Date Completed: 13/01/2014
Game time: 16h 47m
Initially I hadn't planned to pick up the third entry in Batman's Arkham series. I mean I loved the first two games, Arkham Asylum & Arkham City, and when Arkham Origins was announced I was excited, but that excitement began to wane (or Wayne, if you will) as the months went on. Based on some of the previews I had seen I got the impression that Origins was a bit of a rehash of City and on one hand, it is a bit - but on the other hand, Arkham City was a tremendous game so at least it's got a great base to work off!
In the end this was a complete impulse purchase in the days running up to Christmas - the game is set over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so I thought it would be best enjoyed in the spirit of the season. Having played through December and January I have to say I'm a bit confused about why they even bothered to give the game this specific setting - probably to pray on mugs like me. Apart from a couple of cutscenes and some sparsely scattered fairylights throughout Gotham there's very little Christmas Spirit on show. I think part of the main cause of this and one of the overbearing problems with the game is that Gotham itself feels like a pretty dead city. There are hundreds of tall buildings, obviously apartment blocks and places of work, but there is no evidence that any civilians actually live there. There's no one going for Christmas Eve drinks, no one trying to get home from work to their families, no one at all. The only people you will come across in the game are police, criminals and a small handful of hostages (where did they get them from?). Arkham City was able to get away with this due to the fact that part of the city had been caged off specifically as an open world housing pen for criminals - it was natural there would be no civilians. But in Origins it felt like it really struggled to create an interesting atmosphere - something that Asylum and City really excelled at.
The story is pretty good, the gist of it being that Black Mask has put a bounty on Batman's head - he wants you dead, tonight! This means you've got 8 assassins after you, which in keeping with the previous games allows a wide range of the roster of villains to make appearances. This keeps the story ticking along nicely as once you deal with one foe, another is sure to be along shortly. I've heard complaints that this isn't really an "origin" story but I'd disagree with that point of view - it isn't meant to be a story of how Bruce Wayne became Batman and doesn't attempt to, but it does serve as an excellent prequel to the other two games in the series, setting up Arkham Asylum nicely.
Batman is still early in his career here and I found it really interesting to see his relationships with two specific characters quite far removed from what we're used to. The game also serves as an introduction to one of Batman's foes and provides you with some of his back story as well - including a couple of playable hallucination sequences that I found a lot of fun.
In addition to the 8 assassins there are a series of sidequests that become available to you as you get further into the game, presented to you by some more villains that will be familiar to fans of the Batman universe. I've never been a huge fan myself - I only really know the villains from the movies - but the characters are all really well designed and the voice acting does a top notch job of bringing them to life. There's also a full profile for each character you come across so don't let unfamiliarity put you off.
The side missions are definitely worth a look in as one of my favourite moments from the game came from a sequence where you are hunting down the Mad Hatter - a criminal obsessed with Alice in Wonderland - and you are plunged into a hallucination fueled trip through the Looking Glass. It's reminiscent of the excellent Scarecrow missions from Arkham Asylum.
There are three main facets to the gameplay of Origins - the open world exploration, the stealthy "Predator" sequences and the hand to hand "Freeflow" combat. If you've played either of the previous games you'll be familiar with how they handle and they aren't particularly reinvented here. They're still as fantastic as they ever were though. Gliding around the skies of Gotham City as the Caped Crusader, using your Grapnel Accelerator to propel you high into the air is an absolute joy. There is a fast travel option in the game but I very rarely used it as just getting from Point A to Point B was so much fun.
I found the stealth gameplay a lot more difficult than in the previous games and not necessarily in a good way. It wasn't that it was much more challenging, it just seemed that almost every Predator sequence ended up in a gunfight - I don't think the levels were as well designed as in previous games to fully support the stealthy approach.
And so we come to the undoubted star of the game - the hand to hand combat. Honestly I don't think there's a better combat system in any game I've ever played than the formula that the Arkham series has produced and steadily refined over the last two games. The old cliche of "Easy to pick up, difficult to master" rings true here as anyone could pick up a controller and start pounding criminals into unconsciousness, but the challenge increases as more and more enemy types are introduced, each with their own defensive and offensive quirks that you need to understand in order to be victorious. It's not just about winning though, you have to win in style! Putting together massive combos and mixing in counters and attacks with your gadgets increases the number of XP you are given at the end of a battle - which you can then use to unlock more combat skills and open up even more combo opportunities. This is one of those games where you just go looking for enemies to fight, because it's so damn fun.
One thing I found amusing though is that for a hero who famously refuses to kill any opponents, Batman *really* seems to enjoy beating the absolute shit out of every mindless goon he comes across. Gives them an absolute battering at any opportunity!
A common problem in a lot of games is that they don't know how to incorporate boss battles with the core gameplay while still making them stand out and be good fun (Deus Ex...). That's definitely not a problem in Arkham Origins and the highlight of the game for me was the boss battle with Deathstroke - it tested all of the combat skills you had learnt and then threw in a few extra tricks just to keep you on your toes. A real challenge but it never felt cheap and even when I was beaten I couldn't wait to give it another go.
So overall, Arkham Origins does suffer a bit from being a bit of a rehash, but it's a rehash of a really brilliant game and the core gameplay remains in tact. For me that's reason enough to recommend this to fans of the series, but for newcomers I would suggest they go back to the start with Arkham Asylum.
Sadly I'm not sure where the series can go from here and I fear it may have run its natural course unless any sequel significantly changes up the setting but if this is the end I feel that the Arkham series can stand tall as one of the best franchises to come out of the 360/PS3 generation.
