I had a good time playing Batman: Arkham Origins. I really did. I'm just saying that out front because, while I did enjoy it, I have to call it what it is: Sloppy, Below-the-Bar, and downright lazy from a technical perspective. I mentioned that I enjoyed it before saying that, because from here on in there is going to be a lot of bashing followed by a score that seems higher than you might expect after reading what I've written. Well, lets get started. Batman: Arkham Origins is the third "Arkham" game, though it is not made by the same people, and though it is a prequel. Some people have said that it is also a misnomer, because it neither takes place anywhere near Arkham anything nor is it an origin story for Batman, but this is not entirely true. I look at this game as a tale of the origin...of Arkham. In the end credits, we hear the future warden of Arkham Asylum explaining the need to re-open the asylum as a result of the game's events. But I digress.
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| Combat, as always, is fantastic, and it has a few new aspects to it (1). |
I'll start with combat, because, as always, it is nothing drastically new. Like always, Batman can strike, counter, and stun to win in combat situations and there are various enemy types that require different tactics to take down. Combat flows more smoothly in this game than in past Arkham games, but I feel like that is more a result of time and technology upgrading than it is a result of the creators. I don't know for sure, though. There are few fundamentally differences between Origins and the other Arkham games' combat, though. In Origins, you have a gadget called "shock gloves." Essentially, when you throw enough punches in combat, your gloves are charged up fully, and you become unblockable for a short amount of time. Some have called this cheap, and some have said that it makes an already easy combat system far too easy, but I say that it actually adds a bit more variety to the tried-and-tested formula. My one complaint about the shock gloves, though, is that they become charged far too quickly. Not a single encounter goes by that you can't use those gloves in. It adds variety on the whole, but when it happens every encounter, some of that variety goes out the window. Know what I mean? Now, there is one area of combat in which Arkham Origins absolutely triumphs: boss fights. The main story Boss fights in Arkham Origins are always fast-paced and absolutely merciless. Whether it is Deathstroke's heavy-duty reflex test boss fight or copperhead's unrelenting, constantly-attacking boss fight or Bane's predictable, yet still hard-as-nails boss fight, you can expect your skills to be tested on every front when you come up against a new boss. Now, earlier I mentioned enemy types. Like in Arkham city, you have regular enemies, knife-enemies, shield-enemies, armored enemies, and stun-baton enemies, but in Arkham Origins, you have a few new variants: martial arts enemies and giant enemies. Now, the martial enemies were something entirely new, and they made combat interesting, but I
hated the giant enemies, but not for the kinds of reasons you might expect. I don't know what it is with the lesser "3rd" entries in game sagas, but all of them have some sort of "giant" enemy. Fable 3 did it with their magic-wielding giant guys, Uncharted 3 did it with their giant guys who you needed to use melee attacks on, and Arkham Origins did it with their "enforcer" variants. I feel like that is shorthand for "we need a new enemy" after the super-successful 2nd entry. I have never liked that. Ever. I hated it in Fable 3, I hated it in Uncharted 3, and I hate it in Arkham Origins. If there are
any game developers reading this review, for the love of everything good in the world, stop with the God-forsaken giant enemy variant! They aren't as challenging as you think they are, and they are no longer a creative thing. If you do it, then you are simply giving in to the current 3rd entry formula. So, to summarize, combat in Arkham Origins is smoother and has a lot more variety, but not all of that variety is good or enough to make it stand out.
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| In Arkham Origins, Police are a common enemy type (2). |
Now, since I'm talking about combat, I need to take a moment to go off the beaten path. I don't like cops. Now, some people who don't like cops enjoy games like Grand Theft Auto, where you get to mow them down like ants, but I'm not a huge fan of killing human beings even if they make their living off of the extortion of the American public. Not to mention, in Grand Theft Auto, you are pretty much a murdering scumbag, and those cops that you mow down in those games are genuinely trying to do good by putting you down. With that in mind, Arkham Origins is the perfect kind of game for a person like me. You play as Batman, a hero who is trying to save the city through methods other than revenue generation, and there is a
sect of police who control the entire system, and they don't like that. In Arkham Origins, there are many opportunities to put dirty cops in their place without killing them. I tell you, there is nothing more satisfying than walking through vents as Batman, hearing two cops torturing a hobo while telling him, "nobody will believe you," and breaking out of the vent and beating them senseless. But here's the thing: there are good cops in this game too, and with them comes a powerful statement. All the good cops in this game are sent to do the more small-time, routine jobs, such as checking out vague reports in neighborhoods. Basically, all the good cops are kept out of the action, while the pigs are the ones out on the streets. It is the kind of statement we need more of: there
are good -intentioned cops out there, but you don't see them very often because they too are
victims of the actions that pigs take. But I'm getting too far off the path, here. What I'm trying to say is this: Batman: Arkham Origins takes an incredibly realistic stance on police. It doesn't make out all police to be raping, murdering, pet-shooting scumbags, but it doesn't paint police as angels either. And it doesn't give them any extra rights just because they have a badge. In most other games, police are either your strongest allies or the scum of the earth, but not in this game. In Batman: Arkham Origins, you look at the officer, and if he is preying on the innocent, then you whoop up on him like you would any other criminal. It is a truly amazing choice on the part of the creators of this game.
