You did it. I did it. We played Batman: Arkham Asylum with detective mode on for the vast majority of the experience. It was handy. It allowed us to see through walls and scope out enemy positions. It let us track DNA and even highlighted ventilation ducts to play wolf inside. But our heavy use--which I suppose could be dubbed as "abuse"--of the device made one man feel a little sad on the inside, and it's even spurring a needed change in the game's follow-up.

At the Develop conference, Batman: Arkham Asylum's art director David Hego spoke about the usage of detective mode in the game (via GameSpot), jokingly saying that hearing about a person playing through the entire game with it on made him "want to cry a little bit."   

You did it. I did it. We played Batman: Arkham Asylum with detective mode on for the vast majority of the experience. It was handy. It allowed us to see through walls and scope out enemy positions. It let us track DNA and even highlighted ventilation ducts to play wolf inside. But our heavy use--which I suppose could be dubbed as "abuse"--of the device made one man feel a little sad on the inside, and it's even spurring a needed change in the game's follow-up.

At the Develop conference, Batman: Arkham Asylum's art director David Hego spoke about the usage of detective mode in the game (via GameSpot), jokingly saying that hearing about a person playing through the entire game with it on made him "want to cry a little bit."   

I liked detective mode but I can see why they're doing this.

While I understand why they're doing this and its ultimately a good decision, they should just tweak a few annoying things and add some logical extensions onto the core game such that it doesn't force you to play the game differently to how you did it first time round.

Sounds like a good idea. 

Good to know that they're aware of it. Arkham Asylum had this wonderful, dirty, gritty look to.

That will be a welcome change.  Arkham Asylum looked fantastic, but the Detective Mode was just too useful to turn off.  I trust that they'll find an acceptable middle ground.

You lie, Brad, sir. I did not do it. Still, good-they needed to improve on this.

I abuse the hell of this system.  Glad they are going fix it, cause the level designs were beautiful but never really got to enjoy it cause of detective mode. Bad ass game though non the less.

nooooooooo

" Sounds like a good idea.  "

I can really understand why they are doing this - I really like the look of the game but it was so much easier to play the game with the X-ray vision on that I would forget to turn it off.

I hope they spruce up the melee combat as well. I found it boring.

It's true, I spent most of that game with Detective Mode turned on and very few times did I get to appreciate the beauty of the game world design.
 
Although I blame that partly on the game focusing everything so heavily on Detective Mode. Hopefully a sequel manages to utilise it for key areas and moments only instead of requiring it almost all the time.

If it made the game more fun (it did) for the player then why change it for the sake of making sure everyone takes in the awesome art. I certainly came out of the game really enjoying all the great texture work and modeling. It didn't diminish anything. 
 
Seeing through walls constantly, and planning stuff out was one of the best parts of the game.

This is sad news. Less options is exactly the opposite of what i look for in sequels.

It did feel a little bit like it should have been a sort of final upgrade, maybe if in Arkham Asylum 2 Batman's Detective Mode can get damaged at the start of the game (not destroyed, it will till work but not as uberly as before) and then at the end of the game they can give it back to you so you feel all epic and unstoppable.

This is kind of a bummer. One of the parts I enjoyed about detective mode was not having to worry about it running out.

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The 4th Batman would be Splinter Cell night-vision/sonar inspired.

Sounds the way to go to me. No reason they couldn't have layered the effect onto the normal vision mode last time. 

Holy fuck. People spent the majority of the game playing in detective mode? The Arkham Asylum I played on the PC looked so good that I made sure to only use it when I really had to.

I had to force myself out of Detective mode sometimes.  It was useful enough that it was handier to always have on instead of keep flipping on and off.  But whenever I got into a new area, or didn't have a lot of fighting to do, I had to remember to look at the beautiful lighting and design that could only be seen through normal vision.

Good. Even on my second playthrough, I found myself always having detective mode on.

Good news.  I tried to turn it off whenever I could, but the mode was just far too useful.. It gave you an almost necessary edge in combat, and even when you knew there were no enemies around, it had to be used to find clues to progress the story or secrets.  There was literally no reason to have it off, besides appreciating the games art direction.  Very glad they're fixing this.

