Unlike previous Bat-DLCs, (deep breath) Batman: Arkham Knight - Season of Infamy: Most Wanted Expansion doesn't just throw you into a series of arenas and ignore everything you've done in the main game. Instead, it adds optional missions to Arkham Knight's campaign.

What a thought, right? Actually "expanding" the existing game? Brilliant.

Although there are clear signs that this content was an afterthought - there's literally a separate room in the GCPD building for these villains' cells and evidence lockers - these new missions nevertheless feel like cozy companions to the game's original Most Wanted. And they employ a rich variety of Arkham Knight's mechanics, including exploration and investigation, which is a refreshing change of pace from just fighting shit.

Do I wish that there were more than four new missions? Yup. Do I wish that the Mad Hatter's obligatory hallucination sequence was longer and more fanciful? Yup. Do I wish that Mr. Freeze and Ra's al Ghul had more presence in their missions? ... A little.

But I'm happy with the gameplay and narrative quality of these diversions, I'm happy with how well they integrate into Arkham Knight's story, and hell, I'm even happy to see Killer Croc again.

Better than: Batman: Arkham Origins - Cold, Cold Heart and all the other Arkham DLCs.
Not as good as: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Hearts of Stone
The "right" way to play this: is probably by having it from the beginning of Arkham Knight.

My understanding of the Arkham Knight DLC situation had been that, while most of its "story" packs were in the same neighborhood as the Harley Quinn pre-order bonus - which I previously described as a "pretty baffling disappointment" - the Batgirl-centered A Matter of Family was much more substantial and worthwhile.

That turns out to be a half-truth. The "more" part is true; not the "much" part.

A Matter of Family is set some time prior to The Killing Joke, and starts with a flimsy excuse to set Batgirl and Robin up against the Joker sans Batman. (Joker claims that he'll kill Jim Gordon if Batman shows up. Since when would that stop the Bat?) The map is open, but miniature -- Seagate Amusement Park is an artificial island isolated from the rest of Gotham, and its size feels comparable to one section of Arkham Asylum's overworld.

After the DLC's intro, you're tasked with rescuing three groups of hostages. While the map's openness means that you can go after these groups in any order -- after the first and second rescues, there is a non-optional objective to defuse a bomb at a specific location; then after the third rescue, a boss fight. So aside from picking which hostage to rescue first, the mission is intensely linear. And the whole affair is like, one or two hours long, maybe another if you seek out the optional collectibles (which I didn't).

Batgirl's moves and gadgets are all the same as Batman's, but fewer. The only "new" ability here is that some hackable objectives and traps don't require a password, that is, using the hacking gadget just finishes the hack automatically. Yes, that is a vanishingly minor distinction from Batman's kit.

A Matter of Family "works" in the sense that it delivers some of the same great stealth and combat fundamentals as Arkham Knight. Otherwise, this DLC pack is shallow, un-innovative, and utterly uncompelling. It's got more meat to it than the other story packs, but ... that's a pretty low bar to clear.

Better than: Batman: Arkham Knight - Harley Quinn Story Pack
Not as good as: Batman: Arkham City - Harley Quinn's Revenge
I kinda can't believe: that Batman: Arkham Origins - Cold, Cold Heart ended up being the best standalone Batman episode.

Midnight Protocol appears to sit somewhere between Hacknet and NITE Team 4, in terms of both realism and aesthetics. Its hacking mechanisms are less artificial than Hacknet's, though still abstracted from reality to be more "game-y." And while it revolves around a flashy node-based network visualization (similar to hacking in the newer Deus Exes), you still control everything with a command-line interface.

Unlike most hacking games, Midnight Protocol is turn-based: the "trace" countdown only ticks when you take an action. So, you can take your time planning how to optimize the CPU usage of exploit and stealth programs. There's an Uplink-style economy, where your ill-gotten money can be used to purchase upgrades -- the demo didn't show it, but there is a "hardware" tab, so I assume that your rig will scale up (as will program requirements) over time.

