Modern Warfare 2 Notes

The campaign starts with a credits sequence. Lots of maps with what looks like data communications flying around in green lines.
There is a recap of the story from Modern Warfare 1 as it plays in voice and little bits of cut scenes as the credits roll.
Moscow Russia
A voice over tells us that once one enemy is defeated another quickly takes their place.

Afghanistan
SSDD
Joseph Allen
We start the game in a makeshift base camp in Afghanistan. we are with several soldiers who are described as locals and giving them some training. In the guise of teaching we are show how to pick up guns by holding X. How to move using the analogue sticks. How to crouch with B and shooting with the right trigger and aiming with the left trigger. We have to shoot some targets and throw a grenade with right bumper.
We are then told to make our way through the camp to an objective marker. The ambience is good with soldiers playing basketball and men fixing jeeps.
Now we have a range to run through shooting the paper targets and avoiding the civilians.
We are now given our difficulty choice.
I choose hardened.
An alarm goes off and suddenly everyone is running around. We are going to a fight somewhere.
When we get there all hell is breaking loose. There are rocket teams on the other side of a river shooting at us and we must take them out using a grenade launcher.
Once that is done a bridge layer device comes and makes us a bridge.
We are told to go to a convoy which is forming up and take our seat as gunner of a humvee.
Once there we get an on rails gunning sequence where we use a chaingun to shoot at various buildings
The convoy is ambushed by rocket launchers on the rooftops and we have to flee until the convoy is wrecked. Abandoning the vehicles the troops flee into the houses and then into a school.
I have to fight through the school room to room and ten out into the streets. Where we fight until we make it to a rally point and regroup.
We meet a man named Shepherd and are drafted into his 141 unit.

Mission 2
We are on a  mission in a high altitude mountain range. The one seen in the demo at E3.
We have to use the triggers to dig the ice axes into the ice and climb up then jump across a gap. Once on the other side we are shown the heartbeat sensor which give a radar dot for people in front of us.
Under cover of the blizzard with Soap McTavish we enter the airbase and set about planting an explosives on fuel tanks and then we have to rendevous with Soap at a hanager to deal with a satellite.Inside the Hangar Soap takes out a man with style and then investiagtes a satellite sitting inside the hangar. We are to go upstairs and get an APC module. which I do with no resistance. On coming downstairs Soap has been caught by about ten armed men and is about to be shot. I get to detonate the explosives and then shoot at the men in the confusion Soap also joins in and we get out of the hanager. We have to run around on the airfield and head away. There are men appearing from everywhere and snow mobiles bringing more.
We get to a point where we take over the snowmobiles and have a chase through the snow and a frozen lake. We jump a huge gap and get to a helicopter for extraction.
If you are caught in the stealth sections you get about six troops to shoot then you seem to be free to carry on.

Mission 3
No Russian.
We are Roach and we have been inserted into the terroist cell as a deep cover operative.
We are now taking on the role of one of the terrorists, we are in an airport and are told to follow Makarov who seems to be the main villian here.
We walk out of an elevator around six armed men. There are loads of travellers milling around and security guards. Makarev starts firing into the crowds indiscriminently killing everyone. We walk through the airport with the men killing the innocent without mercy. It is actually quite sickening to see the injustice of it all. The total power they have over the unarmed and I found myself not shooting at the civilians. The guards start to rally as you make your way into the airport. By the time you reach the backroom areas resistance is mounting and swat teams can be seen coming in the distance. Heavily armed and riot shielded swat teams attack and you push out onto the tarmac for a big fight.
Back inside the airport backrooms again an extraction vehicle arrives and just as you are about to get on Makarov shoots you down. Seems he knew you were a plant and his plan was to lay the blame for this attack on the doorsteps of the Americans. After all one of the dead terrorists found at the scene is a genuine American agent.

Mission 4
The Russians are up in arms, they are blaming America for the airport attack. The plan is to go after evidence to clear the name of America for the atrocity.
The supplier for the attack was an arms dealer named Alex the red.
I start in a car watching two men meet another group, whatever happens it's not friendly and the men start shooting each other.
We chase them down the street eventually shooting and catching one of the fleeing men.
He is taken away to be tortured for information. We are to go after the other man.
We are left with another two men chasing down the man. There is heavy resistance as we enter a shanty town. The other two men are killed leaving us to forge on alone.
We forge on through the buildings which are full of enemies and it's hard going as you can be flanked from above and behind easily. I eventually get on the tail of Favela and watch as the rest of the team grab him.

Mission 5
James Ramirez
We see tactical sattellite displays go haywire, sending up bogus contacts for a large amount of unidentified aircraft over the USA. Seems this is an attack and the system is being hacked to display bogus data to divert attention to the real attack which is in Virginia and there really are aircraft there.
We are in a humvee driving through suburban streets, overhead there are planes dropping lots of troops by parachute. There is anti-aircraft fire everywhere. We are told to get out of our jeep.
We have to avoid a heavily armoured BTV as it plows through the street machine gunning and rocketing everything in sight including civilian houses. We follow it and having nothing to take it out with avoid it and progress to a rally point with other troops in the area. Of course there is heavy fighting all the way.
We regroup on the roof of a diner and have to fight off incoming waves of enemy soldiers. We have a protable autofiring machine gun to drag around the roof. After a few waves of soldiers the roof is targeted by a UAV and we have to get off the roof. BTV's turn up and our superiors tell us to get to the UAV controller and take the control box off him. His location is pinpointed for us. We have to run the gauntlet of the BTV's and get to the control box. After killing the soldiers in control of it we take it over and use the UAV's guided missiles to take out the BTV's
We are told by radio to regroup again at the resturaunt.
There is a VIP who we are trying to protect, he is being kept in the meat locker of the first resturaunt, however the burger joint is more secure so they move him there. Our objective to protect the soldier who is carrying the wounded man, once we are at the burger joint and the vip is safe in the meat locker we have to defend the burger joint against a huge assault. Lots and lots of soliders come from all sides and there are quite a few of our own men helping out here. Getting onto the roof of the burger joint is the best strategy and after several large waves, two helicopters and lots of fun the convoy comes in to your rescue and you and your men join the convoy.

Mission 6
we are back with Soap. Makarov has declared war on America and is going to kill a thousand Americans for every russian killed in the airport massacre.
A prisoner in a gulag apparently is someone the Makarov hates immensely. I assume this is the Captain from the last game who we supposedly saw die. we have to go and rescue him.
The scene picks up straight after the last chase through the shanty town.
We are now trying to get to an extraction point, however we have strirred up a real hornets nest and every inch of the way to the LZ is hard fought.
When we eventually get there the helicopter can't land as there are far too many enemies in the area. Soap tells the pilot to abort and try and get them on the rooftops.
We then havve to run up and onto the roofs where the game takes a leaf out of Mirrors Edge and we have to basically run and jump without our gun and make it to the helicopter, however we end up falling off a roof in cut scene and have to get back onto the roofs on your own. The route is simple and impossible to go wrong with but it feels like a breathless chase as you run through buildings and jump gaps to dive over a cliff for the ladder from the bottom of the helicopter. All very breathless action movie staging.

Mission 7
Back with Ramirez in Virginia.
We have to locate and neutralise anti aircraft guns.
We start following a armoured vehicle called Honey Badger.
We can use a laser designator to target areas we would like the armoured car to shoot at.
We progress along streets and through houses clearing out the enemy soldiers.
We come to a road block and have to pass through a house and then we can see the anti aircraft guns. We use the lase designator and they are blown up for us.
We now have to go to 4677 Brookmere road?

mission 8 The only easy day was yesterday
Back to Roach
We are assualting a havily defended oil rig which the russians are using as Sam sites. There is the possibility that the person Makarov hates is on the rig.
We are going in using a submarine.
We exit the sub through what looks like the torpedo hatch with three of us riding a small torpedo like vehicle. Another team comes from another sub in a similar fashion.
We come up under the rig and make our way up fighting as we go. There are sections where you go to a door and place a breaching charge reminiscent of rainbow six Vegas. When you go through the door you have a bullet time like sequence where you have to shoot the soldiers and avoid shooting the hostages in the confusion.
You free three sets of hostages, one on each deck of the rig.
Before the last set you have a section where the enemy use smoke and thermal vision goggle to get you, so you have to do the same.

Mission 9 Gulag
We are assaulting the fortress like gulag, there are helicopters and fighters in on the attack. We start sniping from the helicopter as we fly in and it's a nice sequence with Fighters blowing things up all over the place. We land and get out into the main courtyard of the Gulag and fight our way inside and to the control room where the computers are hacked to find the prisoner. We then fight our way through the cell blocks.
Here we fight our way through the empty cells to an armoury and get a riot shield, which is handy as we are essentially bottnecked in and guard pour in and give us a pounding, since I am behind the shield it's rocky but I survive.
We can hit people with the shield but can't shoot past it.
We fight through more cells, rappell down into a basement type area, breach through a wall into a large shower and locker room area. Here we encounter more riot shield men and find that they are only vulnerable from behind or using grenades.
This is aa farily hard set of rooms to clear. Once through we drop through a hole in the floor to a sewer type area.
Here we are told that the wall next to us is the cell of our prisoner. We breach the wall and the prisoner kills the guard for us.
It is Captain Price. We have to hot foot it to the chopper, the tunnel caves in under the battleship bombardment of the area. We go back to a hole in the roof where the chopper lowers a line, we all clip onto it and zoom up the hole and escape.

