As we play offers the thought strands of the reviewer as they’re going through the game. This offers unique content for the reader so they can come to understand the conflicting feelings of the reviewer as they’re playing a game for the very first time. All feedback on this concept is welcome.
Rocksteady pulled off the impossible just a few years ago, they gave us a Batman game that finally delivered. Arkham Asylum not only rose the bar far above expectation, making it superior to any other Batman game before it, it made it almost impossible for any future Batman game to match or improve those standards.
Yet Arkham City came along and shattered our expectations. Rocksteady gave us Batman in an Open City; pitting The Dark Knight against his deadliest enemies, giving us a more hard-hitting story, ending with the cliff-hanger to end them all.
But when Arkham Origins was announced, many of us – myself included – felt a sense of trepidation. For one thing, Rocksteady are not involved – and to date, we still don’t know what they’re secretly cooking up – for another, it’s a Batman Origin story, so we still won’t get resolution from the end of City.
Then there is the inclusion of multiplayer
Fortunately, Batman: Arkham Origins still has a compelling story to tell. Where City gave us a look underneath the cowl, letting us learn a bit more about Bruce Wayne, Origins shows how ruthless and raw the Bat was prior to Asylum and the psychology of Bruce Wayne way back when.
In a way, it kind of brings things full-circle, especially considering Batman’s final act at the end of Arkham City.
While playing the game, Origins increases in relevance. Its story, and the reason for telling it, become more pertinent the deeper you go. For instance, characters that appeared in City are given more of a legacy, and the relationship between Alfred and Wayne is thrust into the limelight.
The issue with Origins is that the story starts to become thin and frustrating from the mid-way point on, partly down to the inclusion of one character. But again, it makes sense when City is taken into consideration.
That’s the thing. Playing Origins feels like a prelude to a bigger sequel. While it’s not necessarily filled with unanswered questions, loose-ends are tied up and character development is given a new level of depth to prepare us for what’s coming next.
The mechanics are largely unchanged, though Bats has a few new additions to his arsenal. For one, he can use his grappling hook, to gain extra propulsion when reaching a platform, then keep gliding. This helps stop break-ups in movement and keeps movement toward an objective seamless. There’s also the Remote Claw which grapples two enemies at once and knocks their heads together.
Also, for the first time, Bats can fast-travel across the city, though this threw up countless bugs for me and caused several hard-crashes. After six or seven, I decided to keep doing things the old-fashioned way.
Unfortunately, the game still threw up regular hard-crashes for no apparent reason, seizing up my game on Xbox 360 at least 10 to 15 times. Occasionally, I lost save progress because of this – as much as fifteen minutes of gameplay at one point – and had to restart at prior checkpoints. As you can imagine, after a few instances of this, I was about ready to throw my console out the window.
Still, the game and story was a decent, solid affair. The over-saturation of Riddler discoveries to be made didn’t interest me, and many side missions I chose to ignore. When I was finished with Arkham Origins, I found very little motivation to go back and do anything else with the campaign.
By that point, the multiplayer was calling…
Despite being critically panned, I appreciated Brink. Splash Damage did some magnificent work there, but the game was unfortunately held up by horrific lag and countless other issues. There was a foundation there for a good game. It’s a shame most people didn’t get to experience that.
So it’s perhaps unsurprising that Arkham Origins also has a solid multiplayer foundation. And equally unsurprising it has issues of its own.
It’s three v three v two. Bane and Joker have a gang of thugs that fight against each other with guns and melee weapons, and must take on the dynamic duo of Batman and Robin. Gangs win a match by killing all team’s reinforcements, while Batman & Robin must intimidate the gang by eliminating its members. If a gang builds momentum, they can bring in either Joker or Bane to help even the odds, either ring leader offering more powerful abilities.
The aim is simple, but tactics and techniques will be required to do it. For instance, our heroes can set traps for opponents, then cast a smoke bomb to disappear out of view, and gangs also have their own abilities, such as Enhanced Vision, to help them out of a sticky situation.
The problem with the multiplayer? Nobody is playing it. Either they’re too busy involving themselves in the campaign or they’re already done with it, but regardless, the servers are just not populated. And frankly, I can’t see that changing.
When you do get a game, lag spikes do cause unwelcome interruptions and hard-crashes again plague the game, though, ironically, the multiplayer definitely seems more stable than the game’s campaign.
Also, there’s one mode. If you’re going to offer an online component, you should at least be ready to offer the player a little bit of choice.
I feel for Splash Damage. They’ve done commendable work and effectively done the impossible, introducing multiplayer to this franchise, but it’s once again gone mostly ignored and will likely be forgotten about before the year is out. Ironically, omitting the multiplayer from Wii U may have been their biggest mistake. With players on the format eagerly awaiting something to play online with their friends, this could have filled the void. And likely got a decent population together. On PS3 and 360, there’s just far too much competition for Batman to go up against and it’s never going to be anyone’s first choice.
Final Analysis
A mixed bag of success, then. Arkham Origins has a decent story, though not the one we wanted told. And there’s decent multiplayer here, but one that is already being ignored.
Arkham Origins feels long in the tooth and far too safe to be the franchises’ best entry. Hard-crashing, graphic glitching and frame-rate dips also make this a frustrating foray on Xbox 360, but the experience was mostly entertaining throughout.
Worth it for further narrative on character background and the slightest hint at what’s coming next.
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