And the story teased by the demo is promising: you've got a dark past, there's some underground conspiracy, a hack gets abruptly interrupted by a counter-hack with ominous messaging... all typical stuff, but the quality of the writing "sells" it fairly well, typos notwithstanding.

Basically, everything I saw in this demo was good. But I'm trying not to get my hopes up; hacking games have a habit of letting me down with some combination of clunky interfaces, under-baked game design, and boring narratives. I'll want to see some post-release opinions on whether the rest of Midnight Protocol can measure up to my admittedly-high standards.

Progress: Finished the demo.

My initial concern in Patrick's Parabox was that the mechanical distinction between "push this block" and "enter the maze inside this block" is too ambiguous. I.e., you can't enter the side of a block until its opposite side is against a wall, and pushing an un-pushable block may have unexpected consequences if you're not paying attention. As more blocks and more pushing come into play, this gotcha could become frustrating.

But the demo levels didn't grow horizontal complexity like I expected -- they grew depth complexity. The last level I played had, like, four nested layers of block to traverse through. Now my concern is forgetting which layer I'm currently in.

That's just the kind of mind-twisting puzzle mechanic that I'm interested in learning more about. (And Parabox is more immediately accessible and rewarding than my peeks into Recursed have been, so far.)

I'm not "sold" on this one yet, but certainly ... intrigued. I wonder how the full game's later puzzles will turn out.

Progress: 14 puzzles solved in the demo.

On the one hand, I'm impressed by how well The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos (what a mouthful) adapts Dungeons & Dragons rules into a fun turn-based game. Its complexities aren't tutorialized very well - if you aren't already familiar with how "sprint" works, or "attacks of opportunity," the in-game explanations are little help - but I like the balance it strikes between simplification and versatility. This combat engine lets me worry about line-of-sight and backstab positioning, while keeping me from worrying about the minutiae of inventory management or spell preparation.

And I also like how the game sets up a pre-made party to exercise the breadth of D&D archetypes. Instead of doing the typical CRPG thing, asking me to pick a race and class then discarding the rest -- here we've got a human ranger, an elven archer, an ogre ... warrior I guess, a wizard, a dwarf; between the party of seven, every interesting character function gets some coverage. (Whatever your favorite D&D "thing" is, it's surely represented.)

On the other hand, Dungeon of Naheulbeuk bets big on its story and loses. It's a parody of RPG tropes, telling its tale via in-game cutscenes and extensive (voice-acted!) dialog, exploiting character stereotypes and some "knowing" satire both for entertainment value and to drive the plot forward. But the characters in this parody are overly rote; the few ideas that do feel fresh, like the cowardly thief, are overshadowed by low-hanging fruit like the speech-impaired barbarian or the wizard losing herself in a book. And the dialog is similarly uncreative, resulting in spoken lines that are more cringey than humorous. I appreciate the intent and effort, but the implementation just isn't good enough.

Since the original creation is French - as is the game's default language setting - I suspect that some of its sense of humor may have been lost in translation. But on that I can only speculate.

The gameplay is fine, but takes a back seat to storytelling, which isn't as funny as it wants or needs to be. Like many other parody games (see: DLC Quest, Eat Lead) Dungeon of Naheulbeuk ends up being the very thing that it intended to lampoon.

Progress: Got the magic amulet, didn't finish the demo.

Toodee and Topdee starts with a really fascinating premise: mashing up side-scrolling and top-down paradigms. Switch between a Mario-style character who can jump between platforms, and a Link-style character who can move those platforms. Toodee's initial levels feel like a call-out to games like Fez or Super Paper Mario -- "perspective changes are old news."

Unfortunately, the puzzle mechanics built on top of that premise are mostly underwhelming. The first time I jumped in sidescroller mode, then switched to top-down and placed a box under myself, was cool; but doing this move three or more times in a row just to cross a gap is kinda lame. As is switching back and forth to control gravity with precise timing (aligning falling sidescroller blocks with top-down pits). And there are some counter-intuitive assumptions in mechanics like keys, which apparently still count even if an enemy picks them up.

