My first Batman game, and what an adventure! I loved it!

For a long time, I considered going straight to the 3rd game of the trilogy: Batman Arkham Knight. I'm glad I ultimately decided to do Asylum first, because it would have been a shame to skip this one.

The world design is excellent. The navigation between the main hub and the different areas was very convenient. Wherever I went, I was never far from the main area.
Adding to that, you can backtrack once you get more gadgets, by opening new paths in previously explored areas. Each gadget is really meaningful, and they add a lot to your movement abilities.
You have the grappling hook from the get go, and you later get the batclaw, and eventually the line launcher. Each one feels great to use.

The combat felt pretty mashy at first, but you need good timing on the counter, and you can mix up your attacks with the batclaw & batarangs to make the combat a bit more stylish.
Taking on dozens of goons in melee is exhilarating. Batman really feels like a badass in those situations, especially in the aftermath when all of them are K.O on the ground.

You can also take a more stealthy approach. I mean, isn't that what Batman is all about? Taking down each goon one by one without getting noticed is really satisfying. You can:
- crouch behind an enemy and do a silent takedown
- lure enemies with the help of batarangs or dead bodies, and activate your explosives once they're close enough.
- do inverted takedowns while hanging from a gargoyle.
- glide kick enemies after jumping from a high place. (Btw I like the different camera angle when you glide kick from really far, it adds more epicness to the scene)
Taking advantage of all these mechanics makes the combats extra special, and it really makes you feel like Batman.

The Boss fights were very fun. Many of them require more or less the same actions (incapacitate the Boss with a batarang before he lands his attack > use this occasion to deal damage > rinse & repeat).
But despite those similarities, it was still very engaging. The fight against Poison Ivy was my favorite !

Great roster of vilains. Almost all of them were here. My favorites were Poison Ivy & Harley Quinn (excellent voice acting btw).
Two-Face, Penguin, Ra's Al Ghul & Mr. Freeze are missing, but I bet they show up in the next entries 😁

Later in the game, Ivy's plants appear everywhere in the Asylum. I love this idea of level design, where they change the layout of areas you've already visited. It makes the exploration less monotonous.
It's like in Hollow Knight when the Forgotten Crossroads change into the Infected Crossroads, after beating the Broken Vessel.

The encounters with Scarecrow were pretty cool. They did a great job portraying Batman's nightmares. The sequence in the morgue with Bruce's parents was really haunting. And there is also that scene when Batman relives the day of their death. That was a powerful moment.
The game sure has a really oppressive atmosphere at times! Which reminds me of the segment in Killer Croc's Lair that was quite stressful, but very solid gameplay-wise. It had me on my toes the whole way.

Btw, I feel like saying it since I'm reviewing a Batman game, but I've always hated batman's rule of not killing. "This psychopath just murdered 150 children inside an orphanage, but jeez I would really be a dick if I killed him!" This is so dumb lol, it's hard to sympathize with him sometimes.
I love the stories where Batman is older and stops giving a shit, killing criminals without remorse!

Anyway, it's a really good game that aged perfectly. Pretty much my only grip is the reliance on Batvision. Constantly switching it on & off to spot breakable walls or hidden items was a bit cumbersome.

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Started on June 24th & finished on June 25th 2024]
Playtime: 15 hours
Main story complete.
100/240 riddles found. 16/42 character bios unlocked.

A very lovely Hidden Object game where your hidden objects are cute cats! The game has a very cute artstyle and you can customize all colors of the game if you want! You can change the background, lineart and cat colors to suit your needs! This was perfect because I wanted everything to be dark, since I cannot do lightmode.

The game doesn't take too long to complete though, it only took me 13 minutes to find all cats and do a speedrun level once. It's rather short, and I would have preferred a little bit more game time. There is some extra levels from paid DLCs.

I had some issues with the game running properly through steam when pressing play, so I had to run the game through it's exe file, but that didn't affect anything thankfully, and achievements unlocked fine! Other than that, it was a fantastic hidden cats game and I enjoyed it thoroughly!

I can definitely recommend it for a quick little fun! and it's free, so its definitely worth it!

I expected something more.

The idea is good, but I expected something more.

The farm system is very simple, and the first house upgrade only costs 6 wood seems a joke compared to the rest of games of this style.

The combat is simple, but has curious things like having to eat if you want to hit or do damage.

Maybe someday I'll give it another chance.

Me esperaba algo más.

La idea es buena, pero me esperaba algo más.

El sistema de granja muy sencillo, y la primera mejora de casa solo cueste 6 de madera parece una broma en comparación con el resto de juegos de este estilo.

El combate es simple, pero tiene cosas curiosas como tener que comer si quieres golpear o hacer daño.

Quizás algún día le vuelva a dar otra oportunidad.

Halo: Combat Evolved is a fun but flawed game that unfortunately shows its age in quite a few ways. This game shines brightest when it shows off its unique and incredible locations, each with their own incredible atmospheres, and ties it all together with its very interesting story. Unfortunately however this game is not always at its best. A good portion of the game is spent navigating tight corridors, often seeing the same rooms copy and pasted over and over again, and fighting the same bunch of enemies. Master chief is fun to control in combat, however a few controls feel a bit outdated or awkward, such as the vehicle controls and lack of a zoom button while shooting. This game also suffers from not really having a proper waypoint system. Despite all of the levels being pretty linear it's still very easy to get lost due to the often confusing and repetitive map design. Overall Halo's biggest problem is its repetitiveness. Whether it be enemies, weapons, or maps, after a certain point you'll start to feel like you're just doing the same thing over and over again. The story is definitely still interesting however and though repetitive it is fun. Despite its rough patches I'm very glad I completed this game and would still recommend checking it out.

Finally got around to playing this. For some reason I played Portal 2 when it came out and just never got around to Portal Sr. Having prior knowledge of how to do the puzzles because of this made Portal 1 quite the breeze to get through and that’s really the only issue that I think it has.

It relies a lot more on environmental storytelling rather than any actual plot progression. It exists more just to set up the small world and act as a bit of a demo slice for its fun portally puzzle physics. The turrets are very silly and GLaDOS carries a lot of the runtime with sarcastic humor that kind of distracts you from how ominous the circumstances surrounding your character actually are.

It’s the kind of puzzle mechanics that itch your brain like giving scritches to your pet cat. Made me feel like I was both overthinking and also not thinking hard enough at the same time in some areas. There was one where I couldn’t figure it out immediately so I tried to loop myself between portals infinitely for fun, just to find out that that was the solution all along. So even while the rooms feel like you’re locked between padded walls, it really gives you just enough to play around with until you’re able to solve the problems. If anything I wished it was a bit longer or that the advanced puzzles were different levels. They’re really just the same maps just with harder obstacles like poop floors and more turrets.

Portal is Portal and Portal is very fun. I would say that Portal 2 is the better game, but that’s mainly because it’s just larger in scale, has co-op, and extends the universe created here. You have to start somewhere though and Portal 1 is the perfect sprout to a beautiful gigantic beanstalk.