Not just the beat-em-up, the stealth oriented preying-upon-armed-goons angle was such an insanely COOKED creative choice to embody the caped crusader. Attractively gothic detectivism that turns into a reverse-survival delight through seismic punchy combos and techno-noir sleuthing. So tonally splendid you'd groove from the ceremonial pacing running from one villain showdown to the next and game over screens down to the badass slow walking, gets a bit formulaic with far too easily readable boss fights to the point of unchallenging linearity, still takes a conceptual blast of comic book roots through amazingly ominous sequencing including a mindbending Scarecrow that toys around videogame metaphysics to amusing effect and a toolbox of crafty sneaking made particularly priceless when seeing the last armed guard running around while panicking helplessly. Solid pacesetter.

Admirably bold triumph of the high-concept kind of "story mode". Sure, it's not the first time this happens, but it's a welcoming encyclopedia of grand environmental storytelling and a cocktail of nostalgia meets the fantastically ghastly and adventurous violence juxtaposed on RPG amalgamation for bouncy trigger-happy / wrench-whacky / chaotically-spellbound venturing. This feeling of methodical exploration took wonders for my amnesiac memory as the game pushed me on the path of bloodthirsty scavengers and armored puppets of ungodliness like a newcoming spectator searching for a way out of Rapture. Having said that, not every singular element slaps as smoothly as i remembered- Some of the conceptual grandeur and ambiance immersion lags because of how heavily schizophrenic is the start/stop gameplay itself. The Vita-Chambers come to mind- Not only an accidental source of monotony by forcing you to re-route yourself back to the place where you died at, but also a gateway to exploit the game's economy by sheer patience- All it takes is waltzing right where you died at and overpower your enemies affordably instead of spending cash out of a dozen of medkits mid-combat. It placed a harsh decrease on my inmersion as well, having to face a similar lot of weariness by the incredilous amount of pirating (and granted, this is an entirely player's choice, but it's such a tiresome avalanche of pipe puzzles you must endure to avoid combats) take a slight detour to the entirely non-cinematic hayride people tend to praise to kingdom come. Affordable gunplay married to a grand, one-of-a-kind neurotic storytelling, it's such a galvanizing fairytale arranged with an audacious style: Retrofitted to outlandish wonder and asphyxiating dread, fuelled with mysticism almost belonging to survival horror until you get your hands on godlike powers to cartoonishly kill-or-be-killed adventuring. For all the tonally opposed Frankenstein of mechanics, oddball logistics (what's the deal with turrets of mass destruction on a city underwater?) and spectacle before philosophy, i take a grand kick out of this game for being a innovative jump of profound themes at the time. FIFA and Call of Duty was becoming the norm and this took the spotlight to remind ourselves how it's like to embark a guntotting odyssey of good versus evil, with ourselves as the moral compass while whacking a wrench at the face of the humanely wicked.