Mission 10 Of their own accord
Back to America It looks like things are going badly, we start in a bunker where there are a lot of wounded men.
Sgt Foley wants us to go and slow down the enemy to help with the evacuations.
We run through the battlefield and into a large building, which probably has some kind of signifigance but I don't recognise it. We are near the captiol building and the washington monument.
We climb through the building fighting room to room.
Then get to an enemy position which was being used to bombard the evacuation site. When we clear out the enemies we start using their own weapons against them and snipe some rocket launcher men and blow up some helicopters and vehicles.
We are then to go to the rooftop for extraction. We race to the roof with minimal resistance then get into a helicopter, taking control of the mini-gun we fly around doing as much damage as possible before being shot down ourselves.
In the wreckage we try and fight off the advancing enemy but our ammo is running out.
Everything goes white.

Mission 11 Contingency
Price talks to Shepherd, Price wants to do something fairly weird to end the war today, he likens it to putting out an oil fire by making a bigger bang next to it and sucking all the oxygen away. Shepherd thinks he is nuts and tries to order him to do something else. Price cuts the connection and we are going to it his way whether the Americans like it or not.
We are in a snow bound forest, we have parachuted in and our team is a little spread out. I am with Pri ce and we start making our way to the objective. We take out a few patrols using silenced sniper rifles When  you shoot at one target Price shoots another. After some trudging through the woods you come to a village and things start to hot up as you meet some more of the squad and a fight breaks out.
We fight through the village and then come to a large base. We get a UAV to assist us and storm the base. We are to get to a submarine. It is hard fought but I get there. Price goes aboard and we are to hold off the enemy until he does what he intends to do.
We go to the roof of a guard post and hold them off.
The subs missile doors open and a nuclear bomb launches.
We see the view from the international space station as the nuke goes off. in the lower atmosphere. The space station is blown apart like a dandelion cluster in the wind.
The resultant EMP blast knocks out all the electronics.

Mission 12
Back with Ramirez in Washington, about to run out of bullets with loads of enemies approaching. The EMP knocks a helicopter out of the sky right on top of the approaching enemies. Other friendly soldiers come and free Us from the wreckage.
We have to run for cover as more and more aircraft fall from the sky as if it's raining helicopters.
Inside a building the explosions finally stop.
We walk out after finding some ammo and meet a soldier who tells us to regroup at the Whisky hotel. This seems to be army code for the Whitehouse.
We make our way through an office building with some fighting in the cubicles.
Then back out onto the streets.
We fight some soldiers in the pouring rain and the dark. Then into another building, in the basement of this one we find a door to a presidential bunker.

Mission 13 Whisky Hotel.
We come out of the tunnels onto the gardens of the Whitehouse. We meet up with other soldiers who are trying to take back the Whitehouse from enemy clutches. It seems the whitehouse is the only building with power in the area as well.
we have to storm the building against heavy resistance, into the oval office and through onto the stage where the president would make his televised speeches.
The radio chatter which we can hear now suggests that our own forces are going to level the Whitehouse rather than let it be taken by the Russians.
We decide to get to the roof and show friendly flare colours to the incoming bombers to prevent them from blowing the Whitehouse. We have two minutes to run through the place to the roof fighting all the way. When we get there we are just in time.

Mission 14 Loose Ends
The war is mostly done in the US as a greater part of the russian war machine was rendered junk by the EMP.
141's objective now is to capture or kill Makarov.
He has been traced to two locations. We are sent to one while another team goes for the other.
The house is a nice log cabin type affair in the hills. As we approach jeeps try and make a break, they are quickly rocketed from UAV's
We fight into the house and take it floor by floor breaching into rooms and killing everyone.
Makarov isn't there. On the Radio we find out that he wasn't at the other safe house either.
We are told to hack a computer and while we are doing so a counter attack takes place.
We have to Protect the DSM device as it copies all the files from Makarov's computers.
This is a hard fight with enemies coming from all directions. Placing claymores helps a lot.
After the device copies everything we have to escape to the LZ.
This is a crazy run through loads of enemies. Eventually a cut scene cuts in when you get close to the helicopter. Shepherd shoots the character you place Roach and Ghost at point blank and takes the files. You watch as you are chucked in a ditch, doused in petrol and set alight.

Mission 15 Out of the frying pan
Shepherd seems to be either in league with Makarov or the orchestrator of it all.
Price is in similar circumstances in Afghanistan. His pilot is coming to extract him, however makarov and Shepherds men are fighting it out in the area as well.
We are in a large aircraft graveyard. We have a sniper rifle and it's great fun sniping everything in sight. We progress through the area and every inch is hard fought.
We come to a large open area and our plane flies overhead, the LZ is far too hot though.
Getting across this area is hard but great fun. We progress until we meet a jeep full of our team and have a real rodeo ride of a mounted gun session. We end this by driving the jeep onto the back of the rescue plane as it is taking off.

Mission 16 Just like old times
Soap and Price are on a mission to kill someone, not sure if it's Makarov or Shepherd.
We come across a patrol and it seems to be Shepherds men.
Taking out the patrol we rappel.
down and knife two guards from above whilst on the ropes.
Inside the caverns we find many armed men and lots of equipment. We sneak our way through the caverns only taking out those who get in our way. Eventually we are compromised and the lights go out and the tunnels flood with men.
Fighting our way through we have to use a riot shield to get across some catwalks on the side of the cliffs.
Then back inside the base.
We can hear on the radio that they are preparing to extract Shepherd.
Storming a cavern we have a huge fight before getting to a breach door.
Inside the breach room we have a few men to kill and must avoid shooting the tons of explosives which are being rigged to bring the caverns down around us.
We have to hack doors to escape and then run outside. Shepherd brings missiles down on his own men in an attempt to get us.
We give chase and get to some more caverns.

Mission 17 Endgame
This is a zodiac chase scene, lots of river boats copters and men to shoot at.
You have to give Chase to Shepherd anf avoid incoming fire for long enough.
Then you watch as Shepherd boards a helicopter. You have to hold the boat steady as Price shoots down the copter. Your boat goes over the edge of a waterfall and you land in a heap at the bottom. What follows is a quicktime style series of events where you see Shepherd climb from the crash and you follow him, you are injured yourself. When you get to Shepherd he knifes you in the chest. He is about to put a bullet in your head for good measure when Price jumps him and they fight.
As Price gets beaten to death you try and pull the knife from your chest when you do you throw it at Shepherd and kill him.
Price gets up and helps you up. Nikolai comes in with a helicopter and you are both saved.

Side notes
For the most part the endless respawing of enemies seems to be gone. Yes enemies spawn as you progress through the map, but once you shoot say someone at a window, he might be replaced once, but once the second man is down no more appear. This ends the recklessness which seems so at odds with real warfare. Yes you might need to be bold to progress in a real firefight, surely you wouldn't run headlong into hordes of armed men in real life though.

Credits roll with some weird scenes of office or a museum with scenes being acted out from the game. Is this supposed to be Infinity ward making the game?

15 hours on the in game clock, though I think it was less than that, seems to count time you spend on pause.
405 Achievement points for the first playthrough.

Uncharted 2 Notes

Wants to update as soon as I put it in the drive a 20mb patch takes about 5 minutes.
I choose hard.

