Oh God, Arkham Asylum's combat system, where do we begin.
You click Mouse1 and Batman automatically spins into an auto-aimed combo with the nearest enemy. You press mouse 2 and you automatically block the next attack coming from any direction. No aiming necessary, just click mouse1-mouse1-mouse1 and then mouse 2 when you get a big lightning bolt indicator over your head.
I really enjoyed Arkham Asylum, but the combat system really is the epitome of consolized shit.
Batman's combat system relies more on managing large groups of enemies and stringing together combos than aiming and targeting. On the harder difficulties or doing the game's challenge mode, it can get
very demanding. I don't think disparaging it because it doesn't require you to lock on to enemies or attack with extreme precision is especially fair.
What might be a better question is if that model works for The Witcher, but as we haven't seen anything of the combat system, it's hard to even say what elements of Batman it's drawing from.
I was going to compare this to Dynasty Warriors, but then I remembered that Dynasty Warriors doesn't have auto-aim and requires you to actually point the stick in the general direction of the gigantic mob you're trying to attack.
Maybe this is just the going-on 300 hours of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare speaking, but I think that group combat is overwhelmingly both more interesting and exponentially more challenging when you have to manually place your strikes, particularly with a high degree of precision. E.g. when a Spartan is stabbing a Dory on your 2 o'clock and a Pirate is swinging a Cutlass at your 10 o'clock and you're dodging a third with a Blunderbuss on your 6, especially compared to the click-click-clickety-click of the Batman: Arkham series. In a game like Chiv, even placing a stab under or around an enemy shield can be an acutely frenetic affair.
But then again I didn't play the challenge modes, and I have no idea why you would want to. I beat Arkham Aslyum on Normal mode on my PS3 and I found the game to be most intriguing in terms of the plot, the detective elements, and the simplistic but fluid stealth combat.
I know you guys like to disparage the Witcher series' combat system, but for god's sake, at least it requires some skill in terms of maneuver and placement of strikes, and that's on top of managing groups of enemies. Of what significance precisely is "managing" large groups of enemies when they stand around and wait their turn to strike you, issue a giant blue halo over their heads before they're about to attack, and the only interaction you need to have in order to deal with any of this is left clicking and right clicking? Are you referring to management of left clicks versus right clicks? You can't even choose which enemy you attack or which enemy you parry, it's all automatic, so the use of the term "management" doesn't really make any sense to me.
And of course you didn't mention that most of the combat engagements in the Arkham series can be avoided by resetting your braindead enemies' detection abilities by pressing the grappling hook button which launches you 20 feet in the air, and if that doesn't do it, you zip around the room for about 5 seconds to one of the dozen gargoyle statues strategically placed around the room and it should do the trick.
Perhaps you can elaborate, because I'm a little worried by the dev's reference to Arkham. This signifies "simplification" in combat encounters in the same way that their references to Skyrim and GTA V signified this obsession with open world. The devs' reference to "constantly locking onto enemies" makes it pretty clear that TW3 is going to have some kind of autoaim with the attacks. Not that I give a shit, I intend to
Anyway, this
>>>>> This junk