#2 - Batman: Arkham Origins (Reupload)

Not sure how this review ended up deleted but here's a reupload of it

Before I start, I want to clarify. Batman Arkham Origins is not a bad game, per-say. But in my honest opinion it’s an ok-good game that exists in a franchise where that’s not good enough.

A little background: games starring superheroes is a not a new franchise but until the Arkham games came out, none of them really felt right. From Superman getting easily beaten by basic weapons, to team games where everyone loses health every time they take a hit. Not to mention the complicated systems of combos and super-moves. There have been a few Batman games in the past, including a Batman Begins game and several based on Batman: The animated series. None of them felt quite right, partially being restricted by their respective franchise

Out of the shadows came Batman: Arkham Asylum. Boasting the writing talents of Paul Dini (writer of the award-winning Batman: The Animated Series episode Heart of Ice) and the voice actors Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin, all veterans from Batman: The Animated series.  Unlike that said series. This was a much darker story, featuring the Joker committing on screen murder, dead bodies at every turn, and a far more gritty surroundings.

It was a huge success, it took (an element I hate in many games) and made it exciting, it took strategy, but not so much that it was highly complicated, and the surroundings were beautiful. Obviously a sequel was planned: Batman: Arkham City. Batman: Arkham City took everything that made Asylum great, tweaked it by adding new moves, gadgets and the like, and put onto an open world environment. The story, still penned (at least in part) by Paul Dini, and with return of most voice actors (with Tara Strong doing a good stand-in for Arleen Sorkin, and Mark Hamill reprising the Joker for what he said would be the last time, it wasn't the last time) Arkham City expanded on the roots of Arkham Asylum in all the right ways. It still looked lovely, was packed with references, and the story, while somewhat cluttered was a good one.

Lots of rumours had been going around as to what the third iteration of the Arkham franchise would be, with rumours of have a silver age backdrop and including heroes like Superman. In 2013 we received news that a new Batman: Arkham game would be released that year. Later, to many people’s disappointment, it was discovered that Rocksteady, who were the developers of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, would not be working on it (as they were still in the process of creating Batman: Arkham Knight) instead, the task fell to Warner Bros. Montreal, who did the Wii U adaptation of Arkham City. Furthering the disappointing news was the fact that they’d chosen a voice actor for Batman who wasn’t Kevin Conroy. Also of note was that Paul Dini was not working on the story for this game. Batman Arkham Origins would serve as a prequel, detailing the origins of key relationships in Batman’s mythos.

OK, that was a lot of backstory, so on with the review. Spoilers ahead

So, story: set in his second year of operation (on Christmas Eve no less) we start with a break-in at Blackgate Prison. The Black Mask had broken into the prison (I can’t remember why) and took then Commissioner Loeb hostage. Batman pursues but is too late, Loeb is dead. Batman discovers a remote control drone keeping an eye on the action and destroys it, taking out a memory card, before confronting Killer Croc. After Killer Croc is defeated, he reveals that there are 7 more assassins after Batman tonight, and he was just the first.

Now this is a really exciting premise, although it’s a little annoying that assassin number one went down before we even knew that assassins were chasing him. Also Killer Croc being an assassin doesn’t really fit. The version of Killer Croc (much toned down from his later appearances) is supposed to be a blood hungry monster (all be it with some intellect) rather than a hired assassin. 

Anyway cut to the Batcave, where Batman discovers the full scale of the threat as he runs through the assassins after him. Deadshot, Lady Shiva, Deathstroke, Copperhead (a very different one to the known comic version) Firefly, Electrocutioner and Bane. Batman realises that the only person who could have controlled that drone was the Penguin, and so he sets off to find him.

After a few minor events Batman finds the Penguin on a ship called the Final Offer. In there you face an onslaught of enemies and bad cockney accents. I actually liked the Penguin’s voice in Arkham City, it made him sound threatening enough to be a serious player in the criminal underworld. But good god I wanted to throttle Tracy every time she spoke. 

