Eh, while i agree with the point that modern western games have taken a huge drop in quality regarding combat there's one thing he talks about that i just find being stupid as fuck.
It seems he wants literally every game with combat to put the player in extreme danger, no matter what, otherwise he just can't be arsed to play it properly. He mentions how there's no point in countering and doing other stuff than punching in the Batman series, but there is. Just like any game where focus is on the combat there's a combo system, which in turn rewards players for playing "better" (quotationmarks cause batman combat isnt exactly anything difficult to master) by giving them all from more money/gold/etc to spend on upgrades/weapons/armor/moves/artworkshit to items locked behind "challenges" that require you to be versatile in your combat (look at those stone statue thingies in dmc3).
Batman is all about chaining together huge combos and that is where alot of the enjoyment people talk about exists with the games. And i have to say that you wouldnt be able to complete the Arkham games by only smashing the punch button, several factors has always come in after you've progressed to force you to take use of all the things batman can do, just as with the rest of them.
I mean, fuck. Not even the DMC games are at core "hardcore survival" games unless you rank up the difficulty to max. They're too all about doing long combos and looking sexy as fuck while doing it while being versatile in the combat.
I get that he wouldnt like the mechanics in Batman, i agree with him on those points about the automated shit being lame as hell and all, but the part about not being arsed about playing the game properly unless his character is in constant danger just feels undeveloped and dumb as hell.
Sorry for long and probably very incoherent rant, but that part annoyed the living shit out of me.
If he can't find the slightest enjoyment in being in the position of the one controlling the battlefield i don't understand why he bothers with Character action games at all.