Been playing more Arkham City. I really like it. The fighting is smooth and fast and interesting, they introduce a lot of stuff kind of slowly and I'm still getting new "powers" and combos and special moves. It's a little "magic" in the buttons department, it seems like you use every single button while playing the game. It can be slightly confusing at times, and there's all different sorts of button combos you use constantly.
But it's nice. I like that you spend equal amounts of time being a detective/solving mysteries and fighting/cleanin' up the streets. At the end of the day it's basically an open-world game where you can go and do a bunch of sidequests on the way to the next story mission, but they do it in a unique way that makes it fun.
I talked about the "temperature" thing before, and I really like that whole thing. I mean it kind of feel gimmicky sometimes, it's not always temperature, sometimes you're tracking a radio frequency somtimes you're walking across ice and it's a "seismic" meter or something, but at least it's unique and they TRY and make it cool. It's not just a giant waypoint arrow floating above your head or some minimap icon with a highlighted path that you're following. I mean with the temperature thing, I'm heading for the COLD area (to find Mr. Freeze btw), and it just helps reiterate "what I'm doing" which is where most open-world games fail. In Assassin's Creed or Just Cause 2 or inFamous, you're just going toward a point to do a thing and then going to the next point to do the next thing. The longer you play the less connected you feel to the world or the story. It all just becomes objectives on your way to the next objective. This game does a great job of making you feel a part of the story, and it keeps you in the story. When I turned it off last night I was following a trail of blood some ninja lady left, and got ambushed and Robin showed up and blah blah. It was cool, though. Highly varied content and missions.
I also love the puzzles. You know it's like, first you have to find this building, then you clear out the enemies in front of the building, then you have to find a way in (it's not hard but it is a little puzzle), then once you get inside there's more puzzles, a hacking minigame, then several rooms all with different things you have to do, including a giant room filled with water with a big shark in it (kinda dumb but... BATMAN) and penguin is shooting you and the water freezes and you gotta go slowly and use your batclaw to pull a raft around. It's neat, at least.
Then you have these rooms with like 5 or 6 enemies with guns. You can't take more than a couple bullets before you're dead, so you cant just start beating people up. But it's not always straightforward, you have to separate the enemies and attack them when they're alone and then swing around on these gargoyles that are in every room somehow. You can make an explosion and it'll draw the enemies toward it, and you drop down a take one guy out quickly, retreat to the statues above, and wait. It's fun and interesting. At one point one guy took a hostage, and if he sees you you fail, so I had to take out all the other enemies without being seen, then drop down at just the right time, creep up behind him, and so a silent takedown on him. I died like 3 or 4 times in that room and every time I tried something different, so you really do have choices for how to complete these rooms. After I cleared it I saw more opportunities I missed before, like a floor grate you hide in and take guys out when they walk over you, a machine that either makes noise to attract people or something (I didn't test that but it was clear you could do something with it).
So yeah I'm having a lot of fun with it. It's a very good game. I think they got the open-world formula down correctly and it's amazingly fun to play. I'll have to see how it pans out later on (I'm about 30% into the story, maybe 40%) but so far it's a great game that I'd recommend to anybody.
yes coulombs are "germaine", did you learn that word at talk like a dick school?