GAMEPLAY-STEALTH
The stealth used to be my favorite parts of Asylum, so seeing it botched so hard breaks my heart and any fondness I might have had for the game otherwise.
>Improvements and new mechanics
Storywise you're mostly fighting the Arkham Militia, who have been trained by the Knight, aka red hood aka jason todd aka robin 2, in Batman's tactics. Thus the way the story and the dialog try to sell is that these people know batman inside out, with their tactics being made to keep batman out in the open and away from cover. These come in a few forms, and they are mostly done like shit.
>Thermobaric charges: Grenades that burn entire vent systems. If you're in a vent when they go boom, bye. Sometimes they destroy vents to the point where you can no longer enter them. I have no idea when that happens
<Very rarely used
>Mines: These are placed everywhere, floors, vantage points.
<Very rarely used, the radius on their detonation is so small you can rarely trip them
>Sentry guns: These knock you back and deal a shitton of damage, probably certain death if spotted by
<You get a gadget that disables their cone of fire for a solid minute. This can be done infinitely with no cooldown.
>Medics: Enemies that revive downed allies.
<You get a gadget that can knock out medics when they attempt to revive anyone. At most there are two medics in any stealth section, meaning limited ammo(3) isn't a problem.
>Boa controllers: drones that patrol the area and can spot Batman easier than guards.
<See sentry guns
>Detective vision gimmicks: You either have the jammers, or the detectors. The detectors give enemies your position if you stay in detective vision for a long period.
<It's a LONG period. Around 3 seconds to fill the bar, and the bar degrades instantly and quickly. And it more or less lets you set up explosive gel traps because it shows a last known location and not your real time location
>Minigunners(these might have been in previous games?): Big guys 4u who can't be knocked out instantly, you have to go through a scripted animation(I hestitate to call it a QTE because it's anything but quick) to take them down
<Except environmental takedowns go through them really quickly and every encounter you have with them has something to take them down instantly. Robin, a fuse box, a weak wall, something.
Batman also now has two new moves that completely break stealth.
>Fear Takedowns: aka how to make stealth worthless. It's a move where you can take down up to five enemies at once, the games goes into slow motion and whatnot and you pick and choose targets. This completely makes any bullshit tactics like "work in pairs, watch each others backs" enemies employ an utter detriment.
>You can now go from vantage point to vent in an instant. Combine this with the fact that enemies rarely take out vantage points or vents and this means stealth is now a complete joke.
But that's not even the main reason why stealth is completely botched.
>How predator stealth is done
In previous games, stealth was always confined to indoors sections, where the maps funnel you into these parts with no way to go but forward.
In this game, some genius fuckwad decided 90% of the stealth should take place on the rooftops of gotham, whether it be watchtowers or story missions. What does this mean you ask? Why, it means every stealth map is a complete shitshow with vents covering the entire map and you can simply fuck off to an adjacent rooftop, do a glidekick takedown or a grappnel takedown, and then do that 10 more times until everyone is taken down.
The indoor maps are pretty alright outside of being able to go from vantage point to vent with no risk and enemies being too spread out.