AW8
Arcane
Agree, I found this to be the easiest Arkham game yet. It's very hard to get punched in combat, I think Batman moves faster in this game or something. I played City on Hard 2 weeks ago, and freeflow combat is less forgiving there, Batman is sluggish and can't dodge hits as well.The sad thing is that you actually get more things you can do to mess with enemies. You can sabotage weapon crates, detective mode jammers, etc. Just got a voice "synthesizer" to order grunts to certain locations (such as said sabotaged crates). You can throw gadgets while gliding in, as mentioned before. You can steal or pickup baseball bats, which let you strike directly on shielded enemies and those guys that can't be hit before being stunned. You can use environmental objects sometimes a la Sleeping Dogs. You even get a single juggle lol.
But these mechanics are usually pointless because the encounters are too easy even without them.
I think the gunfire damage has been increased as I insta-die without armor upgrades on Hard. But Predator is still piss-easy because of the Fear Takedowns (upgradeable to 5 insta-KO'ed thugs! 5!) and the gargoyles/vantage points/vents/grates everywhere. You can even switch unseen between hiding above the thugs on the ledges, or beneath them in the grates, with the new "grapple up vent" feature. Oh, and most Predator takedown moves have been made silent or given longer range (normal silent takedown, corner takedown).
The few new enemy types doesn't really weigh fair against these new player advantages.
The New Game+ design is so retarded, why do I have to beat the game once in order to unlock the hardest difficulty?
But even though it's easy... I can't say I haven't had fun. Stealing baseball bats and punching through the defenses of Brutes or manipulating armed thugs with the Voice Synthesizer and Disruptor, great fun. What the game really needs is a proper Challenge Mode where you can play around with all the gadgets and enemy types (and different characters!) on different maps. The AR Training is unfortunately a watered-down Batman-only version, and judging from the Season Pack information, proper Challenge Maps will come as paid DLC.