I must preface this by saying, it's so not my thing. I have no interest on comic books and my enthusiasm for PC games is almost entirely sim-orientated, contemporary and realistic.

However...

This is a beautifully made game. It almost counts as Art. The voice acting, atmosphere and character animations are way beyond almost anything else I have ever played, and it is so well written that it's easy to ignore the story-driven scripted events and contrivances. The music is fantastic and all the creative decisions are really sound, i.e. the relationship of the "core" game to its mini-game subsections, challenges, power-ups and informational media discovered by the player, etc. The combat involves a lot of button-mashing, never optimal on a PC keyboard vs a controller, but the scripting, animation and presentation is so fine that you just have to lean back and chuckle when, thanks to a string of seemingly random mouse inputs, Batsy unleashes martial arts hell on the biggest, ugliest crew of biker dudes since "Mad Max". It's a hoot. Finally, the stealth gameplay is terrific; like the Splinter Cell series it's about gameplay balance, the environment and severely limiting the lethality of the hero's loadout. However, no game, not even Splinter Cell, is so well-tuned in terms of control harmonization, to provide such satisfaction at dispatching a villain by stealth takedown as this.

I still have no interest in comic books. But this game is a masterpiece.

Blah blah, spoken like a true batman fanboy...and yeah, coming from a spider-fan, this game is great.

It was a great game, but I am glad I rented it since there wasn't much of a reason to replay it.

Maximum PC gives it a Kick Ass rating. How was Mark Hammil as the Joker?

The thing that bothers me about gaming today is the lack of replayability. Maybe I'm spoiled by simming where almost every experience is new and offers a chance to perfect a portion of a simulated experience. I'll replay an adventure game once and then maybe a favorite level, but then that's it.

$50.00 isn't a huge amount of coin, but I still like to feel I got a value. How long did it take to get through to the ending?

If you the kind of person who moan about replayablity,dont get the game rent it. i got it cos i like replaying these kind of games when the memories are out of my head, like splinter cell.

Yeah. I'm a moaner.

I think a lack of replayability is something that's inherent in most genres. Flight sims and sports games can be a bit different, but for something like you're average FPS then you're always stuck with the same scripted missions - I'm not sure studios have the budget to always create these huge open worlds. Sims you have your big open worlds, and with, say, sports games, no two games are ever quite the same. My opinion anyway.

Little big Planet tried to prolong its shelf life by all the user made maps, but the game itself just didn't do it for me. By and large though, I suspect that aside from some form of DLC then most games have a very definite shelf life before they start to get boring.

I'm interested to see how MW2 does. I thought MW1 was very enjoyable, but I don't know if the new one will be worth the extra price, especially as the first one was still very scripted. £70 for a game you might play through once or twice?