just copied to clipboard. You can use the Shift+Insert key combination to paste it into the command. Enter anything descriptive for (file name). I chose "yoyo," which is the network's name I'm cracking. 

You'll get output like what's in the window in the background pictured below. Leave that one be. Open a new Konsole window in the foreground, and enter this command:

aireplay-ng -1 0 -a (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 -e (essid) (interface)

Here the ESSID is the access point's SSID name, which in my case is yoyo. What you want to get after this command is the reassuring "Association successful" message with that smiley face. You're almost there. Now it's time for:

aireplay-ng -3 -b (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)

Here we're creating router traffic to capture more throughput faster to speed up our crack. After a few minutes, that front window will start going crazy with read/write packets. (Also, I was unable to surf the web with the yoyo network on a separate computer while this was going on.) Here's the part where you might have to grab yourself a cup of coffee or take a walk. Basically you want to wait until enough data has been collected to run your crack. Watch the number in the "#Data" column—you want it to go above 10,000. (Pictured below it's only at 854.) Depending on the power of your network (mine is inexplicably low at -32 in that screenshot, even though the yoyo AP was in the same room as my adapter), this process could take some time. Wait until that #Data goes over 10k, though—because the crack won't work if it doesn't. In fact, you may need more than 10k, though that seems to be a working threshold for many. 

Once you've collected enough data, it's the moment of truth. Launch a third Konsole window and run the following to crack that data you've collected:

aircrack-ng -b (bssid) (file name-01.cap)

Here the filename should be whatever you entered above for (file name). You can browse to your Home directory to see it; it's the one with .cap as the extension. If you didn't get enough data, aircrack will fail and tell you to try again with more. If it succeeds, it will look like this: The WEP key appears next to "KEY FOUND." Drop the colons and enter it to log onto the network.

Problems Along the Way

With this article I set out to prove that cracking WEP is a relatively "easy" process for someone determined and willing to get the hardware and software going. Even though the AP which I was cracking was my own and in the same room as my Alfa, the power reading on the signal was always around -30, and so the data collection was very slow, and BackTrack would consistently crash before it was complete. After about half a dozen attempts (and trying BackTrack on both my Mac and PC, as a live CD and a virtual machine), I still haven't captured enough data for aircrack to decrypt the key. So while this process is easy in theory, your mileage may vary depending on your hardware, proximity to the AP point, and the way the planets are aligned. Oh yeah, and if you're on deadline—Murphy's Law almost guarantees it won't work if you're on deadline.