So I beat this game last weekend (yeah, 2 years late, but I was decided to not even play it) and I'm surprised by how much I loved it. Going into something with negative expectations can do wonders.
I was so ready to bash this game if all of the shortcomings I heard about it were true, but a big part of the game that annoyed so many others felt ok to me: the Batmobile and the tank battles. I had fun every second I spent conducting that awesome machine.
What I can agree with are the lack of boss battles and the constant Joker appearances. It was fine the first few times he showed up to taunt me, but they made it way to frequent and I beat everything else in the game before I defeated Scarecrow so I guess I got even more Joker than most of you guys.
The only encounter that felt like a boss battle was against Albert King and he wasn't even a main player. Jason's too but that was more of a hide and seek game than a boss battle. That was really disappointing. We had two big martial artists in this game in Jason and Deathstroke and we had to fight them in tank battles. That's shameful. I don't think anyone will disagree that it was just lazy. They excelled in other parts of the game, like the gameplay, physics and the graphics, but boss encounters were completely relegated to banal tussles. What was that with Hush? I couldn't believe that would be all we'd get.
I didn't mind the story either and admire that Scarecrow was still the main villain in the end (specially after what happened with Strange and Blackmask in AC and AO) even though he was a completely different one than that of Arkham Asylum. I already knew Jason was under the mask of AK, which surprised no one ever, and I still wish, like I did before the game was launched, that we had a completely original character in AK. They could show his face before the story even started, so his identity wouldn't be important.
I liked the new gadgets, I liked the fear takedown, I liked the odds pitted against us as the story moved on and the resolution with some of the characters. I felt like Batman in this game, even when I was destroying so many drones in a warzone. Overall, I had a wonderful time with this game but was already ready to move on before I even played it.
As much as I like the formula and gameplay, it's time for something new.
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