We start the game with Nathan sitting is a carriage of a train, though something is wrong.
Nathan is beaten up and bleeding from a hip wound. He looks around and realises that the train carriage is hanging over a cliff, as boxes fly past him and the door of the carriage opens onto a thousand foot frozen drop.
We get control as Nathan hangs from the bottom of the carriage. We have to clamber around the inside and outside of the carriage as bits fall off and it slides further and further over the edge of the cliff. rails bend, rocks fall around us and Nathan is wounded and being tested to his endurance limits. eventually I get to the top carriage and we have to run through it as the whole thing falls over the cliff. Nathan has to jump at the last second to avoid plunging down with it. He lies exhausted at the cliff edge.
A flashback shows a dejected looking Nathan drinking alone is what looks like a carribean bar.
A man that Nathan obviously knows comes up to him and they get a drink and sit down. The man is called Harry Flynn and he has a business proposition. A client wants them to obtain a mongolian oil lamp, i presume which they will steal from a museum. Nathan tells Harry that it's a dangerous job and a three man one at that. Harry introduces Chloe Fraser who will be their driver.
Nathan is suspicous of why the collector wants a worthless oil lamp. Harry shows Nathan a piece of Marco Polo's journal which tells of secrets hidden in the lamp regarding the location of the lost fleet. Apparently Marco Polo sailed 14 ships loaded with Kubla Khan's treasure and all but one was lost. Nathan is definitely interested in the location of the lost fleet, if not the job for the collector. They agree to get the lamp and the location of the lost fleet and screw over the collector.
We are back on the cliffside, with Nathan staggering along amongst the wrecked carriages.
I find a man lying dead andd take his gun, there is also a treasure here.
We have to shoot a padlock to open a door inside a carriage.
Usual analogue sticks for camera and movement.
X is jump.
L1 is aim R1 is shoot
R2 is reload.
We progress through the wreckage and someone shoots at us, they are fairly easily despatched.
We are inside a carriage trying to get out when a tanker explodes and another carriage hurtles down the mountainside and smashed into the one we are in. Nathan is knocked unconscious again.
He flashes back to after the meet with Harry and it seems that Chloe already knows Nathan of old. She tells Nathan that she is purely in business with Harry and once they are done with the job she wants to split the money with Nathan and go off with him into the sunset. Nathan seems to be smitten a little with Chloe, though it looks like she is playing the pair of them.
Nathan climbs out of the carriage and back onto land again, this time he finds a dagger lying in the snow.
Another flashback, this time to the heist, The three are in a boat going in through the sewer pipe. They split up, Nathan and Harry into the museum and Chloe to cut the power as they enter.

Chapter 2 Breaking and entering.
We get control back inside the sewers with Harry on the heist.
This seems to be a basic tutorial on the platforming. X to climb ledges and jump.
We can hang on ledges and pipes and clamber along. Jump from ledge to ledge while hanging.
There are poles to swing on.
We are show how to stealth knock out guards by pressing Square when close behind them.
There are alarmed doors which need to have their junction boxes switched. You follow the wires from the alarms to find the box.
Flynn takes out guards and assists you, the a.i. is quite impressive, scripted, but nice.
The pair of you clamber around through windows and over roofs then into a huge courtyard filled with guards. You have to stealth knockout the lot of them.
Then into an area which is densely packed with guards. Flynn gives Nathan a tranquiliser gun to use on the guards.
We shoot them in two's similar to Army of Two but much more intuitive. Flynn simply shoots his target a few seconds after you do.
More clambering, including pushing a cart over to make a jump possible.
There is a section where you use a rope to climb higher then to swing from side to side to reach a ledge.
Then you have to wait near the tower until the lights go out as per Chloe's end of the job.
Inside the tower a cut scene shows Nathan smashing the lamp to find a cloth map inside. It is blank. Nathan burns the resin inside the lamp and the blue light it glows with reveals the invisible ink on the map. It seems the ships were hit by a tsunami near java and crashed aground near a large mountain drawn on the map.
The map talks of the cursed cargo from Shambala. Nathan is excited and tells Flynn that Marco Polo must have found Shangri la. Flynn then double crosses Nathan and leaves him in the tower with no rope to get out. He shoots a display setting off the alarm and leaves Nathan to his fate.
The area fills with guards on the balcony above us, laser sights fill the air. We are told to dodge using circle to avoid being caught in the sights. We have to run through a few area jumping and getting through manholes into the sewers. Nathan comes up through a manhole and into the guns of about five men.
The next cut scene shows Nathan in Jail three months later. Sully comes and bails him out with Chloe. Nathan is of course distrustful of Chloe. Sully tells Nathan that Flynn is working for someone called Lisarovich. They have found the ships and are working to find the Chintamani stone which Nathan tells us is a huge sapphire as big as a mans head.
Apparently it also has mystical powers.
Nathan needs to get into Lisarovich's files as he has the diary of Marco Polo. With this Nathan is sure he can work out where the stone is quicker that Lisarovich.
Chloe is to provide a distraction and Nathan and Sully are going to sneak into the camp to get a look at the files.

Chapter 3 Borneo
First session 1:15
Sully and Nathan are in a jungle, Chloe tells them to go to a charge and pick up the detonator.
Some armed solider types appear and it's our first shoot out.
We come to a camp and have to fight it out with the guards, then arms the explosives already planted in the camp. Which seems a bit backwards, why plant the explosives in the enemy camp and not arm then when they were planted, so that Nate and Sully wouldn't have to fight all the men and then arm the bombs to blow up the now empty camp.
We boost Sully up to a ladder to get out of the fight box.
Then a little interlude where we are taught some melee skills. When you are grabbed during a fight you press triangle to break out of a grab.
Some men are working on a generator and we follow the pipe from the generator to the camp.
A cut scene shows us that Lisarovich is a bad man, he is a huge military type hard man who guts one of his own soliders for stealing a trinket from the dig site.
flynn and Chloe are in the camp.
Flynn is getting an earbashing for not finding anything yet.
Nathan sets of the charges in the camp we came through a little while ago and Lisarovich goes to investigate as planned. We now have to get into the camp and find some info. There are of course sentries left behind. Sully says he will cover you from above with a sniper rifle.
We get into the camp by stealth killing a few guards and shooting the rest.
Inside the camp Nathan finds Marco polo's diaries along with a lot of other stuff relating to Shambala. Seems that the stone was never on the lost fleet. It looks like Lisarovich is looking for the trail to Shambala itself where the stone may still be.
Nathan asks Chloe via radio if Lisarovich has found any bodies. Seems he has not, which is odd. If 600 people were run aground here there should be some bodies.
Nathan thinks they went to higher ground to avoid the Tsunami. Our next stop then.
Soliders begin to flood the camp however and we have to survive as more and more of them flood in in waves. Grenades are introduced here. Tapping L2 fires a grenade, holding L2 brings up an arc indicator allowing you to aim them.
We have to take out the soliders, then assist Sully as they target him instead. Finally a machine gun nest in a tower must have a grenade thrown inside to blow it up.
We then follow the way up to the mountain.
Up the path we find a temple entrance. Chloe joins us.
Inside the temple there are lots and lots of skeletons all with black teeth. We get to wander around and find a piece of resin, the same blue glowing stuff that revealed the earlier text. We light a torch with the stuff and notice a trail of blood that glows bright blue in the light. Following it to a wall we get to push it down with sully. Inside we find more bodies and it looks like they were fighting each other. Nathan finds a chest, inside is a dagger like object which Nathan tells us is a holy object, not a dagger. A map tells us  that the way to Shambala can be seen using the dagger only in a specific temple in Nepal.
We are given control back in the tomb.
ON getting out Chloe goes on ahead and I am screaming at Nathan that she is going to betray them.
She comes back into the entrance as Sully is being helped up by Nathan and brings Flynn and some goons with her. Flynn gets the map and orders Nathan to be taken to Lisarovich. As they are being led down the mountain Chloe knocks down one guard and the rest of them help her with the other. Seems she wasn't double crossing them, yet.
We are now fleeing down the hill with guards on our tail.
A little fighting hand to hand and some platforming. Then a cut scene where Nathan and Sully jump a huge distance into a river to get away from Flynn.

Nepal.
Chapter 5 Urban Warfare.
Nepal is in the middle of civil war, which is perfect cover for Lisarovich to come in and tear things apart looking for the right temple.
Nathan is driving around in a jeep and is attacked by a large humvee. We get control after he is forced off the road.
We now get the scene that was shown so often before release. I know how to play this in my sleep.
Nathan shoots the jeep blindfiring and running towards the screen. It blows up.
We now make our way through the streets of Nepal, which are beautifully rendered by the way.
Some platforming in the middle of two fight boxes to get between them.
At the end of the second fight box we have our ass saved by Chloe who rockets a truck with an emplaced gunn for us.
Nathan realises that symbols on the dagger will reveal which temple they should be at. They need to be at higher ground to find the symbol, Chloe suggests a hotel which is the tallest building in the city.
We have a blocked door to bypass and must do some platforming to get to the other side of the door.
The street fills with soldiers as we do.
I fight the soldiers and then we are prompted to shoot the lock out to let chloe in.
We then have to boost  her up and follow her through some bombed out buildings.

