Picked up the new Batman game at a midnight release and played it for about 3 hours. No need to worry about story spoilers in this thread since I developed a habit in Arkham City of Batmaning the crap out of every group of thugs within a 10 block radius of where I'm currently standing (GIMME THAT EXP!!!) which means I spent the majority of the time beating up people, but I'll get to that in a minute. Suffice to say that there's enough to keep you busy that after 3 hours of gameplay I only made it to the first actual plot point beyond the initial tutorial levels.
Combat: The Free Flow Combat is still as enjoyable as it's ever been. The actual hit sound effects feel much more "realistic" and have more "impact" than they did in the previous games. One difference is that there's no big, climactic BOOM! when finishing a fight. It still goes all slow motion and such when you're about to take out the last guy in a group, but rather than playing a booming sound effect it just goes with whatever sound effect would accompany the attack you used to finish off the last guy. This means that if you use the special combo auto-takedown to finish of the last guy, you actually get to hear a grotesque CRUNCH! when Batman breaks the limb of the last thug. Gotta say it is pretty nice, but I kinda do miss the finality of the massive BAM! right when the slow-motion hit connects as seen in the previous titles.
This next bit might come from me just being a bit rusty, but it seems like the enemies are a lot more active during combat as well, attacking with more frequency and such. The good news is that they did away with the "homing enemies"...or at least I haven't noticed it yet. By that I mean an if an enemy comes to attack where you're standing and you attack someone else, causing you to move 5 feet away from where you were just standing, the first enemy won't magically slide across the ground that extra 5 feet while they're taking their swing to punch you in the back of the head. Seems like if they start their attack and you're no longer in the spot they were attacking, it'll miss you entirely.
As I mentioned earlier, though, I spent 3 hours playing the game and really only got up to the first major plot point beyond the tutorial levels (the first one being a big one teaching you the basic mechanics of combat and moving around, the 2nd being a much shorter one to teach you the fundamentals of the Predator sequences as well as introduce you to the new Crime Scene Investigation mechanic...which is pretty damn sweet, I gotta say). The city is LOADED with groups of thugs...they're frickin' everywhere! In Arkham City and Asylum, there were large patches of the gameplay area that would always be devoid of life...seems like you can't swing a dead cat in Arkham Origins without batting a thug in the back of the head with it. They're quite literally all over the place. And not just thugs, either, but corrupt cops are wandering the streets too, so you can always pick a fight with them. :3
One thing that I don't really like about the combat (and perhaps this'll get fixed in a patch) is that so far there's been quite a number of fights that end with Batman interrogating a thug. The problem is that it doesn't flow nearly as well as it did in, say, Arkham City. In AC you could beat the crap out of everyone and as soon as the 2nd to last guy was down you press Y to initiate the interrogation, regardless of whether or not the guy you had to interrogate was rolling around on the ground or not. Now, in this game the interrogations are actually much more in-depth (beyond simply saying "TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO KNOW!" "ALRIGHT! DON'T HURT ME!"), they're like mini cutscenes and that might be where this problem is originating. But pretty much every time I've had a fight where I was supposed to question the last guy, it broke my combo because the option to interrogate just wasn't there until I waited for the last guy to stand back up so I could grab him by the throat. In AC, if you were interrogating someone who was already knocked down, then you'd just drop a knee on their neck. This game seems to want you always in a specific position for the interrogation "scene" and I'm guessing that's where this issue stems from. That, or maybe I'm just going too fast in the combat. Either way, the point remains that this wasn't an issue in AC, the interrogation move was essentially your finish move, capping off your combo. While in this game I have yet to be able to pull off an interrogation without breaking the combo.
