The Arkham series of Batman games began with Arkham Asylum back in 2009. At the time I was fairly entrenched in World of Warcraft mode and didn’t pick up this game right away. When I first heard of it I heard nothing but absolutely stellar recommendations. By the time I rolled around to playing it in about 2012 it suffered from a bit of a problem. The main hook of that original game was its amazing melee combat mechanics. The problem is that by the time I played it I had already played several games that had “borrowed” and iterated on this mechanic, so it wasn’t as mind blowing as it was for early players. I definitely saw the appeal though, and the story telling and atmosphere was absolutely fantastic, especially for its time.

Fast forward two games and 4+ years and we have the next installment, Arkham Origins. For the record, I’d like to say that it’s absolutely incredible that we live in a time in which Batman games are actually good and highly anticipated. Throughout gaming history, Batman games have been nothing but absolutely horrendous. If Arkham Origins was the first of a new wave of Batman games we’d all be celebrating it as absolutely incredible. Unfortunately, as the third in its series and the 20,349th in the last few years with these mechanics, Origins just feels a little flat.

It’s still as solid mechanically and visually as ever, but that’s kind of the problem. When you’re comparing yourself to a game that came out in 2009, saying you’re “on par” just isn’t that great. They introduced some new aspects lately, like the so-called open world aspect from Arkham City and the detective mode in Arkham Origins, but these two additions feel a lot less like additions and a lot more like inconveniences.

Everything about Arkham Origins just has an overall feel of fatigue. From the combat mechanics to the scenarios to the story, the whole thing just looks like the Batman peanut butter was just spread a little too thin over this three-game piece of toast. The most offending victim of this fatigue is the cast of characters you’ll be seeing. In Arkham Asylum we interact with The Joker, Commissioner Gordon, Killer Croc, Harley Quinn, The Riddler, Scarecrow, and Poison Ivy. In Arkham City we get to see Hugo Strange, Catwoman, The Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Ra’s Al Ghul, Talia Al Ghul, and Soloman Grundy. So who do we get in Origins? Um…… Bane. Pretty much just Bane. The rest of the cast is made up of every obscure character that could be dragged from the dregs of the DC basement.

I hope you enjoy fighting the likes of Deathstroke, Firefly, and Deadshot, because those are the new enemies you’ll face this time around. The story hook is that Black Mask has hired 8 assassins to track down and kill you, leaving the assumption that you’ll be fighting all 8 at one point or another. Here’s the thing. I think by the end of the game I’d really only fought like 5 of them. I seriously don’t remember fighting at least a couple of them, which means either I didn’t have to fight them or those fights were REALLY forgettable.

The epic fights play out in a way that keeps in step with the blandness of the rest of the game as well. One of the first fights was against Deathstroke, and it was actually pretty badass…..for the first quarter of the fight. That is until I realized that the fight was basically the EXACT same choreographed sequence four times in a row. It was NES-esque in its design. Melee attack the enemy for a bit until his health reaches a certain breakpoint, at which point he breaks off from the fight and lunges at you, generating a quicktime event. Once you fend him off, you go back into melee until another breakpoint, in which you are served the same quicktime event from before. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were maybe only about 4 different animations used in that entire 5 minute fight.

I struggle to say that Arkham Origins is a bad game. It doesn’t do a whole lot particularly wrong, it just doesn’t go out of its way to do anything new, or even improved from the previous games. Combine that with the plethora of other games that have utilized the Arkham melee mechanics, and this game just works out to a really big meh. If you are a huge fan of Batman then I’m sure you’ll find some enjoyment in this game, but if you’re new to the series and want to try it out I really suggest you go back and try the first game instead. It did all the things Origins did just as well, but with way better atmosphere, more creative story and encounter design, and far more recognizable characters. It speaks volumes that I got Arkham Origins a week before getting Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, and as soon as that game came in, I put Origins aside for almost 8 months.