I've always held that the only difference between a critic and any other random jackass on the internet is that the critics get paid to express their thoughts (that is, write reviews). But, in the end, their opinion is about as worthless (or worthy, depending on your levels of cynicism) as anyone else's. So with that in mind, here are my (COMPLETELY FREE!)final thoughts on Arkham Origins.
Combat
This is, of course, the big one when talking about an Arkham game. I made a topic last Friday regarding my first impressions of the game and I mentioned that I thought the combat was as solid as it had ever been. Having played the game more I can sadly say that my first impression seemed to be off...way off. I don't know how they did it, but the new studio did indeed manage to fuck up the combat.
First Impression: "They fixed the "homing enemies" BS!"
Truth: Nope, enemies still act like guided missiles if they start your attack and you move to punch someone else that leaves you a good 5 feet away from where you were when the first guy started his attack. So they just still magically slide across the ground that extra five feet to punch you in the head.
First Impression: "Seems like ending a fight with an interrogation is a bit buggy, hopefully they're fix that."
Truth: Nope, it's designed that way. In this game you can't just save the interrogation target for last and press Y to automatically start the interrogation as though it were your finishing move. In this game you actually have to beat the crap out of the interrogation target like anyone else, then they fall to the ground and wait for you to finish off the rest of the guys before you go to interrogate them.
But here's the BIG problem that damn-near breaks the game: the targeting (or prioritizing, if you will) is absolutely horrendous. Let me give you an example of what I mean: I'm in the middle of a fight and I go to use Disarm-Destroy...a very handy ability indeed which I'll be addressing again later. Now, there's a guy standing there with a gun he just picked up, so naturally I point in his direction and push the button combo to do Disarm-Destroy. Standing right next to and slightly in front of the guy with the gun is a guy holding a fire extinguisher. What does Batman do? He takes the fire extinguisher, headbutts that guy in the face, then throws the extinguisher away...and then proceeds to get lit up by the guy with the gun.
That's the stuff I'm talking about. In the old games, when you did stuff like that, it would realize "You know, I bet the player was wanting to get rid of that gun more than the fire extinguisher". This game is pretty much "whatever weapon is the closest to Batman." But it's not just for that ability, either. It's the same when you're doing the Bat-claw pull (always shoots for the guy furthest from Batman instead of the one that's already running right up to punch Batman in the face...meaning that guy gets to run right up and punch Batman in the face when he's trying to pull the other guy). Even the simple act of DODGING got fucked up, with Batman refusing to flip over thugs in the general direction you're pointing and instead just dive-rolling into the middle of a crowd and getting punched up.
In my First Impressions topic, someone had mentioned that it seems like you have less time to react for counters in this game. Having played it a lot, I know what he means. Seems like the enemies are MUCH more aggressive in this game than in previous ones and their attacks come in a lot faster. I remember getting the Free Form Focus (reaching a 12 or more combo to slow all enemies down a bit while speeding Batman up a bit) was a real difference maker in Arkham City. In this game, any advantage it gives you is just barely noticeable.
Story:
Gonna use spoiler tags for this one (for obvious reasons).
Setting
Well my first impression of the setting was pretty much what I'd have to stay here. The Gotham City in this game is pretty massive, basically it's literally twice the size of Arkham City as the entire area that Arkam City takes place in is present. You can go to the Court House, the museum, the church, all the major locations from the City are there. Of course now it's all "pristine" (for Gotham standards) so it's not all broken down and decaying, meaning it's actually a lot more cluttered.
Linking to the south is a massive bridge that takes you to the 2nd part of the city which is roughly about the same size. and features plenty of locations to explore. If there's one thing I'll give this game credit for, it's building a lot of great set-pieces.
The "dungeons", for lack of a better term, seem much larger than they were in the previous two games. But unlike in the previous games, once you've cleared them out, no one ever spawns in there again. I think Asylum did it that way, but I really liked how you could go back to the Steel Mill, for instance, and find some of Joker's Crew still chatting it up while hanging out in Arkham City.
So yeah, the city is by far the biggest Batman playground we've had thus far, and to help get around that playground they added in Fast Travel locations! But you can't use those fast-travel locations just all willy-nilly right from the start. No, Enigma has some jamming towers messing with the Batwing's navigation, you'll have to take them out! Oh, and don't bother trying to take them all out first thing, need certain gadgets in order to unlock a few of them, which means that you won't have them all unlocked until very late in the game...which I'll get into with the Level Up System here in a moment.
