I much preferred the atmosphere of Asylum but it's still a good novelty getting to explore a more open map though I found it didn't add too much to the experience other than me having to spam grappling hooks a lot more. It doesn't get in the way too much at least.

The villains are wasted on this game, having barely any screen time other than mentions from other characters until your final encounter with them. The boss fights are at least a lot better which lends more threat to the characters though this matters a lot less when there's very little buildup to their presence except maybe Penguin.

Catwoman was a fun diversion but gameplay-wise is barely any different so it fails to provide much mechanical variety thought at least her animation work and design is just as good as Batman's so there's some visual difference.

I enjoyed this overall but really just felt like a big retread of Asylum with some more distractions and less cohesion.

Does an unbelievably good job of providing heaps of fanservice and simultaneously wrapping it up in a fantastic aesthetic that's realism-themed but retaining a comic book edge with exagerrated proportions and effects across the board. The atmosphere is tangible and setting the game in an enclosed space you can freely move around was a really good choice.

The game isn't especially hard, the combat is satisfying but a little mind-numbing towards the end. I personally prefer not upgrading health to keep it somewhat tense. Going for high combos and variety bonuses over everything else also helps, plus the extra XP will net you more upgrades so you keep getting new toys to play with.

It's great that each villain gets their own buildup before their area/fight while still maintaining the Joker as the primary antagonist throughout as he takes the piss out of you and his own henchmen over the intercom, building up to a narratively appropriate if mechanically very dull final boss.

A very concise and excellently realised experience. Has some very well-known down moments but some failures are to be expected when they try to put in this much variety on top of also establishing the (at the time) unique core gameplay and ridiculously good animation work.

Played the whole thing in co-op with the missus and just blasting pedestrians with synchronized honking was in of itself worth the install, I only wish there were more NPCs that were actually scared of the geese like the glasses kid so I could live out my avian-related power fantasies in full. Doesn't wear out it's welcome though the more aggressive characters occasionally felt like a chore to deal with, especially when they can just banish you from places you need to be and it becomes repetitive to drag something away to distract them first. Still massively fun though even after seeing it played to death for years before giving it a go myself.

The Jet Set Radio series has always been deeply flawed in spite of the massive promise those games had. So, given a skilled enough team, it would be more than viable to follow up the last game over twenty years later with all the rough edges sanded off. Modern design philosophy feels like a snug fit for a series that always felt like it should have played a lot smoother than it did. I could (and have) spend all day grinding around the open-ended maps, something that Jet Set Radio Future teased with it's earlier maps but then sacrificed for more linear design around the halfway point. What this game also has is an actual story which doesn't take up much time at all but still manages to have interesting twists and a message in there.

I do think there are many places this could have gone further, like with tricks still being about as simple as they were in JSRF though at least there's more timing considerations since you can't turn corners to add to the multiplier while simultaneously pulling off tricks to add to the score. What is there is tuned to perfection but I hoped to have more of a skill ceiling when the game itself is this easy; it is clearly targeted towards those who didn't grit their teeth through the more frustrating parts of the original games to the end. I found half the challenge here was in actually finding which rail or gap in the floor I had to grind/slide through/over to find a piece of graffiti I missed rather than actually beating the game.

The combat feels like it was added out of formality more than anything, though it does make sense to at least have one more element in there so it isn't purely pulling off the same few moves for hours (as satisfying as that is in of itself). It is the absolute bare minimum beat-em-up gameplay as if this was a movie tie-in game, though it does feel satisfying to take down the mechanized enemies after popping open a weak point.

I enjoyed this, I still prefer the soundtrack and aesthetics of the games that inspired it but not everything can be exactly the same and I can commend how they built their own spin on the sound and visuals with a modern twist, which goes for the gameplay as well. I would love to see them iterate on this though what is there is very finely tuned and a great time front to back.