After an encounter with the Electrocutioner, a very brief encounter, you make it to the Penguin who reveals there’d been a murder at Lacey Towers, stating that Black Mask is having troubles of his own. Batman is then pulled out of the Penguin’s office by Deathstroke. Deathstroke was a prominent villain in the trailers, this seems rather early to put him in as a boss. 

The Deathstroke fight is primarily a battle of countering correctly, which is harder in quick-time scenes where you can only counter 1 in every 2 or 3 moves. Once you grasp it he goes down rather easily. Batman takes his remote claw which will prove useful later.

Batman makes it to Lacey Towers and discovers that the Black Mask’s then girlfriend had been murdered. The Police believe it was the Penguin, but after Batman examines the scene, he deduces Penguin was not responsible. Batman believes that the only way to discover was behind it was to access the national criminal data-base, inside GCPD.

Inside GCPD Batman makes his way through the building, discovering that Black Mask had offered the bounty to the police officers, and many were willing to take it. After stopping a riot in the police holding cells and encountering Barbara Gordon for the first time, Batman accesses the Database, allowing him to fully solve the case. It is believed that the Joker was behind the whole affair (despite the only clue to his existence before was a text message.)

Knowing that Black Mask had a huge stash at Gotham Merchants bank, with biometric security only he could access, Batman deduces that that was the Joker’s target. This is where the story starts to unravel slightly, but I’ll get to that later. At Gotham Merchants Bank Batman discovers not only that the Joker had usurped Black Mask and was running his operations, but also that he hired the assassins. (So much for making Black Mask an interesting character)

After encountering and defeating Copperhead at the Sionis Steel Mill (whose map was changed significantly in the under-layers from Arkham City) and rescuing Black Mask (who is then relegated to a side-mission) Batman pursues the Joker to the Gotham Royal Hotel. There he discovers the Joker killed the Electrocutioner, and Bane stays behind as the Joker’s protector. 

Batman is nearly defeated by Bane as the police arrive. Bane escapes on a helicopter but the Joker is left behind. Batman saves the Joker from falling through the roof of the hotel, and questions why Batman did this before being taken by the Police.

Now, about the Joker. He was the main villain of Arkham Asylum, and a major player in Arkham City, was it really necessary to have him as a main villain again? This story proceeds to make Black Mask look weak, and there are a number of questions as to how achieved this with a no known reputation. How did he convince so many to follow him after he revealed himself? Why would so many follow a basically unknown criminal (yes, I heard the pay rise excuse, but still…)? Also the Joker as a criminal likes to one-up himself with each scheme, except this seems like one of the the largest scheme he’s ever pulled (hard to imagine he could from this to something like The Laughing Fish for example).

Cut to Blackgate Prison, where we get a glimpse into the newly evolving psyche of the Joker, with the help of Psychiatrist Harlene Quinzel. The issue here is that this is a direct contradiction to the interview tapes in Arkham Asylum. Also while I can take Tara Strong’s take on Harley for a distressed or angry Harley, her voice lacks the innocence that Arleen Sorkin brought to the role, not helped by some poor dialogue (“What’s it to ya” seriously?)

Back to Batman when Alfred is chewing him out. I quite like this version of Alfred. Seeing Batman as a waste of hard earned Wayne fortunes is an honest one, Martin Jarvis reprises his role as Alfred for a much larger part of that in Arkham City. And he does it very well. Batman follows he put on Bane on the previous fight and follows him to his hideout. To his shock and horror he realises that Bane had discovered his identity as Bruce Wayne, also that he was working on a steroid called TN1 (all Arkham Games have to involve some kind of dangerous chemical, most commonly steroids) Meanwhile Firefly, in a nice, but ultimately pointless distraction has laid siege to the Pioneer’s bridge.

