I'm not asking for much.

I parted with cash for Batman Arkham Asylum. I've installed it tonight.

Can I play it? Can I fsck!

Games for F***ing Windows live! Who in their right mind thinks this bag of [LIFTED] is a good idea?

I have to sign in before I can play, fine. I have other GFWL games, no bother.

I sign in and ooops there is a problem click here to resolve. Click! I'm taken to an XBox Live page to create a gamer tag. Why? It's a PC game!

Ok, anything for an easy life, I create a gamer tag.

I start the game again, and Live pops up again, I sign in. Now it wants a mandatory update, or I can't save progress during the game that I bought.

I agree to the update, twenty minutes later, it exits and installs something, then restarts Batman.

OK, now I can play, yes? Nope. It wants an update, another one? same one? who knows?

I agree to the update, whilst chewing angrily at my desk. 20 minutes later the system restarts and I try to run the game.

It's still asking for a [LIFTED] update! I've been sitting here for an hour and a half, pissing about, and I still cannot play the bloody game.

[LIFTED] it! I'm going to bed.

/rant

Consoles are just the same now:

"Oooooh, I fancy a QUICK bash on GTA IV before I go to work/uni/whatever."

"An update x.xx has been found. Your software will now be updated to the latest version"

Half an hour later, it's done. Just in time to frakkin' leave for work/uni whatever.

Do you get a dialogue box come up in games about checking for the latest update if you aren't connected to the net?

I only ask cos I'm usually connected, but not always

Xbox doesn't force you to update, only thing it stops you doing is online play in case of exploits etc.

GTA4 on PC seems to be the same setup, GFWL and Rockstar Social club.....big ball ache. Then again plenty of games are, World in Conflict I used to play about once a month, every time I logged in it wanted to download a 14GB patch before I could play online ! Madness.

If I recall, GFWL updates itself through Windows update (well in Vista & SP3 anyway), so once it is installed, as long as you run WU often it should all run OK.

It hasn't been too bad for me. I've had a piss-poor internet connection for about a month and gaming servers are blocked, so I've had to use it "offline", but it still seems to work fine. Steam however won't let me play anything. I had a week of "offline mode" then that was it.

I DL'd GFWL on it's own, and logged in before running the game. It still asked for an update!

I have it running now, it took another 4 or 5 attempts and a couple of reboots, but at least it is finally working. The update was for the game not GFWL, but GFWL was handling the update process!?

Not a bad game actually, despite the heartache trying to run the damn thing.

Trust me, the game gets better as you play.

Finished it. You're right, it is a good game.

I wasn't too keen on the Scarecrow platforming sections, they seemed like they were just filling it out a bit. On the whole though, money well spent.

Really? A lot of people thought the scarecrow bits amongst the best. Did you bother to collect all items and find the last spirit of arkham?

No, unfortunately. I got to 61% on my last save (Poison Ivy showdown), and before I knew it I was in the last boss fight. Was something of a surprise.

I'm going to play through it again and collect all the trophies/clues.

You don't need to reply the entire thing to collect all of the riddler's trophies and the spirit of arkham things but you do if you wanna win the games trophies (my fave is the longest flight where you jump off the top of the clock tower and glide for ages).

I have to admit, jumping off the clock tower is fun. However, there is a ledge in the cliff face that I cannot reach. When you glide towards it from the clock tower, you get infuriatingly close but always hit it a little too low, and drop to the ground. I know there is a Riddler trophy in there, and the back entrance is blocked by steel girders.

You can just continue after the ending credits - it plonks you back on the map and you have free reign to go collecting stuff. As the riddler never appears in the game, you can collect all the tropies and get those achievements too. The combo's achievements can be done in the "Challenges".

Yep, that's exactly what happened. Completed the Riddler's challenge and even found the last spirit of Arkham. I'll have to have a go at the challenge mode now.