So after all the excitable yelping coming out of last year's Quakecon, after that damnably exciting, damnably brief teaser trailer, we've now seen Doom 4 (or just plain Doom, as it's currently calling itself), by way of a couple of hefty E3 demos. And you know what? The Quakecon converts were right. The new Doom is incendiary.

Faster, harder, gorier, funnier, and altogether more brutal, Doom stands out from the swathe of its bullet-happy contemporaries with a fresh, unique, damnably satisfying-looking combat flow that nevertheless feels 100% authentically Doom. It also looks incredible, has a gloriously horrible sense of humour, and is bringing some seriously unexpected but very, very cool additions in its community-focused customisation tools. Click on, and we'll tell you all.

Shotguns. Super shotguns. Machine guns. Plasma rifles. Chainsaws. Chainsaws that carve up demons at a variety of interesting angles, often changing direction mid-hack in order maximise artistic expression. Rocket launchers. The goddamn BFG. Whatever weapon pops instinctively into your mind’s eye when you hear the word ‘Doom’, it’s in the new Doom. And when it fires, it fires like the end of days.

But there are a few new ones too. We’ve seen – in snatches – a new lightning rifle, and a couple of longer-ranged scoped weapons too. But don’t worry. Mid to close-range, rapid fire slaughter, with Doomguy sprinting through swathes of arterial spray, looks to be the order of the day, 100%. That’s because…

It’s fast, it’s ferocious, and it never, ever stops moving. From the industrial environs of Mars, to the wide, open-air killing fields of Hell, Doom’s combat is a whirling, ever-shifting carnival of weapon-changing, demon-mulching violence. On top of his expected speed (which sees him walking faster than some games let you sprint), Doomguy also has a neat new mantle move, which, alongside his double-jump, opens up a raft of verticality and on-the-fly strategic options.

You’ll never be hiding weakly behind cover, but you can duck behind a crate, climb swiftly over it, and then leap off to retaliate with a surprise shotgun burst as you hurtle through the air toward your previous attacker.

That’s how it looks right now. The combat is too fast and kinectic, and flows with too much momentum, to make static recovery any kind of an option. And the levels and multiplayer arenas we’ve seen are positively littered with health and armour pick-ups. Certain enemies will spew them out too, once you’ve burst said enemies satisfactorily all over the wall.

But that’s not to say Doom is too generous. In terms of game balance it looks more like a case of ‘keep moving, keep killing, keep healing, or die quickly’.

Taking the occasional hint from Doom 3’s more ‘realistic’ monsters, but swinging far closer to the early games’ more colourful, expressive take on biotech body-horror, the new Doom’s demons are a totally faithful, modern recreation of the same, line-up of enemies that have underpinned the series – and in fact FPS archytypes in general – for over 20 years.

Zombieman is in. Imps are in. Pinkie Demons are in (and returning as the chunky, bipedal melee-bastards we all know and love, rather than the wheel-assisted rhino-dog of Doom 3). Barons of Hell are back, as are Mancubi, Revenants, and Cacodemons, all fulfilling the same roles and behaviours they’re supposed to in Doom’s complex, quietly cerebral ecosystem. Oh, and there’s this really big demon guy too. He’s got a massive gun instead of an arm, so he’s cybernetic, as well as a demon. He’s… I don’t know, some kind of a Robodemon, I suppose you’d call him…

We’ve seen around 15 minutes of solid Doom gameplay so far. And you know what? Not a break in the action. Not a line of dialogue. Not a single pleading NPC or objective-dumping audio diary. Just Doomguy, a lot of monsters, and a lot of guns. All momentum, all the time, without a moment to look back at the trail of gore heaping up behind.

The one concession to ‘narrative’ we’ve seen comes when Doomguy fires up a data file and runs it through his mobile hologram drone, which projects a recording of previous events in the room he’s in, in a manner akin to Dark Souls’ phantoms of the fallen dead. The real-time, 3D playback shows a previous Marine dragged away by a Baron of Hell. Follow the unfortunate grunt’s final path, and you’ll find his body, and the soon-to-be-severed hand required to fire up a fingerprint lock. That’s it. No slowing of pace, no loss of control, and all information delivered in economical and gleefully brutal fashion. If Doom is going to have a story, that’s the way to deliver it.

File this one under ‘Don’t-you-dare-screw-with Doom’s-core-gameplay-Oh-actually-hang-on-yeah-let’s-have-that-new-bit-actually-because-oh-my-God-it’s-incredible’. While the new Doom looks entirely, spiritually authentic to the fast, furious, freewheeling open combat that Doom Just Is, the new melee execution mechanic is an incredibly exciting addition. It’s new, it’s fresh, it transforms things just enough to make Doom feel unique again, but crucially, it’s so well implemented that it feels like it was always there.

Do enough damage to an enemy without completely killing them, and they’ll start to glow. Get in close before they recover, and you can fire off a hilariously, triumphantly violent hand-to-hand takedown, the kind of thing that makes the earlier games’ Berserk power-up look like half a can of Redbull, watered down with camomile. Heads are twisted off. Jaws are wrenched away from heads. Entire limbs are snapped off and used to stove in any heads that may miraculously remain intact. And being delivered by Doomguy, these ‘little’ takedowns, however intricate, happen fast and furiously enough to never, ever slow down the pace of the combat. Seeing a theme here now?

