The amount of stuff this game throws at you in just half an hour is honestly crazy and almost overwhelming.

Dunkey's got a good eye for games I guess. This game looks gorgeous. I wish I could play it on a CRT.

I wonder if the bubble double jump is intended or something to be used for sequence break, though.

Generally falls into the same trappings of the sequel, although in a smaller scale so it's actually enjoyable. I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't started with Arkham Knight, but welp. I guess in 2011 it 'was' one of the best open world games around.

In fact, I think I even missed some of the bloat of the next game. The games urges you on with the main story and I never had too much chance to explore for sidequests without feeling I was straying too much from my objective. Didn't help that I finished the game and didn't even know you could unlock the ability to launch yourself to glide through the city, although the PS4 version optimization is so bad that wasn't something I enjoyed doing very much.

The lack of gadget based exploration, which was abundant in Asylum, was a shame too. A lot of the times it felt like the game was just wasting my time, especially with the batclaw raft parts.

The soundtrack kicks ass, though. Everytime it went while I was crouching around choking bad guys it hyped me through the roof.

The living conditions here suck. No way this is all up to code.

So much better than Arkham Knight is almost unbelievable. I should have started through this one. What happened to Rocksteady? Is this the fate of every once prominent medium-sized studio who goes full-blown AAA? Bigger and bigger, never better?

It's not only that it's more focused, it actually feels like there's a story to tell. It's not a great story, it's the usual superhero fanfare, but it works so, so well in the context of the game.

The Metroidvania-inspired exploration was great, the Asylum is moody and atmospheric, and the combat that at the time was innovative was implemented to perfection in this game with the more subdued fights instead of throwing 30 enemies at once at you like Knight did.

Also, while this is technically a stealth game, this game might just have the two best 'stealth section in a non-stealth game' I've ever played, since the both of them played so differently from the rest of the game: the Scarecrow sequences were amazing, and worked really, really well as this series introduction to Batman's past. The last sequence was especially great, it was a great 4th wall break and actually made me think for a moment my PS4 was fried lmao. And the Killer Croc sequence, though simpler, had me on the edge of my seat and tense through all of it. And best of all, both of them felt really fun to play, especially since they just didn't throw you back at the start of it for failing once.

The only criticism I can really muster is the whole Poison Ivy sequence. It wasn't bad, but narrative-wise it felt pointless and detached from the rest of the game, almost as if they just needed something to pad more content, and her boss was terrible.

Now on to Arkham City, after Knight I'm kinda uneasy but this made me hopeful.

Arkham Knight is the pinnacle of the bloated AAA open-world design. A beautifully crafted world with an astonishing level of detail that rivals the Gotham of the Tim Burton's movies that has not a single meaningful moment. A real exercise in futility.

Ubisoft might get the most shit for this but Rocksteady truly beat them at their own game here. Not even them would be sadistic enough to hide over 200 pointless collectibles behind so many stupid puzzles.

I can't even say if I enjoyed myself while playing this. Part of me had fun gliding, the other wanted to throw the controller at the screen every time I had to listen to one of the villains talk.

This game is a textbook on how to NOT write villains. Not once I thought they were menacing or dangerous, most of the times I just wanted them to shut up. And Joker is the worst example of this, he shouldn't even have been in this game. Feels almost like they were afraid the game wouldn't work without him, so they just threw up the flimsiest excuse for him to be in it and gave Mark Hamill a compilation of all the worst lines of dialogue he would have on his career until The Last Jedi.

Anyway, Batman is a shitty superhero, when are they releasing a decent Hellboy game? I should have just played the Blacksad game instead.

This is a game that really can't help being a game, as much as it tries to offer immersion and distance itself (and failing at it) from the Ubisoft open-world formula. Playing it is a constant battle between the premise of 'Be the Batman' and its annoying gamey contrivances.

Early into the game there's a mission where you have to rescue a hostage from 5 armed goons inside a locked room. You attract two goons outside, take them out, and then the mission pratically stops dead on its tracks to give you an upgraded suit and along with it 5 tutorials that don't feel at all connected to the suit and more to Batman own physical capabilities.

Later there's a mission where you have to scort Gordon through the streets on a flimsy police car for...some reason. And then in the middle of it Batman remembers, hey, I have a passenger seat in my nigh-indestructible tank, maybe I should put it to use? Rocksteady did a nice job with the maneuvering of the batmobile, but it gets stale really fast, especially when they're this blatant about shoving it into the game.

The fact that the map doesn't give you all its locations on a plate from the start and you have to explore while listening to radio frequencies and interrogating goons to fill it sounds like a good idea at first. Until 1 hour in and you realise there's almost nothing really interesting to find, it's just the same checklist open-world gameplay that you've seen a hundred times already.

The combat is flashy to try and guise the button mashy reality of it, and it requires a certain level of suspension of disbelief and immersion to truly have fun with it, which becomes difficulty when you consider how constantly the game breaks its immersion.

The story is...bad, to say the least, and it constantly sacrifices narrative and concision for its gamey contrivances. Also, they cared so much about the secret identity of the Arkham Knight that you can get spoiled by just looking through the skins selection menu (and not like you can't guess who it is as long as you have the most basic knowledge of Batman lore -- the death scene that plays with him basically shoves it in your face).

I understand this is more of a first impression (I'm four, five hours in), but I'm already struggling terribly with it. The game is beautiful to look at, but that's all there is to it. I don't feel invested in any of its mechanics or the story.