Fuck you.
Just fuck you and everything you stand for.
You clearly don't belong in this game. Everything else about it is brilliant - the visuals are slick and gritty, the gameplay is solid and extremely different from Mortal Kombat and the Story Mode is engaging and challenging without being bullshit hard. When Bane kicks the Joker into an elevator, then runs inside to smash his head against the walls hard enough to leave dents, I pump my fist into the air with joy. The game as a whole could have been a beautiful rose in the colourful flowerbed of video games, but it isn't. And that's because you exist on it as a hideous, parasitic fungus eating away at it's insides and ruining everything that's good about it with your rank stench of dog turd.
Allow me to elaborate. I had cleared the Story Mode and earned a load of Armoury Keys to unlock alternate costumes for the characters. However, the Keys are only awarded with every alternate level you reach, so I wasn't able to unlock all of them. It was then that all my common sense leapt out of my brain and scurried away, leaving to me to make a really stupid decision. "Okay," I say to myself, "perhaps I'll try the S.T.A.R Labs missions. Mortal Kombat's missions were cool and I beat loads of those, so maybe this'll be a ticket to free XP and Armoury Keys." Little did I know of the bullshit that was lurking over the hill, waiting for the chance to pounce and sink his filth-encrusted fangs into my patience.
So I start up the missions, and all goes well. Lex Luthor has kidnapped Louis Lane, as he is wont to do, and Superman has to save her, as he is also wont to do. Mission 1 has me beating up The Flash for some off reason - all I do is follow the on-screen prompts and I complete it, earning three big silver stars. "Huh," I say to myself. "This isn't so hard. I was expecting a bit more, but okay." Mission 2 is more fun - Superman is low on health and has to stay in these patches of sunlight to recover it whilst fighting Bane. It's tense and frantic, and I complete it with little fuss. I earn only two stars this time, but then I try again and it turns out I had to punt Bane through a building as well, which is fair enough.
But then you come along, Mission 3, and put a fucking brick wall between me and progress.
Lex is mind-controlling Batman and has given him a supply of Kryptonite-laced Batarangs (no they don't specify how, put your hand down). And it's not like the challenge is difficult in concept - beat Batman, use a stage prop, don't get hit by the killer green projectiles. No problem, one might say. And indeed, for the first few minutes, it seems pretty simple. Batman barely puts up a fight as I wail on him with Superman's arsenal of kickass moves, punching him through a glass cabinet and throwing a plane on his head. I've whittled him down to half health and so far, things are fine.
And then I get hit with a Batarang.
I ignore this and complete the mission. But because I was hit, I'm deducted a star. And the only way to get all three stars is never to get hit. So I try again. And again, and again, and again, and gradually the veil of normalcy is torn away to reveal the hideous beast underneath, the sight of which makes me swear in disgust and throw my controller down so hard it bounces off the floor, hits the TV and knocks my copy of Metal Gear Rising off my shelf. Because the tongue-slapping otherkin dickheads behind the creation of this mission have rigged it to the point where earning that precious third star is fucking impossible.
See, there is literally no way to predict when Batman is going to throw a Batarang, because the A.I. doesn't have the same patterns one would find in a Capcom game. And it seems Lex's mind-control device also made Bruce Wayne fucking precognitive as well, because everything I do can somehow be perfectly countered with a telepathically-thrown Batarang from the fucking future. Heat Vision blasts are interrupted without a fuss, attempts to dive in are blocked and any attempts at actual combos or closing the distance are met with a giant Batarang-shaped middle finger. And even when I'm close up to him he will find some way to throw one in my face, because Ryu is apparently a pussy for not throwing projectile attacks at a such a close range as to render them pointless over regular punches or kicks.
My problems with this are twofold. Firstly, one shouldn't set such a fucking narrow goal in the first place. Not everyone is going to be capable of dodging a Batarang every time, so there's no reason to penalize us for not being picture perfect. Three will do at the most, because even then the Kryptonite Batarangs (note how fucking dumb that sounds, by the way) don't even do that much damage. Secondly, even if you are going to set such a goal, you have to make sure the enemy A.I. for that mission isn't an input-reading arsehole that delights in ruining people's dreams. Because Heaven forbid that the players actually succeed in completing the shitty challenges we personally designed to have a fucking reward at the end for completing! Only pansy casuals design their games to let their players have any chance of winning at all! No, kicking the player's arse for having the gall to try and do anything besides take it like a bitch is where it's at, because Dark Souls did it so we might as well too! Haw haw haw, tongue-slap tongue-slap!
In the end, I gave up. I turned off the Xbox and played some Mario Tennis instead. There came a point where I asked myself "Why am I even bothering to press any buttons?" because clearly I wasn't meant to succeed, so what was the point? I refuse to put up with bullshit A.I., idiotic goals designed by Hitler and fucking capital punishment for the slightest of errors, because challenge is one thing, but setting up a concrete wall and expecting us to bash it down with naught but a toffee hammer is an exercise in frustration and anger. I'm not proud of my lack of patience when it comes to these things, but from now on I'm only playing games that at least give me a chance to actually fucking complete them. And if that makes me some kind of casual scrub, then call me Scrub McNewbpants, but better to reign in Casual-Land than continuously have my face shoved into dog shit and broken glass in New Hardcoria.
In short, fuck you, Mission 3. I hope Killer Croc rips you open and eats your insides. I'll just grind Story Mode from now on if I want my XP.
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