Game review! Arkham Origins

Arkham Origins Review – Xbox 360

After first becoming a fan of Batman since the epic reimagining by Christopher Nolan in The Dark Knight films. I bought Arkham Asylum in 2009 and was blown away by Rocksteady’s interpretation of the character, the sinister storyline and just how much fun it was to be Batman and to smash randomly placed villains.

The follow up to this was 2011’s Arkham City which was an open world style game, the polar opposite to the enclosed feel of Asylum. Whilst I wasn’t as keen on the storyline of City, the game itself was superb. Big, wide open spaces led to opportunities to glide seamlessly around the city and swooping down on groups of thugs that were up to no good. The interpretation of the DC Super villains has on the whole being excellent with fantastic character designs, voice acting and on screen presence. Arkham Asylum’s main standouts were the sinister ‘Scarecrow’ with the dream segments and cut scenes in that first game being unmatched in anything seen in the next two games. Next the obvious standout is ‘The Joker’ a wonderfully dark character with his sinister laugh and taste for manic chaos.

Arkham City brought characters such as ‘The Penguin’ and ‘Deadshot’ into the field of play and made an environment that was grand in scale but rich in detail with ‘easter eggs’ around every corner giving fanatics that extra detail that they crave.

However it was with trepidation that the news broke that a new developer would be taking over the mantle of the Bat and be making that dreaded prequel that is rarely ever done well.

However after the first trailer was released, these thoughts were dispelled quickly. The general plot revolves around the imagining that this early career Batman has just appeared on the scene and is only used to dealing with drug dealers and petty crimes. However all this changes after Gotham’s top crime lord ‘Black Mask’ decides that Batman is becoming a pain and brings eight of the top assassins in the world to Gotham to terminate him.

I won’t reveal many spoilers because I’m not even half way through the game yet but it quickly becomes apparent that there is something darker going on than first thought.

The opening of the game takes place in Blackgate prison and has Batman after correspondence with Butler Alfred tracking down Black Mask who is reported to have escaped and has taken Commissioner Loeb prisoner. This ends with Batman after a frantic chase around the prison seeing Loeb gassed to death as he is too late to save him. He also fails to reprimand Black Mask who escapes via the rooftops and leaves Batman to battle it out his servant Killer Croc in a rather disappointing battle that feels just like an ordinary thug fight but with an oversized green guy who looks a bit like a Crocodile.

My main issue so far is that the game definitely lacks the detail of the previous two; you don’t get the same sense of the blood, sweat and tears that Rocksteady put into making the two previous Arkham titles so amazing. The streets are quite bereft of little touches like posters and links to the DC Verse like the other two.

However the game quickly picks up and the next few segments such as infiltrating Penguin’s Final Offer Cruise ship are excellent and the boss battle with Deathstroke both frustrating and brilliant in similar measures.

On a side note its worth buying the game for the moment The Joker is revealed for the first time in a bank heist. It is pure cinema and very Christopher Nolan like.

The new detective mode is good and a nice new addition, it is enjoyable scrubbing back through crime scenes to reveal the perpetrators of the crimes. The crimes in progress that you can avert to from your main mission offer a welcome diversion but are all of fairly similar nature: mostly involving taking out a group of thugs on ground level that are breaking into cash machines etc.

Overall the team at Warner Brothers have done an excellent continuation that definitely has the feel of an Arkham game but still feels like a smaller sibling or a cousin that you don’t really talk to. However I know that in terms of the storyline I still have the best to come so, on that note I am off to Pioneers Bridge.

8/10