From my Blog:

I recently played through the entirety of the new Batman game and am in the process of 100%’ing it. The game is really interesting with superb gameplay, but I acknowledge it has some minor issues going on that prevent it from being superior to City; I’d say it’s arguably on par with Asylum overall (maybe a little bit better, as someone with a gameplay slant). Of course in Asylum you can get perfect variety in almost every fight in the game which is fun and it’s virtually impossible to get perfect variety (around 30 different moves) in Arkham Knight with a finite number of enemies; but I still find it fun to try.

The first major “dungeon” of the game, Ace Chemicals, is utterly fantastic and makes surprisingly good use of the Batmobile, combat, and predator rooms and even has some pretty intense drama at the end of it. The problem is the somewhat non-linear aspect and feel of that dungeon is only duplicated at one other point in the main game; the rest of the game is just a series of short diversions in various different areas. You might consider the usage of the batmobile nonsensical but it does work on a gameplay/puzzle front and that’s ultimately what matters; the main underlying Joker theme is pretty damn nonsensical and that’s probably the best part of the story.

Speaking of the Batmobile at first it feels rather awkward and forced, but over time it sort of grows on you and the game throws some very difficult fights at you assuming limited upgrades (we’ll get to that in a bit) which are really interesting and entertaining. The issue is that early game fights are very bland and straightforward; the game doesn’t ramp up on the tank front until the final few tank battles the game has to offer. Fortunately those specific fights are excellent and you can really see the potential of the Battank. The major tank boss fight in the game is great, though the major regular ass batmobile “fight” is pretty terrible (again without upgrades, probably not that bad otherwise); that isn’t because of the batmobile though just the boss fight itself is badly designed. I immediately started playing through the game again a second time and the batmobile’s awkwardness had almost totally faded away and it was quite fun to use, so I think it’s just a substantial learning curve plus some rather tedious usage of it in the game that turned people off.

The upgrade system in this game is extremely robust, however in the process of simply beating the main story and doing one major sidequest I was only able to unlock less than 10% of the abilities available. I forgot to upload a screenshot of it (playing at my brother’s house), but there’s a whole huge ability tree for everything imaginable and most of them have some relatively expensive parts to them. To give you an idea there’s a tree that has close to 20 different nodes that are all exclusively related to gadgets and that's just one out of six trees in the game. Essentially you have to do a whole lot of the expansive different sidequests just to even get a mildly upgraded Batman in the end. Ultimately this actually makes the game reasonably difficult in a non 100% run which is certainly different than previous Rocksteady Arkham games.

Edit: Here's that image:

The 100% process is actually not overly painful this time around, and this is the main thing this game has over Arkham City; there’s not quite as much Riddler Diarrhea to go around and the rest of the sidequests are generally more interesting than their Arkham City counterparts (and of course the main game is substantially less interesting aside from a few elements). Brad was fascinated by the Super Grapnel in the Quick Look but there’s actually 2 more upgrades to the Grapnel Boost beyond that so you have the Super Mega Ultra Grapnel Boost (5 X button presses then hold) by the end which makes flying around the city incredibly fast, this allows you to make traversal in a fairly large environment substantially less painful. Though the area covered is ostensibly 5 times larger than Arkham City it certainly never feels like it just due to the sheer speed of your character (also there’s not a big fuck-off wall in the middle).

A major change from previous Arkham games that also aids in relieving some of the 100% stress is there’s very few traditional “challenge rooms” in the game, instead you have several different kinds of challenges integrated into the world with a really cool leaderboard system. A personal favorite of mine is the one where you have an infinite supply of enemies and the objective is simple: don’t get hit. The sheer limitless skill opportunity this provides is kind of mind boggling to comprehend but I gave it a good try with no upgrades near the beginning of the game (having no idea what half the enemies were naturally). However even the dreaded Batmobile Challenge Rooms got pretty fun near the end of the game and the one that I thought was underwhelming was fun to do after having learned how to play with the vehicle. As someone with a specific fondness for the old challenge rooms I still welcome the change and especially the more compelling leaderboards for each of these, it really does make me want to go back and perfect each of them.

Overall I feel like Arkham Knight is an outstanding game, the problem is the year that it came out. If Arkham Knight came out last year it would be a strong game of the year contender, but since it came out this year alongside Bloodborne, The Witcher 3, Mortal Kombat X, Helldivers, and of course Rocket League; with Metal Gear Solid V, Fallout 4, and Just Cause 3 still on the way it was really hard to stand out. The game’s handful of disappointing moments and generally hamfisted plot (complete with overly obvious “The Dark Knight” references) combined to lessen its impact. However I still whole heartily recommend the game.

