To get us back on track:
- Arkham Asylum - Fun but not overly challenging. Try to avoid walking around with xray vision on all the time. The "detective" side of things is just following footprints or looking at shit in the right order, while Riddles either involve having the right item, or scanning the right thing in the environment, sometimes from a specific angle. Stealth is fun, but you can cheese it if you know how. Combat you'll either love or hate. There's nothing stopping you mashing attack, and occasionally dodging, countering, or stunning. You can turn the game up to hard so the giant I'M GONNA FUCK YOU warning lights don't show, but the wind-up on most enemies attacks should be more than enough to see it coming (except an enemy about to throw shit at you if you're not looking at them). Not to mention as you build a combo, Batman begins to lunge further as he attacks, meaning you can end up like a pinball bouncing from enemy to enemy. And you'll only stop if you're hit or "spend" it to instakill a single enemy. The only reason to use more combos for a bigger score is to level up faster in the main story (you'll have more than enough to get everything even with C and B rankings) or more points in Challenge missions.
Challenge missions are unlocked as you progress and put an arm behind your back with stuff you can't do for perfect ranking. In theory, you could just pirate the game, modify it so the challenge missions and everything is unlocked from the start, and just dive into that. Or treat the story as training for that. The Joker DLC Challenge Missions are OK, they at least give you other mechanics and play style.
- Arkham City. Same as the above but bigger. Not necessarily better depending what you do and don't like. The story is stronger, but the DLC is weaker. There's an endless fighting challenge if the combat tickled your skinner box urges. But don't play any DLC as other characters except Catwoman. It's cut content and it's basically needed for the story- but it is kind of cool.
Don't play any other Arkham games. Origins is a broken mess with a nice coat of paint at times, and Arkham Knight is a shot-gun of mixed features that don't always work, a weaker story, and by the time the game becomes a challenge you won't care- even if they did add stuff that would have made the first Arkham game much more challenging. DLC was basically cut content as well.
- Infamous. Worst part is the collectables only show up on the minimap, and once you get near them (but even if you don't collect them) the marker vanishes. Maybe I've lost one, but I can't find the last one because of it. Also suffers from the morality system thing where totally evil or totally good are your only options- nothing for neutral. Other than that, fun little pseudo 3rd person shooter- not a great deal of a challenge.
- Infamous 2. Better story, more difference between good and evil. I'd play this over the first game if not for the fact the story does progress over.
Never player Second Son or the DLC/stand-alone with the neon light girl, but the protagonist was such a Donte level unlikeable cunt it'll suffer to play through. Heard it was "OK". New powers but didn't do anything special and the story was non-sensical.
- Prototype. Basically Radical Entertainment's Hulk game with an edgy coat of paint. It actually hurts it since the tone juxtaposes the silly shit you can do. You don't get any fun little extras either (boxing glove cars or playing golf with people) just standard "kill everything in the time limit" or "do this race". I enjoyed my time with it, but I'd recommend just pirating that Hulk game.
Prototype 2 was more of the same, but didn't work as well apparently. It was a wet fish with sales.
- Deadpool. Super repetitive, feels like a movie-tie in game despite it being long before the new movie.
DC Universe Online gets an honorable mention but it doesn't do anything any other MMO doesn't. It's Free-To-Play, but you're crippled. 2 character slots and a harsh limit on cash and inventory. The premium service is fine though (they did an offer one time and I abused free Sony Coin coupons from magazines to get it for free). Character creator was neat- even if it was just changing out heads/torsos/etc. I hear rumors City of Heroes keeps having people trying to buy it up to re-open the servers. But nothing materialized. Heroes Online was a pale imitator IIRC.
That PS2 Spiderman game is still the best.
Fan service is minimal for all of the above. Though Arkham City's Catwoman gets an honorable mention. The Arkham games as a whole get more shameless trying to bait sales by putting Harly in a moment that's sexy, but the graphics and the man-jaw most of the women have kill it. Deadpool has fanservice, but those moments are blink and miss it.