5 - Chatty Henchmen
Whether it's Asylum or City or even Knight, one thing criminals in these games love to do is chat. They just ramble out of the mouth like verbal diarrhea, and one of their favorite topics of conversation is publicly and out-loudly (emphasis on the word "loud" mind you) shaming Batman. They're always talking like "If I can get my hands on Batman, I'd kill him" or "If Batman comes anywhere near me, I'll blow him away!" or something of the like. What happens? The player easily drops down into a group of fifteen of them and dispatches them with ease. Not very threatening talk for people who get beaten up so easily.
4 - Remote Control Batarangs
I despise the remote control batarang puzzles. They're so needlessly complicated and impossible. Not impossible in the sense of a player's ability to beat the puzzle, impossible moreso in the sense of implausibility. When you throw the remote control batarang, time slows down, allowing you more time to carefully plan your trajectory and maneuver accordingly. Sometimes, you leave the controls on inverted by default and wind-up fucking it up a few times. Basically, the remote control batarangs play a bigger role in Batman: Arkham City and Knight, but in Arkham Asylum, they really are tediously unnecessary.
3 - The Riddler & Riddler Trophies
I am in no way a video game completionist. To me, completing a video game is finishing the story, but when game designers quit with the generic, linear level-by-level format of video games and started reviving and building immensely successful open world game formats, they realized that story shouldn't be everything and started throwing in side stuff to do. Arkham is no exception. The tedium of feeling like I have to collect dozens of Riddler trophies just doesn't seem all that enticing to me. The only sad fact is that's how the Riddler gets his inclusion in these games, but creating tons of implausible puzzles for Batman (and later Catwoman) to traverse and solve. Poor Edward Nygma. No respect for the Riddler.
2 - Awkward & Painful Gameplay Shifts
In Arkham Asylum, there's a part where you shift to a Scarecrow hallucination that forces you to walk at a snail's pace through the halls of Arkham's Mansion. Slowly. In Arkham City, the game opens with you as Bruce Wayne walking with your hands cuffed also at a tortoise's jog. It fucks with you equilibrium because you're pushing the control stick forward but moving no faster than if you were constantly tripping over your shoelaces. The tank stuff in Arkham Knight is 50/50. You either love the tank battle elements or you despise each and every time you have to try it out. Nothing beats sneaking around on or in buildings, ledges, cliffs, catwalks, wires, gargoyles, helicopters, rafters, floors, ventilation ducts, crawlspaces and everything in between to get the drop on your enemies. That's what made Arkham Asylum so good.
1 - Over-Reliance on The Joker
Look. I get it. Mark Hamill is practically our Jesus Christ, our Messiah, when we think of who should voice the Joker in an upcoming Batman game or animated movie. Having nowadays largely walked away from the role, Hamill no longer seems to be interested in assuming the voice work for the Clown Prince of Crime. So why do the Arkham games continue to shoehorn him into every possible story aspect? Obviously the debut game Asylum gets a pass because it was the inaugural game and no one's going to buy an inaugural Batman game where you fight Black Mask or the Penguin. But when Arkham City came along, it again was all about the Joker. I guess that was acceptable. City was moreso a follow-up to Asylum in many ways. But Arkham Origins needing to be about the Joker? Give me a fucking break. The villain the entire time needed to stick to being Black Mask, but nope. It had to be a twist where it's the Joker. It wasn't even Mark Hamill as the Joker, so what was the point of shoehorning him in like that? Even Arkham Knight, the game where the Joker was dead and nothing was bringing him back, wedged him into the story in Batman's psyche and made a game about the Arkham Knight more-or-less about the Joker. I get that he's Batman's main villain, his archenemy, the yang to Batman's yin; he doesn't need to be everywhere. Arkham games have done splendidly well with showcasing other of Batman's rogue's gallery, with a few notable exceptions (*cough* Deathstroke *cough*). There was no reason to keep having to rely on Mark Hamill who was clearly trying to walk away from the role and leave on a high note after his performance in Arkham Asylum. So many other villains could've made fantastic baddies. Luckily Scarecrow was given a bigger role in Arkham Knight, but you can't argue that they didn't purposefully size-up Joker's role in the whole narrative for no other reason than "just because".