Chapter 6
On the other side we come upon some more of Lisarovich's forces.
Chloe has a plan involving a grenade and we split up.
This is a fairly big fight box with a temple, and lots of buildings in an l shape. We ambush the first wave and then move waves come in from other directions flanking you. Making it impossible to stay put and forcing you to move and think.
Eventually I kill them all and we now have to climb up inside the hotel.
Once in a new guard is introduced, he has armour and seems to be only vulnerable to melee.
Chloe is trapped in an elevator and we must turn the power back on to get her out.
We have to climb through the bombed buildings making routes through the devastation. There are also some soliders to break up the climbing, something the first uncharted never did.
There is a swimming pool on the roof where Nathan does a Marco Polo joke.
Once up at the highest point you spy the temple in cut scene, however Lisarovich is already there.
A helicopter Spots you and it's time for a fight.
Nathan and Chloe take a zip line from building to building.
Nice scene of Nathan clambering accross a walkway between two buildings and the copter shooting it down around him.
We get to a rooftop being hotly chased by the copter.
Gunfight on the roof with the copter in attendance.
We make our way through the buildings inside and more men arrive to fight.
We make our way through the fight to a large room, the copter blows the wall out and while men try and kill us  the copter shoots rockets at the room, the whole builidng starts to come down around us and the only option is to jump through to the next buliding as the place comes down around you.
In the next builidng we go to the roof and jump to the next building.
there is more shooting and we jump from roof too roof. The helicopter turns up for a boss battle.
We have to shoot it with grenades as it circles the roof trying to shoot us. soldiers turn up to make it more fun.
Nathan and Chloe are split up when a zip line breaks sending Nathan away from her.
Nathan comes around a corner and bumps into Elena from the first game.
She is after Lisarovich and reveals he is a war criminal.
Chloe arrives and there is a girl spat, which is quite humerous.
Nathan wants to save Elena and Chloe is jealous.
A helicopter turns up and its moot as they have to run for it.

Chapter 7
They're coming with us.
We run from the helicopter into a fight box with an emplaced gun at one end.
There is some nice clambering to flank it.
Through the buildings to the other side, we see a tank below us terrorising resistance fighters.
We come into a temple courtyard.
Elena and Jeff are left in the temple while Nathan and Chloe examine a huge statue.
Drakes journal is introduced. Here we see a picture of the statue with it's four arms in different positions from they are now.
We have to clamber around the room until we get the arms arranged as the journal picture.
Once done a keyhole opens up and we put the dagger in and it opens.
The water drains from the floor of the temple and we get a new door.
Inside is a labryinth of tunnels and it soon opens out into a temple.
The floor collapses here and we end up in a spike trap, shooting the cogs off the wheels of the trap stops it killing you.

Chapter 9 Path of light.
Nathan and Chloe come to a huge room with a gold statue in the middle, the statue extends it's arms as the pair enter.
It seems we have to move mirrors so that an intricate pattern of light hits faces which then open their mouths for the blade key and bring the blades of the knife down.
When all three have been done by plaforming your heart out the blade drops onto the statue on the floor and kills it and it's mouth opens a door.
Inside in cut scene Nathan sticks the blade into a key slot and the circular floor moves to form a relief map of mountains and the beam of light gives the location of Shambala which Nathan marks on a map.
The fun ends as noises from above herald the arrival of the soldiers.

Chapter 10 Only one way out.
We make our way back through the way we came exploring the puzzle of the tomb only this time it's filled with enemies, including snipers.
When we get the Elena and Jeff's location they are missing. Outside in the courtyard of the temple we find more soldiers and a rather fine gungfight in the rain.
Once done we find Jeff wounded and Elena tending him.
Chloe wants us to ditch Jeff but Nathan won't.

Chapter 11 Keep moving.
We start with Nathan holding Jeff up, we move slowly and Elena and Chloe are doing the shooting. We bascially as the title suggests have to keep moving following the fairly obvious corridor as gunfights and rockets explode around us. We get inside a building and a cut scene starts. There is nowhere left to go for us carrying Jeff. Chloe is going nuts and Flynn and the gang burst in. Chloe points the gun at Nathan and pretends to be on  Flynn's side. Even Flynn is beginning to doubt her. Lisarovich comes in and shoots Jeff. He finds the map on Nathan's person and they no longer need him. Flynn is left to kill them. Elena slugs Flynn and in the scuffle they both run away.
We now have to run and jump through the area avoiding being shot.
Eventually the duo get away, Nathan tells Elena that he is going after Chloe and she is of course jealous and incredulous of Nathan's stupidity.
Of course she decides to join him on his foolhardy jaunt.

Chapter 12 Train to catch.
We have to fight some soldiers then clamber around some puzzles in the streets.
We end up on a signpost with soldiers coming from all sides. We have to do the entire fight on the post and clamber from side to side to avoid being shot.
Then we get to the trainyard.
Nathan is going to sneak onto the train and save Chloe and Elena is going to drive in and get them out of the yard once done.
Nathan goes into a train workshop and finds a train carriage, he undoes the break and it careers out into the yard. Which is no good as he is in it and it attracts all sorts of bad attention.
We have to survive in the carriage with enemies on all sides.
Until Elena drives in and we get into the jeep with her.
In cut scene the jeep drives after the train and Nathan jumps onto the train.

Chapter 13 Locomotion.
We get to clamber all over the moving train, inside outside on top. Dodging signals and fighting soldiers.
Then the helicopter arrives and tries to kill us.
We shoot it with a rocket and have to turn a wheel to open a door to trigger a rather dramatic cut scene of carnage.

Chapter 14 Tunnel vision.
We go through the tunnel fighting along the train, there are chaingun men to deal with, you shoot the straps on the logs to knock him off the train.
The helicopter needs to be shot down, and while we do so it's rockets need to be shot out of the air, we use an emplaced gun to do this.
We have to fight a boss type character.
Simply shooting and punching him, but he is much more resilient than the average characters.
There is a cut scene where Chloe tells Nathan to go and she does not want saving. flynn comes in and shoots Nathan in the groin, the injury we saw at the start of the game.
Nathan shoots some gas cannisters that are piled together and causes the crash we saw the aftermath of at the start of the game.

Chapter 15
We have to climb the train again, though this sequence is shortened from the first time.
Then we cut back to the scene where Nathan picks up the dagger in the snow. Lisarovich's men come looking for the dagger and there is a fight box here among the train wreck with waves of soldiers and some armoured men for good measure.
I watch a cut scene of Nathan collapsing in the snow in the middle of nowhere and being rescued by a sherpa type figure.

Chapter 16 where am I.
end of second days play 5:30

Chapter 16 Where am I.
Nathan wakes up in a village high in the mountains. A sherpa tries to help and assist him and gives him a drink, it seems he has been unconscious for a few days.
The sherpa takes him out of the house he is in and we have to follow him through the village.
The village is beautiful and children scurry around the stranger and cows moo at Nathan.
The graphics here really are beautiful.
The sherpa takes us to a hut and inside we find Elena. She is glad to see us, there is a bit of catching up and then Elena introduces Charles who has been living in the village since his own expedition to find Shambala failed. He tells Nathan who is fed up of playing the hero since Chloe rejected his offer of rescue that Lisarovich must never be allowed to get the Chintamani stone. He tells us that slivers of the stone have granted enormous power in the past to figures from history like Ghengis khan. If a monster like Lisarovich gains the entire stone then who know what devastation he will wreak on the world.
Nathan is still adamant that he isn't going on. Charles tells the Sherpa Tensi, to take Nathan to see what became of Charles' expedition. Charles thinks this will change Nathan's mind. Nathan reluctantly agrees.

Chapter 17 Mountaineering.
This is a trip though snow and ice filled mountain caves.
Jumping from icy ledge to icy ledge. Swinging on ropes and clambering around the walls.
Wolves can be seen tracking us from on high.
Eventually we come to the wolves slaughtered as if by some animal.
In the shadows as we watch nathan clamber in the distance an ape like figure moves. A yeti?
We come to a large area where we have to puzzle our way.
I find a gun on a body of one of charles's dead men.
The yeti attacks, an ape with goat like horns.
There is some shooting and some punching and close combat shooting as it grabs you.
Eventually when you have it's invisible health down enough Tensi stabs it from behind and it runs off. You then progress up into a temple like area.

Chapter 18 Heart of Ice
Inside the temple the game really does turn into tomb raider instead of tomb raider lite.
Only it's better than tomb raider as it doesn't leave you hanging for hours working out the puzzles and they are slightly easier and much more fun.
Tensi goes to one side of the temple as there are pressure plates which suggest this is a two man job to get to the secret of the temple. The temple is old but it suggests that it is a test for the body and mind. There are levers to pull and huge cylinders with handhold and blockages to negotiate.
Then we are into the workings of the giant statues, cogs and pulleys like the innards of a clock. Tensi goes to his side and follows you opening the way for you as you open the way for him.
Finally you both stand on pressure plates and huge statues lift from the water and make a bridge to the statue.
Inside the inner sanctum you find Charles Schafers men, all dead, shot by Schafer himself.
nathan find out that they were SS. The yeti makes it's presence known and it's time to go.
Only this time there are two yeti.
We  have to pull a lever, which makes an elevator come down from the ceiling.
We have to survive the yeti until it gets there and then get onto it.
As we do the yeti jump on and we have some quicktime and shooting at the yeti as it hangs on Nathan's foot to get away.
The lift takes the duo to the top of the mountain and we can see in the distance that the village is burning.
We cut to the village and Elena is herding children to Safety, Charles is nowhere to be found.

Chapter 19 Siege.
We now have a huge run through the village which is under attack from Lisarovich's men. The villagers are fighting back with crossbows and whatever guns they can take from the dead soldiers. Though the villagers are being massacred.
This feels like a corridor shooter rather than a fight box shooter, or just one huge sandbox fight box. Whatever it is it's great fun.
We get to Tensi's house as it seems he is looking for his wife of children, i'm not sure.
A tank appears and blows the hell out of the house as the duo dive for cover.