Batman warns Captain Gordon about the bombs, and proceeds to disarm 3 of them, whilst GCPD bomb squad, despite Batman’s warnings, disarms the fourth while Batman distracts, and eventually defeats Firefly. Batman returns to the Batcave only to discover that Bane had been there and had injured Alfred. He manages to revive Alfred from the brink of death, only to discover that the Joker had broken out of his cell and was laying siege to Blackgate prison

Batman arrives, and discovers that Joker now wants him alive. He proceeds through all the Joker’s men to discover that Bane had broken into Arkham. After another fight, Bane offers an ultimatum, Batman must kill Bane, or he will kill Captain Gordon. Batman stops Bane’s heart with his shock gloves (I will mention those later) and the Joker runs off, Batman then resuscitates Bane, Bane takes a dose of TN1 (and he grows to the size you see him in later games) and engages Batman again. Batman wins, severely injuring Bane in the process so he can’t remember Batman’s identity. Batman then encounters the Joker and a series of combat moves knocks him out. He leaves with Captain Gordon wondering whether Batman could actually be a benefit to society.

The story is decent, but the argument that’s better than the stories of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City is one I heartily disagree with. The fact that it’s a prequel opens up a few holes with how well Batman’s equipped in this game, and while I know they’ve tried to write the issues off, it’s an issue none-the-less. Also the story’s premise on the assassins is dropped half-way through the game with Deadshot and Lady Shiva relegated to side-missions, and the encounter with the Electrocutioner being very disappointing in both narrative and gameplay purposes. 

The only assassin that gets any real attention is Bane, which is an odd choice seeing as he appeared in both previous Arkham games. Fred Tatasciore does a great job with Bane’s voice, making him both mentally and physically intimidating. My other major gripe with the plot is the fact that the Joker waited, presumably several hours while Batman finds out every detail of his plan before making his move. Had he made this move immediately after leaving Blackgate, he could’ve got away with it. I have a minor gripe with the way they got people off the streets too. The snowstorm warnings provide a decent warning for people not to be out, but with the number of criminals and cops about, it’s hard to really see how cold it is.

Voice acting I’ve touched upon before, my only problem is Roger Craig Smith as Batman. I know they wanted an actor to reflect a younger version of the character, the problem is he doesn’t sound very young at all, more like a cross between Kevin Conroy and the infamous Batman voice of Christian Bale. 

There are some nice nods to the DCAU continuity by including Robert Costanzo as Harvey Bullock and C.C.H. Pounder as Amanda Waller. Troy Baker does a really good job as the Joker, he sounds pretty similar to Mark Hamill.

The music is fantastic in this, reflecting the music from the Dark Knight Trilogy, the music truly reflects Gotham City in Holiday time. Good work there

The gameplay, for the most part is a copy-paste job from Arkham City. No new moves have really been added. A few new enemy types are in existence including the enforcer/armoured enforcers who are substitutes for both the Abramovici twins and the Titans from Arkham City, with similar attack styles to those two (although no weapons) there are also the venom-enhanced henchmen, who are similar to armoured enforcers but take fewer hits once their armour has been stripped. 

Then there’s the infamous martial artists. These guys are interesting, as they can counter moves, counter counter-moves and do 2 step moves that you have to counter twice, this becomes quite difficult when the counter icons are removed.

The big issue is gadgets. There’s something I like to call the prequel paradox, this is where you can either upgrade the gadgets but get criticisms that if they existed here, why not in titles set in the future. Or you can downgrade, and get criticised for downgrading things. They chose to upgrade in some areas. Batman has the grapnel ‘accelerator’ (a grapnel boost by any other name is still a grapnel boost) which is kinda necessary given the huge amount of open world exploring you have to do. But it does beg the question, how come it was barely in prototype stage in Arkham City (set years later.) 

The remote claw is the only notable addition to predator missions, allowing you to create tight-ropes and suspend people from vantage points. This is cool, but is does make predator missions too easy, especially since you achieve 3 take-downs from it.