This is no straightforward corridor shooter. Even the enclosed sections set in the, er, corridors of the Martian UAC base are wide, rangey, multi-levelled affairs, filled with a multitude of only semi-linear options and lines of attack at any given time. Yes, you’ll move loosely from A to B, as you always have in Doom, but when the fights break out in between, it’s going to be sandbox slaughter all the way. As it always is when Doom has been at its very best.

Beyond that, we’ve already seen some suitably twisty, turny, multi-layered level designs set in Hell, with a couple of Doom’s traditionally obtuse, explicitly teased, ‘hidden’ power-ups clearly on show.

Doom is going to have multiplayer. And it looks nuts. While the core mechanics of the campaign alone would have delivered the online game of ‘skill, fast, vertical movement, and awesome guns’ that Bethesda has promised, there’s much more than that going on here.

Domination and Clan Arena modes are joined by ‘90s classics like Freeze-Tag (a brilliant, off-kilter favourite from our Quake 3 days), and the claim of ‘very unique power-ups’ definitely seems to ring true. Grabbing a pentogram to transform into a flying, rocket-hurling Revenant, anyone? Yeah, thought so. Oh, and teleports are back, so we should probably take that to mean that telefrags are as well. Delicious.

Okay, it already looks brilliant, but this is the thing that pushes Doom over from ‘exciting’ to ‘potentially essential’. Doom has an immense history with the modding scene. Hell, the original game, and its easy-to-tweak file system, is pretty much responsible for modding being a thing in the first place. Only problem is that more recent id games, such as Doom 3 and Rage, lost the scope for all those customisable fun-times when they moved over to console. We know that Fallout 4 will have mod support on the Xbox One, by way of a natty deal between Bethesda and Microsoft, but Doom possibly has an even better solution, right across the board.

SnapMap is Doom’s in-built suite of level editing tools, and presents a dizzying number of things to build, modify, tweak, and model, all with a couple of clicks. Environmental layouts, hazards, enemy placements, game logic, event triggers… there are even a bunch of single and multi-player game mode presets, all of which can be adapted and reworked into any shape you see fit. See it as LittleBigPlanet, only in 3D, and pissing gore from every hole.

So far we only have a release window of Q1/Q2 2016, but that doesn’t mean things are going to go quiet any time soon. Quakecon at the end of July should throw up even more footage and details, and Bethesda always goes big for Gamescom in August. Expect more news throughout the summer, and probably something big around Hallowe’en. Because Hallowe’en. And Doom.

You could argue that it’s foolish for developers to put so much effort into creating things so few players will find, but trust us: in the following cases, it’s worth it. Even if you have to fight tooth and nail for a trinket that's - in the grand scheme of things - completely insignificant, something about seeing what others won't makes it all worthwhile. Here's the best of the best you overachievers will get, which will certainly leave you better off than those poor saps saddled with the .

After sampling these slides, you may be asking yourself: where are all the guns? Gaming has its fair share of unlockable, world-melting super weapons too, and we've collected all those in a separate feature, . Between these two features, you're sure to unlock the most potent weapons and abilities gaming has to offer - or blister your thumbs up real good trying.

Suggested by: Sliet

How to unlock it: The title 'Big Boss' isn't something that's handed out lightly in the Metal Gear universe - and this game is no exception. First, you need to finish MGS4 on any difficulty. This will unlock the 'Boss Extreme' difficulty mode, the toughest difficulty mode in the game. You then have to finish MGS4 again on this new difficulty mode, all while fulfilling several additional challenges. These include: finishing the game in less than 5 hours, no kills, no detection, and no using of health items. You basically have to know MGS4 better than your extended family, and have your entire route through it mapped out in advance.

The amazing things you get: Beating MGS4 under these grueling conditions earns you the 'Big Boss' emblem (along with several other lesser emblems). Between them, these accolades unlock several new weapons (The Patriot) and items (Stealth Camo), but by far the most interesting is the . This unusual facemask strikes fear into the hearts of all who gaze upon it. Most enemies will instantly cower and drop all their weapons when they see you approach; others simply faint. Snake laments looking like a demon in the MGS5 trailer, but this is a true demonic visage.

Suggested by: Horusalis

How to unlock it: Obtaining Final Fantasy 7's most powerful summon can be handled in a couple different ways, but each is a hair-ripping challenge. The summon itself is found on Round Island, a donut-shaped spit of land that's impossible to explore without a gold chocobo. Obtaining the gold chocobo is the tricky part, as you must either go through a long and exhaustive chocobo breeding process that's about as much fun as helping a horse give birth, or defeat Ruby Weapon (one of the game's optional super bosses) and exchange the item you receive for a feathered friend. Alternatively, Knights of the Round is also part of the Master Materia set, but you have to defeat a different (and more challenging) super boss to get that.

The amazing thing you get: To be fair, Knights of the Round is a Thirteen ornately armored knights roll up on whatever you're fighting and deliver a barrage of sword slashes, fireballs, and comet strikes. Of course, the coup d'etat is when King Arthur himself takes the field and delivers a screen-shattering final blow. And since damage for each of the 13 hits is calculated individually, this attack easily exceeds the 9999 damage limit of other summons. Safer-Sephiroth's universe-ending Super Nova has got nothing on these overpowered knights of the roundtable.