Aside: After playing Arkham Knight I even said to myself “hey this game is totally better than Shadow of Mordor and that was easily the best game last year.” But the thing is I went and played some Mordor just to test out this theory and uh… yeah Mordor’s better. I don’t think it has better combat or even better exploration but there’s something about the specific feel and tension of the game that Batman just doesn’t have. When I booted up Mordor I checked out my handy dandy ubiquitous 100% save file and to my surprise all of my abilities were *poof* gone and I could run around the world with a completely basic character. Whereas in Batman this is mildly frustrating because you really just want to be a little OP as Batman, in Mordor you become too overpowered too quickly so being decidedly underpowered (while still being a fully capable murder machine) is actually very compelling.

This led to me trying out the “Test of Defiance,” a relatively easy challenge with a fully upgraded character that takes about 35-40 minutes. However, with a baseline character it took me over 2.5 hours and I had lots of really close calls and a lot of usage of uncommon tactics that were nigh useless in the regular game. With zero upgrades in Mordor you have no access to Branding, Combat Finishers, Mounts, Fast Travel, Explosions, Teleporting, and various other things; but to my surprise the game is still fully functional and almost every captain variant in the game is killable in that state (though you’re very fragile so extended combat is infeasible in most situations). The test furthers the complication by making it so you can’t drain enemies for health or arrows, which maximized the necessity of learning and knowing the environment to find herbs and fixed arrow locations. All of this combined to make for a wonderful experience and I can’t help but thank Monolith for unnecessarily patching the Game of the Year edition in and fucking up old save files; good job, it made the game more fun somehow.

Double Back Aside: Here's a pretty rad Predator Room in Arkham Knight, these are just as fun as ever, except the game throws a lot more enemies and new mechanics at you than the previous games which makes for an interesting time:

I definitely put this in the Arkham Knight forum but apparently it didn't agree.

Arkham Knight goes deep in terms of references. Right now, Arkham Knight is my game of the year with the The Witcher being a close second. I don't agree with Mordor being better than Arkham Knight, but I'm in the minority in thinking Mordor is just an OK game. The story and atmosphere in Arkham Knight are so good along with the patented combat. There was only one specific part where the batmobile got on my nerves (When the Arkham Knight brings out the giant machine and chases you) . Another disappointment is how they telegraph Arkham Knight's identity so early. Other than those it is a fantastic game. I think it is probably the best game I've played on Xbox one.

I'm gonna be that guy that ignores your entire post the second you implied City being better than Asylum. :3

@sunstalker_solaire: Curse you, 4 posts guy! *shakes fist*

I enjoyed Arkham Knight a lot but it didn't completely blow me away. I didn't like the batmobile that much even when I got used to how it controlled. The batmobile just felt shoehorned in spots like with the awkward traversal sequences and the underground boss fight was annoying. The side content was weak and repetitive and the story was predictable but had its interesting moments. I wasn't a fan of the cop-out shit they pulled when they explained away Oracle not being dead. I wasn't that fond of the overuse of Joker but stopped hating it when it was better integrated into the story even though it continues to highlight how heavy the games have leaned on using the Joker as a crutch instead of having a story that can stand on its own without Joker taking the spotlight all the damn time. They could have pulled back a bit on the amount of times he pops up. Oh and the Arkham Knight reveal was a let-down and the story immediately gives him the shaft. At least the game looks pretty fucking good though.

Yeah I would rank the games from best to weakest like this: Asylum, Knight, and City because I felt like Knight at least made the open-world more meaningful than City

I'm gonna be that guy that says Shadow of Mordor is really trite and derivative and have no idea how people put such high praise on it.

Arkham Knight is a really, really well made game with terrible pacing problems and too much repetition. Some parts just clobber you over the head with tutorial-esque tasks like Ace Chemicals teaching you the basics of the Batmobile or the blimp levels teaching you how to use the decrypter. Other parts of the game do nothing to impart any basic knowledge about how some things handle - like I get that it's the 4th game in a row but some basic combat refresher would be nice. Also I don't know why but while I never had a hard time coming to grips with the severely overcrowded control scheme in past entries, I constantly had moments of doubt during Arkham Knight as to what button I need to press to drop down instead of glide and things of such nature. The way they double and then triple overmap each button becomes a real headache after a while.

