Batman: Arkham Origins

I sat on the idea of doing this review for a while, because my feelings on this game are really mixed and I wanted to be able to solidly praise or condemned. In the end, it turns out I can't really do either. Batman: Arkham Origins is a game that I want to love unconditionally, but will unfortunately have to offer a number of caveats in recommending.

First off, though it would be easy to mistake it, Origins is not made by Rocksteady games, who were the originators of the Arkham games and made the first and second entries in the series. WB Montreal was handed the license to play with while Rocksteady took a few years to work on its next gen entry into the series, which I'm sure to cover at some point. Rather than reinventing the wheel, WB Montreal chose to largely take the architecture (in a very literal manner, it would turn out) and and structure of Arkham City, and slap their own new coat of paint over it, in some noticeable ways. The result of this can be either a detriment or a boon, depending on what you're looking for.

To put it bluntly, if you liked Arkham City, and you want to play Arkham City with a new story campaign, this is for you. If you got your fill of City's mechanics and underpinnings, and want to move on to something that is evolutionary from there, you can skip this entry and go right to Arkham Knight. For some of you, that might be enough for you to stop reading this review right here, and that's fine.

That said, I still want to go into this game a little deeper and give credit where it's due; like I said, I really want to love this game. See, while the game really is largely an Arkham City clone with a different paint job, it's kind of a really good paint job. In fact, I would go as far as to say Arkham Origins is the second strongest narrative of the series, just behind Arkham City and tied with the original Arkham Asylum in my eyes. As the name would suggest, Origins is a semi canonical prequel (Rocksteady choose not to acknowledge it in their trilogy) that tells the story of Batman's second year in action. Batman's status as a crime fighting newbie definitely shows in the character's portrayal; rather than the established and unendingly confident Batman with an established network of allies and a known well of villains, we play as a Bruce who is still rough around the edges. He's young, brash instead of cool and sure of himself, and much more visceral than his older counterpart. To reflect this, Roger Craig Smith has been brought in to voice the younger, angrier dark knight, instead of having the seasoned Kevin Conroy reprise his role from the first two titles (and almost every other major piece of classic Batman media in the last 30 years).

I actually don't want to say too much or spoil any major points of the journey, so I'll just say this: the story is an interesting romp through Batman's early career, beginning with an investigation into the Black Mask that eventually becomes a murder mystery, while trying to dodge hired assassins that make for some of the best boss fights in the series, and if you can stomach repeating a lot of City's mechanical beats, it's a story worht experiencing. There are a number of twists and turns, introductions of characters that will become major Batman allies and villains in the suture, some nods to existing stories of Bruce's early days, and just enough seeds placed for the events that would eventually play out in Asylum and City for it to still feel like a proper prequel, despite the objection of the series' real keeper of the keys.

Visually the game also receives a bit of a n overhaul. The story is set on Christmas Eve, and thus the Gotham City that you'll traverse in mostly familiar ways (thank goodness, this game gives you the grapnel boost right from the jump – one of the smartest deviations made by WB Montreal) has been blanketed in a seasonal bluish-white blanket of snow and Christmas decor on the streets. Batman himself is also sporting a very different look, donning a much more tactical armored style of Batsuit instead of the more comic book styled get up in his previous outings. Personally, I actually prefer this look – it looks appropriately early days for the caped crusader, and I think the artists have succeeded in creating a look for Bats that has lost the weird, oddly proportioned nature of the Asylum and City models, and in fact seems like more of a predecessor to the armored outfit we'd eventually put on very early into the later Arkham Knight. I've heard some people say differently, but ultimately I think this is a better looking game than City, and as divisive an opinion as it will be, I also think it has a stronger character design and portrayal.

The map itself, as I more than inferred earlier, very much feels like a retread of Arkham City, to a point. The world is split into two major sections of Gotham, separated by a bridge. The upper half of Gotham is basically the map from Arkham City, right down to the court house, GCPD, and the Sionis Mill on Amusement Mile that would be Joker's home base many years later. More than once in upper Gotham did I find buildings and spots that felt extremely familiar having just come off the previous game. It's clear that WB Montreal didn't literally take the level geometry and paste it in, though, to be clear. The architecture itself is clearly new assets, the actual landmarks and geography are just in the same places.

Lower Gotham, however, is all new, and seems to be a much richer part of Gotham, with a large park, hotel, and bank. The good news there is that means this is technically a bigger game than Origins, and there is a whole area that you won't have seen before, which definitely lessens the weird feeling of familiarity that you may occasionally have creep up on you.

There are some mechanical differences from City, but ultimately they're too small to really over-explain, and they're nothing that detracts or harms the game. If you liked beating dudes up in the last game, you'll like beating dudes up in this game. Combat still feels fast and ferocious, and gliding through Gotham still feels buttery smooth. You felt like you were the Batman in this game's forebears, and you'll feel like it here.

Unfortunately, there are some negatives that I have to point out. For one, I definitely ran into a lot more bugs and glitches in this game than I did in Asylum and City put together. A few times the physics in the game completely flipped out, resulting in hilarious villain ragdolls flying around like Superman had hit them instead of a man in a bat costume, and two times the game actually stopped recognizing my control when transitioning to a new part of an encounter. Iy should be noted these weird crashed only ever happened during specific mission segments, and never while just cruising around the city, so it was easy enough to reload my last checkpoint and continue. The bugs were never game breaking, but it was still occasionally disappointing to run into them. The other negatives are that, as is becoming something of a pattern, the PC port is not super well optimized, and much like its predecessor, I have to recommend you turn off DX11 features, even if you're running a relatively modern rig. In addition, because it's not included in the Rocksteady family of Arkham Games, Origins was not included in the Arkham remaster collection (which has its own controversial pros and cons) for the Xbone One and PS4, so the only way to play the game on newer machines is via a physical copy on the Xbox One via backwards compatibility, or streaming on the PS4 via Playstation Now, as origins did not receive backwards compatibility support on the Sony platforms. So if you don't still have your now almost two generation old systems still hooked up, it can be something of a hassle to get and play this entry in the series.

Origins ends up the oft maligned stepchild of the series thanks to its being a half-brother at best to Arkham City, and its status as the game that wasn't made by the main guys, kind of like the early Treyarch Call of Duty games. If you never played any of the Arkham games, and you only want to play one of them, this is a perfectly serviceable stand alone Batman product with a great story that doesn't require any of the other games in the main series to understand and enjoy. It's not perfect, it's nothing you haven't seen before, and it has its flaws, but if you have the hankering to be the Batman, and you've already played city to death, it's a competent option to satisfy that bat shaped itch.