How to unlock it: Emeralds. You have to collect so many emeralds. First up are the eight classic Chaos Emeralds, which let you transform into Super Sonic. Once you have all those, you then need to collect eight more Super Emeralds to unlock Hyper Sonic. What all this means is that you'll be spending a lot of time in the . These sadistic dexterity challenges find Sonic running along a spherical arena collecting blue orbs while avoiding red ones. Oh sure, those stages start out nice and easy, but the longer you take, the faster it gets, until you're making split-second turns one after the other afraid to blinkbecause the screen ismoving sofastyoucan'tlookawaythesoundof collectingblueorbswill haunt yournightmares.

The amazing thing you get: In the right hands, Hyper Sonic can absolutely destroy Sonic the Hedgehog 3. He moves faster than Sonic (and Super Soinc), flashes between different colors, and has a mid-air dash that can destroy all enemies on the screen. But where things get really interesting is when you collect all eight Super Emeralds as Tails or Knuckles. Tails becomes Super Tails, who's joined by a trio of super-powered birds that automatically attack enemies; while Knuckles becomes Hyper Knuckles, who can clear the screen of foes by slamming into walls.

How to unlock it: Accessing Darksiders 2's most powerful armor set requires you to collect lots and lots of stuff. We're talking Banjo-Kazooie-levels of collectibles here, including (but not limited to) 40 tome pages, 30 relics, and 69 stonebites. Each one of these things is a tiny little item tucked away behind inconspicuous rocks or dark corners in the game's world. Basically, everywhere you'd never look. And a lot of them are in dungeons - dungeons you'll have to replay multiple times if you want to find everything. Darksiders 2 is a fun game, but having to redo the same dungeon multiple times while looking for the apocalyptic equivalent of a needle in a haystack is about as much fun as having to redo your taxes.

The amazing thing you get: Darksiders II does reward you handsomely for your troubles, transforming Death into something that should be on an '80s death metal album cover. Each piece of this set provides a massive boost to Death's core stats, save for one: resistance, your Achilles' heel. Perhaps the most controversial aspect are the two purple horns that are included free with the Abyssal Spaulders. I guess all the metal spikes and engraved demon faces didn't make the Pale Rider demonic enough, so what the hell, throw a pair of horns on top of him. Why not?

How to unlock it: No matter what difficulty you choose, Dead Space 2 is a harrowing, frightening journey. Necromorphs pop out of vents, demon babies swarm at you, and seemingly sane folk turn into alien zombies at the drop of a hat. However, at its most difficult setting--Hardcore--you’ll have to fight tougher, more resilient foes with fewer resources than ever. If you manage to survive that ordeal, however, you’ll be rewarded.

The amazing thing you get: A foam finger with powers akin to Unitology’s most powerful god (Did they have a god? We never could quite get a handle on that religion). Similar to the “We’re number one” props you can buy for three bucks at homecoming, but with the power to completely de-limb an enemy in a matter of milliseconds, the “Hand Cannon” is by far game’s best weapon. Plus, in lieu of projectiles and accompanying noises, the Hand Cannon’s psychic super-powers are accentuated by Isaac gruffly exclaiming “Pew! Pew!”

How to unlock it: For many, the toughest part of Square’s debut on the PlayStation platform was managing to remove the accompanying Final Fantasy VII demo disc from the tray. Once that was done, the fortunate fighting game fans looking for something new were treated to Tobal No. 1’s “Quest Mode,” where you progress through dungeons filled with enemies and randomized potions that can be used to power or poison yourself or your enemies. The first three dungeons (which unlock the final three enemies in arcade mode) run under 10 floors each and can be completed in under 15 minutes each. But the final dungeon is a beast, spanning 30 floors and taking over an hour to complete.

The amazing thing you get: If you manage to make it all down to the final level, you’ll unlock a cute little robot named Toriyama Robo, the android alter-ego of famed character artist Akira Toriyama (creator of Dragon Ball, and designer of Chrono Trigger and Tobal’s cast). Lose at any point during the preceding 29 levels, however, and you’ll have to start all over again. BRUTAL.

How to unlock it: If you’re the exploring type in Super Mario World, you’ll find a Star Exit in five of the game’s worlds in Dinosaur Land. Each of those leads to Star World levels that are slightly tougher than the standard stages, but they also introduce different-colored baby Yoshis. These adorable Yoshis have slightly different abilities compared to the garden-variety green dino: the blue one flies, the red one shoots fireballs regardless of what he eats. However, there’s even more after Star World. Beating those levels unlocks Special World, with hard-as-nails levels belied by surfer slang stage names like Tubular and Mondo.

The amazing thing you get: Special World’s insanity includes hellish situations like a level without platforms (that Mario must traverse by remaining in his balloon power-up form the entire time) and a stage that deviously mixes trampolines and Bullet Bill. But completing the run will literally transform Super Mario World. Besides giving the environments a brownish autumn hue, plenty of enemy sprites are drastically (and oddly) altered. How so? Pirahna plants turn into pumpkin heads, Bullet Bills turn into birds, and Koopa Troopas perform the ultimate mindfreak by wearing Mario and Luigi masks. We imagine that this mode is like seeing the world through Mario's eyes while he's tripping balls on peyote.