Not that you'll be wanting to use them very late in the game, because about 2/3rds of the way through it, there's snipers all over the rooftops, and at least 3 or 4 of the buggers are watching right over the area where each drop point is. So if you plan on using the fast-travel system, I hope you're ready to catch a sniper bullet or two. Gliding around, in general, at that point can become a bit tricky since there's so many snipers. Oh, and since the snipers just spawn in on roofs where they weren't before they.....apparently count as their own encounter for some reason. It'll be a sniper and 2 regular gunners up on a roof. You take out the two gunners and it gives you "encounter completed, enemies: 2" and starts pumping up your experience. Then you go take out the sniper and it gives you the experience for taking out one guy. So yeah, that's a bit odd.
Level Up System
Pretty sure my first impression of this was "it sucks", and having finished the game I can confirm "Yeah, it REALLY sucks.
If you were like me, then you enjoyed flying around in Arkham City every time you left a building to grind out some fights against the random groups of thugs so you could get some exp and get to that next upgrade sooner. Well, don't really have to bother with that in this game seeing as how the level-up system is VERY picky and restrictive about what gadgets and moves you have access to. Want the Blade-Dodge takedown maneuver? Well you won't be getting that till you put 3 points into melee combat armor. Want the Multi-Ground Takedown? Too bad, you don't get that until you've put 3 points into ballistic armor. Want the Disarm-Destroy ability? Too bad, you don't get that until you're damn-near at the end of the game because it's a story-line unlock for absolutely no frickin' reason. Want the ability to do critical strikes? Yeah, can't do that until you've completed Shiva's side-quest, which is roughly half-way through the game.
It's just sooooooo restrictive in how you upgrade your stuff. There's a lot of combat challenges, stealth challenges, and maneuvering challenges....but most of those can't be done until you've unlocked specific upgrades that come late in the game. I found myself often with a surplus of level-up points because the game just arbitrarily holds you back for now real reason. At least in the first games there was a reason you couldn't have access to a certain gadget...you actually had to have it delivered to you or (in Asylum) you'd go back to your Batcave and pick it up. But keeping Batman from learning Disarm-Destroy until the very end of the game? That makes no sense other than "Because we said so, damnit!"
Conclusion
So yeah, I tried to be optimistic about the game despite the fact that it wasn't made by Rocksteady. I kept saying "As long as they don't screw up the combat, I'm certain I'll love the game." Well...they managed to fuck up the combat. Between that and the cripplingly restrictive and arbitrary level-up system, I've gotta say I'm rather disappointed with this one. I won't say it's a "cash grab" because you can see that they did put some honest effort into it. Sadly, as Enigma says at one point: "A for Effort, F for Impact".
In the end I'd say rent it if you really like Batman games, buy it if you're a hardcore Batman fan, but other than that you might as well wait for a price drop.
Combat
This is, of course, the big one when talking about an Arkham game. I made a topic last Friday regarding my first impressions of the game and I mentioned that I thought the combat was as solid as it had ever been. Having played the game more I can sadly say that my first impression seemed to be off...way off. I don't know how they did it, but the new studio did indeed manage to fuck up the combat.
First Impression: "They fixed the "homing enemies" BS!"
Truth: Nope, enemies still act like guided missiles if they start your attack and you move to punch someone else that leaves you a good 5 feet away from where you were when the first guy started his attack. So they just still magically slide across the ground that extra five feet to punch you in the head.
First Impression: "Seems like ending a fight with an interrogation is a bit buggy, hopefully they're fix that."
Truth: Nope, it's designed that way. In this game you can't just save the interrogation target for last and press Y to automatically start the interrogation as though it were your finishing move. In this game you actually have to beat the crap out of the interrogation target like anyone else, then they fall to the ground and wait for you to finish off the rest of the guys before you go to interrogate them.
But here's the BIG problem that damn-near breaks the game: the targeting (or prioritizing, if you will) is absolutely horrendous. Let me give you an example of what I mean: I'm in the middle of a fight and I go to use Disarm-Destroy...a very handy ability indeed which I'll be addressing again later. Now, there's a guy standing there with a gun he just picked up, so naturally I point in his direction and push the button combo to do Disarm-Destroy. Standing right next to and slightly in front of the guy with the gun is a guy holding a fire extinguisher. What does Batman do? He takes the fire extinguisher, headbutts that guy in the face, then throws the extinguisher away...and then proceeds to get lit up by the guy with the gun.
