do you have a few moves that you favor or frequently use? how do you prioritize enemies? (shield, knife, armor, baton) do you focus mainly on crowd control and counter a lot or are you very aggressive and are constantly dropping guys? i need help getting 3 medals on the later ones.

Crowd control is essential, that being said, a huge part of that is prioritising enemies. Armoured enemies, stun gun and shield enemies should be your top priority as they can kill your combo and have unblockable attacks. It helps if you have certain upgrades, like the destroy/disarm and bat swarm, the latter is great for buying time to plan out what you're going to do.

Are there any specific challenges that are you giving you trouble?

prison riot has been a pain for a while. can get around 27k doing what i normally do but i always end up putting up crap scores in wave 3 and 4 because my combo gets interrupted by some dude i could barely see or didn't see at all. I hate to blame camera but it seems like it's worse on this map than others. also have a hard time telling exactly when one of the shield dudes is about to lunge forward and mess up my combo.

I don't know if I have a strategy, but there are a few things that I tend to do a lot. I use takedowns immediately once their available, usually on a baton or a shield guy, since I find those to be the most problematic - some other guy will eventually pick up the weapon but it buys me some breathing room (it seems harder to select a thug than it was in Arkham Asylum, and Batman doesn't seem to lunge nearly as far as he used to, so sometimes I'll take down the wrong guy). I always use batarangs on thugs who have guns immediately, just to knock them down until I can work my way over to them and finish them off. At the start of a round, I try to fit in as many moves as possible even if they're not necessary to taking a target down, so I'll vault over a guy and hit another dude with a stun, throw batarangs, use the batclaw, etc., right away to get the bonuses for variation. If you're having trouble with getting hit by guys out of nowhere, maybe try using the dodge. Flipping over guys is a good way to get yourself out of a tight spot and reposition the camera for a better view, and I think you can do it once without dropping your combo - even if you don't flip over a guy, if you do a dodge roll you can still continue your combo and it can get you out of trouble, I used that a lot when I was up against a wall and things were getting dicey. I also abuse beatdowns a lot, if nobody is about to throw something/is packing a shield or a baton.

I don't bother much with ground takedowns, the bat swarm, disarm, or most of the gadgets. I stick to the basics and while some of the challenges could get pretty tough (later ones with Hammer Guy and Sickle Dude gave me some hell), I got all the medals for the combat challenges. It took some time, though, they seemed to be a lot tougher than the challenges in Arkham Asylum.

As far as getting points:

Use gadgets. The freeze grenade is very useful for priority targets like guys with batons or shields. Grapple hook is a good temporary fix for weapons, but the disarm/destroy is great too. Using gadgets also boosts your score a good amount. You can just use them early on in the combo with the quick attack buttons and go like batarang-zap gun-grapple hook.

Use all your different abilities for variety bonuses. Find guys to disarm, armored guys to takedown, use the bats when you're surrounded, and when you're on a roll in freeflow mode use the A+B ability to finish off all the guys knocked down.

Of course ultimately the key is to not get hit. It helps to dodge and jump over guys so that you're not always surrounded, avoiding attacks from an unseen angle. A-A over priority targets and get behind/around them or use a gadget on them until you have a high enough combo to deal with them.

My biggest problem was always the huge guys that can just charge through mobs and can't be countered or the semi-huge guys with the hammer or sickle. Actually you can use freeze grenades to take the one armed guys completely out of the picture for a while or use the zap gun thing to make them go nuts and hit any thugs around them.

lots of good tips, thx fellas. i've defintely neglected dodge moves, except to jump over shield and baton dudes, and totally negelected batarangs and freeze grenades. Down with the batclaw though, just because it feels good to disarm a guy, clothesline, and then crack him in the face.