How to unlock it: There are dozens of masks to unlock in Link’s second Nintendo 64 adventure, and while some (like the one that turns you into a powerful Goron) are easily unlocked, there’s plenty of useless ones that are fairly difficult to acquire. If you can snag every mask in the core campaign--including the one you get for basically stalking a couple for three days straight instead of saving the world, and the one you have to wait to buy mere minutes before the moon crashes into Termina--you’ll earn a final mask that turns the game’s childlike Link into a god.

The amazing thing you get: Remember how fun it was to have the projectile sword attack in the original Legend of Zelda? Remember how disappointed you were when that effect wasn’t translated to 3D in Ocarina of Time? Well, besides turning Young Link into a character straight out of Dragon Ball Z, slipping on the Fierce Deity Mask allows our hero to shoot spectacularly devastating Sword Beams at enemies, overpowering any foe in the game with just a few strikes--even the final boss!

How to unlock it: Snagging an “A” rank at the end of a Resident Evil 2 campaign is no easy feat. In addition to finishing the story in under three hours with three saves or less, you can’t succumb to temptation and use first aid sprays or unlocked weapons that use infinite ammo. Granted, you’ll probably get good enough at the game to do this in the process of playing through the game six times, because you’ll need to do that to unlock the series’ weirdest character.

The amazing thing you get: After all that repetition, you’ll gladly welcome a change of pace, which is exactly what “The Tofu Survivor” provides. You see, in addition to Leon, Claire, and Hunk, a sentient block of bean curd was also witness to the horrors of Raccoon City’s zombie outbreak. Unlike all of the aforementioned human heroes, Tofu has no access to firearms, and must fend off the undead with nothing more than a knife. So your reward for surviving a difficult run through RE2 is an even more difficult run. But this time, you’re food!

How to unlock it: Throughout the course of Vandal Hearts, there are six keys hidden on select battlefields throughout the strategy RPG. Snagging each key is usually no easy feat; in a game where proper troop placement is vital, you’ll usually have to send a soldier out to a remote part of the map to investigate a slight crack in the ground (or in one case, send a flying-type troop to pluck a key out of a lava pool). Your reward for finding each of these? The Trials of Toroah, a series of stages meant to punish your troops with unfair conditions, like traversing a spiral-staircase pyramid as archers rain hell down on you, or a straight path through a gauntlet of the game’s toughest bosses. Your reward for THAT, however, is truly awesome.

The amazing thing you get: Completing the trials gives you the ability to promote the game’s protagonist, Ash, into a Vandalier, which is basically the debug mode of character classes. In addition to some sweet gold armor, Vanadlier-class Ash also has access to every single spell in the game, which includes a high-damage spell that can hit every opponent on the map. So basically, instant victory all the time. Cheap? Yes. But dammit, you earned it.

How to unlock it: After completing the initial run-through in the Wii’s sublime remake of Punch-Out, you’ll enter “Title Defense” mode, where every character--even gaming’s biggest loser, Glass Joe--is exponentially tougher to beat. If you can run through the entire roster a second time, you’ll unlock another new mode called “Last Stand” that mimics the retirement system of the NES original: lose three times, and your career's finished.

The amazing thing you get: If you can stay upright during Last Stand (or more realistically, reset the game before notching a defeat), at some point you’ll randomly encounter the game’s coolest new fighter, Donkey Kong (sorry, Disco Kid). Once you’ve traded blows with Nintendo’s famous gorilla, you’ll be able to pick him for an exhibition match at any time. All you had to do was put your entire game progress on the line!

As an infinitely wealthy martial artist looking down upon the denizens of his city, usually as he glides over them en route to his luxury tank, Batman isn’t really touched by the small indignities of living in Gotham. The rain-slick city, which recently beat out Chernobyl in a ranking of the world’s best places to live, is an ever-escalating battleground for Batman and the super-criminals always tugging at his cape for attention. In , the city is wider and in greater danger than ever before, demanding bigger and better solutions from Batman’s futuristic fanny pack. Who has time to sweat the small stuff?

Still, that doesn’t mean your quality of life, a truly alien concept within the borders of Gotham, needs to suffer in such a grand scale of things. The detail-oriented design of Arkham Knight means that keeping in mind a few tiny tricks will ultimately grant you the upper hand and an easier, smoother way to pummel the Scarecrow into a wheezing pile of creepy-straw. But, sure, having a giant tank also helps.

After you’ve been to the Gotham City Police Department for the first time, venture into the game options and set the Batmobile’s tank mode toggle to “on.” A tap of the right bumper or R1 will now switch Batman’s armor-plated city sled between drivin’ and blastin’ modes, making for a more sensible control scheme overall. The tank’s vulcan cannon goes on left trigger and its primary cannon goes on the right, just as the video game tank god intended.