The boss fights as usual were underwhelming, but I consider that a series staple by this point. The side activities had potential that was completely thwarted when you realize every step is just a carbon copy of the previous one until you hit the 100% mark. There isn't even a scrap of narrative justification as to why Batman decides to break Firefly's backpack only on the 4th time you beat him down on the ground. The combat encounters have too many variables now for the system they originally came up with. When most thugs were just thugs, you could forgive Batman for not hitting exactly the right guy you wanted from time to time. When you're in a room with a dozen guys and half of them will not only break your combo but hurt you if you perform a regular strike on them then things start to get messy when the execution isn't spot on. This bleeds over into the predator challenges as well, with goons being extra alert to the point where floor grates almost becomes pointless as you continuously get spotted in them.

There were other things but honestly it's mostly nitpicking. The Batmobile was fine for the most part. The Riddler was as poorly implemented as he had been since City. Overall this is a series that never needed to become a huge open world game. Asylum presented a perfect semi-open playground for Batman that sadly Rocksteady didn't re-create in their future installments. I won't even get into the ridiculousness of Batman needing some mechanized Iron Man suit to take down 3 thugs in a room instead of relying on his signature intelligence. It was a fine game that I had fun with, but everything I didn't like about City was multiplied tenfold in Arkham Knight. Also for a big series conclusion the ending was both weak and disappointing.

Yeah...going to have to disagree on that one amigo.

The excavator boss fight is certainly a front-runner for worst gameplay sequence of 2015, as was the "fight literally FIFTY of the same tanks you've been dealing with the entire game at once" section.

I keep going back to AK and asking myself just what happened to Rocksteady between their last game and this. It's a step back in nearly every department (minus visual presentation of course).

Hmmmm, Arkham Knight just relied too much on the Batmobile (which I think was fun, just over-used), was a little too repetitive and uninspired in it's sidequests, and has not one traditional boss fight. That's what I think was wrong with it. I has some great moments, and when it's firing on all cylinders, it's the best Arkham game. But those cylinders just don't fire enough.

I played Shadow of Mordor and Arkham Knight back to back, I'd put them on pretty equal footing. Solid 8's out of 10 (give or take half a point).

I certainly think that Arkham Knight is an amazing game. I've had a great time playing it and I hope to complete it soon. Mordor is a much better game however. Mordor has the nemesis system which hasn't even been touched by any other game. I truly confused as to why. The next generation of gaming isn't about pretty textures or bigger worlds. It's about improved A.I. that responds to what you do in the world. Currently my Games of the Year are Batman and Witcher but not for the same reasons that I completely and utterly love Mordor. I would have truly loved to see some other franchises take advantage of a similar system in their games.

Especially old franchises that could really use some help like Assassin's Creed or in a crazy move something like Call of Duty.

@colourful_hippie: Hey at least they're self aware about the dumb plot elements. I think it was just a "we killed Ivy so now we can get away with letting Oracle live" move, which is obviously silly.

@humanity said:

I don't get it either, but then again I don't feel anything for Lord of the Rings. I understand and appreciate its place in the canon of great fantasy fiction, but I don't personally feel invested at all in any of it. Shadow of Mordor was fun as a Batman romp, but all of the mechanics it does well (thinking specifically of the Nemesis system) is stuff I wish could be applied to a more interesting setting. Narratively it's pretty meh. Mechanically it's a mix between AssCreed and Batman, but Batman is pretty great at being Batman already, so what is there to get excited about? In my mind so many people going tits over ass for Shadow of Mordor did nothing but underscore just how bad a year 2014 was for video games in the AAA space.

Arkham Knight on the other hand isn't without its flaws. I personally loved the Batmobile. I saw that beautiful beast in Asylum and salivated at the chance to drive it, tearing up pavement around Gotham City. My disappointment with the vehicle is more to do with how over-used it is Arkham Knight. Car combat hasn't been all that fun since Twisted Metal. There's a reason the genre disappeared like a wet fart, leaving behind the skid marks of bad games dedicated to bringing it back. The lack of boss battles was disappointing as well. I never had an issue with the boss fights in Asylum or City, since they all pretty much boiled down to "have epic 1v1 fight with an awesome villain." I like those.

