I just got a few new games yesterday.

And already I'm starving for even more Batman: Arkham Asylum, as last night's excursion (incursion?) was cut short by the action of my "Night Time" cold medication. Things got progressively more surreal until I was blacking out, losing time between scenes and waking up in places unfamiliar. It was actually very convincing; maybe I should do it again tonight.

I'm still early in: I wanted to beat the new episode of Monkey Island that I also just got, and then Section 8 had a surprising demo, two more reasons to resent linear time.

Similar to Final Fantasy, an image of Batman brooding on the cover is probably sufficient to sell units, but that's not what happened here either. What they did was create a Batman game firmly in the Metroidvania milieu - a striking choice - marrying it to a combat system which is like a ballet where people die. Even in a voice cast already masterfully selected, Mark Hamill's Joker, he's the guy from the animated series remember?, vacillates between ridiculous and horrifying with terrible speed. In what is ostensibly a "superhero" game, they chose instead to emphasize Batman's fragility and humanity, which is the kind of counter-intuitive choice that seems obvious after the fact.

Now I've worked myself into a Goddamned lather. I'm just taunting myself with its virtues now; launching geysers of unpaid marketing saliva. Let's finish here: the game is ridiculous, in the best possible way. And now I must play it more.