After the previous two installments in the Batman: Arkham franchise were critically lauded, the pressure was on new studio Warner Bros. Montreal to make a third title that hit the highs of Asylum and City and closed out the generation with an awesome action-adventure extravaganza. However, the pressure must have been too much for them to bear. What was actually released, in the form of Batman: Arkham Origins, was a twisted, soulless mess that feels like little more than a shameless cash-in.
Platforms: PC, PS3 (Version Played), Wii U, Xbox 360
Publisher: Warner Bros. Games
Developer: Warner Bros. Games Montreal
Genre: Open World Bat-Em-Up
Release Date: October 25, 2013
ESRB Rating: Teen
To be honest, the deck did seem stacked against Arkham Origins before the discs even began to be pressed and boxed. With Rocksteady, the original developer behind Asylum and City, skipping this entry to work on a next-generation Batman adventure, many had written the title off before it was even released. Sadly, when you actually play it, you realize that your first impression was the correct one.
That’s not to say this latest Batman installment is, by design, a bad video game. You still Batman around the place, kicking dudes, jumping off gargoyles, and zipping across the city. It almost stands up to its predecessors in that regard. Batman: Arkham Origins is just missing the magic of the Rocksteady games.
Set years before the other two games, Batman: Arkham Origins features a younger, slightly angrier, and a less gravelly-sounding Batman as he defends himself from an onslaught of eight assassins hired by Gotham underworld crime boss Black Mask. They have one night – that being Christmas Eve – to “Kill The Bat” and collect $50,000,00 for their troubles. Things get complicated when The Dark Knight meets The Joker for the first time. This is where my first problem with the game came to light. I know you can’t have a Batman without a Joker or a Joker without a Batman (I think Heath Ledger said it best). But the promise of a mainstream piece of Batman media where the Clown Prince of Crime isn’t a looming threat felt like a refreshing idea. Even if he was one of the assassins, that would have been fine with me. It would have allowed for the relationship between Batman and some other villains to be explored to the depth that it is explored with the Joker. However, he does show up about halfway through the ten-hour story which is, you know, fine, but the way he comes in, sans spoilers of course, is far from subtle. You can see it coming from a mile off. I mean, anyone can put on a black mask, after all.
The inclusion of the other assassins also comes off as a waste of time. Initially, the premise of taking down eight notorious assassins and stealing their key weapons to help your progression is, again, an interesting premise. It’s been done before in games like Mega Man, but not to such a scale. However, the assassins story thread is quickly nipped in the bud before it can bloom and many of the assassins are left to meander as side attractions. Not that you actually want to fight off those killers-for-hire. I’m sure they were chosen by taking a DC encyclopaedia and randomly stabbing it with pins while blindfolded. I’m sure I’d be equally annoyed if Arkham Origins recycled staple villains like Poison Ivy, but I know Batman has better opponents than Copperhead or the Electrocutioner. D-list doesn’t cover it. Aside from the fresh introductions of Deathstroke, much of the supporting cast is met with indifference rather than interest.
The open world from Arkham City makes a return in Arkham Origins. When I say that I mean it literally. Much of the map is recycled from the previous title and any new locales feel like the developers copied and pasted assets arranged in a slightly different way. Just like in Arkham City, you’ll be Batman-ing from rooftop to rooftop, gathering collectibles from The Riddler – now known for some reason as Enigma – and fighting sporadically-placed thugs and cops. Thankfully, rather than experiencing serious deja vu every 30 seconds, Arkham Origins handily adds in the option to fast travel from district to district, once a district is unlocked via Far Cry-ish radio towers at least. It’s a nice addition, especially as many of the objectives involve moving around impassable buildings (the new invisible walls) or across the tedium of the lengthy Pioneers Bridge.
As for gameplay, much of it is the same you’ve already played in Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. You get infinite loops of stealthy predator sequences and all out, 25-on-one hand-to-hand combat sequences. The predator parts work just as well as they do in the other games, which is fine, but in the out-and-out combat sections something is off. Previously, pounding on one button makes the Bat attack whilst you watch for the counter prompt to appear above an attacking enemy’s head. However, the counter mechanic only seemed to work half the time, with Batman attempting to counter the wrong enemy the other half of the time. The aiming also appears to be broken. Point your analogue stick in the direction you want Batman to hit, and he should endeavor to attack the nearest enemy in that direction. However, this time around, Batman spent much of the time, after thinning out the horde, swinging his arms around wildly into the air like a drunk trying to find a wall to urinate against. Similarly, numerous amounts of ground takedowns just flat out didn’t work. Also, adding more enemies to encounters does not serve to make the game harder, but when you add more enemies to an enclosed space, especially when the camera just cannot handle them, does not serve to make the game harder, just far more frustrating.
Another new addition is enhancements to Batman’s investigation skills. You now have the ability to scrub through a timeline of the events as worked out by the world’s greatest detective. It is ripped straight from Remember Me, which is not a good comparison to make, but it does add an extra layer of interactivity to the proceedings, and those small segments break up the other gameplay loops well.
Finally, and unlike the preview entries in the series, Warner Bros. has actually nailed a boss battle that makes sense, meshing with the moment-to-moment style of the game. Firstly, the Deathstroke fight involved a one-on-one battle of fisticuffs that mimics the combat arena sections throughout the rest of the game. Surprisingly enough, it works well. In a similar vein, a Bane fight mimics the predator sections with, again, surprising success. However, the traditional Arkham boss battle makes a return: wait for bad guy to charge at you, dodge, cape whip, pummel into submission, wash, rinse, repeat, snore. It should also be noted to not just Warner Bros. but the majority of developers that adding more normal enemies to a boss confrontation is not a good idea, but rather a concept that turns the encounter into more of an annoying, anger-inducing mess.
Arkham Origins is absolutely rife with bugs and glitches. Just loading the game on the PlayStation 3 caused the game to lock up on several occasions. On top of that, when more than a couple of guys appeared without a loading screen, or when just trying to navigate the open world, the framerate dropped to something near ten frames a second. Which does, believe it or not, make the game entirely unplayable. The only fix was to quit to the title menu and reload my save. Just like returning gameplay loops, returning bugs from previous games and small physics glitches make your perfectly-crafted plan fail, which is even more frustrating due to the lack of “je ne sais quoi” that Asylum and City had.
However, Batman: Arkham Origins is still a bog standard, totally average game. For the most part, it is playable, and sometimes even fun. Sadly, there is a distinct lack of new ideas thrown into the formula to make it engaging and interesting enough to invest time into. Similarly, it lacks the heart and soul that made the previous two Batman titles so beloved by critics and players alike. When publishing executives moan about the rising tide of used games, it’s titles like this one that are to blame. This game is so similar to everything else out there that it is hard for me to recommend spending more than a handful of your hard earned pounds and/or dollars on it. Really, somewhere along the line, something went wrong, and Warner played it safe just to grab a quick dollar and to retain some franchise visibility in the swathe of “AAA” titles last fall.
Review Disclosure: A retail copy of Batman: Arkham Origins was purchased by Warp Zoned for the purposes of this review.
