Batman Video Game Adventures

Dear Wal,

I have had many adventures in Batman games. I now own Arkham City, Arkham Asylum, Lego Batman and Lego Batman 2 for the xbox. I've played through Arkham Asylum at least five times (I was obsessed with that game), I nearly finished Lego Batman before I got bored, I've finished everything but the stealth challenges on Arkham City, and I got Lego Batman 2 like three days ago soo... I've had lots of Batman adventures on the xbox. My parents have spent a lot of time watching me play these games. It's usually an extremely entertaining experience.
I played Lego Batman in my noob days, so I didn't get as much out of it as I did the other games, but it was hilarious. Batman as a lego. A cute, adorable lego Batman who can't talk. Let's just say, I had way too much fun. And I fell into toxic waste. A lot. And I got really confused on most if not all of the puzzles. I tend to understand very complicated things completely and then completely miss the really simple things. Anyway. Lego Batman, gotta love it. Now when I went on to play Lego Batman 2, I still sucked at puzzles. Really badly. But Superman helped. It always helps to be invulnerable.  Well, almost invulnerable. Let me just say this about Lego Batman 2: I loved it. It completely tops the first game. You can fly! There's an actual city! Loved it. I had way too much fun watching Batman complain about being flown around (He's always doing that.) and yeah. Getting off subject. Am I? There wasn't much of a subject in the first place. It's after midnight people, give me a break. Anyway.
Puzzles are hard. There was this one puzzle in Ace Chemicals that took me about thirty minutes to figure out. You had to use Robin's hazard suit thing to suck up the right colors of toxic waste and shoot it at the same colored pipes. Simple enough, right? Wrong. First of all, I accidentally ice breathed two pools of toxic waste into water. I didn't even know you could do that. And then once I found the other pools of toxic waste (Apparently you're supposed to ice breath the other ones. Who knew.) I shot the wrong color waste into the wrong pipe. Then I ran around for twenty minutes trying to figure out how to open the pipes again. Batman kept getting in the lava and dying. I griped at him but he still did it. Anyway. I finally figured out how to open the pipes and very carefully shot the right color toxic waste into the matching pipe.
Another thing I kept doing was I kept trying to use my Arkham City controls to do things. Like countering the goons when they punch you, using the triggers to use batarangs/birdangs and trying to use detective mode. I kept wishing for detective mode.  It would have been so much easier if the bits of the puzzles I needed to be able to work were highlighted in orange.
There were others I just couldn't figure out. I miss the most obvious things, like the grapple on the spinny-electricuty thing in the truck. That took me about fifteen minutes and like seventy tries of gliding across that gap (BTW you can't do that) to figure out. Once I did it was a piece of cake. To try and alleviate all the trouble I have with these puzzles, I have developed a system. Explode all the things. Try all the suits. Fly Superman around everywhere to find things. Check and double check and triple check for grapples and grapple handles (or whatever they're called). I ran around for forever in the level where the Batcave was invaded by Lex and the Joker because I didn't see the grapple handle. There were so many weird glitches. i don't even know.
Superman kept getting stuck, just frozen in mid-air, while I was chasing the giant Joker bot (the first time). Oh, by the way, I can't believe Batman had to call in the JLA just for a giant robot, and that I didn't even get to play Martian Manhunter. He's an essential part of the JLA! He doesn't just run the Watchtower! Who else on the team is a telepath? Nobody! Ugh. Anyway. Glitches. I had to replay the level where you chase the Lex plane across the city because after I destroyed the helicopters as Superman the next part of the level (where you go under the wing of the plane to take out the engine) wouldn't load for some reason. And then there were all the times the characters got stuck on handles or grapples or balancing on things. It gets pretty confusing when you have three-four superheroes running around behind you getting stuck on things.
Oh and you know what else I did, like a fool? On the first chase through the city (following behind Joker in his boat with the Batwing) I thought you had to spazz-tap in order to make the gun shoot faster, I didn't know you could just hold down the button. So by the end of the level my hand was dead. It was sad. Thankfully I figured this out during the next chase. I over-complicate things so much.
Onward to Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. I have to say I did a lot worse in Asylum than I did in City. I got lost so many times. All of the buildings are labyrinthine mazes, the elevator shaft in Intensive Treatment was particularly confusing for me. It usually took three tries for me to get to the right place from that shaft. The actual story I didn't have too much trouble with, but searching for Riddler trophies was a huge pain. It took me ages just to find my way into a lot of the buildings. There was this one time-I think it was probably the first time I played through the game-when I had to go back to the Batcave after escaping from Croc and I didn't realize I could just go through the sewers to do so, so I went all the way back up to the surface and tried to use the first entrance. It was blocked by Poison Ivy's plants. I literally spent two hours just trying to find the Batcave. I'm such an idiot sometimes.
I didn't have any navigational issues in Arkham City at all. The map was easy, the buildings not as labrynthine this time around, and when you're up in the actual city it isn't hard to navigate at all. Not just because of the giant Batsignal in sky marking where you need to go, but also because there are landmarks. Lots of landmarks. It's not hard to form a mental map of Arkham City. But the first Riddler room I had no end of trouble with. I didn't have any problems finding it, I just couldn't figure out how to get into it. I didn't realize that you could just walk up to the big green question make and press A and then Batman would bust in. I just stood there with detective mode on and stared at the question mark, looking for any cables or terminals or anything. I mean, it's the Riddler. You can't just walk in. Turns out you can. I finally had to look it up on the internet. How sad is that?
One time, Watson was over at my house. She was laying on the couch watching me play Arkham City, and I was playing on game plus. Game plus isn't really that hard, especially if you get good at the combat challenges before you go and play it. Anyway, I had to sneak back into the steel mill to go fight Joker, which meant I had to get past about a million snipers. I hate snipers. I hate being shot at. It always scares the crap out of me. So of course, I was gliding along praying that the snipers wouldn't see me, and one shot at me. He didn't even hit me. And I nearly fell out of my chair with a terrified squeak. Watson busted out laughing.
I later glide kicked the guy that shot at me. DON'T SHOOT AT ME FOOL.
Just a side note before I end this excessively long post, something I noticed that was different in City from Asylum. The freeflow was much smoother and easier to use. In Asylum I couldn't get freeflow to work to save my life. In City I became a master. I even went back and played Asylum after I beat most of the combat challenges on City and found it still to be sticky. Has anyone noticed this?
Wow. This is pitiful. All I ever play are Batman games.

/endrant

P.S. INJUSTICE IS COMING! I can't describe to you how excited I am about this.