Chapter 20
Looks like a boss battle with the tank now.
The boss battle is a long affair, the tank essentially follows a script set by the position of Tensi. You follow Tensi to set points and the tank will follow you both. You have to shoot soliders as you go and jump around the roofs of the houses and run through alley. The tank follows and blows things up and uses it's machine gun. Occasionally you come accross rocket launching soldiers who when you kill them give up their rocket launcher with one rocket left. each time you hit the tank with a shell you get a checkpoint. Around four or five rockets and the tank blows up.
Tensi finds his daughter
Elena sees that Charles is being taken by the soldiers.

Chapter 21
Nathan and Elena give chase in a truck. We have a fun section where we jump from truck to truck fighting soldiers as we go. Occasionally the truck you are on goes on fire if it's hit enough and you have to jump to another.
You come to a truck with a grenade launcher and have a traditional if fun emplaced gun on a vehicle section. This does not go on for long and your truck is run off the road.
The bad guys think you have died, silly them, don't they know you are the heroes.

Chapter 22
Nathan and Elena track the convoy to a monastery and see Lisarovich being given the dagger and charles being led into the monastery.
We are going in on foot.
We climb up the cliffside and can either stealth or go in all guns blazing to the troops here.
Then up to the main monastery courtyard, here we have a large fight box with two stages. A river runs through it and once we have cleared one side we have to use movable cover to get close enough to deal with the emplaced gun on the other side.
Here there is a clambering flank position for the gun and a secret to boot.
Once you get to the gun more men fill the first side of the fight box and you get to give them a pasting with the emplaced gun.
Now we have more clambering puzzles in the crumbling monastery.
A locked door must be opened from the other side so more clambering.
We climb up around the frame of the broken down building and up into the next. It's filled with soldiers and we have a shoot out. as we near the bottom a rocket launcher solider becomes trigger happy and  the building starts coming down around us.
We now get a sniper rifle and fight back against the soliders.
An army of soldiers come at us accross the bridge and it's a hard fight. We then have to go up the inside of a tower as snipers in three towers across the way make it hard.
At the top is a sniper rifle.
A rocket guy is shooting at you and the whole tower is in danger of collapsing.
When you shoot him the tower he is in collapses.
You now have to take out the tower snipers as a hoard of soldiers comes across the bridge at you.
Then you cross the bridge and have a thrilling clambering sequence as it collapses.
Now a fight box with lots of soldiers.
We have to climb a little to get higher up the fight box and are now above where we last fought.
We get into a rectangular room with a balcony and it's a tought fight with soldiers from all sides.
At the top of the stairs we find a room in which Schafer lies injured.
He tells us that Lisarovich must be stopped. Lisarovich is heading for the tower, where apparently the dagger can be used to show the way to shambala.
We have some climbing to get to the rooftops and then somme fighting and climbing combined on the roofs.
We come to some soldiers shooting at something unseen. I bet it's a yeti.
Yes it's the two yeti. They are climbing fast and ignoring the men unless they get in their way.
We have to deal with many men in this area and then move onto the next.
Again a fight box with lots of soldiers and two chaingun toting men.
We climb a bit more around the crumbling monastery and find our way into the tower.
A cut scene shows Chloe Flynn and Lisarovich in the temple. They don't know what to do with the dagger and Lezarovich is getting sick of Flynn's excuses.
Chloe is left alone in the room with the dagger and Nathan drops in. She is relucant to give him the dagger but she does.
In this room we have a puzzle to solve. There are four stones to be placed on four pedastals. They are in our journal. Air fire water and earth are all associated with the stones and the animals on the walls. When you place each stone in the right place then another level of the puzzle opens up.
Now you have to rotate symbol wheels to the right symbol beside each pair.
The colours are as you would expect, apart form water which is clear instead of blue.
This had me for a while but once you see it it's as plain as day.
The dagger into the centre pedastal makes a ladder and a door open. The view outside clearly shows a large symbol on the ground the same as the pedastal in the room. It is obvious that Nathan has to now insert the dagger into it.
We zip line down to it and find some soldiers to kill in the large fight box.
Once done we get the dagger into the symbol turn a wheel that rises from the ground and a waterfall opens up in the mountains and fills up two channels that we have been seeing earlier.
I remember looking at the ornamental tree that was at the top of a flight of stairs into nowhere. Now we find the water rushing into it and opening up a door under the tree.
We have a zip wire and a fight box between us and the tree door. There are lots of dead soldiers littering the place.

Chapter 24 The road to Shambala.
Inside the temple are simple stairs down to some doors.
We come to a room with a blue globe in a shaft of light. There are daggers all around the walls. Turning a few at random triggers the globe to move, which seems to do the trick.
I don't know wether i got it at random or it wasn't meant to be that hard.
In cut scene Lezarovich arrives with chloe and Flynn and takes everyone hostage.
Nathan is forced to use the blue resin to reveal where in the wall to stick the dagger to open the way further.
A huge cavern opens up with a way across, as they watch the way moves to block the path.
Flynn and Nathan are sent to sort things. We have to clamber for a bit then get into a room with more sliding symbol puzzles.
The answers are as always in the journal of Marco Polo.
When the puzzle is solved the Yeti's turn up.
We have to survive for a set time period before Lezarovich arrives and saves the day with his sawn off shotgun.
The yeti are actually blue zombie like giants, Lezarovich calls them Scarecrows or guardians.
We progress into Shambala itself and it is beautiful, a hidden paradise of green pastures and temples.
Lezarovich is about to shoot Nathan when the natives turn up and are far from friendly.
Nathan and the gang escape in the confusion as tons of natives hurl poison darts at everyone.

Chapter 25 Broken paradise.
We are running as fast as we can while the world explodes around us. The soldiers are on our heels and the natives are on theirs.
When we run far enough a soldier shoots a rocket and the builing we are standing on slides down the hill. When we get to the bottom all the soldiers are dead and the gang are happily alright.
Chloe wants to escape and Nathan and Elena want to go and destroy the stone, an argument ensues and eventually Chloe joins them.
The inevitable fight with the natives occurs and they are hard to kill.
Lots of running and gunning needed to avoid their crossbows and anger them into coming for you by hand. Where you can run backwards peppering them.
Once you get one down you can pick up his crossbow which is an effective weapon. Another zombie appears with blue flame grenades just to add interest. Killing him you then have to clamber out of the area.
Blue resin seems to ooze from plants, shooting it clears vines from the way to proceed.
We come into a large temple area. We are allowed to explore for a while then the soldiers arrive. While we are fighting them the natives arrive.
One of the dead chaingunners weapons makes quick work of the natives.
We have to use Nathan as a broken counterweight to open a door.
We are then into the storm drains of the city. Fighting with the soliders.
Into a courtyard fightbox with more soldiers then pushing a cart up to a wall to get higher.
We now come to the temple where the stone is supposed to be.
Inside we have a large fight box with soldiers and natives in waves.
We climb up through the temple unhindered by anything other than stairs.
At the top we find a tree like statue with a huge stone in it's base. Nathan examines it and finds that it is resin and not a sapphire. He looks at the carvings and realises that the sap from the huge tree which is growing outside is the actual source of power here. Not a stone. the sap dries into resin and hence becomes stonelike.
Lezarovich has already been here and realised this. Flynn appears with a bullet hole in his chest, his reward for being such a faithful servant to Lezarovich.
Flynn uses his last grenade to try and take the gang with him and succeeds in wounding elena.
The gang go after lezarovich.
We get a long corridor type fight with soldiers.
Nathan tells Chloe to leave with Elena as he goes after Lezarovich.
She argues but Nathan ignores her and leaves the pair of them.

Chapter 26 Tree of life.
We go down a pathway and see Lezarovich and a few of his men at a large glowing pool at the bottom of the tree. Lezarovich drinks some of the sap and after a few seconds of gurning his scars heal themselves.
Nathan shoots the pool and it explodes killing all the  soliders, however, Lezarovich gets up and his wounds heal.
He comes after Nathan and we are into the final boss battle.
Lezarovich is invulnerable too bullets, however, explosions are another matter. There are loads of sap clusters and we must basically run around avoiding Lezarovich's shotgun shells, grenades and grabs. All the while watching for him to get close to a cluster and then shooting it blowing it up in his face.
Doing this around ten times eventually starts a cut scene.
With Lezarovich downed Nathan is holding him at gunpoint, Lezarovich calls Nathan a monster, and asks him to count how many men he has killed today. He tells Nathan to kill him. Nathan hesitates and Lezarovich laughs. Nathan stands back as the natives arrive en masse and rip him apart.
Nathan now has to run along a massive bridge which we saw in the distance earlier, the whole bridge is falling apart however, this is a fairly spectacular scene as the bridge really does fall  apart as Nathan runs along it. at the end we have a scene where the natives are about to attack Chloe, the bridge falling apart saves them but only just.