Before this change, the Batmobile turns into a roving gun whenever you hold the left trigger - or whenever you want to brake in the Batmobile and mistakenly extend Batman’s cannon with embarrassing prematurity. Another bonus with toggle: The drift button is mapped to Square or X, making it far easier to handle tight corners in the Batmobile. Not that you should be too worried about threading through alleys: Batman’s car can withstand plenty of scrapes without losing speed, so don’t worry about garbage cans, benches, trees or any of the pointless attempts at obscuring Gotham’s terribleness.

You can take the shock gun, or “Remote Electrical Charge” in gadget parlance, as soon as you arrive at the Gotham City Police Department for the first time. It’s locked up in the evidence room, but it’s shielded only by a pathetic layer of glass, belongs to you in the first place and - oh yeah - YOU ARE BATMAN. Just take it.

As you leave the room you’ll overhear police officers consider and then quickly cancel the idea of stopping your impromptu removal of evidence. You can march out with confidence, knowing that you’ve gotten early dibs on one of the most useful gadgets in the game. It’s handy in solving a few of Riddler’s conundrums later on, but you’ll really want to fire it during combat (LT + Circle, or LT + B), where it will stun enemies, trigger their machine guns in undirected fire, and remove electrical shielding from the crooks you can’t normally punch.

The wonderful cadence in Arkham Knight’s combat has you flitting between numerous goons, delivering a biff here and a pow there. Some enemies are temporarily knocked down, leaving you free to deal with the others behind you, but your merciful restraint is costing you in the combo meter. If you have a chance, you can press RT + Circle (or RT + B) to lift up dazed opponents and thrust them back into the fight.

Why do we fall, minor henchman? So Batman can pick us up, pepper us with punches and extract that delicious combo juice. A well-timed pummelfest can help push you past the 8x multiplier quickly, which then lets you do an instant takedown of a tougher enemy nearby.

Brutes, the large and padded men populating every respectable supervillain’s menagerie of minions, can really trip up your flow. Usually, you need to stun them with your cape (you know, like how you were stunned and dazed as a child when you ran through sheets on the clothesline) and then punch them 15, 20 times while countering incoming blows from behind.

To speed up the process, try pushing or luring Brutes to environmental hazards, activated with Square + X, or X + A. They glow blue in unison with enemies that are in range, and they’re indiscriminate in who they knock out permanently - even a Brute at full health won’t get up after you knock them into an electrical box or drop one of Gotham’s many industrial lamps on them. The city planners must have gotten them with that bulk shipment of stone gargoyles.

The Arkham Knight’s propensity for erecting towers all over Gotham seems to hint at his true identity as a disgruntled Ubisoft game designer. His militarized towers don’t “reveal” anything other than an opportunity to punch optional dudes, though, so their difficulty tends to be higher than most challenges stemming from the main story. As such, they’re often guarded by emplaced sentry guns, which are huge pains in the bat-posterior.

You’ll come across a few of the Knight’s watchtowers early on, but don’t bother swooping through the red lights until you’ve obtained the Remote Hacking Device in the story. The wireless gidget lets you temporarily blind sentry guns, letting you tussle with tower guards without having to worry about getting shot. Even a fully upgraded batsuit can only shield you from bullets for so long, and the hassle without hacking just isn’t worth suffering through a lengthy loading screen.

It’s easy to forget the Batmobile’s other flourishes in the roar of its fiery exhaust. It’s a valuable puzzle-solving tool throughout the game, thanks to its sturdy winch and cable, but it can also help you deal with tougher gatherings of goons. Sometimes it’s best to think of it as another gadget in Batman’s arsenal.

If you’re about to descend on a batch of buffoons, take a look around and see if they’re near a road or a window. Chances are you can remotely summon the Batmobile and leave it parked nearby. Now, after building up your combo meter and spotting an outline of blue on your target, you can press A + X (or X + Square) to uppercut them into the air and marvel as your car blows them out of the sky like a crooked clay pigeon. This cool maneuver, like many others in the game, continue to show Batman’s questionable grasp of the words “non” and “lethal.”

If you intend on completing the majority of sidequests in Batman: Arkham Knight, there’ll be plenty of points later on to upgrade Batman’s suit, fists and gadgets. At the outset, it’s better to focus on beefing up the Batmobile’s cannons. The Arkham Knight has more drones than a militarized Amazon warehouse, and taking them out with fewer shots will help battles breeze by and just seem more fun.

Bruce Wayne’s friend and inventor Lucius Fox will also offer a choice of upgrades to the Batmobile as the story progresses. The most useful of these, which you should get as soon as possible, is the EMP, short for Electro-Magnetic Pulse and even shorter for “I’d like to destroy some drones while they’re immobile and defenseless, muahahaha.”

Because urban planners desperately wanted to add “drowning beneath a bridge” to the long list of horrible things you sign up for when you move to Gotham, the city is split between three major islands. You start on Bleake Island (seriously, why does anyone live here?), but from there you’ll venture into Magiani and Founder’s Islands as you track down the Scarecrow and his debilitating fear toxin.