Setting: Next up is the city itself. Well, they promised us bigger and they delivered. Part of having thugs on every street corner is the fact that there's a lot more street corners for them to be on in the first place. This place is HUGE! And unlike AC which was essentially just one big horseshoe of a hallway, there's no prison walls in this game, so it's completely wide open and feels "fuller". It's also nice to see Gotham in a "pristine" state. In AC, we saw it broken and shattered with a good chunk of it becoming flooded. In this game, you really FEEL like you're in Gotham City. So I gotta say they did a great job on this. It's also fun because you'll be able to recognize a lot of areas from AC in this game (hell, I could look over and see Wonder Tower standing tall just a few blocks away from where I was, but I didn't go exploring in that direction), though there have been a couple changes. Gotta say I'm very much looking forward to exploring this place in more detail.
Level Up System: There's been some tweaks to these and I'm not certain if I like it. Though that could just be me being a bit of a whiner seeing as how they made some of my favorite upgrades from AC take longer to get to. This game follows pretty much a standard skill-tree progression. There were some semblances of this in the first two games, but you still had a WIDE variety of choices with every level up. This game narrows your progression possibilities considerably. For instance, you have to progress through the melee armor upgrades 5 or 6 times before you'll be able to unlock the Special Combo Reduction ability (so it only takes 5 hits rather than 8 to be able to pull of a special combo). On the other hand, some upgrades are given out for free. Like with AC, there are certain "challenges" for Batman to complete. Some combat specific challenges, some predator/stealth specific challenges, and then some maneuverability (gliding and such) challenges. The difference is that you can only do whatever challenge you're currently "assigned" at the time. It's a latter you've gotta work your way up. So instead of like in AC where you can look at the list of things you gotta do and pick which one you're going to try for, this one you have to specifically "get a combo with x hits" then the next one of "pull off three special takedowns" becomes available, and so on. As I mentioned, though, these actually give out free rewards. In fact, the way you unlock the Sonic Batarang and the ability to explode it is by working through the stealth challenges.
So yeah, I'm not certain that I like the new level up system because it seems to restrict your freedom quite a bit when deciding how you want to progress. I'll probably have a more solid opinion on it as I progress through the game.
Oh, and another thing to note is that the Riddler is, indeed, back with his collectibles. Though this time they actually put a story to it beyond "I'm a psycho going around planting trophies all over this place!" Now he's got a plan that involves leaking a massive amount of information that will essentially throw Gotham into absolute chaos, so it's up to you to find these data packs strewn about the city.
So that's my first impression of Arkham Origins. Anyone else got the game yet and wanna share their first impressions?
Combat: The Free Flow Combat is still as enjoyable as it's ever been. The actual hit sound effects feel much more "realistic" and have more "impact" than they did in the previous games. One difference is that there's no big, climactic BOOM! when finishing a fight. It still goes all slow motion and such when you're about to take out the last guy in a group, but rather than playing a booming sound effect it just goes with whatever sound effect would accompany the attack you used to finish off the last guy. This means that if you use the special combo auto-takedown to finish of the last guy, you actually get to hear a grotesque CRUNCH! when Batman breaks the limb of the last thug. Gotta say it is pretty nice, but I kinda do miss the finality of the massive BAM! right when the slow-motion hit connects as seen in the previous titles.
This next bit might come from me just being a bit rusty, but it seems like the enemies are a lot more active during combat as well, attacking with more frequency and such. The good news is that they did away with the "homing enemies"...or at least I haven't noticed it yet. By that I mean an if an enemy comes to attack where you're standing and you attack someone else, causing you to move 5 feet away from where you were just standing, the first enemy won't magically slide across the ground that extra 5 feet while they're taking their swing to punch you in the back of the head. Seems like if they start their attack and you're no longer in the spot they were attacking, it'll miss you entirely.