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| In the end, walking on the street is 100% more reliable than Arkham Origins' sloppy grappling mechanic (3). |
Now I'm going to make the same segway I've made for the other Arkham games: another aspect of gameplay is exploration. Now, in my Arkham City review, I mentioned that the exploration was pretty lame because the map just felt stretched and there wasn't a single distinguishable area on the map. But if there was one thing to be said for it, it at least felt alive. There were inmates everywhere and it made Arkham City feel like it was an actual place, boring though it may be. The same cannot be said for Arkham Origins. Now, the map in Arkham Origins felt a lot more like a city than the map in Arkham City did in that there were a lot more businesses and things like that, but the thing is, Gotham just felt dead. I understand that there were no citizens out because of the storm, and there were people to beat up scattered around the city, but the thing is, Gotham didn't feel like anyone lived there...and...also...why does Batman beat up everybody on the streets? In Arkham City, everybody in the city was a criminal save for those who were being beaten up by criminals, so it made sense that everyone was fightable. But in Arkham Origins...there is no reason to believe that everybody on the streets is a criminal. I don't know, its a small qualm, but one that I was thinking about for a lot of the time. And the thing is, I just couldn't shake the feeling that Gotham was just a city made for a video game. Does that make sense? The entire city felt...created. A good video game location is one that feels organic, not one that feels like it was made for us to play in. And the entire time I was playing, the map felt very inorganic, like I wasn't Batman in Gotham City, but rather a person in a space created by computers and game engines. But none of these qualms can hold a candle to how much I hated getting around. The grappling in Arkham Origins is ab.so.lu.te.ly
terrible. In Arkham City, there were thousands upon thousands of things to grapple on, and it made traversing the city an easy and entertaining endeavor. But in Arkham Origins, you can grapple on
maybe 10% of things. There are thousands of ledges that you should be able to grapple on, but you can't. For example: I was trying to reach an enigma datapack on the top of a building that was slightly higher than the surrounding buildings. I tried several times, but I simply couldn't grapple onto the freaking ledge even though it was right there. Then, I tried doing the dive and let up routine that you could do in Arkham City, but that wouldn't work either. It boggles my mind. "Thief" (the remake) had a similar problem. You could never tell which items you could climb on, and it really took away from the experience. In Arkham Origins, every single leap you took was a gamble, as you could never know if you were going to be able to reach where you were headed. And sometimes, you would end up grappling to a point at least five buildings away when all you needed to do was grapple to the ledge just a little bit above you. It is an absolutely shameful flaw. Batman shouldn't have to worry about whether or not he can make it to a rooftop. He shouldn't have to throw his controller down because the creators of this game couldn't figure out how to fix a barely functioning grapple mechanic. I hated having to traverse this city because of just how sloppy this game is from a technological perspective.
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| Enigma Datapacks aren't as charming as the green question marks, and as long as you have the right gadget, you can almost always get them without thinking (4). |
As in past Arkham games, exploration leads to finding things that the Riddler leaves behind for you. But in Arkham Origins...things are handled a little differently. You see, the Riddler doesn't really exist yet. In Arkham Origins, he is still just Enigma, and he hasn't assumed his ultimate role in the Batman universe yet. So, there are no green question marks to pick up and there no riddles to solve. Rather, you go around the city picking up datapacks with extortion data. In Arkham City, the Riddle challenges were often incredibly challenging, but in Arkham Origins, the enigma datapack challenges were about as simple as possible. And when they were challenging, it was only because the creators of this game have no idea how to make the gliding, grappling, aiming, etc. mechanics...oh, I don't know,
function! Here is a tip, Warner Bros. Games: Challenge is about testing your player's knowledge of the system, not making them overcome your incompetence. Now, I don't mind that these packs were sometimes easy to get, I mean, Riddler wasn't exactly at the height of his career. But they really lacked the charm of the green question marks, so I never really wanted to go get them. It was a nice try, but it just didn't work very well.
