Batman: Arkaham Asylum is not all people make it out to be. Starting with the positives, the story is great and makes you feel like you're inside your own little Batman movie. There's a lot of fun boss battles and everything with the Scarecrow is a blast I really found myself "feeling" like Batman in these sections. With the positives highlighted, I move forward to the bulk of the game. The combat is boring and repetitive outside of boss fights, with the game throwing an obnoxious amount of enemies at you. There's a couple sections where you're met with large more powerful enemies, but their patterns become super repetitive and easy to maneuver and when that isn't enough they just throw in a ass tone of more enemies to make things "harder". I didn't struggle with the combat sections of this game, but I found them extremally tedious and boring to play. The stealth sections start off pretty fun and they leave room for mistakes/creativity, but the further you go on the more frustrating they become. Enemies travel in pairs, thugs with guns deal a large amount of health per hit and the environments get stale and un-fun to maneuver. Most the boss fights end up being pretty enjoyable, but there are a few that really just feel lackluster. Killer Croc's "boss" fight is just you slowly walking around and gathering samples of plants with the occasional batarang throw to stop Croc from getting you. Poison Ivy's fight is repetitive and serves next to no challenge and sticks you in a horrible camera angle for this style of game. The most disappointing however ends up being the final fight. You don't even fight the final boss. That's right, you never fight them. They jump down, swing around, jump up to a platform and send generic enemies down to fight you. You beat the enemies, they jump back down, you hit them once, rinse and repeat. For a game that had already shown me it could have exciting and interesting boss fights, this is what the end with? Overall my experience with this game wasn't very enjoyable and if it wasn't for the story and the actually good boss fights; this game with be rated much much lower.

Dishonored is a game with high potential that just fell short for me. With really unique gameplay options and the ability to handle situations in many different ways, it sounds near perfect. However, I feel the game fell short it terms of story with characters being bland and forgettable as well as boring, un-original storytelling. Very few characters really stood out to me and every twist someone would pull out I found myself predicting way ahead of time. Thankfully this game does end up saving itself with the gameplay. It's fun and unique and I had a blast experimenting with different methods of getting around obstacles. I love that you could play the run without ever killing (though I did kill just about everyone I could) and that depending on how you played your ending would change. My only real flaw with the gameplay itself is how linear the levels feel. Sure you could tackle goals in different orders, but there was never really too much to explore at best you were finding a few heals or a book or two to add to your journal. I really felt no need to adventure in each area as it didn't seem to enhance the gameplay or story. It's definitely a game worth playing, but I can't really give it a greater rating with it's poor story and linear gameplay.