And I'll agree that something was lost in translation when Rocksteady went from Batvania in Arkham Asylum to full-blown open world. They made it work, and it worked great, but the fun of Asylum was in the 50-50 mix between freeflow combat and predator rooms. Arkham Knight doesn't have predator rooms. I miss predator rooms. Yet I'd still say Arkham Knight is a damn good game. Not the best game of the year, that honour belongs to Witcher 3 for the foreseeable future, but it's definitely earned a spot on the top 10, and I find it easy to recommend to anyone who enjoys Batman.

I've only played the first two and a bit or origins but DAMN is it me or the dialogue in that first video he posted Fucking terrible!! I don't remember it being that bad in the other games

I thought the final quarter or so of the game was the weakest point, honestly. They leaned heavily on the Batmobile at first and then weened off of it, only to start jerking it off for the last handful of boss fights. Car stealth is not what the new Batman game needed. It becomes especially stupid when these ultra-tanks that the Arkham Knight has are totally oblivious to your location as you're plowing through cement walls and lampposts just mere meters away. To have two fights with the Knight be Batmobile fights and then end Deathstroke's arc with the exact same Batmobile fight just felt lazy as all hell. It's a shame, too, because the last chunk of the game is when the story really starts firing off in a really interesting way.

@sepulturafanboy89 said:

The first two games featured Paul Dini. The writing half of the Bruce Timm/Paul Dini combo that made Batman: TAS what it is. I don't know if Dini didn't want to write for Arkham Knight or if he just wasn't asked back, but the game did suffer without his involvement.

Updated the OP with this image:

So yeah you could spend 37 points on the Disruptor if you wanted, you know the Disruptor; that thing people use every once in a blue moon that's kind of OP to begin with.

Something tells me you played this on a console, otherwise you've got some magic going on that stops the game from being a broken pile of garbage.

@oldirtybearon: Arkham City definitely has like 25 Predator Rooms. It has a lot more predator rooms than the previous 2 Rocksteady games actually, to make up for only a few challenge rooms. Unless you don't consider a big area with grates/explosive walls/slow moving enemies with guns a predator room.

@fredchuckdave: If you're going off of a checklist then sure, Arkham Knight has predator rooms. I guess I don't consider them as such because there's no penalty for fucking up stealth. They also removed a bunch of takedown animations which worked to terrorize the enemies. All in all Arkham Knight doesn't really reward careful, stealthy play the way Asylum and City did.

@oldirtybearon: As always with predator rooms you can play it however you want, the new multi takedown mechanic means they could put in 12 guys and new predator enemy types/drones and so on to make it more difficult. Since it is predator it's just not going to be very difficult to begin with; aside from Catwoman's Arkham City maps these are always just fairly rudimentary puzzles to solve. They're fun to play of course but the point is to be stylish and fast in your approach and the game certainly allows for that (you can always go for the old all silent takedown method as well). As far as I know there are hell of a lot more ways (21 according to the trophy) to take down enemies in Arkham Knight relative to the other games.

The only exception to the above is the two Robin Predator rooms which are ridiculously easy, if you want to complain about those have at it (though you can still do them different ways and choose not to use the broken stuff).

@fredchuckdave: I'm not complaining. I'm stating that the predator rooms in Arkham Knight are not as good as the ones in Asylum or City. Playing those on Hard (or Knightmare, in Knight) were a real challenge and a ton of fun. Arkham Knight just doesn't scratch the same itch because even on the hardest difficulty, you can survive a mob of gun-toting mercs rather easily. Come to think of it, that's a problem Arkham Knight in general has. Both in Asylum and City playing on the hardest difficulty challenged the player to use everything at their disposal. It forces you to really think about the encounter (freeflow or predator) and plan ahead in certain instances.

Arkham Knight on the other hand you can be a spaz and get through most of the game okay. I find that disappointing, no matter how well made the rest of the game is. And it is a well made game.

@oldirtybearon: Again aside from Catwoman all of the predator rooms are easy on every difficulty including challenge rooms in the previous 2 arkham games. As far as regular combat Arkham Knight can be quite difficult but you do get more options and there is the infinite combo challenge if you really want to do something difficult. As with the other games (and Mordor) just spamming dodge trivializes everything, if you want to counter everything and be stylish about it that's reasonably difficult in each game (okay, not Asylum), and in Knight you have more things to keep track of as far as countering goes, actually quite a bit more as it turns out.

