My list of issues with Arkham Asylum

1. Boss Fights Sucked.

2. Gargoyles a bit too convenient, grappling mechanic felt too automatic, no finesse involved.

3. Hollow gameplay sections: Courtyard filled with killing dozens and dozens of plant pods (that shoot plasma balls WTF?) by crouching and pressing a button to initiate the canned animation. And hopefully you enjoy that canned animation of him punching into and then ripping open the pod, splattering the fake camera with plant blood, because it's gonna be the same every single fucking time. Which is really boring after the 3rd time. Nevermind the 20th.

4. Gameplay length seems low, if you compare it to some other games released. If you compare it to Modern Warfare 2's length though, it seems pretty great. So that's really hard to say. Coming off of a run of Dragon Age or Borderlands or AC2, it's undoubtedly going to seem a bit short. You really have to judge if the quality of the experience is enough to make up the difference.

There's no real replayability though. It's not linear in the sense that it's a straight line, there are hub areas involved, so you'll have to backtrack and encounter the same areas but with different conditions. But all in all, the campaign's gonna be exactly the same. The only replayability might be in getting higher scores in the Danger Rooms. Wait, Danger Rooms are the rooms in X-Men. What are they called, hazard rooms? Challenge rooms? The challenge is in getting higher scores, but I just played em once each and had enough. It only served to remind me that these sections were taken from the campaign and that there was a lot more to do because you weren't confined inside a room.

5. Other then that, the one big aesthetic detail that I really disliked was what I had been kvetching about for the longest time... before the game, during the game, and now after the game: Batman's walking animation looks retarded. He's just walking like a stiff robot that's maybe a little bit constipated? It just looks bad, man. Seriously, fix that animation. He looks great when he's moving while crouched, but we're all too damn lazy to hold down the crouch button all the time. And when we aren't running, we have to walk. And Batman looks awful doing it. It was a bad jig to begin with, we never should have started this jig. It was a bad jig, a terrible terrible jig.

Arkham Asylum actually didn't have a lot of faults, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Batman's mysterious explosive bat-gel

I was just thinking about the explosive gel, and it occurred to me that there's no real way to trigger it, is there? Cause doesn't Batman just spray the gel onto the wall in the shape of a bat? Then he steps away and triggers the gel with a remote detonator in his hand. But how does that signal from the detonator activate the gel? Is there some sort of receiver stuck inside the gel that receives the signal from the detonator? I didn't see any. The gel itself can't possibly receive remote signals, can it? It's just this gel substance.

Has anyone figured out how Batman triggers the gel to explode?

Impressions of Batman Arkham Asylum

Mind you, this is still only halfway into the game...

I think Batman might be a killer in this game. Driving an automobile at full speed into people is generally pretty bad and can be fatal, after all. Bane's a strong guy, but I don't think steroids make you invulnerable to death by blunt force trauma from cars. The impact could've done enough internal injuries to kill Bane. Caving in his rib cage, crushing his heart, etc. And even if the internal injuries somehow weren't fatal, the car might be pinning him to the bottom of the seafloor, leading to death by drowning.

...Bane was something else I found rather odd. In the comics, normal Bane without his venom is still a rather large fellow, but in the game normal Bane seemed to be really skinny and emaciated. It creates this somewhat inaccurate picture of Bane as a weakling who requires Venom in order to become super buff and strong, when in the comics Bane is already really buff and strong and uses Venom to get a bit of a temporary boost.

Ya know what, I'm gonna say a bit more. I'm not sure about this, but I hope there's an upgrade for faster knockouts. Right now, the knockouts seem really slow to deliver. By knockout, I'm referring to the ability you get once you punch an opponent to the ground and they're trying to get back up. Batman kneels down next to the thug, seems to check him for a moment, and then delivers the knockout punch. I think an upgrade to just have him quickly deliver the knockout and move on would be nice.

Also, if they ever do a sequel, I hope they'll separate the armor upgrades into two different categories, one for melee protection and one for firearm protection. Because the armor upgrades in this game seem to be way too effective against guns. I saw Batman take 2 shotgun blasts and a few rifle bursts and survive, on normal difficulty and without any armor upgrades. With the added protection of the armor upgrades, Batman almost becomes the Man of Steel against guns. It's pretty silly how much he can take against lead. With that said, I don't have any problem with upgrades against melee attacks, that seems more reasonable. Batman's well known for being able to take a lot of bruises and cuts fighting thugs in hand to hand combat. Maybe it could be called "Added Stamina" or something. But in this game, I would be loathe to apply the armor upgrades because I don't want Batman to feel like a bullet sponge, that's not Batman to me.

And what's with the Gears of War style finger in ear slow walking bullshit? That's pretty strange, seeing as how Batman's cowl doesn't even have any button for his fingers to press. His comm with Oracle should thus be hands free, allowing him to run around unhindered and do plenty of stuff while talking. I mean, think about it. If your fucking Xbox live headset doesn't require you to press a button on the side of it to communicate, why does Batman's high tech cowl? Why are they copying something from Gears of War for absolutely no reason? Copy something if it's good and appropriate, not just because it's trendy or whatever.

Oh yea, there's also really no real reason to ever leave Detective mode. Being able to see through walls and pick up hostile skeletal figures hundreds of feet away... it's just insanely overpowered. The night vision goggles in Splinter Cell were quite nice to use, but you didn't feel like you were basically cheating the game by using them. And that's a real shame, because the game looks gorgeous and quite stunning when you're not in Detective mode.