Your video gaming impulse will be to clear out an island of sidequests as soon as you get to it - and before you move on - but you’ll run into a lot of dead ends this way, especially for tasks that require the Batmobile. To avoid wasting time, and to pursue sidequests organically, whenever, play the story missions until your beloved butler Alfred lowers the bridge to that island. Once that’s done, the Batmobile has access to the roads and can bail you out if you get in trouble with drones. It also gives Alfred something to do beyond listening to Batman batsplain every little thing he’s doing. YES, sir, of course you’re using the deep tissue scanner. I get it, it makes sense.

Batman’s predatory style is more refined than ever in Arkham Knight, thanks to the new Fear Multi-Takedown system. Provided you’ve taken enough foes out in silence - just enough to induce a little panic in the rest - you can instantly take out several clustered thugs back-to-back by popping out of a grate or dropping in from the roof.

You can only incapacitate three enemies at a time in the beginning, but bumping this number to 4 and 5 via Waynetech upgrades makes later story missions much easier, especially when the opposition is armed (plus: a sequence of fear takedowns is guaranteed to succeed unless you fail to point the camera at the next guy). This maneuver is especially powerful if you’re foiling Two-Face’s bank robberies across Gotham, which must be completed before his troops make off with all the cash. With vault alarms drowning out the sounds of gunfire and punching, quickness is better than silence.

Batman typically enters the scene from an elevated gargoyle perch, so you might as well use your bat’s eye view to cause some consternation. The Distruptor gadget returns in Arkham Knight with a wider variety of ways to induce malfunction in enemy weapons, so always consider using it before you swoop down and start flailing.

For instance, the Disruptor can disable enemy medics before you join the fight, thereby stopping them before they wake up thugs you’ve already knocked into next Tuesday. You can also set ammo crates to go haywire, giving you a KO’d enemy before they can bring a gun into the fight. In fact, if you booby-trap them and toss a batarang into the crowd from afar, they’ll panic and get themselves electrocuted before you’ve even touched the ground. Now that’s the classic Batman way.

Even if you love the Batmobile’s wrecking ball approach to fast travel, gliding is still the preferred method of travel through Gotham. Though you can often save time by driving through sewers and other secret passageways, going up and over the city is more fun, liberating and - get this - informative.

Batman: Arkham Knight’s storytelling tricks include the clever use of audio cues, some of which you simply won’t hear over the growling of the Batmobile’s engines. As you swoop through the city, you’ll hear signals of nearby sidequests, some of which won’t even be available on the mission menu yet. In between the light patter of rain you’ll hear a ghastly screech, wafting opera music and even the obnoxious beep of a roadside mine - all little distractions that lead to something more. If you’re playing Arkham Knight this way, you’re doing it right.

Looking for more help? We also have a complete .

Kickstarter has seen a resurgence lately, what with the mega-success of recent nostalgia-fueled projects like Yooka-Laylee, Bloodstained, and Shenmue 3. After a lull last year for big-name, video game Kickstarters, it seems like gamers in general are once again ready to part with their money in the hopes of bringing new experiences to life. Which is great! But there are a few things you ought to think about before throwing some of your hard-earned cash at a project.

Rather than hard-and-fast rules, think of these as points to ponder when you're considering a contribution. No two Kickstarters are identical, so it's always a case-by-case affair - but if you consider the following, you'll feel that much better when you do decide that a project is worth your support. You shouldn't be cynical, but sometimes it pays to be skeptical.

As a general rule, Kickstarters aren't always the wondrous community efforts that they appear to be at first glance. Tucked away in the FAQ for Yooka-Laylee is the fact that there was "a plan in place using personal finances to get the game done no matter what happens." Bloodstained was already 90% funded before it was revealed to the public; the primary purpose of the Kickstarter was to in Sony's case.

These standout spiritual successors are on a different scale than the low-budget projects that really do need every last dollar if they hope to exist. It's not that your money is going into the pockets of some big corporation behind the scenes, but many Kickstarters won't explicitly list out the specifics of how exactly your contributions help make the game possible.

Now, I've never been the producer on a video game, so I have no experience balancing cost charts and divvying up funding into a realistic budget. But common sense dictates that not all stretch goals - extra modes, more bosses, bigger levels, and so on - are entirely dependent on the money that exceeds the initial funding goal. While that may be true for features that require additional salaries, like voice acting or console ports, other stretch goals are just there to be an appealing carrot on a stick.

Take Bloodstained, where an extra $250,000 of funding unlocked such goals as a Speed Run and Boss Rush modes. There's no way in hell that implementing these modes costs that much; plenty of indie platformers that were made in their entirety for less than $250,000 have 'em. Rather, they're more like little objectives to help build up excitement and nudge would-be backers into chipping in for the greater good, like the thought of a corporate sponsor matching your contributions to a fundraiser.

Banjo-Kazooie holds a special place in many of our hearts, with cherished memories of collecting Jiggies, Musical Notes, Eggs, Mumbo Tokens, Feathers, and Extra Honeycomb Pieces while sitting in front of a colossal CRT television. Yooka-Laylee was engineered to tap into that nostalgia, given that that it's a game about two animal buddies teaming up, from a studio founded by ex-Rare developers. And while Yooka-Laylee's looking great so far, it's not going to replicate the experience you had as a kid.

