finally got to play this game all the way through. so fucking aweshome. cheap heations bewear: of course i loved it because it was a batman game, but as it did not appear on a nintendo console, the factors should balance out!
the attention to detail was awesome. the pacing was awesome. the voice acting of the main characters were phenomenal - particularly mark hammil's joker. i never really give voice acting the appreciation it's due, but his joker is always awesome. and in this game, he kicks it up a notch, giving the character a much less silly, much darker, more maniacal tone. a very subtle but very incredible difference. kevin conroy's batman is always spot on, as it has been for nearly 20 years, though the inflection (and i blame the game engineers, not the actor) was often confused -- like, the bits were angry or slow when that didn't fit in the storyline context. the other characters were passable, but often awful, particularly the commish, the warden, some of the doctors, etc. but that's mostly a passing remark.
the renders of the characters were awesome. batman looked so very kick ass, the joker looked so very evil, croc was intimidating, harley was hot, scarecrow's new design was ultimate -- maybe not as cool as the later BTAS "corpse" style, but a very close second. the lip-syncing was more off than on, and a bit of a distraction, but the mannerisms and actions were probably the best i've ever seen. i'm not sure if the character animations were choreographed in a "polar bear express" fashion, but it certainly seemed so. incredibly life like.
one related caveat i did not like was the occasional full motion video rendered cut scenes. when the in-game model characters look that good, don't break the flow by introducing a different cinematic feel.
the game's story line was to-be-expected, but they way it allowed them to position the pacing and progression was brilliant. beating up 15 thugs at once is exactly what batman should be able to do with relative ease - unlike the representation in every other batman game, where 2 or 3 regular bad guys can accidentally kill you double-dragon style. giving the player "predator view" and slowing down the action matrix-mode is such a great technique to give the player the feel of actually being batman. they're not cheats, he's just that good.