An improvement in many ways over the original, still lacking in level design in later areas that force you to redo the same relatively simple grinds and jumps just to get another chance to try that one annoyingly hard one that always feels like it's near the end. A lot of backtracking too that just makes a lot of this game's length feel artificial. Having no button to stop grinds when it's this easy to accidentally jump onto them is criminal. Music and visuals however are absolutely on-point and once again make it a lot easier to suffer through some of the more frustrating moments and at least this time there's satisfaction to be had when the level design allows for it. I wish more levels felt as open as Shibuya Terminal. The sewer level is, naturally, the worst in the game.
I don't mind most of the redesigns but I prefer the originals. I don't like what they did with my girl Cube, making her taller and more 'well-proportioned', they made her personality horny as well (going by one of her lines about her henchmen), I miss when she used to be chill and friendly and listen to Rob Zombie. Gum also inexplicably has cleavage now. I get the impression they tried a bit too hard in places to appeal to what they thought western audiences wanted at the time after the original did a lot better outside of Japan. The designs still rule for what they are, same with the new muted but consistent colour scheme, but I still have a preference for the more childlike and colourful attitude of the previous game which seemed more obviously fun, where here DJ K is a huge prick who insults you every time you plummet from a skyscraper or drown in a river. I thought you were cool, man! Must be that crazy hypercapitalist society they have in the far-off Future Year of 2024.

Enjoyably floaty if finicky gameplay that really does not hold up to the scrutiny of later levels where you will get repeatedly knocked off buildings and made to loop around the entire area just to get back to where you were, keeping in mind the momentum kept from jumps is just slippy enough to make you fall off edges but not quite enough to maintain speed. Most of the mechanics are in a frustrating middle ground where it doesn't necessarily feel skillful to pull tricks off but it's not smooth enough to feel casually enjoyable either.
The style goes without saying though and this game is well deserving of it's cultural impact for the legendary character designs and soundtrack alone. If it wasn't for the visuals I would not have stuck with this - it's worth remembering this game was one of the first to ever do it this cool in 3D.

A solid update that is your best option on a modern PC since the original is a nightmare to get running these days. A damn sight more stable but the creation club integration is fucking horrible. Still, it's nice to play a Skyrim that is considerably more stutter-free. Feels like it should have been like this from the start, like it feels significantly less cobbled together and more like a complete game.

Install SKSE64, use Mod Organiser 2, follow this little guide for essential fixes, and most of these are good too. I stay light on graphic mods but I consider these mountain, water, road, and snow texture mods essential to help smooth over the last of the 2011 version jank while keeping the original aesthetic intact. Modding addiction is very real once you realise how easy MO2 makes it for you.

But, if you must install one mod, make it this one. I will forever hate modern AAA games for putting adverts on the fucking main menu, making it feel like a storefront before you've even started playing. Especially diabolical for a game as immersion-focused as this one.

The combat is some of the most satisfying in an action RPG of it's size and the grittier overall feel makes running around bandit camps and plundering ancient tombs enjoyable; your character is the most powerful fucker in the world and is the answer to literally every prophecy, which feels more impactful when the world leans towards dark fantasy over high fantasy. This does unfortunately mean that most of the quests are very basic affairs that only serve to make you feel important, so no more sudden trips to the painted world or planes of Oblivion.

I absolutely cannot fault this gameplay loop though, casual comfy dungeon crawling but throws in the occasional level-scaled challenge just often enough to wake you up. Also perhaps THE biggest mod community still going, it's harder to find things you can't mod in. I'll at least always respect the commitment to that.

They traded in Morrowind's excellent main quest for extremely fun and surprising side adventures instead. It's taken 16 years for me to finally finish this and it was quite the slog thanks to some truly tedious combat deriving largely from inflated health pools that only get worse as you level up. I have no idea how anyone is supposed to do any significant damage without relying almost exclusively on enchanted weapons past a certain point. I also had a conjured imp to hand that I would constantly place down to distract everyone, allowing me to beeline towards my main objective. The crap speech system is easily sidestepped using a custom spell for 1 second of instant persuasion level 100, thankfully, but there's only so much you can do about some of the least satisfying combat and spell animations I've ever seen. Fireballs look like puffs of red mist, where are the particles??
A huge mess of many clashing ideas and systems in an engine suffering from the growing pains of moving between console generations. Still a very special experience despite all of it's problems. We will never see something like this again, a huge big-budget WRPG that stays strangely alluring because of the unique circumstances in which it was made. No current-day development cycle would even think of allowing faces quite as horrific as these into any of their products now but Oblivion made a lot of these mistakes before any other games of this immense size. Pure ambition.
Farewell. May this game rest in piece.