Nathan and Chloe take the wounded Elena out of shambala. Back in the monastery she passes out they fear for her life. Back at the village Nathan prays for Elena, Chloe sees and decides to bow out of the running for Nathan's affection. She leaves and Sully chases after her. Elena is getting better and they walk off into the sunset jibbering nice couple like dialogue to each other. The credits roll.

12 hours 41 minutes
42% of trophies on first playthrough on hard.

Batman: Arkham Asylum Notes

Options for brightness etc, I choose normal difficulty as I am unsure of a game like this.

Pan down through Gotham in the dark and rain, Batmobile speeds through the night.
Joker is handcuffed in the passenger seat as Batman takes him to Arkham Asylum, which is a huge sprawling building on it's own island.

We meet warden Sharp as the security guards strap the Joker to a trolley and wheel him into the asylum.
The joker quips away as usual trying to annoy everyone. I get control of batman and we can walk and look around only. The rest of the buttons don't do anything yet just the analogue sticks for the usual movement and camera.
The Joker harasses a doctor and then we watch as another baddie called croc is transferred in front of us, Croc threatens Batman.
In a lift Joker suggests that it was weird that Batman caught him so easily and co incidentally loads of the Jokers gang have also been caught recently.
The lights go out and when they come back on Batman is almost throttling the joker, ensuring he does nothing tricky. The elevator ride comes to an end.
Cut scene shows commissioner Gordon chatting with Batman. The joker is taken out of Batmans custody. and almost instantly beat up his guards and gets loose. The joker has Help and it seems Harley Quinn is in the control room and opens the security gates to let the joker deeper into the Asylum.
Batman gives chase and it's into the game proper.
We have a few inmates to deal with first as the Joker lets them out of their holding cells.
X is strike and Y is counter.
Simple button presses which make Batman do a variety of combat specific moves.
The joker is now in control of the comms system of the Asylum and talks to Batman through television screens handily placed where they need to be.
A makes Batman Run and pressing it again while running makes him go into a diving roll.
B does a heavier attack.
Right trigger crouches
Left trigger makes batman go into aiming mode with a batarang.
Right trigger fires them while you hold the left trigger.
In the next area I find little walking false teeth, you are prompted to shoot them with the batarangs.
We are told to run down a corridor, at the end we fight two enemies. A guard is signalling us at the end of the corridor.
He tells us that a prisoner has one of the guards hostage up ahead.
Batman speaks to a woman called Oracle who seems to be fullfilling a handler type role.

Zsasz has one of the guards strapped in an electric chair.
We can't go directly into the room and are funnelled into flanking him from above.
A guard again asks for our help when we get up to the balcony.
We are prompted to go into detective mode, which makes everything look blue and all the guards look like they are being x-rayed.
Gargoyles up above us glow yellow and seem to be the key.
We get above Zsasz by jumping from gargoyle to gargoyle. Pressing Right bumper uses Batman's grapple.
When we have Zsasz in our sights we press X to do a gliding kick. Then right trigger and Y to knock him out.
Harley quinn appears on the monitors and she has Warden Sharp hostage in his office.
We are stuck in this room and need an exit. Detective mode provides a red glow around a grill which lets into the air vents once we have opened it by pressing A repeatedly.
We come to a viewing area where we can see guards being gassed.
We climb above them using a grill and events and find two guards to save.
There is also a baddie that we save and then knock out.
Batman has to hit the control panel for fans with a batarang to turn on fans which extract the gas and allow us to go down to the floor.
Another corridor and two enemies.
We come to a door with a joker face painted on it in green. When we go in a cut scene shows Batman coming face to face with the joker, however the Joker releases a huge mutant man to attack Batman.
I defeat the monster using batarangs and punches.
Joker vanishes further into the asylum.
As you knock out people or find new things, even break the little teeth bats fly from them. These fill your XP meter and allow upgrades.
I seem to have earned enough to get an upgrade, there are many and most are locked. I choose to learn inverted takedown which allos batman to drop from a gargoyle grab an enemy and then go back up and hang them from the gargoyle.
A guard tries to open the door the joker left through for us but can't. Joker appears on the monitor and gloats about kidnapping Commisioner Gordon.
We have to take an alternative route back to the room where Gordon was kidnapped. We are prompted to use Detective mode and find a whisky bottle, which it seems Gordon's kidnapper was swigging. We can use the detective mode to follow his breath trail analysing the alcohol in the air.
This takes us to an elevator. In cut scene Harley blows the elevator weights and rides up on them as the elevator itself crashes down into the shaft nearly killing Batman.
Seems we can't follow them this way.
We have to find our way up through the shaft in a tomb raider style. Batman can grasp ledges and shimmy along. He also uses his grapple and jumps from ledge to ledge.
At the top of the elevator we get more goons to fight. Then through a vent.
Now we get armed goons, these need to be taken down more stealthily as Batman can't take many direct hits from bullets.
The first time we meet the armed men here we are given gargoyles to climb up on and get behind them.
Crouching moves silently and you can perform a silent takedown with Y.
Three guards are easily despatched and we move on to a single guard up the stairs.
Joker chats again on the tv screen.
We move through a vent and come into the largest room yet. There are guards patrolling and we can use all the skills we have learnt so far to take them out as stealthily or as messily as I want. Best is to use the gargoyles and strike from the shadows or creep up behind and do silent takedowns.
More enemies come in another  wave and then we find the body of the whisky breathed guard we have been looking for. It seems he is a dead end and the joker knew this as is handily painted on his chest.
I get another upgrade and choose armour upgrade v1.
The riddler comes over the comms and asks us to solve a riddle, about a sharply observed portrait and we can see a portrait of warden sharp, scanning it solves the riddle.
Now we have found Bowles we have a new objective which is to escape to the islands surface.
Through some rooms and some vents without incident and then out into the grounds

Mission 2
We find some guards out in the grounds and Joker tells his men to destroy the batmobile.
There is a tunnel in the grounds that the guards think is locked down, it will probably be a source of trouble soon.
We are told by an alarm from the batmobile that it is under attack. We are given a map by oracle that shows the location of the batmobile. We have to go through a tunnel which is guarded by armed thugs. Simple matter for Batman to climb behind them and silent takedown the two guards.
Now out into a yard where the batmobile is parked, about 6 thugs are hitting it with Iron bars. It's fairly simple to take them down.
We are prompted to take explosive gel from the batmobile.
We are prompted that there may be a clue as to where Harely took Gordon in the area.
We find Gordon's pipe and can follow a trail of pipe tobacco using detective mode.
The trail leads to security doors which are locked, we must find another way
It's not hard though as detective mode prompts us to use explosive gel on a thin wall we can see through in detective mode.
Down the tunnel we come to a new area, a guard is hiding in a guard post and tells us that the jokers men are killing anyone who tries to escape the asylum.
There are seven of them at a doorway which isn't a hard fight really.
Inside we find Harley Quinn, she is behind one of the so far impenetrable electric force doors. She has Gordon and after a chat with the Joker on screen we learn that we are making the Joker uncomfortable as we are moving faster than he would like. Harley vanishes with Gordon and we have to find another way past the force door.
The roof seems a fairly obvious way in and yes up on the roof is a weakpoint we can blow open with our gel and get in.
Inside we have a maze of vents to negotiate then a large room with lots of guards to take out, all of them armed, so stealth is important here.
There are floor grates here that you can get in and run around under the floor undetected.
Once we taken out the enemies we free doctors who have been held by the jokers men. They tells us that more are held prisoner elsewhere in the facility. We have to rescue them too.
I get armour upgrade v2.
Eventually I find my way to the x-ray room and three thugs are guarding the door.
We find five men holding one of the doctors, two explosives on walls behind the guards are enough to free her without incident.
Take another route in the building and we come to an area where a guard is trapped by gas. One of the doctors is in the gas room and things look bleak for him.
We have to take a route through the vents above the gas and then find three controls to hit wwith batarangs to turn on the fans.
One is hidden by a breakable wall. The only way to break it is to knock a thug from his precarious perch on top of it and he breaks it for you.
This frees the doctor from his prison in the safe room with the lack of air.
In the last room of the medical area a doctor is held in a chair bed by restraints, it's a trap and as we go in 8 thugs come down from above, fight them all and  you get to free the doctor.
Now we have completed all the doctor missions we are told to go back to the sanatorium which was the big room where we had our stealth kill section. Here one of the doctors wants to go to Arkham mansion to get her papers back. One of the guards goes with her. The other doctors are told to barricade themselves in one of the rooms. An elevator opens which was previously locked andd joker's men come out, again we take them down stealthily in this room.
Down in the lift to the next level.