Since the "real" challenge in these game has always been perfect variety (which is downright trivial in Asylum) Knight wins that really easily just by nature of having more things to keep track of. Note I don't mean the trophy (which is x15 instead) as that's only about half of the moves in the game.

I agree that the predator rooms aren't as good. They just aren't. But I disagree on the "spaz" comment. I found the general combat to be much more challenging in AK, especially later in the game when the enemy variety got jumped up. It really forced me to start using all of my tools to win fights, otherwise I would get completely owned everytime.

Thanks for writing this up, it was a fun read! I definitely don't agree that Arkham Knight was better than Arkham Asylum. I don't even think Arkham Knight is a great game. I think it's ok, but it presents a very poor showing in almost every aspect. The main aspect of gameplay that saves it from being a complete letdown is the traversal and the atmospheric detail. Everything from the voice actors to the city to the little sound cues is expertly done. As far as playing it and watching it, it doesn't add very much to Bruce/Batman and the gameplay is about a half-step up from City.

As far mordor, I really enjoyed mordor but it was the nemesis system that elevated it to being great. The gameplay is familiar, but with that uruk-hunting system in place, I ended up assassinating countless hours of the day away. It was a blast. If Batman presented something new (besides the emphasis on driving and tanking in every sidequest), then maybe I'd have a better outlook on it.

The story and characters were used so modestly that it was very difficult to care albeit in a couple spots. Any surprises the game tried to throw at me were way too telegraphed to evoke any sort of emotion out of me. Anyways, the main good takeaways from the game were the combat, the combat, and the combat. Batman's combat still feels the best of any game that plays like it. It just hasn't been beat.

#

@fredchuckdave said:

Updated the OP with this image:

yeah you could spend 37 points on the Disruptor if you wanted, you know the Disruptor; that thing people use every once in a blue moon that's kind of OP to begin with.

Haha, "once in a blue moon" in the other games... sure. I couldn't get enough of the Disruptor in this one. Two medics in the room? Sabotage their packs and then take out a random goon. They'll electrocute themselves one after the other trying to help him. Shoot a weapon crate, and then use the voice pattern thing to tell someone to open a crate. One less goon. I actually used it to cheese one sequence by shooting my disrupter at two tanks. With the 8 point upgrade in the upper right corner, they explode afterwards if they try to fire at you. I literally stood in the open, watched them try to open fire, and then stared in awe as the tank explosions took out all the goons at the checkpoint. Didn't have to lift a single gauntlet. It was marvelously lazy.

As to your blog, I'm glad you liked Arkham Knight. I like it more in retrospect than when I was actually playing it, during which time I became very aware that this was my least favorite Arkham game of the four (yes, Rocksteady... the four. I'm counting Origins!). I'm not going to say that it isn't a beautiful game, and it was notably steady on the PS4 even at launch. Kudos to that. The combat system is still great, and the stealth system holds up as well. There are a lot of gadgets, but they're all useful in their own ways and offer a hell of a lot of variety to the proceedings. Oh, and Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill coming back for this last shindig was a blast.

Yet, I still didn't like this one while playing it. The writing was very sup-bar compared to the previous two, and bits like the final banter between Catwoman and Batman were awful (Bruce is a total ^&&^ing prick). Paul Dini and Bruce Timm know how to write a brooding, menacing Batman who you still really like. I never got the impression from the previous games or animated series that Batman had severe intimacy issues and an undiagnosed case of Asperger Syndrome, but oh well. The story isn't much better, and it really seems to lack focus. It leaps from Scarecrow to Arkham Knight to Joker issues to... Batman having to do side activities to pass the time while someone hacks or decodes something.

What story is being told here, anyway? Is it one about fending off a vengeful Scarecrow? If so, then a predominantly linear game like Arkham Asylum would have been better. We could have HAD civilians about to up the stakes while also cramming in some trippy hallucination sequences and character building. Is it one about defeating the Arkham Knight? He's a one-note character who very quickly reveals his secret identity to anyone with a smidgen of Batman lore knowledge (i.e., the audience of this game). The majority of his angst is expressed by forcing us to tackle repetitive road checkpoints, repetitive watchtowers, repetitive vehicle chase sequences, repetitive tank battles, repetitive explosive defusing tank battles, repetitive stealth tank battles, and awful boss tank battles. In other words, he utterly sucks. He's a lord of tedium and whining (pot calling the kettle black on that last one, but eh. I have no shame. :-P ). Is it about Batman coping with the Joker's last bit of posthumous villainy? We've had the Joker three games in a row now. I'm not saying the mine is tapped out, because more Mark Hamill is never a bad thing. However, we could probably give the vein a rest for a bit. There are other villains in the rogue gallery who can headline, Rocksteady.

