This was really fun!

You get to play both the good guys and the bad guys in this. Again, getting 100% completed was not as hard as Star Wars, but doable. Chronologically, it would have made more sense for the player to be required to do the villain missions first (most of them take place “time wise” before Batman shows up and ruins the villain’s fun).

There are three Hero (and consequently, three Villain) “missions” with five parts each, where you battle (or take the role of) villains who are part of groups masterminded by the Riddler, the Penguin, and the Joker. You have to complete all of the Hero parts of a mission to then play the Villain ones … and you’re not going to be able to get all of the minikits and specials from all parts until you’ve hit the third Joker mission, as there are parts that require specific characters or vehicles that aren’t available until then.

For various reasons I played this at a slower pace than I did Star Wars or Indy. But I did so enjoy it much more than Indy. It was well worth $40 or even maybe $50; but for all I know (another gift here) it was running $60 at the store. Oh well.

100% is easily doable; just make sure you eventually find all of your Hostages (even the villains have to rescue them! and you can’t get all of them until you go through in Free Play mode anyway) and go through the BatComputer and purchase everything you can (except that 4,000,000,000 stud “clue” – it’s not worth it and is not required for 100%, and you can’t have more than 4 trillion studs at one time either). There are a couple of “extra” levels you need for that 100%, but they aren’t any biggie (find a walkthrough online if you run into issues).

I also recommend finding a walkthrough (Google, my good man!) to check to see what characters you’d need for finding all of the Suit/Extra blocks, MiniKits, and Hostages … nothing more frustrating than going 90% through a Free Play with the intention of finishing before realizing you need a character or vehicle you haven’t unlocked yet.

Next on my playlist? Next week Amazon ships me a copy of LittleBigPlanet (and another controller – hopefully my girlfriend will be willing to play a bit).

EDIT 11/3/08: Switched to NewEgg; got it $3 cheaper and probably 3-5 days earlier than I would have through Amazon.