That's the stuff I'm talking about. In the old games, when you did stuff like that, it would realize "You know, I bet the player was wanting to get rid of that gun more than the fire extinguisher". This game is pretty much "whatever weapon is the closest to Batman." But it's not just for that ability, either. It's the same when you're doing the Bat-claw pull (always shoots for the guy furthest from Batman instead of the one that's already running right up to punch Batman in the face...meaning that guy gets to run right up and punch Batman in the face when he's trying to pull the other guy). Even the simple act of DODGING got fucked up, with Batman refusing to flip over thugs in the general direction you're pointing and instead just dive-rolling into the middle of a crowd and getting punched up.
In my First Impressions topic, someone had mentioned that it seems like you have less time to react for counters in this game. Having played it a lot, I know what he means. Seems like the enemies are MUCH more aggressive in this game than in previous ones and their attacks come in a lot faster. I remember getting the Free Form Focus (reaching a 12 or more combo to slow all enemies down a bit while speeding Batman up a bit) was a real difference maker in Arkham City. In this game, any advantage it gives you is just barely noticeable.
Story:
Gonna use spoiler tags for this one (for obvious reasons).
The story was alright, though it's likely going to disappoint a lot of people and confirm suspicions of a lot of people. Once again, the story does indeed revolve around The Joker, not Black Mask. Turns out Joker is actually impersonating Black Mask from the very beginning, as such HE was the one who put the bounty on your head, not Black Mask. You do get to actually fight Black mask, though it's only as a side quest.
But, getting back to the main story, lets start with how the assassins are handled. Sad to say: rather poorly, really, with one exception.
Killer Croc: Main boss of the Tutorial Level in which Batman is chasing down "Black Mask" who has broken into Blackgate Prison to kill Police Commissioner Loeb. You fight Croc (a proper fight this time, none of this toss a Batarang to knock him down nonsense) on the roof right at the end and he pretty much disappears for the rest of the game after that, popping back up at the very end but leaving just as quickly.
Electrocutioner: Literally treated as a massive joke. You fight him in Penguin's lair and as soon as you run up to throw your first hit it zooms into a semi-cutscene of your hit connecting in slow-mo and just knocking him right the fuck out. Batman then has a brain-fart and forgets to secure Electrocutioner, allowing him to wake up and escape as you progress through Penguin's lair...only to show up again and get killed off in a cutscene by The Joker.
Deathstroke: Sadly not nearly as impressive as I hoped. You finish your business with Penguin, and Deathstroke just jumps in and attacks you. You beat him, and never hear from him again except you pass by him in a jail cell at the very end of the game. Gotta say the fight was fun though.
Deadshot: Just another sidequest fight. The video where it shows off the new Batman Crime Scene analyzer of him finding out what happened to a helicopter that got shot down is what leads to it. Basically a chopper gets shot down right in front of you, you piece together the crime scene, go to the shooter's location, find a Deadshot bullet with a frequency on it, the frequency tells you to go to a building, and then you have to "fight" Deadshot by completely a pretty challenging Predator room sequence.
Shiva: Treated as a sidequest. She shows up, tells you to go to a room where you have to save some dude hanging above a pool of electrified water. You do that, then she tells you to meet her at a building. She fights you with a handful of goons, ninja chicks, and the new Martial Artist enemies, and then buggers off saying "I know now why my master chose you" or something like that.
Copperhead: Kinda like Deathstroke, she just shows up, you fight her, and that's pretty much it. To be fair, though, she gets more buildup than Deathstroke. She gets the jump on you and poisons you, causing you to start hallucinating and seeing a bunch of dead people show up bitching about how you failed to save them. You then fight a trippy fight against Copperhead and that's that.
Bane: Bane is the only one that actually gets any kind of characterization...but that's still not saying too much. He actually turns out to be the final fight in the game (though you do fight him earlier in the game) and I gotta say his fights are a pain in the ass...mainly due to the shitty combat targeting I was mentioning earlier.
Firefly: Just kinda comes outta nowhere and gives you an excuse to go through some fights and a couple Predator rooms. His fight is pretty tricky, but still, no real build-up. Just suddenly "Oh no! Firefly is attacking!"
