Ambivalence would be the best thing to describe my feelings going into this game. I knew that it was being developed by different people than the first two games in the "Arkham" trilogy, and I had also read a number of mixed reviews regarding this game. After loving Arkham City, I was ready for more Batman brawling, stalking, and gliding.
Over the weekend, I finished up the main campaign and most of the side missions. When this game came out, there were a number of reviews basically saying this is a lesser game than the previous two. My opinion is a bit more nuanced.
First, you should understand how I played the game. I played this game on PC via Steam, and it was played with a Radeon 7970 video card and a 27" 2560 X 1440 monitor. This was not the experience I imagine most reviewers had who were stuck with Xbox and Playstation versions of the game that sound buggier and worse looking.
But at 1440p with a higher end video card, the game looked very sharp and ran fairly smooth with a couple minor tweaks. It was certainly better looking than when I played Arkham City on Xbox. I imagine a reviewer would probably be much more generous had they experienced the game the way I did.
There are problems with the game though, even though I was running it on a higher end rig. There were a couple times the game crashed on me and I don't think it was my PC. Also, I found the controls to be slightly worse than the previous games. Not bad enough where I would be upset, but in enough subtle ways for me to have to note it in this post. It was small stuff...it didn't feel to me like the counters were as accurate. My biggest complaint with the controls are ground takedowns, which felt inconsistent to the point where I generally would not use them unless I was sure it would land. It felt very weird watching Batman string together 30 hit combos and then do a ground takedown aimed at nothing.
Another criticism, if you can even call it that, is the overall lack of originality with the gameplay. They didn't really do much to expand on the previous entries. The crime scene scans are interesting but simple. They also have a couple slightly different gadgets. But I think if you had played Arkham City right before playing this, you might find that this feels more like an expansion than a new game. Half the city is Arkham City, and the rest of Gotham is separated by an annoyingly long bridge. The city itself is not as well designed as it should be for an open world. Arkham City felt like you could really fly around anywhere easily. There were times where I would go towards my waypoint marker and I would run into a wall because of these sometimes arbitrary roadblocks.
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| One of your new items is the Shock Gloves which you acquire later in the campaign. Once they are charged up, they are devastatingly effective against enemies. So much so that you can basically abandon typical fighting techniques the series has established. Even though it makes the game easier, I did enjoy using this overpowered weapon when the crowds of enemies were particularly large. |
I also found it strange when Batman could climb or grapple some objects but not others, and it didn't seem to make any sense to me. In fact, there were rooms where one object was climbable, and another object that was exactly the same wasn't.
The story is great. Obviously with a series like this they get a little creative with how Batman meets all of these super villains in order to create an origin story, but I still found the story to be creative and interesting. I've heard some people call several of the villains second tier. I disagree. Batman in many forms has always had the classic mega villains like the Joker, but also the more obscure but still interesting villains that to me always added texture to the story. Arkham Origins, in my opinion, does an excellent job balancing it out.
I can't speak to the console experience, which is no doubt worse in most ways, and I would be inclined to only recommend a purchase if it was discounted...perhaps for $20. But I recommend the game overall if you are interested in Batman. Despite my criticisms of the gameplay, I was still drawn to the experience enough to put in about 14 or 15 hours. If I had played Arkham City less than a month before, it stands to reason that I may not have felt as positive about it. There's no doubt that I played the "best" version of the game as well.
Since my last post about Dark Souls I've also completed Ghost Trick and The Testament of Sherlock Holmes. I've also put additional time into Fire Emblem: Awakening and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (the PC port). I'm sure I'm overlooking other things as well. Hopefully this week I'll post some more of my thoughts. Comments are welcome as always.
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