#483

 Some nameless beast, some vile and base interloper (a friend) accosted me on the street like some vagrant churl to accuse me of being a bad Bat-nerd and a bad gamer--shit, if I'd managed to reproduce, my parenting skills would very probably have been raked over the coals--for not putting Batman: Arkham Asylum on my Factual Top 25 Games of All Time list.

As a person of dignity, I will tell you exactly what I said. I said that yes, Arkham Asylum was a labor of love and one of the greatest things that ever happened in my life, and also revolutionized games on many levels but especially in terms of melee combat. Rocksteady made something that I turned on and didn't turn off until I had solved every single riddle, collected every single profile, every last piece of lore--I explored and admired every last inch of that island.

I was Batman, motherfucker. Started on hard mode and stayed kicking ass the entire time. Absolutely not a single detail escaped my detection.

And I am here to say that I hated that final boss fight enough to disqualify it from the list. I am not sorry and I am not taking it back.

*

Barely even wanna fucking talk about what makes me feel that way, but. But. It's bad form, bullshit really, to say something is inimical to the quality of an effort without explaining. So.

My suspicion, born of projecting my feelings and based on nothing else, is that they didn't want to stop making it any more than I wanted to stop playing it--that they knew, as I do, that the game's only true flaw was its finitude. As such, the pain worked its way into the tail end of the story, dulling their blades. The end is where many stories thrash madly anyway because endings are incredibly difficult and a truly unassailable one is rare. 

Also it may be that physical exaggerations of Joker simply set my teeth against each other and makes them spin in place. I loathe entirely that horsehit where they chop Joker's face off in the comics and he's running around with his face stapled to his skull, and consider the perverted maniac in charge of those storylines to be a fucking morlock that crawled out of the depths of the earth. So, after all that genius level shit with Mark Hamill's utterly unhinged and perfect Joker, Venom Joker, to me, was stupid, and gross, and dumb, and I stopped caring completely in that moment, plus the way you had to kill him was stupid and it took me two tries because his ferocity exceeded by far my willingness to unleash on his ass. It was a stupid ass. I hated it so much it didn't feel worth handing back to the guy, but I did, partly out of spite I guess. To see the credits and hear the music, as is traditional.

The end was also good after that. But no game on my admittedly imperfect and idiosyncratic list ever made me feel the way that boss fight did, so. My decison stands. It also stands because I am insane enough about Batman to disqualify the most singular Batman experience ever created (though I guess I barely started Arkham City or ever get a chance to play the third one) based on a what is basically totally irrelevant and certainly proportionally miniscule issue. I mean this game had no other problems, man. It is still a mystery to me how they did that good of a job. Probably all of them are crazier than I am about Batman by a startling degree, like, even the janitors and the security guys. 

*

Totally made up the scenario in the first paragraph. Been thinking about hunting down an old copy of the game and thought I'd explain why I didn't put it on the list. When I approached the text field, the hilarious conversation I might have had with a buddy if they'd read my post seemed to bloom in my mind, and I thought it would be a funny indulgence.

Now that I've explained it though...hm. Maybe I would be a better writer if I were a better liar.

--JL