The game veering sharply from brilliant to **** does not preclude it from veering back or to any intermediate point in between
True. I will never forgive it for the high-security inmates and the crappy controls for dealing with non-basic enemies but much like my recent completion of Alpha Protocol it's faults are outweighed by its successes.
I think the main problem was the control issue. I played it on PC (mouse/keyboard), and the controls just didn't lend themselves to free-flow combat that required anything more onerous than attack/block.
That said, there were only two things that really irked me about the game: fighting the skeletons Scarecrow threw at you in that weird non-standard perspective (we have just spent a whole game getting used to a particular combat style and camera angle, and now you change that for a single sequence?), and the final boss fight (le crap).
But in general, an immensely entertaining game. I loved the exploration aspects of it, particularly.