I would have been more disappointed in the plot and dialogue if not for the game's pacing, which was far worse and received the lion's share of my animosity. The Arkham franchise has always relied on two core mechanics: fightin' and stealthin'. You grapple up a ledge, crawl through a grate, and now you're fighting. You glide away from where you fought, and now you're stealth pummeling. Now you're slowly walking through a hallway with two fingers up to one of your pointy cowl-ear's, listening intently to some very well written Dini/Timm exposition dump, when all of a sudden... new fight sequence. Rinse and repeat for 10 to 15 hours. It works, but it's something people are used to. If you don't mix it up, you're going to get reviews chastising you for not evolving the franchise.

So, we got the batmobile forced on us over and over as the new "third pillar" of the gameplay. Frankly, it drove me nuts. Way too many sidequests relied on it, especially the ones related to the Arkham Knight's militia (see rant above). Meanwhile, it completely broke the flow of the main campaign for me. Every time that I started to get into the game and really enjoy myself, I'd find myself back in that freaking batmobile doing something asinine. It was as if Rocksteady was afraid that I'd get bored if I did the two things I wanted to do (fightin' and stealthin') for longer than fifteen minutes without having a diverting batmobile break. :-/

It got especially egregious about halfway through the main quest, where they found every possible way to foist that F'ing vehicle on you. First you have to drive Ivy to her plant buddy, fighting identical drone tanks on the way. Then you get a fun Batman stealth sequence around a missile launcher, which is immediately followed by a tedious bat tank stealth battle because why not? One brief fisticuff sequence later and you're driving to Wayne Tower to fight MORE identical drone tanks before you get a sonar device that lets you drive around finding plant roots. Afterwards, you get to... fight another 50 tank wave to defend Poison Ivy. Lest you think you're done though, a batch of super-tanks come out that lead into ANOTHER bat tank stealth sequence (because the first one was SO fun). If you survive this, you get... a legitimately well-done and fun romp through a Joker-themed movie studio that makes you realize what this game could have been if Rocksteady hadn't gone for "bigger is better" on the open world thing. It's a blast, followed by a decent stealth sequence back on the airship. Just when things are looking up though, you get an inordinately long bat tank section in a subway, a bat tank battle on Founders' Island, a bat tank stealth battle on Bleake island, and a bat tank boss battle that incidentally happens immediately after the bat tank stealth battle. If you enjoy the Arkham Militia's headquarters sequence that follows all such said drudgery, get ready for the Excavator battle right after it because ugh. Then you get three predator room challenges in a row before another tank battle to defend Barbara from a legion of clone drones, a giant 60 tank battle at the GCPD, a bout of fisticuffs on a rooftop to break up the monotony, and then the end sequence where they somehow find a way to work in a nightmare version of the bat tank because why not? It's aggravating as heck. Yeah, the batmobile controls well and feels powerful. Yeah, the bat tank's feels like a futuristic hover-tank and is technically sound. However, there's just way too much of the batmobile/bat-tank in this game. It eclipses what people actually bought this game for: fightin' and stealthin'.

This was my least favorite of the Arkham games. Arkham Origins had a better story and better pacing, and while not an Arkham game... Shadow of Mordor was a perfect fusion of Arkham combat with Assassin Creed traversal and the Nemesis system added a lot of random fun to the proceedings. I prefer both over this. Looking back in a more general, "now that that's done" way though, I still liked Arkham Knight. It refined the combat and stealth to perfection and the voice actors in this game could read the backs of cereal boxes and still get a rise out of me. However, the pacing... ugh. Even the open world in this game was built with the batmobile / bat tank in mind, to make sure it had wide enough roads to turn on in batmobile form and arenas with enough complexity to keep things interesting during bat-tank battles.