As I mentioned earlier, though, I spent 3 hours playing the game and really only got up to the first major plot point beyond the tutorial levels (the first one being a big one teaching you the basic mechanics of combat and moving around, the 2nd being a much shorter one to teach you the fundamentals of the Predator sequences as well as introduce you to the new Crime Scene Investigation mechanic...which is pretty damn sweet, I gotta say). The city is LOADED with groups of thugs...they're frickin' everywhere! In Arkham City and Asylum, there were large patches of the gameplay area that would always be devoid of life...seems like you can't swing a dead cat in Arkham Origins without batting a thug in the back of the head with it. They're quite literally all over the place. And not just thugs, either, but corrupt cops are wandering the streets too, so you can always pick a fight with them. :3
One thing that I don't really like about the combat (and perhaps this'll get fixed in a patch) is that so far there's been quite a number of fights that end with Batman interrogating a thug. The problem is that it doesn't flow nearly as well as it did in, say, Arkham City. In AC you could beat the crap out of everyone and as soon as the 2nd to last guy was down you press Y to initiate the interrogation, regardless of whether or not the guy you had to interrogate was rolling around on the ground or not. Now, in this game the interrogations are actually much more in-depth (beyond simply saying "TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO KNOW!" "ALRIGHT! DON'T HURT ME!"), they're like mini cutscenes and that might be where this problem is originating. But pretty much every time I've had a fight where I was supposed to question the last guy, it broke my combo because the option to interrogate just wasn't there until I waited for the last guy to stand back up so I could grab him by the throat. In AC, if you were interrogating someone who was already knocked down, then you'd just drop a knee on their neck. This game seems to want you always in a specific position for the interrogation "scene" and I'm guessing that's where this issue stems from. That, or maybe I'm just going too fast in the combat. Either way, the point remains that this wasn't an issue in AC, the interrogation move was essentially your finish move, capping off your combo. While in this game I have yet to be able to pull off an interrogation without breaking the combo.
Setting: Next up is the city itself. Well, they promised us bigger and they delivered. Part of having thugs on every street corner is the fact that there's a lot more street corners for them to be on in the first place. This place is HUGE! And unlike AC which was essentially just one big horseshoe of a hallway, there's no prison walls in this game, so it's completely wide open and feels "fuller". It's also nice to see Gotham in a "pristine" state. In AC, we saw it broken and shattered with a good chunk of it becoming flooded. In this game, you really FEEL like you're in Gotham City. So I gotta say they did a great job on this. It's also fun because you'll be able to recognize a lot of areas from AC in this game (hell, I could look over and see Wonder Tower standing tall just a few blocks away from where I was, but I didn't go exploring in that direction), though there have been a couple changes. Gotta say I'm very much looking forward to exploring this place in more detail.
Level Up System: There's been some tweaks to these and I'm not certain if I like it. Though that could just be me being a bit of a whiner seeing as how they made some of my favorite upgrades from AC take longer to get to. This game follows pretty much a standard skill-tree progression. There were some semblances of this in the first two games, but you still had a WIDE variety of choices with every level up. This game narrows your progression possibilities considerably. For instance, you have to progress through the melee armor upgrades 5 or 6 times before you'll be able to unlock the Special Combo Reduction ability (so it only takes 5 hits rather than 8 to be able to pull of a special combo). On the other hand, some upgrades are given out for free. Like with AC, there are certain "challenges" for Batman to complete. Some combat specific challenges, some predator/stealth specific challenges, and then some maneuverability (gliding and such) challenges. The difference is that you can only do whatever challenge you're currently "assigned" at the time. It's a latter you've gotta work your way up. So instead of like in AC where you can look at the list of things you gotta do and pick which one you're going to try for, this one you have to specifically "get a combo with x hits" then the next one of "pull off three special takedowns" becomes available, and so on. As I mentioned, though, these actually give out free rewards. In fact, the way you unlock the Sonic Batarang and the ability to explode it is by working through the stealth challenges.
So yeah, I'm not certain that I like the new level up system because it seems to restrict your freedom quite a bit when deciding how you want to progress. I'll probably have a more solid opinion on it as I progress through the game.
Oh, and another thing to note is that the Riddler is, indeed, back with his collectibles. Though this time they actually put a story to it beyond "I'm a psycho going around planting trophies all over this place!" Now he's got a plan that involves leaking a massive amount of information that will essentially throw Gotham into absolute chaos, so it's up to you to find these data packs strewn about the city.
So that's my first impression of Arkham Origins. Anyone else got the game yet and wanna share their first impressions?