The controls also don't work as well as they should for a platform-puzzler. Like, sometimes horizontal movement stops working mid-jump. I think the game engine loses some inputs when multiple buttons are held down? -- whatever the reason, it's a bad problem to have.

As for story, I like that the game has one, but it's a little groan-inducing. Toodee's opening establishes a motif of its divine creator as a programmer, creating varied worlds, tasking an entity named Toodoo with tracking glitches, and making these worlds revolve around ... a semicolon. Like, a literal, giant floating semicolon is what separates worlds and keeps glitches in-check. I "get" the joke but it's pretty lame.

But I digress. What made me stop playing the demo wasn't its story, but its uncreative and sometimes incongruous mechanics. I'm not completely writing off Toodee yet, but it'll need quite a bit more puzzle-design polish before I'm interested in playing it again.

Progress: Finished a few levels in the demo.

I don't know if it was the launch's technical infidelity, or if critics just romanticized Arkham City more than I did, but consensus still ranks Batman: Arkham Knight below its predecessor and I just don't agree.

Sure, some narrative sequences feel forced and melodramatic, especially the first-person diner intro and especially especially the over-long Joker hallucination near the outro. The ending, even the 100%-completion ending, is underwhelming. But Knight's story succeeds at delivering impressive set-piece encounters, at continually teasing you with a tantalizing "what's next" objective, and at integrating sidequests that finally make the open world feel engaging and immersive.

Yeah, Bat-tank combat encounters are longer and more numerous than they really needed to be. The assault on GCPD and some later mine-defusing missions can get kinda repetitive. But these feel like exceptions to the overall rule of badassness established by rocketing around in the Batmobile and blowing shit up with it.

Melee combat, while overall more fluid than before, hits some rough edges in complicated terrain -- failing to grapple to the right thing, or jumping off a building instead of over a grunt. But it works more often than it doesn't; and to be fair, this open-world design problem remains prevalent today, five years later. (Ubisoft has been working on open world unit testing though I can't vouch for that myself.) Not to mention, the new Fear Multi Takedown ability is ... awesome.

And I will never forget that this game's instability on PC is the reason that Steam has refunds. But as of my replay this past week, the game performed beautifully and I didn't encounter any crashes. Just a soft-lock at the splash screen, which still pisses me off, but is really quite minor in the grand scheme of things.

Arkham Knight's successes handily outpace its flaws. Between the comprehensive and compelling side missions, the thrilling and dark story, and some genuinely inventive new mechanics, it really feels like a complete improvement on Arkham City - a generational leap beyond it - and an even fuller realization of Rocksteady's "vision" for a free-roaming Batman experience.

Better than: Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, Batman: Arkham Asylum (though not its story), Batman: Arkham City
Not as good as: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Once the summer sales hit: I'll finally try out the A Matter of Family and Season of Infamy DLCs.

Progress: Finished just about everything except that Riddler bullshit.

The two facts I could remember about Batman: Arkham City - Harley Quinn's Revenge were that it was (1) good, and (2) short.

Like, I didn't distinctly remember that Robin is in it. That's how un-memorable this DLC is overall.

It is still good, though. Harley Quinn's (brief) Revenge tells a fun little story that includes some combat, some stealth, and even a puzzle or two. It doesn't bring much new to the table - other than Robin's shield, which ... doesn't work very well - but it's also short enough to not wear out its welcome.

Better than: Fallout 4: Vault-Tec Workshop
Not as good as: Batman: Arkham Origins - Cold, Cold Heart
Pretty underwhelming use of a new playable character: but it does serve as good prototyping for the larger cast in Arkham Knight.

Batman: Arkham City is still a super-fun implementation of Batman's rogues gallery in an atmospheric open-world sandbox. But... revisiting the game does shine more light on its shortcomings than I saw in 2011.

In retrospect, a key aspect of Arkham City's story is that despite being "in" an open world, all the important parts are linear. It's really not that different from Arkham Asylum's style of storytelling -- but with city blocks, instead of narrow corridors, punctuating mission objectives.