Oh, and I'm glad you thought there was less "Riddle diarrhea" to go around. Personally, I couldn't believe there were 243 trophies in this one to find. Nothing is more anticlimactic to end a game on than spending hours after the main quest just gathering up green question marks. At least The Riddler's voice actor and dialogue were highlights of this game. His arrogance and twisted sense of humor kept me going, though I also rage quit on two of his miserable batmobile time trials. Just turned off the game and did something else for a day or two until I could stomach coming back and forcing my way through them, and then I'd do the main quest and be stuck in the batmobile again... or do the sidequests and be stuck in the batmobile again. *sigh* It took me weeks to beat this game, but not because I was actually playing it during most of them. :-D *grumble grumble*

And dem are my sour grapes. I still love Rocksteady and I'm looking forward to their next project, but I really hope they zero in on what made Arkham Asylum so special and leave open worlds behind in their next game (whatever the heck it is).

By the way, Teddy Roosevelt rocks! I just noticed your profile picture, and I wanted to express my anonymous internet stranger approval. Haha

That or having a high-end PC like I do which is why I was able to play the game just fine on my PC but I had to accept playing it at 30 fps. Tried playing it unlocked but the occasional split second drop to single digit frames was too annoying

Yep Asylum will always be the best game in the series. Knight is second and City is third. The "open" world of city was totally meaningless. It added nothing to the experience other than being a slightly annoying hub world where I just had to get from point A to point B so I could continue the story. The focus and atmosphere of Asylum has never been achieved by any of the sequels.

Except for some slightly disappointing boss battles Batman: Arkham Asylum is close to being a perfect game. For me Asylum is one of the all time best games from last generation, definitely in top 3, and if I were to create a top 10 list of my all time favorite games Asylum would be one of the first games I would consider for the list.

It's groundbreaking for so many reasons; It's awesome combat which was really cool and fresh back in 2009. Furthermore it showed the game developers/publishers of the world that it actually pays off to invest a lot of time, money and love into a licensed game. Which was a nice change of pace seeing as how most licensed games up to this point, with a few lucky exceptions, have been utter garbage made in haste to capitalize on the success of new movie or TV show. Instead of doing that Rocksteady completely ignored the success of the Nolan movies and asked themselves the question: How can we make the best possilble Batman game from the ground up? And that's exactly what they did and Batman Arkham Asylum is the result.

I agree! I really liked the Batmobile sequences! All of them actually. Satisfying sounds and visuals make the fights really entertaining. Them drones blow up good. The Batmobile underground hallway boss is lame, but you can just power through him in, like, 5 minutes.

The worst part about this game is that some of the gadgets get used only once. You CAN use them more times, but they're used once for a puzzle, and then never again. Boo! The gadget puzzles were the best thing about the series. It always reminded me of Metroid, the way yo gathered the gadgets to pass to another section of the game. This time, the game itself is leading you around the city. Bah.

AK is pretty damn good. It's not Asylum, but hey. What is?

100% it last night with the help of the internets for the last 20 or so trophies (because fuck that). Really liked this game! It's on par with Asylum and liked it more than City. If it wasn't for Bloodborne, this would be my number 1 this year for sure.

Only thing it was missing was some memorable boss fights like Asylum and City had. Asylum was pretty awesome, but you couldn't fall down from a tall building through the raindrops into the batmobile!

I never expected being sad that this one was the last in the series, but I am.

Yeah, many of the gadgets were totally under utilized. You use the zip line thing in maybe 1 room. Freeze grenades are only for Riddler stuff. I remember only one remote controlled batarang puzzle.

IMO: Asylum > Knight > City > Origins

I though the "open world" of city made it bloated and unfocused, and was completely superfluous regarding gameplay.

basically what @Castiel said

Great write up. Arkham Knight is fantastic. I haven't finished it yet but I will when my friend lets me borrow it again.

Mordor, on the other hand, is a poorly implemented "good idea" for a mechanic stretched over one of the worst open worlds, with one of the worst stories, ignoring the spirit of some of the best source material in search of disgusting and mindless slave violence, and plays like a Fischer Price knock off. It's a bad game that had the unanimous and suspiciously political praise from the gaming press. As generic, soulless, and limp as they come.

But that's just my overly aggressive opinion that it sucked.

@lazyimperial: That's pretty cool that you actually use the disruptor with regularity and it's cool that the game allows for that, I just wish it doled out points a bit more generously so you don't have to grind out every sidequest just to have the Super Batman you want.

@spraynardtatum:Well thanks, I like the way you phrased the Mordor criticism even if I don't agree with that sentiment. Clearly a political conspiracy much like the Skyrim and X-Com praise of yore.