" This is sad news. Less options is exactly the opposite of what i look for in sequels. "

" This is kind of a bummer. One of the parts I enjoyed about detective mode was not having to worry about it running out. "

" This is sad news. Less options is exactly the opposite of what i look for in sequels. "

Fine by me. I only used it when necessary.

I barely used Detective mode, unless I was stuck for options that I could see in the normal graphics. That game was far too good looking to play the whole thing in detective mode.
 
The fact that it gave me headaches after a couple of minutes didn't help much either.

I think I had that on for near enough the entire game so I can see why it would be changed. The big problem for me though were that near enough all the other visors were useless besides for the one contextual setting for them. Pointless and gamey.

Love the people coming in saying "Huh, I never used it anyway". Like the guy saying "Yeah I love Twilight too" just to get the girl. 
I am two sided about this: 
- They could implement it so it's more streamlined and gives us the same enjoyment as before 
- They force you to not use it and therefore makes the game less enjoyable. 

Yeah I always struggled with detective mode. 

It worked so well and looked cool in and of itself, but I really found that I had to constantly force myself to turn it off to appreciate how incredible the game looked without it.

I abused it on my first playthrough for sure. My subsequent ones though I mostly just used it in predator areas and tried to make myself consciously use it less. Any streamlining they do to allow you to still get the benefits of detective mode without having to sacrifice the art design would be a welcome change.

I tried not to play with Detective Mode on too much, since I really loved the game's look. But it was too useful at times, so I abused it a bit (especially on my run around to 100% the Riddler stuff).
 
Good to hear that they're toning it down a bit, since hopefully it'll make the game more challenging. But what the hell does "augmented reality" mean?

Every time I play the game I tend to use it less and less.  Keeping it off does help the framerate, and I do love all the texture details. The most difficult thug rooms are fairly industrial looking, so in those cases I choose god-damn-badassery.  Gun toting hoodlums soaked in the fear of a vigilante that can see through walls and come from any direction... delicious.
 
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I think its a good thing actually.  I played the majority of the game with it on, and while it was awesome and useful, whenever I turned it off and relished in the beauty of the game, it made me regret having to turn it back on.  But damn, it helped a ton

I'm interested in how they'll alert you to enemies around the corners now.  X-ray very much simplified the game when it came to that aspect, and limiting it very much might give the sequel's enemies a monster closet feel.
Can you imagine doing an isolation-and-haunt section without x-ray mission? memorization wasn't necessary in BMAA.
Well, I think BMAA was good enough that I can give these guys the benefit of the doubt. Probably yelling enemies or something along the line.

I always felt that detective vision should have had a timer on it in the first game, or just been a pulse or something...it was too easy to just leave it on.

I like the idea of using it as an augmented reality. Where you might get highlights of someone around a corner in your vision, without blanking out the entire screen in blue and red.

Detective Mode was hell of handy, that's for sure, but basically for the reasons that made that man cry, I made myself leave it off most of the time, unless I was unsure if there were dudes nearby or I was especially confused as to what to do next.

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people played most of the game in that mode? the hell? i only did it when i really needed it, so its fine by me if they tone it down.

Not that it's in the same league as Batman, but Wolverine had the same issue.  Playing with Feral Senses on just made it easier (and gave an achievement).  Enemies were easier to see and secrets were vastly more visible.  And it made the game look way worse than Detective Vision did.  At least Detective Vision looked cool in its own way.
 
In both cases its a design failure.  Making the player pick between utility and art.  They should make it so you give some gameplay up to use DV.  Like you walk at 1/4 speed.  You'll still flip it on all the time to scope things out.  But you won't live in it. 

Personally,  I always found the combat a lot harder with the detective vision on.  IT seemed harder to tell when people were about to strike.

" Holy fuck. People spent the majority of the game playing in detective mode? The Arkham Asylum I played on the PC looked so good that I made sure to only use it when I really had to. "

I hear that in BatmanBatmanBatman, the entire game is played in Detective Mode, but you have an option to overlay Detective Mode Detective Mode over your Detective Mode.