To put it another way: Arkham City's sandbox is built to support its story, more than the other way around. Side missions aren't just wholly detached from the main storyline, they also tend to be insubstantial on their own. Creative effort was clearly far more focused on the story missions than on other activities in the open world.

(Compared to the side missions in Arkham Origins, which I recently called "uncompelling", I still think Arkham City's are more interesting... but not by very much.)

That being said, despite the highlight of Arkham City being its narrative, that story falls short of the bar set by Arkham Asylum. And I can pin the blame for that on two men in paricular: Mr. Freeze and Ra's al Ghul.

I'm not complaining that they're bad villains: actually, these are two of my favorites from the Bat-verse. Nor am I complaining that their parts in the story were forced, or a slog: neither were as "forced" as the Solomon Grundy boss fight, nor as much of a slog as the Penguin's museum dungeon, both of which fit perfectly into the game. (Hell, as far as Grundy goes -- randomly throwing oddball characters into an event is part of what made Arkham Asylum so thrilling.)

My problem with Freeze and Ra's is that they feel so much like a deus ex machina to the game's plot. The dire needs for Freeze's pharmacology expertise, and for Ra's's magic blood, don't seem like they fit in a world where Batman and Alfred can solve similar problems on their own; and these characters' immediate availability in Arkham City is just too convenient to believe.

When Ra's appears later in the game's story as a big plot reveal, that moment is a lot more thrilling and satisfying. And totally unrelated to Batman needing his fucking blood.

I don't want to oversell my complaint here, which is really just that a couple of character introductions are distractingly awkward. The overall story is nevertheless an entertaining rollercoaster ride from start to finish. And while I'll whine - endlessly - about how much bullshit the Riddler collectibles are, their additional lore rewards (audio recordings and Arkham City Stories) fill in some satisfying context about the origins of Arkham City.

The audio recordings particularly highlight how great Hugo Strange's voice actor was at conveying unsettling sinisterness. It's a shame that so much of his character is hidden away in these optional unlockables.

Replaying Arkham City was fun, but did remove some of the rosy tint from my glasses, so to speak. In fact, revisiting it and Arkham Origins so close together has increased my apprecation for the latter; it may have been an uninspired sequel, but it put a lot of effort into measuring up to its forebear.

Better than: Batman: Arkham Origins (PC, PS3, WiiU, X360), Marvel's Spider-Man
Not as good as: Batman: Arkham Asylum
That Riddler bullshit: still way too much work for an underwhelming payoff. But I did it again, for the achievements.

Progress: Finished the story and most side missions.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is still good enough to start on a Sunday afternoon and finish later that same evening.

Like I wrote last time, there are some mechanical shortcomings - compared to later Arkham games - which are plainly evident. Some combat gadgets don't exist yet, the tactics for Titan enemies are pretty limited, and you can't stealth-takedown from a floor grate (!!). As a result, revisiting Arkham Asylum does have a bit of an "old" feeling to it -- not a big deal, though I wonder if I'll still be this forgiving in another five-or-ten years.

On the other hand, Arkham Asylum demonstrates some prowess which present-day games still struggle to measure up to. Its story pacing is great - maintaining a steady rhythm of supervillain cameos and plot reveals from beginning to end - and it's incredible to see how those story events affect the world map. Actually, it's hard for me to think of a better example of this particular Metroidvania tenet: when a game uses backtracking as an opportunity to demonstrate how the narrative is changing the game world. (Metroid Fusion did pretty well at this, from what I recall.)

And while I'm not going out of my way to finish this game's collectibles, that's only because I've done it before. They're way more attainable than the absurd amount of Riddler bullshit in following games, and this set of character profiles represents a surprising volume of Batman memorabilia.

Arkham Asylum may not have the openness of its followers, but its tight craftsmanship makes it a tough act to follow.

Better than: Batman: Arkham Origins (PC, PS3, WiiU, X360)
Not as good as: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Hearts of Stone
We'll find out soon: whether Arkham City has aged so well.