Batman: Arkham Asylum and the depressing truth about immersion

Batman: Arkham Asylum is pretty good game, sometimes even a great game. There's plenty of problems but the scale and ambition of the title is such that I'm content to overlook the padding that tries to hide the relative simplicity of the game underneath all the shiny.

What's strange to me about Arkham Asylum is that when Batman is being awesome I don't feel like I'm Batman. I idly flick a couple of buttons and Batman pummels one guy, blocks another and then executes a perfect kick on a third. I feel like I'm making suggestions and Batman is following them up, as and when he feels like. I spectate and marvel at his amazing skills, much like I do when reading a comic.

The times that I do feel like Batman are the intervals between the action. The times when I, and by extension Batman, don't really know what we are doing. This is a Batman that's taken one too many punches to the head and is feeling groggy and slightly confused. This is a Batman who can't find the door that he just came in through and spends five minutes anxiously running in small circles while trying to find it.

"Batman stood motionless for several minutes while he tried to remember how to jump"

Batman is very good at doing awesome things even when you aren't controlling him. He's fucking in charge and has his shit very much together. He can call in a Batplane to deliver him a gadget that he knows he's going to need any minute now. When Batman is being is being controlled by me he develops strange tics, a sudden need to find the secret area that he knows must be around here somewhere, despite the fact that the Joker has made it very clear that time is of the essence if Gotham is ever to be saved. At a critical moment in the plot Batman inexplicably decided to enter completely the wrong building and fuck about in crawlspaces, trying to piece together the secret history of Arkham Asylum. He honestly thought he was in the right building too which just made it worse.

It's strange and jarring that, for me, the immersion is highest when Batman gets incompetent, fixated and a little bit mad. I feel like I'm doing the Joker's job for him, embracing that madness and the chaos that the Joker espouses, just in a much smaller and sadder way than he might have expected. I feel that the ultimate Batman game would be one of those QWOP games where all you have to do is get Bruce Wayne out of bed and dressed for a business meeting. It would be impossible to achieve, you'd inevitably end up with toothpaste in your ear and trying to put both legs into one arm of your shirt. Eventually Alfred would put you out of your misery with a tranquilizer dart. The message would be very clear - you are not Batman, you aren't even Bruce Wayne getting out of bed. You aren't the hero, you're the reason it takes the hero fourteen attempts to kill the final boss. You are a disease afflicting the hero, an inner ear condition, a sudden stroke, a bilious attack and Batman would be much better off if this wasn't a game but a comic book. You never read an issue of Batman where he couldn't get out of bed properly and you never will. You aren't a superhero and you never will be.