The shock gloves are another combat addition. Sigh. These allow you to ignore almost all strategy and take on any enemy you like in a full frontal assault, whilst increasing the damage of your average punch as well. While they are limited in their use, they have to be charged up and have a limited capacity, it does make combat a lot easier, too easy.

The environments look decent, still plenty of references, although lacking in a few of the finer details that made Arkham City a thrill to explore. The addition of fast travel was necessary given gliding takes forever, but making it a side-mission to unlock them was appreciated. The biggest issue with the environments is they may have been a little much for the games engine resulting in slowdowns and glitches, and while some have been sorted, some still remain, and WB Montreal will not be fixing any others.

Detective Mode has a new mission (which you might consider should’ve been available in future set missions) it allows you to examine evidence at the scene, and essentially reconstruct the crime. You can question to what extent that would actually be possible, but putting that aside there’s one other issue: it’s supposed to make you feel like a more active detective, but it gives you every clue in a red triangle, you’re just searching for those. Also, to accommodate this function (or at least I assume that’s why) they’ve switched the shoulder buttons around (because that won’t get confusing, right?)

The other major addition to the game is the ranking system. This is probably my least favourite addition. Basically you need to achieve tasks in certain missions to unlock certain upgrades. The problem with this is there is sometimes limited opportunity to achieve these, particularly with the predator ones, since no major predator missions are available after the game’s finished.

Side missions I’ll touch upon briefly. Enigma packs are scattered over the map like Riddler trophies, it’s a similar way of getting them to Arkham city. But while gaining enough extortion data you get a nice radio thing, you don’t get any real payoff if you collect them all. Anarky’s side-mission is probably the best of the bunch, relatively short, but nice overall. 

The Anarky tag part of the mission provides some interesting details about the city. The Mad-Hatter side mission tries again to replicate the scarecrow missions and fails to do so. The Deadshot encounter is similar to the predator bosses from Arkham City, although there’s a nice detective scene to get there. The Shiva encounter is an interesting search and rescue mission; that is the only time you’ll encounter ninjas. The detective crimes have no real payoff other than increasing your ranking, and showing Bruce still has unchecked emotion. Finally Bane’s lieutenant, Bird has a side-mission, relatively uninteresting but does unlock a combo move.

Challenge maps are similar to previous outings, using the Arkham City style, and for relatively good effect. It was nice in their initiation pack that they had a small cohesive narrative going through their maps. Deathstroke plays very well, and they’ve clearly eliminated the one issue that I had with Arkham City’s maps, they now all have moves with similar effects, so all of them have multi-takedown and disarm and destroy moves.

This is the first Arkham game with multiplayer, I don’t really have anything to say on it. I’m told it’s not very good if you’re a goon. Robin finally has inverted takedowns (which iteration of Robin is unclear, though you can do alternate skins for the Arkham City Robin) having 8 players is my biggest issue, even with their added Hunter Hunted mode, it’s still a 7-player match. This is difficult for matchmaking process, and makes it slow getting into a game. It doesn’t take away from single-player as it was created by another company, but precisely for that reason it doesn’t add anything either.

Next, a brief mention for Cold Cold Heart, the add-on that came out last month. It’s a decent add-on, adding 3-4 hours of extra content, some decent missions and fights. The XE suit is the only real gameplay adjustment, and it’s only real future is that you switch from shock gloves to thermal gloves, and won’t die in cold environments. Story-wise: it sticks to the Batman: The Animated Series style, but it adds in its own elements like including the Penguin. 

Anarky also has a brief role in a side-mission. If I have any complaints, by saying Boyle agreed to Fries doing research on his wife, it does take away a bit from the ‘heart of ice’ speech Hugo Strange made in Arkham City.  

This game gives me rage issues!

It’s a crying shame, this game is good, even all the major points I’ve made could be considered nit-picking, but there are so many of them, and the fact that Warner Brothers Montreal is now refusing to fix any more glitches is outright unacceptable. This game had potential to be better than it was. As it is, it’s an average game in a franchise where great is the only acceptable option.

Rage rating 34%