In the grand scheme of things, the story "works", but just seems like it was a bit rushed. Part of this is due to the leveling system which discourages "grinding" against large mobs of thugs for exp to level up. But I'll get into that here in a minute. As I mentioned before, the entire story is actually another devious plot by The Joker, not Black Mask as we were all lead to believe. This would seem to confirm the suspicions of those who said that the reason they went with a prequel rather than a sequel to Arkham City was so that they could once again have The Joker being the center of attention.
Another thing that might upset some people is that they seem to try and make one of The Joker's origin stories as his official one. The origin they go with is the one that he explains to Dr. Strange in Arkham City, about being dressed up with the red bucket on his head and such. Now this could be just my lack of knowledge in terms of Batman lore, but I always thought that one of the Joker's "things" was that NO ONE knew what his origin was. That there wasn't an official story to explain how he came to be. If that's not true and he really was forced to wear the red bucket on his head, fair enough. But if it is true, then I can see some die-hard Batman fans getting a bit upset that this game seems to be canonizing that story.
But, getting back to the main story, lets start with how the assassins are handled. Sad to say: rather poorly, really, with one exception.
Killer Croc: Main boss of the Tutorial Level in which Batman is chasing down "Black Mask" who has broken into Blackgate Prison to kill Police Commissioner Loeb. You fight Croc (a proper fight this time, none of this toss a Batarang to knock him down nonsense) on the roof right at the end and he pretty much disappears for the rest of the game after that, popping back up at the very end but leaving just as quickly.
Electrocutioner: Literally treated as a massive joke. You fight him in Penguin's lair and as soon as you run up to throw your first hit it zooms into a semi-cutscene of your hit connecting in slow-mo and just knocking him right the fuck out. Batman then has a brain-fart and forgets to secure Electrocutioner, allowing him to wake up and escape as you progress through Penguin's lair...only to show up again and get killed off in a cutscene by The Joker.
Deathstroke: Sadly not nearly as impressive as I hoped. You finish your business with Penguin, and Deathstroke just jumps in and attacks you. You beat him, and never hear from him again except you pass by him in a jail cell at the very end of the game. Gotta say the fight was fun though.
Deadshot: Just another sidequest fight. The video where it shows off the new Batman Crime Scene analyzer of him finding out what happened to a helicopter that got shot down is what leads to it. Basically a chopper gets shot down right in front of you, you piece together the crime scene, go to the shooter's location, find a Deadshot bullet with a frequency on it, the frequency tells you to go to a building, and then you have to "fight" Deadshot by completely a pretty challenging Predator room sequence.
Shiva: Treated as a sidequest. She shows up, tells you to go to a room where you have to save some dude hanging above a pool of electrified water. You do that, then she tells you to meet her at a building. She fights you with a handful of goons, ninja chicks, and the new Martial Artist enemies, and then buggers off saying "I know now why my master chose you" or something like that.
Copperhead: Kinda like Deathstroke, she just shows up, you fight her, and that's pretty much it. To be fair, though, she gets more buildup than Deathstroke. She gets the jump on you and poisons you, causing you to start hallucinating and seeing a bunch of dead people show up bitching about how you failed to save them. You then fight a trippy fight against Copperhead and that's that.
Bane: Bane is the only one that actually gets any kind of characterization...but that's still not saying too much. He actually turns out to be the final fight in the game (though you do fight him earlier in the game) and I gotta say his fights are a pain in the ass...mainly due to the shitty combat targeting I was mentioning earlier.
Firefly: Just kinda comes outta nowhere and gives you an excuse to go through some fights and a couple Predator rooms. His fight is pretty tricky, but still, no real build-up. Just suddenly "Oh no! Firefly is attacking!"
In the grand scheme of things, the story "works", but just seems like it was a bit rushed. Part of this is due to the leveling system which discourages "grinding" against large mobs of thugs for exp to level up. But I'll get into that here in a minute. As I mentioned before, the entire story is actually another devious plot by The Joker, not Black Mask as we were all lead to believe. This would seem to confirm the suspicions of those who said that the reason they went with a prequel rather than a sequel to Arkham City was so that they could once again have The Joker being the center of attention.
Another thing that might upset some people is that they seem to try and make one of The Joker's origin stories as his official one. The origin they go with is the one that he explains to Dr. Strange in Arkham City, about being dressed up with the red bucket on his head and such. Now this could be just my lack of knowledge in terms of Batman lore, but I always thought that one of the Joker's "things" was that NO ONE knew what his origin was. That there wasn't an official story to explain how he came to be. If that's not true and he really was forced to wear the red bucket on his head, fair enough. But if it is true, then I can see some die-hard Batman fans getting a bit upset that this game seems to be canonizing that story.