Mission 3
The scarecrow is down here, he uses gas which makes people hallucinate their worst fears.
We blow a hole in a wall to find an alternate route past the locked force door.
Through some vents and we find Gordon's body, although I think this is Batman seeing his worst fears. Oracle is unobtainable as well.
Things take a turn for the worse inside Batman's head in the morgue as voices whisper about his failings, the door out of the morgue leads back into it. Three body bags are on the slabs and they are wriggling. Opening each one shows Batman's mother and father who blame him for their deaths. The last body bag belongs to the scarecrow who knocks Batman down.
When we get back up the whole room is changing, looking like it's being eroded away by decay and opening up onto another place high in the clouds.
Progressin a few metres into this new world reveals the scarecrow as a giant. We have to sneak past him as being seen by the scarecrow ends the mission.
This is fairly easy and an interesting new diversion and added variety to the game.
We have to clamber around, use bombs and then get to the bat signal which we use to shine on Scarecrow and defeat him. This breaks the spell of the gas and we are back in the morgue.
I get armour upgrade V3.
The way that was blocked before is now opened by a group of three of the jokers men. We aare now getting knife wielding variants of the thugs.
Joker tells us that Harley and Gordon are up ahead, they have been told to kill Gordon is they even suspect Batman is in the room with them. Seems we have to be very stealthy here.
I take down the four patrolling guards and getting above the room where Harley is holding Quinn allows us to take her down in a cut scene by triggering it with a press of Y.
Gordon and Batman investigate a room where Bane is being held and experimented on by one of the Arkham doctors. Joker releases Bane and we are into a bossfight with him.