That's because you probably played the original Banjo-Kazooie in 1998, and you're not a kid anymore. When we're young, each game feels like a substantial purchase, and we have all the time in the world to play and replay them. Nowadays, you're a grown-up with responsibilities, strapped for time and burdened by an ever-growing backlog. Of course you're going to experience this game differently. That doesn't mean Yooka-Laylee won't be fantastic in its own way, and could outshine your fondest Banjo memories. But short of establishing a psychic link with your younger self, that experience you remember is going to remain in the past.

If there was such a thing as an albino four-leaf clover, it still couldn't match the rarity of a Kickstarter that successfully meets its estimated delivery date. It's no one developer's fault, really; there will always be unforeseen hurdles that get in the way of making a game. But at this point, you should just ignore those projected timetables, because that development schedule is basically an optimistic delusion.

They're called estimates for a reason: unlike a big-name publisher putting out a AAA game behind schedule and squandering millions of marketing dollars in the process, there aren't as many repercussions for a Kickstarter missing its deadlines. Those creators would no doubt like to deliver their product to you in a timely fashion, but they're not under any contract to ensure that a game code pops up in your email by a certain date or they're fired. You already gave them your money; all you can really do now is wait.

I believe it was the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. who famously said "Mo' project funding, mo' potential to make unrealistic assumptions about the scope of your project." With a creative medium like video games, it's understandable that additional resources would make developers' minds race with possibilities for making their project grander than the one they had originally planned. But that temptation has consequences, because at some point, those ambitions need to be reined in to the realm of the financially realistic.

The Double Fine Adventure that eventually became Broken Age made over eight times the amount it was asking for, but still needed content shaved off to be completed two years behind schedule. Chris Robert's . Or you might get a situation like the Ouya, which blew past its $950,000 goal for a total of $8.5 million, delivered the product exactly as promised, and then collapsed when consumers suddenly realize they had backed something they never really wanted in the first place. More funding than expected doesn't sound bad on paper, but it can impact a project's progress in ways that are tricky to quantify, unlike money.

Yes, nostalgia is a potent and powerful sensation, but don't let it cloud your judgment. You have to keep the perspective that, no matter how much of your own savings you're putting into a Kickstarter, the most you're going to get back is a game (and sure, maybe some extra bits of swag and brief face-time with the developers). It can be a rush donating $100, or $1,000, or $10,000 and feel like you're driving a project to the finish line - but please, consider what your future self will think of that sum once you've beaten that game and moved on with your life.

That last contribution figure isn't uncommon, either. Consider on the eve of its final day. Toejam and Earl may be peerless in the funky fresh department, but they've never done anything that deserves 10 grand of one person's money. If you're paying sums that could cover months' worth of your rent to help make a video game you have no stake in, you're either paying more than you can reasonably afford, or you're being fiscally irresponsible. Probably both, actually.

Movies and TV shows often employ something called 'stunt casting', where a famous celebrity plays a smaller part in an attempt to add legitimacy and publicity to a project. Stunt casting can also apply to the development side of games; take Keiji Inafune's role as producer for .

When a Kickstarter makes a big deal out of an affiliated name, you might want to look for the fine print that describes their actual role on the team. The ill-fated vehicular combat shooter had famed sci-fi author Neal Stephenson as... something. Only he knows what.

There's never a guarantee that a Kickstarter will be successful, even if it gets funded in the allotted time. In most cases, 'success' can be measured simply by whether or not the project ever comes to fruition. are two examples of games that were never completed even after they took backers' money. Other times, the end result may be a disappointment; many of those who had high hopes for the Ouya or Planetary Annihilation felt burned by the finished product.

But ultimately, Kickstarter is not a conventional transaction, where you pay X amount and get Y possession guaranteed. Rather, you should back the projects that you want to see happen, without the expectation of getting anything in return - at least, not for a good long while. Think of those reward tiers as a time-capsule gift to yourself; a pleasant surprise two years from now after this Kickstarter feels like a distant memory. Otherwise, the wait for gratification will be agonizing.

Kickstarter has seen a resurgence lately, what with the mega-success of recent nostalgia-fueled projects like Yooka-Laylee, Bloodstained, and Shenmue 3. After a lull last year for big-name, video game Kickstarters, it seems like gamers in general are once again ready to part with their money in the hopes of bringing new experiences to life. Which is great! But there are a few things you ought to think about before throwing some of your hard-earned cash at a project.

Rather than hard-and-fast rules, think of these as points to ponder when you're considering a contribution. No two Kickstarters are identical, so it's always a case-by-case affair - but if you consider the following, you'll feel that much better when you do decide that a project is worth your support. You shouldn't be cynical, but sometimes it pays to be skeptical.

As a general rule, Kickstarters aren't always the wondrous community efforts that they appear to be at first glance. Tucked away in the FAQ for Yooka-Laylee is the fact that there was "a plan in place using personal finances to get the game done no matter what happens." Bloodstained was already 90% funded before it was revealed to the public; the primary purpose of the Kickstarter was to in Sony's case.

These standout spiritual successors are on a different scale than the low-budget projects that really do need every last dollar if they hope to exist. It's not that your money is going into the pockets of some big corporation behind the scenes, but many Kickstarters won't explicitly list out the specifics of how exactly your contributions help make the game possible.

