Moeez said:
snowman6251 said:
As for Batman, well I thought it was overrated. Its good but I don't see it as game of the year material, especially in a year with quite a few strong contenders. The game just felt off and kind of awkward to me. I mean you could to a hell of a lot worse than Batman but I think other games just beat it, and fairly decidedly at that.
That is sooooooo vague! No one can take your criticism seriously. Honestly, Batman was the only game this year with not as many problems as the other games. Nearly perfect in every department, even with a ho-hum last battle.
Well first of all obviously this type of thing is totally subjective and all GOTY's equate to nothing more than opinions and in my opinion Batman didn't quite live up to my expectations after the huge amount of praise it got. I thought that in some respects it was deserving and in others not so much.
It received tons of praise for its combat. While I won't deny it was animated incredibly well and that for the most part it flowed pretty well I thought it was a bit simplistic. Now simplistic combat isn't always necessarily a bad thing but I felt the game had too much of an emphasis on combat for such a simple combat mechanism. Also once they started letting the henchmen have guns in scenarios that weren't set up for me to use a stealth approach I got annoyed a little. Having to run back and forth to knock the guys with away from the armory stations broke the flow of the combat.
As for the stealth this really comes down to the way Batman moves in the game but it felt clunky and sluggish to me. This wasn't helped by me taking out a guy totally unknown to his friends only to have the Joker come on over the intercom and warn them so they all got paranoid resulting in forcing me to sit in the rafters waiting for them to split up. The grapple gun also had a bad tendency of targeting the wrong thing in some sections that cost Batman a few injuries.
As for the atmosphere and exploring this was a big disappointment for me. I love exploring in games. I love running around and getting to know the area. In Batman though I just really couldn't get into it. That stemmed from two major problems. The first is the way Batman moved. As I said I thought it felt clunky. He walks slow and awkwardly. I felt other things like the grappling hook were kind of sluggish. All in all he just doesn't move in a fluid manner. The other issue I had was the environment itself. It didn't really have much in terms of variety with maybe the exception of the botanical gardens. The rest was just some dark gritty corridors or rooftops. If you've seen one you've seen them all and aside from whatever little things the Riddler hid there there was nothing new to see.
Games that I really like have a wide variety of locals. Zelda has forests, deserts, underwater, the netherworld, etc. Demon's Souls has castles, swamps, jail, ruins, and a mountain. Even Bioshock while sticking true to its one underwater city local has lots of variety in it with its docks, malls, apartments, gardens, art studios, medical facilities, etc. Batman has a whole bunch of samey run down facilities, outside between buildings, and a garden. That's really it.
Also the Scarecrow segments were a huge letdown for me. I was expecting some really deep psychological mind fuck kind of stuff and while they had little bits of that they just turned it into some weird 2D platformer every time that I was not too fond of.
Compared to other games this year Batman just didn't stack up in my eyes. Demon's Souls in particular surprised me as being rather exceptional. The punishment for death being so high in such an unquestionably hostile world made for some of the most intense atmosphere and exploring I've ever had in a game. Behind every corner looked danger and behind every dangerous obstacle lay great reward. Exploring was both highly encourageable and yet totally terrifying. Not to mention the combat system felt pretty much perfect.
When all is said and done Batman just doesn't stack up in my eyes. Its not bad but it had a lot of things that annoyed me and they lessened the experience. I thought there were several other games this year that were more deserving but then again that is just me. This is all my opinion. If you think Batman is the best game ever, good for you, but I liked some things other games had to offer better.