Setting
Well my first impression of the setting was pretty much what I'd have to stay here. The Gotham City in this game is pretty massive, basically it's literally twice the size of Arkham City as the entire area that Arkam City takes place in is present. You can go to the Court House, the museum, the church, all the major locations from the City are there. Of course now it's all "pristine" (for Gotham standards) so it's not all broken down and decaying, meaning it's actually a lot more cluttered.
Linking to the south is a massive bridge that takes you to the 2nd part of the city which is roughly about the same size. and features plenty of locations to explore. If there's one thing I'll give this game credit for, it's building a lot of great set-pieces.
Who actually pulls you into his Wonderland for some platforming puzzles and a couple fights this time, so it's much more engaging than just fighting on a giant watch as the camera flies around in different/weird angles.
The "dungeons", for lack of a better term, seem much larger than they were in the previous two games. But unlike in the previous games, once you've cleared them out, no one ever spawns in there again. I think Asylum did it that way, but I really liked how you could go back to the Steel Mill, for instance, and find some of Joker's Crew still chatting it up while hanging out in Arkham City.
So yeah, the city is by far the biggest Batman playground we've had thus far, and to help get around that playground they added in Fast Travel locations! But you can't use those fast-travel locations just all willy-nilly right from the start. No, Enigma has some jamming towers messing with the Batwing's navigation, you'll have to take them out! Oh, and don't bother trying to take them all out first thing, need certain gadgets in order to unlock a few of them, which means that you won't have them all unlocked until very late in the game...which I'll get into with the Level Up System here in a moment.
Not that you'll be wanting to use them very late in the game, because about 2/3rds of the way through it, there's snipers all over the rooftops, and at least 3 or 4 of the buggers are watching right over the area where each drop point is. So if you plan on using the fast-travel system, I hope you're ready to catch a sniper bullet or two. Gliding around, in general, at that point can become a bit tricky since there's so many snipers. Oh, and since the snipers just spawn in on roofs where they weren't before they.....apparently count as their own encounter for some reason. It'll be a sniper and 2 regular gunners up on a roof. You take out the two gunners and it gives you "encounter completed, enemies: 2" and starts pumping up your experience. Then you go take out the sniper and it gives you the experience for taking out one guy. So yeah, that's a bit odd.
Level Up System
Pretty sure my first impression of this was "it sucks", and having finished the game I can confirm "Yeah, it REALLY sucks.
If you were like me, then you enjoyed flying around in Arkham City every time you left a building to grind out some fights against the random groups of thugs so you could get some exp and get to that next upgrade sooner. Well, don't really have to bother with that in this game seeing as how the level-up system is VERY picky and restrictive about what gadgets and moves you have access to. Want the Blade-Dodge takedown maneuver? Well you won't be getting that till you put 3 points into melee combat armor. Want the Multi-Ground Takedown? Too bad, you don't get that until you've put 3 points into ballistic armor. Want the Disarm-Destroy ability? Too bad, you don't get that until you're damn-near at the end of the game because it's a story-line unlock for absolutely no frickin' reason. Want the ability to do critical strikes? Yeah, can't do that until you've completed Shiva's side-quest, which is roughly half-way through the game.
It's just sooooooo restrictive in how you upgrade your stuff. There's a lot of combat challenges, stealth challenges, and maneuvering challenges....but most of those can't be done until you've unlocked specific upgrades that come late in the game. I found myself often with a surplus of level-up points because the game just arbitrarily holds you back for now real reason. At least in the first games there was a reason you couldn't have access to a certain gadget...you actually had to have it delivered to you or (in Asylum) you'd go back to your Batcave and pick it up. But keeping Batman from learning Disarm-Destroy until the very end of the game? That makes no sense other than "Because we said so, damnit!"
Conclusion
So yeah, I tried to be optimistic about the game despite the fact that it wasn't made by Rocksteady. I kept saying "As long as they don't screw up the combat, I'm certain I'll love the game." Well...they managed to fuck up the combat. Between that and the cripplingly restrictive and arbitrary level-up system, I've gotta say I'm rather disappointed with this one. I won't say it's a "cash grab" because you can see that they did put some honest effort into it. Sadly, as Enigma says at one point: "A for Effort, F for Impact".
In the end I'd say rent it if you really like Batman games, buy it if you're a hardcore Batman fan, but other than that you might as well wait for a price drop.