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| Anarky is a fantastic villain, and it was a pleasure to undertake the side missions involving him (5). |
Like in Arkham City, there are side quests, and I am very torn on what I think of them. On one hand, there are more side quests, but on the other hand, there was even less variety than in Arkham City, and most of the side quests were horrible. You essentially have two side quests types: Most wanted and crime scenes. The Most wanted are pretty much the side quests from Arkham City: There is a Batman villain that needs taking down by doing the same thing over and over again. The crime scenes are where you use the (admittedly) improved detective side of Batman to solve a crime and go find the culprit. The problem with the most wanted cases is this: they are all the exact same thing. Go here and do this. Go here and do that. And some of them only require you to do it once to be complete. Ultimately, they all end in a boss fight that is easy as all get-out. The problem with the crime scenes is this: why should I care? Some no-faced npc gets murdered, and Batman goes and finds a no-faced culprit who happens to be walking around with a gang of criminals not far from the crime scene. It is the same thing virtually every time. Granted, the detective-ing and clue gathering is pretty cool in Arkham Origins, but they fail to give it any relatable context. The murderers are always full-time criminals, the victims are always good-hearted folk working to stop the criminal. Now, there is one exception here: The Anarky Most Wanted mission. Anarky is a
fantastic villain. Maybe its just because (in case you didn't figure it out from the police section of this review) I can relate to him in some ways (other than the whole killing thing, which sort of goes against the entire principle of anarchy), but I was always thrilled to take on an Anarky side mission. Now, the actual missions are pretty much just a repeat of the Zsasz missions from Arkham City, but at least they had a strong villain behind them.
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| The Joker is voiced by my favorite voice actor, Troy Baker, and is even more fleshed out than ever before (6). |
Now, there is one thing that Arkham Origins does better than both of the past Arkham games combined: Character development. The Joker and Batman are fantastically fleshed out. Throughout the course of Arkham Origins, we get a close look at the Joker's psychological state after being spared by Batman, and we get a look at a Batman who is angrier and more troubled than the Batman we know and love. To say anything more would be to spoil some potent moments, but take my word for it. Character development for (strictly) the main characters is spectacular. Now, the story of Arkham Origins is this: Roman Sionis a.k.a. Black Mask hires eight assassins to kill Batman on Christmas Eve, and Batman has to go out into Gotham to take them on and keep them from hurting innocents. The storytelling, while not as strong as in Arkham City, is still pretty strong, save for one major, major complaint. All of the Arkham games suffer from "ending out of absolutely freaking nowhere" syndrome, but none of them suffer from it worse than Arkham Origins does. The game ended and I was shocked. I thought, "wait...did I even take on all eight assassins?" And the answer was no. Two of the assassins were optional side battles that I didn't finish until playing post-game. Why on earth would you say there are eight assassins if you aren't going to be fighting eight assassins as part of the story? You could still have those two optional assassins in the game, and you could have them say that they were also hired, but don't set them up as story villains unless they're going to be story villains! I could not believe that the game had ended when the credits rolled. It was unsatisfying beyond words, and it felt like absolutely nothing had been resolved. But worse than that, the game felt like it had no point. Yeah, it introduced the major players in the Batman universe when they first arrived in Gotham, but there wasn't a bigger point other than perhaps showing how Arkham Asylum got re-opened. It felt like it was a prequel just for the sake of having a prequel, and since prequels are very rarely any good at all (just ask George Lucas or Peter Jackson), that is a major sin in the media world.
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| Despite its flaws, Arkham Origins has its bright spots (5). |
I have gone to town on it, and I have praised it, but what do I think of it overall? On the bright side, combat feels smooth and as fantastic as always, the story and character development were, at times, better than in previous Arkham games, and it took a realistic stance on police. But on the not-so-bright side, exploration was terrible, there was even less variety in side quests than in Arkham City, from a technological perspective this game was amateur work at the very best, and I watched the credits roll without feeling like I had accomplished anything, like there was no point at all to the game. Like I mentioned at the beginning, I did have a fun time playing, but Batman: Arkham Origins is ultimately slop. It is not even remotely a failure, but it is not even remotely a success either. Its like one reviewer once said about this game: "Even when a Batman game isn't very good, it's still pretty good."
7/10
Better luck next time, Warner Brothers Games, Better luck next time.
Picture Sources:
Cover, (5):
www.batman.wikia.com
(1):
www.gamegrin.com
(2):
www.arkhamverse.com
(3):
www.germaximusvideogameworld.wordpress.com
(4):
www.videogamesblogger.com
(6):
www.businessinsider.com
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