"Wow." That was all I had to say as I played through this game. Everything about this game meshed together perfectly: the action, the graphics, the characters, the voice acting, the environment, the gameplay, cut scenes... everything. It's no secret, I loved this game. I was skeptical at first, but after seeing the great scores on Metacritic I decided to go ahead and buy it, and I am not sorry. This is easily the best game of 2009 to this point. To drive home this point, I'll quote Todd Howard, the executive producer at Bethesda (of games such as Oblivion and Fallout 3) who, when referring to the game on the official Bethesda Blog said "Batman: AA. Best game ever?" The man knows good games, so yes, it's that good.
Enough gushing though. The game is very good, and like I said before doesn't have any big weaknesses. And what makes this game so great is not that just all the individual parts (like graphics, story, environment, etc.) of it are so good, but that they all are placed together perfectly. What the game aims to do it does perfectly, and it doesn't try to do too much where it would strecth itself thin. The game isn't incredibly long, but that is a good thing, as I would rather have a medium length game that is an amazing experience than have a game that starts to drag on too long and gets boring near the end just so the developers could say their game is 20+ hours long. There are things to do after you beat story mode too- there are lots of challenges you can do to test and perfect your skills, and all over the map there are collectables that unlock things you may have missed during story mode. I almost never go back through a game just to collect everything, but this is one of the rare cases where I did. Even that part was thoroughly enjoyable.
The only slight weakness of this game that comes to mind is the melee combat system. The "Freeflow" combat system allows you four different options to do during any combat: attack, stun, counter, and dodge (the X, B, Y, and A buttons on a 360 controller respectively). The more hits you get on different enemies in a row the higher your combo counter goes (x2, x3, x4, etc.) and once you reach a certain number you can unleash some of Batman's special attacks. This in theory sounds great, but there were lots of times where I would reach a high enough multiplier, only to press the buttons for a special attack and have nothing happen. This was really the only part of the game that frustrated me, and it is a minor gripe.
As stated before, the graphics and sound were amazing. The graphics are honestly some of the best I've ever seen on a 360 (or of any HD game). Even my wife, who watches me play video games a lot and doesn't usually stop and notice anything about what I'm doing said at one point "Wow, those graphics are amazing." The sound was top notch too, especcially the voice acting. Most of the voice actors were the same ones from the old Batman Animated Series (which I used to watch a lot as a kid), so it immedietly felt natural hearing them do the characters. Heath Ledger might be the best actor to ever play Joker, but Mark Hamill will (at least for me) always be the voice of any cartoon/CG Joker.
In Summary:
Pros: graphics, sound, story, gameplay... pretty much everything.
Cons: melee combat system can be annoying at times, sometimes the camera can get in the way a little bit.
FINAL SCORE: 5 out of 5.
Note: All reviews on this site are solely the subjective opinion of the author. While I try to look at media objectively, this is pretty much impossible (everyone has bias whether they admit it or not), so if you disagree with my review please feel free to post in a polite manner and state your opinion. I welcome respectful discussion on my blog and would love to get feedback on my review and also read yours. Thanks!
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