I use Quick Fire to pull enemies off the rails for a quick takedown. Although, like I said, Origins implemented it so poorly that a tried and true gameplay mechanic in City ended up broken by sloppy implementation.

And the targeting in City was not the same as Origins. In City, you would point towards an armored foe and do the takedown because they were the clear and present danger that needed to be dealt with. In Origins, you could fly past the one or two or three armored enemies, even fly through them on occasion, and target an unarmed thug who was no threat at all. It's really not the same thing.

Battlefield priority means taking out the enemies that are the biggest threat first, that's why the team who built City added in the ability to take out the more dangerous foes with your specialized attacks if you were pointing the stick at them. What you call a flaw, I call a feature. And what Origins has was neither, it was broken. So much that they put in a stupid God of War style RAGE MODE thing where you become unstoppable for a short time. Which is insane because you're playing as BATMAN already. In City the players skill is what made you unstoppable... you know, that and Batman already being pretty much unstoppable.

Also, seeing the enemies in screenshots or even videos isn't the same as dealing with them in gameplay. The question wasn't "was the art fine", it was "did it affect gameplay or was it merely an aesthetic choice". Sure, it's serviceable. But the question of which was better implemented comes down in City's favor. City was set in a winter timeline as well falling on Christmas. Yet it still managed to be colorful and pleasing to the eye and not feel washed out and drab like Origins was. The only reason for the white and grey palette was a story conceit of a blizzard which otherwise doesn't affect the gameplay at all. It's a design choice that makes the game less fun than it's predecessors.

If you do decide to pick up Origins, I can't physically stop you. I assume you're spending money that is yours on a thing you supposedly want and you're well within your rights to do so. But if asked if I'd recommend it, probably not. I didn't enjoy Origins despite finding City and Asylum to be a near perfect blend of story and gameplay. "Perfect Blend" meaning a little story to justify strong core gameplay in case you're wondering. Asylum and City seemed like well crafted experiences built by a passionate team who wanted to deliver on the promise of a strong license. Origins was a bunch of needless conceits in service of nothing other than pushing another game with the Arkham name on it to rake in some cash. It's an uninspired soulless effort that is riddled (pun intended) with bugs and glitches that have affected more players than they didn't. Caveat Emptor my friend.

If you're interested, here's the review I wrote for Origins.

Bad Design choices:

• UNLIKE City, Origins did not evenly distribute hook points for the Grapnel Boost which makes the simple act of traversal a needless chore.
• UNLIKE City, Origins implements poorly designed new enemies that took focus away from controlling the battlefield and instead forced you to focus on just one enemy. This sounds like a small change, but it isn't. It completely changes the encounters with mobs and it breaks the gameplay loop by taking away from fun enjoyable encounters to a needlessly convoluted button presses. It made FreeFlow combat into Quick Timed Events.
• UNLIKE City, Origins Stealth segments were poorly designed. Since you like specifics, I'll elaborate: The stealth segments have always been elegantly designed. Certain spaces allowed certain takedowns to be done. Origins though, made far too many options, so rather than knowing you can lure an enemy to a given space to perform a takedown, you had to struggle with making sure you triggered the proper takedown. Further, the Quick-Fire weapons had a horrible implementation in that they would often misfire and go past the enemy you were intending to attack and hit a different enemy altogether which instead of dealing with the enemy you want, you've given away your position to more than one enemy plus still have to deal with the one you were attempting to takedown. This makes the stealth segments needlessly difficult and very frustrating where they used to be a symphony of movement and quick attacks working in concert. This NEVER happened to me in City and I tried desperately to discern a pattern to the madness. None exists however. It's simply implemented poorly where it used to work fine. I'm all for change when it's necessary, but making a change that hurts the gameplay is not subjectively just different, it's bad design choice.
• UNLIKE City, Origins targeting was broken. Where City and Asylum used a battlefield priority approach, Origins was slapdash in it's implementation of simple maneuvers. Multiple times the player could build up enough combo to pull off a takedown only to fly past the intended target and do the move against a different enemy. This is disconcerting and it makes dealing with the enemies a crapshoot instead of an elegant free form gameplay mechanic.

