i played arkham asylum recently and i enjoyed it but having (unknowingly) skipped that and played arkham city goty edition when it came out, plus the praise ive seen asylum get, i think it gave me a little too high expectations. it's got first game growing pains and also some unsavory humor in the edgy batman game from 2009, whouda thunk it (though city doesnt improve on this). that being said, as the first arkham game it is very good and the art direction is very nice and i wish i had the first hand blind experience of the famous
Spoiler!
scarecrow hallucination glitch (which im still spoilering despite its fame lmao)
segment when it was released because it is very cool and fun and not very effective in the current year of 2022. games' a lot shorter than i expected too! which makes sense and is a good thing! im glad i didnt need to dedicate 30 hours to a single game when i have others on the immediate list as well
so next on the list, arkham city! i love this game a lot. i feel immediate improvement on most things aside from art direction arguably, primarily just in ui/menus/etc, but the city and its interiors are so fun to look at. i feel particular improvement in the combat though, a lot more fun with the new gadgets and tweaks in its hits and counters (i swear asylum is a little clunkier. but maybe i just sucked ass, maybe im just better at the game i played all the time as a kid, lmao). i cant speak on story bc i havent finished it and i dont really care about the story in either of them, but the sidequests are very fun. it's nice to return to media that is just some good ol comicsy nostalgia, and each side quest (save the titan containers mission perhaps) fulfils that in learning about a buncha classic batman villains and doing their little special gimmicks with
Spoiler!
mad hatter's in particular, if you about him showing up before you do an unrelated thing, like i did, then you might get tricked by the cure batman's searching for just suddenly appearing on the map, despite there being a story mission about getting the cure being the immediate story focus! like i did! and then you get to see a fun batman bunny mask and beat up some bunny goons and hit the pathetic little hatter merely 3 times
and it's over. another thing to mention is i love how short and sweet the sidequests are!! they dont drag very much and thus they dont overstay their welcome. which i dont want to do here so im wrapping this up lmao, i just feel the need to talk about the games im playin when theyre fresh on my mind. thanks for reading!