Marvel's Midnight Suns: Photo Blog

My first big video game of the year was "Marvel's Midnight Suns" - and despite not knowing much about it before I picked it up, I ended up loving it! If you're familiar with the XCOM series of tactical, turn-based combat, that's pretty much what this was (same developer), but with Marvel characters. I appreciated the game's inclusion of well-known characters like Iron Man, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Spiderman and Captain Marvel (who I, surprisingly, thought was really cool), and also enjoyed getting to know some new characters like Nico Minoro and Magik. I won't bore you here with the nuts and bolts of the game, but I can simply say that I recommend it for Marvel fans who want a different spin on some of their favorite superheroes. My only real problem with the game was that there was a ton of dialogue and, aside from important story-focused conversations, largely revolved around water cooler chatter and kissing the main character's butt to tell me how cool and great I am. (I mean, they weren't wrong, but it was pretty excessive.)

One of my favorite aspects of the game was its photo mode, and I spent a good deal of time snapping pictures of my heroes as they kicked some undead and HYDRA booty. Here are a couple dozen of my favorite shots from my 70+ hours spent with "Midnight Suns":

I hope you enjoyed these shots of me interrogating, pummeling or otherwise driving fear into the heart of the forces of evil. For more photo blogs from my video game journeys, follow us on Twitter (here and here) and keep it tuned here at Signs of the Times: Underground.

Gotham Knights: Photo Blog

I'm a sucker for pretty much anything Batman-related, so, initially, I was intrigued when they announced a new Batman video game months ago. However, when I learned that "Gotham Knights" was not set in the same universe as the "Arkham" series, I admit that there was a little skepticism about how excited I should actually get. On top of that, the only reviews or word of mouth that I heard was that the game wasn't good and that it was "only eight hours long." Eight hours is not long at all, in terms of video game storytelling, and not worth a $70 price tag, in my opinion, so I held off on purchasing "Gotham Knights" for a while.

I'm also a sucker for good deals, so when I saw that "Gotham Knights" was going for nearly 50 percent off for Black Friday, I finally bit the Batarang (as it were) and bought the game.

"Gotham Knights" lets you choose between four different Bat-characters - Batgirl (Barbara Gordon), Nightwing (Dick Grayson), Robin (Tim Drake) and Red Hood (Jason Todd). I typically rotated my character each time I played, and I played nearly equally with all four of them - possibly leaning a little heavy on my usage of the gun-toting Red Hood. I thought all of the characters were good, in their own ways, and all of them provided compelling reasons for which to use them. I thought all of the back-story stuff for each of the characters was great, too, with emotional stories for each person.

There are a handful of classic villains to fight in the game, and I was 

Without going into much more detail, I'll just say this:

• The game was way longer than "eight hours long" - I put in nearly 45 hours by the time I hit 100 percent completion.
• After an hour or two, I totally accepted and embraced "GK" being unconnected to the "Arkham" franchise.
• When all was said and done, I really, really enjoyed this game.

I really got into using the Photo Mode feature on the game and was able to capture some pretty cool stills, which I'll share in this post momentarily. I will forewarn you that there are some spoilers for the plot, so if you're not interested in seeing those, I'd recommend that you play the game first, then look at these pictures afterwards.

In conclusion, I loved the time I spent with "Gotham Knights" and would certainly endorse it to any like-minded Bat-fans out there. And heck, if you want to hit up some two player co-op, let me know - that's the one aspect of the game that I didn't get to touch the first time around. I'm only a message away.

With no further gilding the lily, here are my favorite photos from "Gotham Knights" on Playstation 5:

Once again, Gotham is safe... safer?... anyway, whatever. The good guys live to see another day, and if they make "Gotham Knights 2," I'm in. For more superhero gloriousness and caped-crusading adventures, feel free to follow us on Twitter (here and here).

We'll catch you next time, here at Signs of the Times - same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.