As I've been on a bit of a Batman kick the last few weeks with all the Arkham series footage I've been watching on Twitch, I thought back to a game that I bought all the way back in 2015.

At the time, I tried a little bit of it in co-op with Scoob, but we didn't get very far, and had very little urge to get back to it.

After playing through it recently, I have discovered why we did not go back to it. As it's just not that great.

The game in question is Lego Batman.

On paper, this should have been a lot of fun. You get to play as Batman and Robin in a silly Lego version of the DC Universe, in a beat-em-up style game where you explore the levels, clatter bad guys, and build weird inventions and contraptions out of Lego bricks.

In reality, it turned out to be quite a frustrating little beast to play.

Primarily, for whatever dumb reason or reasons, I actually found the controls really bad. This was especially true when you are controlling vehicles, and ultra especially true when you have to tow bombs with vehicles and release them so that they hit something you're trying to damage or destroy.

Even getting into the vehicles was a pain, as the button to do this was the same button you use to switch characters, so nine times out of ten I'd just change character rather than jump into the vehicle. It was infuriating.

I know it's a silly game, but several characters, especially Robin, are portrayed as complete idiots. Now I'm no Robin fan, so I didn't mind all that much, but it just seemed odd that Batman always came across as calm and competent, when so many other people around him were behaving in very childish ways.

I do have a couple of other Lego games, though one of them is Star Wars, which for obvious reasons will never be played.

The other one is the sequel to this game, and if it's anything like this one is, then I doubt I'll be playing that one either.

Much like with my Terraria shenanigans from a couple of years ago, I was again motivated to play a game thanks to the chaos experienced by streamer Preach recently.

The game in question this time is Prison Architect, a game I've owned for many years and never touched. The closest I got to playing it was when the multiplayer update came out, and I installed it back then hoping that Scoob and I would give it a try, but it never happened.

So it's been pretty cool to finally get some use out of it.

After a bit of research, I learned that the developers of this game changed a few years back, and a lot of people have not been happy about it. Luckily, I'd still got my old downloads from GOG, so that is the version I've played.

Like with Terraria, I didn't really want to "play the game properly" as such. I just wanted to build something. To this end, I allowed myself infinite money, and turned off failure states. Unfortunately, like Terraria, I couldn't just build something without actually having at least some gameplay, as things had to be unlocked through game progression.

Now, you might think this would make the game very easy, and in some ways it was. But the fact that I was just diving straight into a big sandbox build with no tutorials was still pretty intimidating. It didn't help that the controls of the game are bonkers, and there are no rebindable options, even through config files and such.

I suppose I could have looked at using something like GlovePie to remap everything, but whatever.

I started off with a small build for a few minimum security prisoners, and just kept adding rooms and cells until I'd got 24 settled in and seemingly happy.

It was during this time that I learned all about the regime, programs, deployments, logistics, patrols and all of the other little things that were required to keep things running smoothly and with as much automation as possible.

While all that was going on, I started building a second cell block, this time to take 40 prisoners, who would be a slightly rougher bunch and would be placed in medium security. This included an extra perimeter fence and extra dogs to patrol among them.

I didn't add them slowly like I did with my first bunch of hoodlums, and instead opened the prison up to all 40 at the same time. As you would expect, chaos quickly ensued, with these prisoners beating each other up and leaving blood trails all through the cell block as well as in the cafeteria.

Absolute savages, ruining my nice clean floors. How dare they! And ruining my 29 day no incident streak to boot. Just rude.

It was always my intent to build a third block for high security prisoners, with armed guards and sniper towers, but soon after adding the second bunch of prisoners, and getting them to settle down, I've decided to move on. Believe it or not, I actually spent quite a bit of time over 6 days just getting to this point, so it's had enough time out of me for now.

If I come back to it, I might even try the more up to date version. I mean, I know people have commented on how buggy it has been since the devs changed, but it's not like I was free of them using this version.

Primarily, I had constant issues with the graphics flickering at the top of the screen that just kept happening at random times. For some weird reason, taking a screenshot would not show the flickering, so I had to snap this issue with my camera.

I've never seen weirdness like that before, and hopefully never again.

I simply can not believe it's already been nearly five years since I replayed Arkham City and tackled Arkham Knight for the first time. Those playthroughs feel like they were about a year or two ago at the most.

Since those runs, I've been having this little nagging sensation that I should have also played Arkham Asylum to really round out the trilogy. I simply did not realise how long this little nag had been going on for.

To put the irritation to rest, I figured I'd blast through it again, for old time's sake. After all, I last played this back before I even started game blogging. Which was quite a while ago now.

Though it had been a good fifteen years, I was still surprised by how little of the game I could actually remember. But I should have figured this would be the case. I mean, I've played City three times since I last played this, plus my playthroughs of both Origins and Knight.

I kept trying to do moves, and trigger gadgets, that were only around for the later games. The amount of times I tried to grapple trophies, or slide under things while I was running, it was comical after a while.

Still, the game continues to be enjoyable, with one of my favourite combat systems from any game series, over the top characters, and really good voice acting.

It wasn't all rosy though. I still had the usual Arkham series quibbles, like Batman sometimes not throwing his Batarangs in the right direction, or him dodging the wrong way because he'd rather flip over a nearby goon's head. That sort of thing.

And then there's the Killer Croc section, which I hated back in the day, and probably hated even more here. I think I made it worse this time by being determined to rush through it, and get it out of the way as fast as possible. Unfortunately, that section only really works if you make slow and steady progress, so I just kept getting grabbed by the big dumb git and had to restart several times.

However, by far the worst thing about this playthrough was the performance, which I can only describe as terrible. If I was in one location just running around, the game would hold a solid 60 no problem. But as soon as there was any kind of loading needed, then the game would freeze for a split second, then kick back into motion at 30, before quickly climbing back up to 60 over the next second or two.

This constant freezing was a nightmare. According to my machine's performance charts, the SSD in the computer was never under any strain, so it was not the HD speed. And the CPU and GPU barely realised they were even working.

Looking online, other people have had similar problems, which are attributed to a fault in Unreal Engine 3. But if that's the case, why did Arkham City and Arkham Knight, both newer games, run a lot better than this, as they also use UE3? On top of that, those playthroughs were on a much weaker machine as well. It was so odd and frustrating.

When I got to the end and gave Joker a good smacking, I decided to do another 100% run, as I couldn't remember what happened with the Riddler at the end of this game. I only had two issues dealing with all of the Riddler challenges. One was finding one of the maps, and the other was finding the last few Joker Teeth in the mansion.

Though I'm not sure I should have bothered, as the Riddler ending to this game is not very satisfying at all.

Still, nevermind. I'm really glad I played it again, though, because while I think City and Knight may one day get another playthrough out of me, I think it's highly likely I'll never come back to this one again.