Now, I've never been the producer on a video game, so I have no experience balancing cost charts and divvying up funding into a realistic budget. But common sense dictates that not all stretch goals - extra modes, more bosses, bigger levels, and so on - are entirely dependent on the money that exceeds the initial funding goal. While that may be true for features that require additional salaries, like voice acting or console ports, other stretch goals are just there to be an appealing carrot on a stick.

Take Bloodstained, where an extra $250,000 of funding unlocked such goals as a Speed Run and Boss Rush modes. There's no way in hell that implementing these modes costs that much; plenty of indie platformers that were made in their entirety for less than $250,000 have 'em. Rather, they're more like little objectives to help build up excitement and nudge would-be backers into chipping in for the greater good, like the thought of a corporate sponsor matching your contributions to a fundraiser.

Banjo-Kazooie holds a special place in many of our hearts, with cherished memories of collecting Jiggies, Musical Notes, Eggs, Mumbo Tokens, Feathers, and Extra Honeycomb Pieces while sitting in front of a colossal CRT television. Yooka-Laylee was engineered to tap into that nostalgia, given that that it's a game about two animal buddies teaming up, from a studio founded by ex-Rare developers. And while Yooka-Laylee's looking great so far, it's not going to replicate the experience you had as a kid.

That's because you probably played the original Banjo-Kazooie in 1998, and you're not a kid anymore. When we're young, each game feels like a substantial purchase, and we have all the time in the world to play and replay them. Nowadays, you're a grown-up with responsibilities, strapped for time and burdened by an ever-growing backlog. Of course you're going to experience this game differently. That doesn't mean Yooka-Laylee won't be fantastic in its own way, and could outshine your fondest Banjo memories. But short of establishing a psychic link with your younger self, that experience you remember is going to remain in the past.

If there was such a thing as an albino four-leaf clover, it still couldn't match the rarity of a Kickstarter that successfully meets its estimated delivery date. It's no one developer's fault, really; there will always be unforeseen hurdles that get in the way of making a game. But at this point, you should just ignore those projected timetables, because that development schedule is basically an optimistic delusion.

They're called estimates for a reason: unlike a big-name publisher putting out a AAA game behind schedule and squandering millions of marketing dollars in the process, there aren't as many repercussions for a Kickstarter missing its deadlines. Those creators would no doubt like to deliver their product to you in a timely fashion, but they're not under any contract to ensure that a game code pops up in your email by a certain date or they're fired. You already gave them your money; all you can really do now is wait.

I believe it was the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. who famously said "Mo' project funding, mo' potential to make unrealistic assumptions about the scope of your project." With a creative medium like video games, it's understandable that additional resources would make developers' minds race with possibilities for making their project grander than the one they had originally planned. But that temptation has consequences, because at some point, those ambitions need to be reined in to the realm of the financially realistic.

The Double Fine Adventure that eventually became Broken Age made over eight times the amount it was asking for, but still needed content shaved off to be completed two years behind schedule. Chris Robert's . Or you might get a situation like the Ouya, which blew past its $950,000 goal for a total of $8.5 million, delivered the product exactly as promised, and then collapsed when consumers suddenly realize they had backed something they never really wanted in the first place. More funding than expected doesn't sound bad on paper, but it can impact a project's progress in ways that are tricky to quantify, unlike money.

Yes, nostalgia is a potent and powerful sensation, but don't let it cloud your judgment. You have to keep the perspective that, no matter how much of your own savings you're putting into a Kickstarter, the most you're going to get back is a game (and sure, maybe some extra bits of swag and brief face-time with the developers). It can be a rush donating $100, or $1,000, or $10,000 and feel like you're driving a project to the finish line - but please, consider what your future self will think of that sum once you've beaten that game and moved on with your life.

That last contribution figure isn't uncommon, either. Consider on the eve of its final day. Toejam and Earl may be peerless in the funky fresh department, but they've never done anything that deserves 10 grand of one person's money. If you're paying sums that could cover months' worth of your rent to help make a video game you have no stake in, you're either paying more than you can reasonably afford, or you're being fiscally irresponsible. Probably both, actually.

Movies and TV shows often employ something called 'stunt casting', where a famous celebrity plays a smaller part in an attempt to add legitimacy and publicity to a project. Stunt casting can also apply to the development side of games; take Keiji Inafune's role as producer for .

When a Kickstarter makes a big deal out of an affiliated name, you might want to look for the fine print that describes their actual role on the team. The ill-fated vehicular combat shooter had famed sci-fi author Neal Stephenson as... something. Only he knows what.

There's never a guarantee that a Kickstarter will be successful, even if it gets funded in the allotted time. In most cases, 'success' can be measured simply by whether or not the project ever comes to fruition. are two examples of games that were never completed even after they took backers' money. Other times, the end result may be a disappointment; many of those who had high hopes for the Ouya or Planetary Annihilation felt burned by the finished product.

But ultimately, Kickstarter is not a conventional transaction, where you pay X amount and get Y possession guaranteed. Rather, you should back the projects that you want to see happen, without the expectation of getting anything in return - at least, not for a good long while. Think of those reward tiers as a time-capsule gift to yourself; a pleasant surprise two years from now after this Kickstarter feels like a distant memory. Otherwise, the wait for gratification will be agonizing.