Bad Art Design choices:

• The washed out color palette does not work in service of the gameplay you keep claiming is the only important thing. Again, I'll elaborate: City and Asylum had a purpose for every design choice. Enemies are designed with purpose because you need to identify them quickly so you know what move to employ to take an enemy down at a moments notice. When the color palette is as washed out and grey as Origins, this becomes difficult. And it leads to hurting the gameplay when you can't keep a simple combo chain going in a game with combat that is all about building combo chains and varying up your moves to gain bonuses.
• Further, the new enemies look too similar to simply identify them easily. So it's nearly impossible in the heat of combo-battle to identify which red and black ninja type you're about to face which pulls focus from controlling the battlefield and leaves you locked into an overlong and over complicated QTE if you engage with the enemy. These bad art design choices simply hurt the gameplay, there's no other way to say it.

And the bugs weren't some imaginary thing that only affected a few of the players. It was a significant amount of the player base who were afflicted by the poor coding on the developers part. If wanting my game to work properly means I'm a fanboy of studios who DO bother to bug test, I'll wear that label on my sleeve as a badge of honor. And if calling out studios who can't be bothered to do the work because they have a successful brand to milk and they know it will sell anyway makes me a "hater", well call me a "hater" then. Your scorn will not change the fact that Origins is simply not as well designed, objectively, as it's predecessors. A fact you'd probably know if you bothered to actually play the game instead of assuming everyone but you is a stupid fanboy.

The grappling in City may not have been perfect, but it was a damn sight better than it was in Origins. And jumping over the rail instead of hanging was something you did by how you held the stick, not a gameplay flaw. Player error.

As for the combat in City, it's up to the player to control the battlefield in the game. If you can't be bothered to keep your eye on the enemies when they are holding throwables, that's on you not the game. Dispatching throwing enemies was never a chore when a small amount of diligence was employed by the player. Simply angling the camera to keep an eye out for possible attacks is part of the arsenal at your disposal. It's up to you to use it. Furthermore, gun toting enemies always had an audio cue so the player should know to watch out for them. Your arguments against City only make your points weaker, which is impressive since you're arguing in favor of a game you haven't even played.

Gore is fine in the proper context. Gears of War for example, it needed that extra layer of gore. If they toned it down in that game, it would be silly. You have chainsaw bayonets so gore is a given. Even expected.

But Watch_Dogs is a game set in a modern real city and trying to tell a more grounded tale of espionage rather than a "War is hell" story arc. Excessive gore would seem distracting in that kind of situation. As long as they don't go the opposite way and have you shooting people in the head with no kind of gore would I find it distracting. But even then, the reason I'm excited about Watch_Dogs is because it seems to offer more non-lethal approaches to the challenges than anything else.

Origins lack of polish is not a case of subjectivity. It's objectively broken when compared to it's progenitors. Bugs, crashes, glitches, these are what the term "unpolished" was coined to represent. Further, art may be subjective, but there are conventions that work, and conventions that don't. Origins washed out color palette hurt the one most important thing; the gameplay. It made mobs more difficult to manage and that broke the combat loop that the series was known for.

It's fine to like Arkham Origins. I like lots of things that are objectively bad when subjected to honest critique. The Jason movies for example. But I don't pretend they're some grand vision that people who dislike them are just "hating" against. Or to put it in a pithy one-liner: If you want to write your name with a turd that's your business, but don't call it a crayon when people ask why it stinks.

Mind? I insist.

I never understood a parent who didn't embrace the hobby.

My parents were always supportive of my decision to spend time gaming. When I was young, they bought me an Atari. When I was in high school, I asked for a NES and they were happy to see me happy. I brought my friends over to play, played games in the arcade, and they'd often plunk a quarter in a Pac-Man machine and be my player 2 when I was first finding the hobby.

When I got older and had my own kid, gaming was often a bonding activity between my daughter and I. It still is.

I mean it just seems like such a silly thing to be bothered by. If a kid were a racist or a bully, that's when a parent should be upset. But a gamer? That's just not something I can't see how anyone has a problem with. I mean MAYBE if all your kid liked were hyper-violent games and to the detriment of all other activities it could be cause for alarm. But even then it's not worth dismissing the entire hobby over.

@speedfreak48t5p: I was on board from GTA 3. But San Andreas is the one I consider the gold standard of the open-world sandbox games. The only one that comes close is Saints Row 2, and I'd still put San Andreas higher on the list of all time best.

Are you building a museum or something?

This week alone I've seen you mention the Saturn, the 3DO, and now the Dreamcast.

Also, if you are building a museum, where can I visit it and what are your rates? :)

Too true.

I'm rocketing towards "boring old man" with jet-like speed. My kid is nearly done with being a teenager at this point.

But at least I can afford good Scotch now. :)