The former, which led to the latter. The combat stops tolerating "MASH SQUARE!!!!!!!111one", you actually have to use stealth. My only problem with this is the relative lack of stealth options early in the game. All you can really do are sneak attacks, glide kicks and that thing where you hang the guy from a gargoyle (I love doing that). And then there was Scarecrow, and Bane...

Oh you're barely in at all, then

Well the beginning is going to be pretty simplistic, mano. Spend your experience points on more melee moves and stuff will start getting pretty hairy. It's probably the most satisfying game in the world when it comes to fighting crowds.

The amount I'd played would have taken most people about half an hour. But it took me at least four times that because of the god damned Riddler. Any of his puzzles I did end up solving were entirely by chance. For example, I was trying to scan a gravestone and ended up scanning Wayne Towers

I wouldn't say it's bad, just average.

The epic Batman combat involves mashing square. And sometimes pressing triangle, but that's optional.

The epic Batman stealth involves swinging between gargoyles and kicking people, then being shot and swinging between gargoyles again.

The so-called riddles for the world's greatest detectives aren't riddles, they're painstaking searches of large rooms in order to find miniscule details and scan them. The first one was a riddle of sorts, but it was painstakingly obvious what he was referring to, and extremely annoying when he made it yet more obvious when clearly you're just looking for a portrait of Warden Sharp.

And these riddles seriously mess up the flow of the game. I can't possibly ignore all of these riddles and collectibles and recordings and just continue with the main mission, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. So I end up searching every nook and cranny of a large area for anything that could possibly fit the riddle, and scanning them all. And I still can't find it, and only then do I give up.

Is there something I'm missing here, something which turns this from a generic superhero brawler with some poorly designed riddles, into this GoTY-worthy masterpiece that everyone else seems to see? Does it get better later on? Because I liked the demo, thinking "Hmm, this will just be a small portion of what's in the game". But after a good few hours of play, that's all that is in the game.

EDIT: After progressing a little further in the game, it does seem to be improving. So, if you gave up on this game early on, give it another try, because the first couple of hours (well, they were a couple of hours for me, trying to solve all of the Riddler's scavenger hunts) are pretty painful, but once you get some new combat and stealth options, it goes uphill quickly.

I still wouldn't call it GoTY material, but it's a solid game.

How did this information filter down to you :o