User blog comment:Sunshineandravioli/Stuff Sunshine Likes, Issue I/@comment-2186558-20120128020259/@comment-1194745-20120128232120

Portal does the same thing with the time limit, albiet only in the final battle - by putting a limit on how long you have to complete a goal, it 1) makes it seem more complicated than it actually is, even if your goal is something very simple, and 2) gives you more drive to do it, as the threat of something bad happening at the end of that time limit makes you more determined to do what it takes to avert it. And I suppose the character amount kind of depends on what you do with the characters - if you have a game like Portal, where there's a reason for the lack of character and the ones that do exist are developed to the point these characters are, then it works beautifully. If you have a game where either there's not a reason for there to be only a few characters, the few characters have very little development, or worst of all, both, then of course it doesn't work. And it works the opposite way as well - if you've got a bunch of characters and none of them are well-developed, then it's terrible, but if all of them reach something close to this level of development, then it's freakin' incredible. As mentioned before, you just need to have characters you actually care about, otherwise nothing works.

Batman villains are pretty epic, yes, and that's why the series works even though, honestly, Batman himself is kind of a weak character: the villains are engaging enough that you at least care about them, so you're willing to overlook the weaknesses in the good guys because these villains are just so darnz awesome. On a related note, I thought the Riddler was wicked epic in Arkham City. He's less leaving clues to his whereabouts there, and more using the clues he leaves as a way to mess with people's minds - in fact, that's his character as a whole; he doesn't care about winning or losing, he just wants the superiority of being able to mess around with people.

LOL I could just copy and paste our entire conversation and title it "Review of Portal, Batman: Arkham City and The Legend of Zelda, along with an analysis of heroes, villains, and the role of females in modern video games". XD