Well, I now feel like avoiding my responsibilities as a college student... so this might be a long, legit videogame review in very disorganized forum post format.
Pointless? It's all about the leaderboards. Arkham combat is easy to win, but difficult to master.
Batman as a game isn't all that hard, even on hard + NG+ with no indicators. But as a leaderboard challenge game? It's fucking infuriating.
Right, just as you can obsess over the most perfect speedruns on some shitty NES game. Or perhaps if Heavy Rain had a competitive scene where you play through the whole game until someone messes up, without much of an in-game penalty, or they walk too slow(I admit this is hyperbole, but you should get my point).
That hardly makes the base any good. So my 1% rate of error will cost me a 1000 points less vs the guy with .5% error. Mind you I totally respect that difference, but the game itself(assuming it isn't just fucking up on me, which it might be tbh) has very little to do with it. The game is practically throwing QTEs at you 95% of the time at me since I am largely pushing one button or one button plus arrow(QTE language) and my character's position doesn't matter after the first few hits. It is just simple. Easy to learn, easy to master, relatively hard to be on the very top of the leaderboards but probably not as hard as most games.
Not to mention how the relationship between using tools in combat(the "magic" which is suppose to make the combat system good) and score feels really forced. "Alright, I have to remember to throw a batarang at some point in this fight, I guess" x 5-10. Ultimately it is like you are juggling over dozen unrelated button combinations ("RT, then this" "LT, then this", "X+Y", "Y+A", "X+A" "dodge, A, A") - which guess what? - you don't even need. Most hilarious case of this is the stupid knife dodge. Even if you do the takedown, doesn't that just mean a lower combo? I mean I like that it is there(it is bloated, but I can do bloated), but it is handled poorly since dodge + attack still rules over EVERY enemy in the game(though you might have to use your cape once in awhile, or disarm them). Once you get that slow and useless stuff out of the way(or save it when you have only a few enemies left), you are better off just building your combo higher and higher the vanilla way(sometimes throw in a cape so you do that cheesy cool Kenshiro shit since that builds up your combo pretty well.)
And... Crowd control? Why do you need crowd control!? Aside from guns/projectiles, every enemy is going to approach you in the same way with practically the same attack and these attacks can all be avoided in the same manner. The only real variance is that you don't want to risk countering two or more enemies at once(because sometimes it just doesn't work for me) so you either: 1) Punch one dude, then counter the other if you have time, 2) dodge, punch, dodge, punch, etc. Note they are very predictable, so you will know how many enemies will attack you by the way they move while dealing with the guy before.
It is
HILARIOUS that someone would compare this game's combat favorably to something like Bayonetta. Lets consider a few things out of many:
*Bayonetta has dozens upon dozens of methods of attack(more than one melee attack), with two weapon sets and accessories alone dwarfing Batman's. Moreover with some exceptions that are easily ignored, these don't feel tacked on with dozens of weird button combinations. The way the game uses "dial a combo" makes for much more flexibility.
*Bayonetta has a similar demand of accuracy with its combo system, but it actually asks you to move your character or use smart(unique) attacks to extend it instead of simply doing it for you. It also has a demanding overall time restriction(which means less dodging over and over again) per encounter.
*Bayonetta's enemies also have dozens upon dozens of attacks(ways they approach you, including fucking teleporting psycho crushers, aerial attacks, subterranean attacks), which are mixed together for a glorious spectacle. They also have more unique tactics, with completely different physical bodies.
*Bayonetta's dodge doesn't interrupt enemies, thus you can't use it shut down all offense from enemies. It must be timed well if you want to make full use of it. (If you think you know what "rhythm" is, go play around with dodge offset and wicked weaves to reset point scaling.)
That's enough about Bayonetta's details. Just dig deeper if you don't see the difference. That "rhythmic gameplay" that keeps popping up in Batman's defense? Guess what. That is in every action game. If Batman is a kid tapping on his school desk then Bayonetta is more like a symphony orchestra. Less obvious, a tenfold more stimulating.
Another crazy thing I've been hearing is that Batman Arkham Asylum is better than Arkham City. This is bullshit. Arkham City is huge leap in quality, a surprisingly good example of what a sequel should be. It is the kind of leap the Assassin's Creed or Uncharted series saw. Arkham Asylum was a poor videogame, Arkham City is an average one with some fantastic highlights which almost make it a good one. If we're talking aesthetics alone, City is a smart Batman game which does the IP proud, while Asylum is little better than any piece of shit license superhero game with some legitimately cool audio files tacked on and the cool cutscenes/interactive cutscenes you got from Scarecrow(though the game parts of Scarecrow were 100% garbage). I should just say quickly that City has better combat than Asylum. It has more enemies types, Batman has more attacks, and guns pop up much more often and remain scary(they force you to be more offensive, though only by a little). It also just seems to be a little more difficult, but that is a rough estimate. It has at least become more interesting than Assassin's Creed(lets say Brotherhood, since that's the most recent one I've played), but AC lets you fast-forward it, so it is a trade off(battles in Batman AC are quick anyway).
Now stealth in Arkham Asylum was pretty cool. It was the only thing really stopping it from being a complete shit-show. However it was repetitive and enemies' counter measures were hardly effectual. So it was a cool thing to fuck around with in the demo, but after that not so much. City changes that. Everything about it is harder. Enemies advance faster and just seem altogether more complex and more challenging. Stages feel more varied. Maybe I should go into even more detail, but really I've typed enough. Basically this might be the most fun I've had with stealth in a long, long time(not including MGO of course lol).
About halfway through the game I was starting to be impressed with this. When I reacted the game's climax
I was pretty much blown away on how much they improved on Asylum's concept. Enemy tactics were just fantastic(thus all the more satisfying when you mentally break down the last guy, after disabling his weapon of course).
This is the reason why this game should be played. On top of these awesome "predator" sequences, it starts raining guns. Guns which fuck Batman up. Imagine Assassin's Creed if the guards standing around the city weren't bitches(no matter your notoriety). So it is fair to say Arkham City might be better than the best Assassin's Creed, which means it is probably worth playing(b/c Assassin's Creed also has ass combat). It is for this reason when someone says Arkham Asylum was better designed they should be laughed at, like if someone says Arkham series has better combat than Bayonetta or any respectable 3D action franchise. (Now does it make up for the rest of the game? Hmm... why couldn't this just be all predator and stuff like the
!? Maybe one day.) (I'd say this game is a 3/5 or 4/6)
Btw, the
fight is a straight up gimmick. Cool concept, but plays out more like a checklist than a puzzle. I guess compared to the rest of the boss fights in the series it is great, but not really.
I think AC is actually far more cameo-filled than AA, and some of them just seemed out of place, and tagged on.
Hmm you don't quite get what I am saying. The antagonists/bosses in AA were basically padded out cameos. The big antagonists in Arkham City are way more relevant to what is going on and the Joker didn't become the Hulk. That's a win. You also say it is an argument of scale: cameos in AA were pieces of paper, while in AC they are actually boss fights and whatnot.
I really don't feel like arguing about music, story, visuals, etc, but Arkham City is simply better(also free-roaming > backtracking, theme considered). You could only make a case for a few of the Scarecrow cutscenes, but that's it.