Demetrios: I have no clue why those reviews say as such. Now full disclosure is that I didn't play the game, my roommate did, but I watched her play through the entire plot and it's just inferior in every way. For one, it gets Batman all wrong. Where in the last game he's smart, stealthy, and clever, here he's stupid, obvious, and practically a sociopath. Granted that this is a moral (rather than gameplay) issue I have, but one of the things that makes Batman who he is is the fact that he won't kill people, right? Well, the game ratcheted up the non-lethal violence to a degree I could not have imagined. You often interrogate people who beg you "I'll tell you everything, don't hurt me!" And Batman responds, "Of course you will," before beating the snot out of them. Graphically. He just surrendered! I found it rather disturbing, actually, how brutal and senselessly cruel he is.
And the beatings continue. You don't sneak into rooms anymore--you just punch everyone in the face. It feels like an entirely different game dressed up as Batman. The puzzles aren't challenging in an intellectual way. Instead they're extremely complicated hand-eye coordination challenges. I watched the roommie attempt to get a Riddler trophy for like 45 minutes. Because it was all about stepping on these blocks in sequence. It's not that you don't know what to do, it's that you seriously can't make Batman do it. The controls were all wonky and overly complicated. Batman can't jump! And there was way too much controller jockeying trying to do extremely specific things.
Then there's the plot, which makes no sense. My apartment had three people watching this game and none of us could figure out what was going on. Even by the end. And it's not because they're a bunch of comic in-jokes, as the roommie knows waaaay more about comics than I ever will. The main plot is actually really short, too--the rest of the game is taken up by over 400 Riddler trophies (seriously. four. hundred.). I love sidequests and I love collecting crap, as long as you can see a light at the end of the tunnel. It's clear they just didn't have much of a game and they didn't really think about it.
Lastly: it's rape-y. I don't know if this was an attempt to make the game "grittier" and "edgier," but all of the bad guys huddle up to talk about how much they want to rape Harley Quinn (whose character design has been reworked to incorporate 200% more slut), and how if she didn't have that pesky Joker around protecting her, they would ALL be tapping that. When you play the Catwoman missions the guards are even worse--they constantly refer to you as "that cat-bitch" (animal fail?) and talk about how hot you are. It's... very uncomfortable.
It looks like Thief is less than $10 on Amazon, so maybe I'll pick it up!
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