Bane runs at you and punches, he also pulls chunks of rock from the walls and hurls them at you. He is vulnerable to Batarangs and the odd strike if you are careful. The best approach seems to be to keep distance from him and hit him with batarangs. Eventually he goes into a blind rage and becomes disorientated, when this happens attacking him sends batman into an animation where he jumps on Bane's back and pulls at his venom injector. Do this three times and Bane is downed. In between each round a load of the jokers thugs are thrown into the arena.
After the fight batman climbs from a manhole and talks to Gordon. Batman tells him to get off the island on a nearby boat. Bane comes back and in cut scene Batman uses the batmobile to run him over and dip him in the sea. Gordon goes away in a police boat to calm the panic in Gotham due to the Jokers bomb threat.
Batman talks to Oracle and asks her to look into Doctor Young and the venom that seemed to be making Bane even more powerful. Batman tells Oracle that there is a Bat cave on Arkham Island.
The Batcave is in Arkham North, I head there, there are some new Joker thugs running around.
Here I find the entrance to a cave which we follow to a famous suicide point. Batman jumps from it in cut scene and makes his way in style to the batcave.
Inside the batcave a cut scene shows that Dr Young has made an improved version of the venom formula that powers Bane. It is called Titan and is a much better super solider drug. If Joker gets his hands on it his army of thugs will become as strong as Bane. Batman  gets some new equipment in the Batcave. The batcalw can be used to grab and pull objects from a distance, including enemies.
Simple puzzle here to inroduce the Batclaw, we have to pull boxes which block our jump across a gap.
I can now by another upgrade and choose Armour upgrade V4.
Now we are going through the sewers on the trail of Dr Young.
Oracle finds that Dr Young was being paid by the Joker, However she blocked the payments recently. Looks like she tried to back out of her deal with the Joker.
We have to climb up a sewer manually as the walls are too crumbly to use the batarang.
Out on the surface there are snipers in towers that we have to take out using stealth.
We now have to find a way into Arkham Manor past the pesky electrical main entrance.
There is a grate we can open above the door with the new Batclaw.
Inside we deal with some thugs and use high grates to progress through another locked door.
I upgrade Batarang Power.
Lots of thugs here to have fun with.
In the next room there are a bunch of armed thugs and we need to be very stealthy to take the thugs down.
We find Cash and free him.
Now we go into the library a little more and find a glass floored room. The joker has two men hostage underneath the glass floor and we are tasked by him to get in and save them. The main entrance is a force field door. The bomb gel won't blow the floor, however there is a chandelier type thing high above the glass floor.
Finding my way through vents leads to the top of the chandelier and a quick batarang brings it down through the glass floor.
I free the hostages who confirm that the Joker has captured Dr Young.
I spent a long time wandering around here looking for what to do next. Eventually I found I had missed a door, I was spending too much time looking for clever hidden puzzles that the huge oak door I missed. Talk about not being able to see the wood for the trees.
You progress through some cells to another thug encounter.
In this morgue area vents lead into the office.
A cut scene shows that Dr Young got into the office and took the notes.
I upgrade twin batarang.
We are tasked with finding evidence in the room just as we did with the tobacco and whisky. We find Dr Youngs fingerprints on the safe and now have to follow their trail. A convenient shortcut opens in the form of a previously locked door.
When I follow the trail all the way back to the room where I rescued the two men from the jokers trap with the chandelier we find a book with her fingerprints on it.
Batman finds and destroys the formula in cut scene. The joker obviously watching tells him that he will task Zsaz with getting the formula from Young herself.
As we leave the library room there is a puff of vapour from the vent and in the next room the location finder tells us we are in wayne manor. Which is wrong, looks like the Joker or someone is using the scarecrows gas.
We walk down the corridor and it slowly changes subtly into the alley where Batman's parents were killed.
Another scarecrow sequence arrives and I hope there isn't another as it was starting to outstay it's welcome. The only new addition is some skeleton skinned (pardon the pun) thugs to deal with.
After the nightmare you end up in a hig belltower, which is weird as you couldn't get up there earlier. Still cutting the bell rope make an exit and mess of the hall below.
This breaks a security force door which was preventing you going this way earlier and opens up a new area.
A new thug with a stun baton appears, we need to jump over him using our dodge roll and get behind him to prevent being hurt by the baton as we hit them.
In the next room we see Zsaz dragging Dr Young away.
Charge after Zsaz and he kills the Doctor, which ends the mission, strange I thought we wanted her formula out of the Jokers hands. Anyway we have to find another way of stopping Zsaz other than just running up and hitting him.
The game basically tells you what to do, which is good because it would have taken ages to work it out by yourself. You have to go to the corner of the room, crouch and go into corner cover. This allows you to hurl a batarang without Zasz seeing you. You have  to wait until he is visible behind Dr Young and then zap him. This starts a cut scene where Dr Young tells you that the Joker has not got her new formula but has loads of the other venom formula that made Bane. He has a plant with venom in the greenhouse. Dr Young opens the wardens safe and find it booby trapped. She is killed in thhe explosion. Harley leaves with warden Sharp and we are left to fight a bunch of thugs.
Seems the only way to get past the force field security doors is to use a special key which was blown in the safe. The only other way is to get Warden Sharp to open them as they are keyed to his DNA.
We now have to go after Warden Sharp and Harley.
We go back out onto the island from the mansion and cross it again. There are hordes of guards snipers and electric rod wielding thugs to deal with along the way.
I upgrade to triple batarang.
Inside the cell block we find cells and are continuing to follow the wardens trail.
There are cells with insane people inside acting like animals. We follow the trail to the electric chair room and find poison Ivy in her cell.
She pleads to be let out as she can hear plants in trouble. Seems that we have to ignore her and progress. I find Cash in a cell and Warden Sharp tied to a chair. when we go up to Sharp a cut scene shows Ivy being released by Harley and Joker opening the cells with all the loons inside.
Sharp gives us his  keycard and batman uses it to upgrade his lockpick. We now have a device for hacking the force field doors.
Outside again with the warden safely locked up for his own safety the man in the cell is now Sharp and not cash. A shapeshifter?
We go back out of the cells here as there seems to be nothing to do with the shapeshifter yet.
Ivy is gone. In the next room we have a fight with loads of thugs with Harley swining around above us. We fight the thugs and Harley escapes yet again. A trip through some offices leads us back the way we came to the room we fought Harely in.
Progressing we find two guards strung up above pools of water, electricity is flowing here and the men will die if they are taken down the usual way with a batarang. We have to hack power boxes and save the men in a time limit of Harley's setting. This isn't that hard to do and I manage it first time.
Now we are trying to get doors open, the guards we save are working on a computer and we can explore. There is gas in the room where we just escaped from and the familiar fans are there to turn on, the problem is getting to them.
That is twice now I have had to look up a help guide. The puzzle are just a little too obtuse, as evidenced by a simple google search turning up huge amount of people being stuck at the same place.
Turns out the area I thought was the same one I had been in before was actually a new area. Not stuck at all. Anyway. We run through the cell block and Harley is goading us using the Tannoy. A vent in the ceiling takes us to a hack box and we turn off a force field letting us progress.
Through this door we come to a boss fight of sorts. Lots of thugs enter and arena in waves and we have to knock them out. The floor become electrified at times also. When this is done a cut scene starts. Harley is left for dead by the Joker and she comes at Batman who easily subdues her. He scans her fingerprints and locks her in a cell.
Oracle tells batman that heat is building up in the botanical gardens.
We are to use detective mode to pick up Harely's trail in the gardens.
I get remote control batarang.
Some puzzling and box hacking to get a riddler trophy and arkham secret tape here.
We are back out into the grounds and tasked with going to the botanical gardens.
The gardens are nice, lots of plants, looks like a poison ivy boss battle soon.
armed guards, hacking doors.
Now we have a large room with lots of armed guards.
I upgrade to sonic batarang.
we fight a bunch of thugs and save a worker called carl todd.
Here a hack panel is booby trapped with joker bombs and we have a time limit to hack it three times.
Back through to the  big room again and a door is unlocked. Here we come face to face with the Joker, he seemed for the first time to be peeved off that we are pestering him too much.
He blows a bomb and brings down the door arch blocking our way forward. We must  seek an alternate way through a vent and some walls to knock down.
We have to clamber around in dusty chambers where the batarang won't grab and then we come to an ordelry called Jordan fraser who tells us that there are others locked up.
We now have a new objective to save them.
In the aviary which is just through the door we have to save the men locked in birdcages without alerting the guards.
The key here is to take out the man in the chamber with the control button to drop the hostages. Then the remaining guards are easily despatched.
The hostages tell us of a secret door in the room. Harley finngerprints lead right to it and a another booby trapped hack box lets us in.
We meet joker and two henchmen loading up some crates. Joker shoots the henchmen with his titan formula and they mutate into bane clones and attack. Similar to the bane fight except they use dead bodies to hurl at you. You can also get on their back and steer them to hit the other enemy.
The titan production facility is destroyed in the fight. However, the joker has enough of it to cause trouble. Batman thinks that Ivy will be allied to their cause as her plants are being harmed. Our next task is to track her down.
Batman needs something to get accross the ravine ahead. He brings in the batjet in cutscene and we get an upgrade called the line launcher.
This takes us to a room where we find Ivy. In cutscene Batman threatens her and she tells him that only one plant on the island can counter the titan formula. It grows in killer Crocs lair, guess where we are going next.
I upgrade to cryptographic range amplifier.
We have to make our way back through the botanical gardens. This is the first time there has been any backtracking.
As we get to the exit of the botanical gardens Joker gets to Ivy and blasts her with Titan. This causes the plant life to go nuts and mutate. Huge vines grow all over the island. Plants are shooting out deadly spores.
We have to go to cash in the mansion to find out how to get to crocs lair.
Inside the mansion we find that Ivy's plants have really run amok. We have to stay above ground as there is pink killer gas on the floor. We have to use  the new line gun which makes instant zip line to negotiate our way to cash.
Cash tells us that Killer Croc is in a cell under the intensive treatment wing.
The way into intensive treatment is blocked and we have to find our way up to a sniper nest to gain access to the building.
Inside we have a room of gunmen, however the twist here is that our gargoyles are booby trapped making this a much harder fight.
There is another booby trapped hacking door.
Then down a corridor where we find Cash's office and pictures of his family.
Walking along the corridor here it looks like the xbox crashes. I thought it had, I was about to swear when it goes black and a cut scene starts. It looks like the one from the start of the game and I start getting angry then it looks different and I realise that something is happening again, Scarecrow maybe, Batman is in the batmobile seat tied up and Joker is driving him to Arkham. We get control of Joker and Harley is leading a tied up batman into the Asylum.
This is scarecrow again, he appears as the doctor to check the patient over. Joker shoot batman in the face at point blank range and it looks like a game over scene, only it tells you to use the middle stick to avoid the Jokers fire in the tips box.
We restart and see Batman claw his way out of his grave and stand looking rough with us in control again. It's the scarecrow avoiding stealth section again, once too many I feel.
Cells are filled with rocking mad batmen.
I hate these bits now, the load times are far too long after each misstep and being seen by scarecrow and what was startling and fresh the first time has just been overused.
There are some new timing elements and dropping lift shafts, using moving cover here.
Finally I get to the searchlight and now we have a boss battle with Scarecrow, three waves of skeleton thugs and larger bane type skeletons are to be fought before we get back to reality and find scarecrow jabbing us with his syringe fingers.
Batman fights him off and gets back to reality.
I get cryptographic power amplifer.
scarecrow runs and threatens to send his gas into Gotham We see him going down the lift towards Croc's lair in cut scene.
We have to fight some men, hack a box to open a door above the lift to get down the shaft further. More men to fight and then we are into the rooms before Croc's cell area.
We go through a door and into Croc's lair. Scarecrow is there, in a cut scene he threatens to contaminate the water supply of Gotham with his gas. Croc jumps out of the water and grabs Scarecrow and is about to bite his head off. Batman saves him by hitting Croc's stun collar with a batarang and activating it. I would have left the Scarecrow to die. Anyway they both vanish underwater.
We come to a section of tunnels with floating boards, Batman must negotiate them to get to the plant. Making too much noise on them brings croc up to eat you.
We have to get to the plants using the homing beacon from our scanner and when we get to it I find that we have to do it more than once. Croc comes at you from a few different directions and needs to be bataranged and avoided using the zip line gun.
We have to make it back out with a more persistant croc.
When we get near the end we have to run from croc as he destroys the boards behind us.
When we get to the tunnel the gate slams on us and croc is in the tunnel with us.
Shame what you have to do is obtuse and it makes you repeat the naff annoying running to camera bit after a load every time.
the tips box is talking about an explosive gel trap which I haven't laid.
Ah I see it now, there are three sprays of explosive gel on the floor at the gate. Detonating them as croc reaches them sends him through the floor into a shaft. Batman then escapes the lair.
Our new objective is to go to the batcave and make the antidote to titan.
I get sonic shock batarang.
The batcave isn't far away luckily.
In cut scene batman makes the anti titan formula, however it's hard work and he can't make a lot of it. Ivy's roots infiltrate the batcave and wreck it. Looks like that is all the formula he is going to get.
We get a new upgrade the ultra batclaw which allows us to blow up walls from a distance.
We make our way back through the caves. and find a new problem. Joker is polluting the water supply with titan. We now have to get to three pumping stations and disable them.
We have a tomb raider style puzzle to get up to the first pumping room.
The next pumping room is full of around 7 armed men.
Which is quite hard, the hardest so far as you have a small area and less darkness to hide in. You have to be really careful in isolating one guard and taking him out and getting away into vents afterwards.
The next pump room down the hall is much easier, only one armed guard and a knife and electric baton guy.
As we go back the way indicated out to the surface of the island we are trapped by force doors and the joker sends two titan henchmen and a elavator loads of normal thugs to attack in a small confined space.
We have to ascend an elevator shaft using the ultrabatclaw to pull out walls and make alcoves to climb up. Thenn cross the island which is full of ivy's plants which spit globes that home in on you. There a joker snipers in the towers as well.
Back inside the botanical gardens Ivy chat's and the place is full of her spore spitting plants.
I upgrade special combo throw.
We make our way through with little difficulty, fighting some guards that Ivy is mind controlling. There are joker men who have been eaten by Ivy's plants. When we get to Ivy she brings forth a huge plant beast and get inside it's mouth controlling it.
she has two attacks digging roots into the ground which then rise up and grab at you, or shooting the spores.
We have to dodge back and forth and batarang at the head of the creature.
Ivy appears at times and more damage can be done by hitting her.
When you get her energy down to nothing you spray explosive on her protective layer and blow it.
She comes back again with full heath and this time she sends controlled guards at you to run interference. Same again rinse and repeat. Taking her second wind down finishes her off.
I upgrade combo batarang.
We escape in cut scene from the crumbling gardens and find ourself out on the island Again.
The joker is setting off fireworks and asking you to come join his party for a surprise.
When we get there there are around 20 thugs waiting at the door.
When we get inside Joker appears on a tv set on top of a joker figure, you are expected to think that it isn't the Joker but he's actually just sitting there with a tv on his head. He blows the room and when Batman recovers Joker is gone. In the next room we have Joker sitting on a throne made of shop window dummies.
He sends two titan thugs at us and hoards of normal thugs. Three waves of thugs and the two titans later we get another cut scene. Joker brings Gordon in and tries to shoot him with titan to make him a monster and have Batman fight him. Batman jumps in the way of the shot and takes the hit. He starts to change but somehow manages to stop it from happening.
Joker shoots himself with titan. The scene changes to a news broadcast from a helicopter above Arkham. Joker rises from the rubble changed into a titan. He throws Batman into an arena. Batman uses the titan antidote on himself. Now we have to fight the titan powered Joker.
I get special combo takedown.
I get special combo boost.
This is another fight with thugs really. Joker comes down and give you some pounding but you basically have to avoid him.
He then goes up and sends in a wave of thugs Once they are defeated to bring him down with the ultra batarang and he gets stuck on the floor and you can pound him.
You do this three times and the joker is down.
A cut scene shows him attacking Batman who sprays explosive gel on his fist. The resulting punch knocks out Joker.
We see Gordon talking on the radio and telling someone that the asylum is under lockdown again and all super criminals are under lock and key.
The credits roll.
That seemed to take a long time wasn't counting very well for this game. Around 15 hours I would say.
545 achivement points for one playthrough on normal.