You know, I'm actually pretty sure I've seen(on many occasions) people railing against books and movies and music, because the creators have crammed them with their shitty politics. Likewise I've seen people telling other people to chill the **** out with their politically-charged over-analyzing of those same mediums. And nobody ever sits around wondering how music or books or movies can be art if we can't TALK ABOUT THE ISSUES, MAN!
To be honest, I'm completely baffled why anybody even takes the question "Are games art?" seriously. Of course they are. They can be art just like any other entertainment medium can be art(likewise they can be shit, or at least culturally insignificant, or immensely fun/entertaining, but not art). It all just depends on the skill of the creators, i.e. if the team behind the game is good enough and the end result is good enough - it can easily be considered art. If all the different elements work together well enough it can be art. Or if one aspect is so stupidly brilliant, you can look over its faults in other less important aspects(see: Planescape: Torment/Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines's poor, but not terrible gameplay, for example). Kind of like if a movie has a great script and great acting and great dialogue, but shoddy camerawork, for example.
To be clear, though, personally I think that only a tiny percent of games are art, just like only a tiny percent of movies/books/songs are art.
To be perfectly honest, I really don't see how this is suddenly a problem. Arkham City's combat was only different from Arkham Asylum in the fact that you could do double or triple counters and the keys were moved around(plus a few new gadgets, same as this game). In fact, you could argue that it was limited in some aspects, since you didn't have a "Throw" attack.
And yet both games were awesome. Like somebody below me said, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And the Arkham games have one of the most fun combat systems I've seen in years. Actually the first time I heard that they were making a prequel(and a different company was making it, to boot) my first though was "God, I hope they don't change the combat".
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