Batman: Arkham Origins – Xbox 360

Great for a new developer taking over! Major Glitches Fixed. Updates at the bottom., October 26, 2013

(See my Arkham Knight review! http://www.amazon.com/review/R1ROO06Q4Q5FQF/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00IQCRKW0&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=468642&store=videogames)

I am not a gamer that is close or follows the Batman story or development outside the games/movies. So whatever story is developed I enjoy very much. I just play games because I enjoy them. I remember trying the demo for Asylum and loved it because I fell in love with the fight system. I’m a perfectionist and the fight system really challenges me and also annoys me when I know I can do better. With that being said I am glad WB Montreal kept the fighting/predator system the same. Here are my thoughts of how I view the game of just being a gamer.

Here are some of bad things first for some people:

1. Lack of innovation: This might drive some players crazy because there is not really anything new to the fighting/predator moments. At the same time if you are a fan of the older games…why change something that is great? There are some new things that were added but not much different from the base of the old games. The only new things seem to be the detective mode, where scanning crime scenes go more in depth and you need to find evidence. There is also multi-player which I have not tried yet.

2. Lifeless: Since this is a prequel you are doing missions across Gotham city and of course Arkham City before it was converted for the inmates in AC. I wanted to see civilians in the street and traffic but there was nothing. In AC there were those helicopters flying around and would follow you if they spotted you, there’s not much going on in the air this time around and I felt alone in the city which should be full of life.

***SPOILER***
When you run in to Joker for the first time and he blows up the building across the street. Then Batman grabs Joker and asks "How many innocent lives did you take?" I felt nothing because you don’t see life in the city to make that connection to the citizens in the game.
***END SPOILER***

3. Prequel: I mostly hate prequels because you always know what the future outcome is going to be with some of the main characters. I liked to be surprised. Like I said above I don’t follow Batman stories outside the movies/games. Introducing some lesser known villains was a plus and it helped balanced that out for me for unpredictability.

4. Freezing: I have had the game freeze up on me 4 times already within the first 24 hours I had it. There is no pattern for it and it’s random. It happened to me on the title screen the first time I started it, when I was in a fight, when I was gliding around, and when I was upgrading my abilities. It seems like many people have run into freezing issues and hoping this is something that can be patched.

Now for the good things:

1. No learning curve: This could be a good or bad thing for players but for me this was good. Why change anything if it’s something we fell in love with in the first two games? I loved being able to dive into the game without having to look up the controls.

2. Challenge: Even though fighting and predator is copy/paste, I found myself dying a lot more in boss fights and even a couple of street fights. Since I am a fan of the fighting in this series I paid close attention to detail in the fighting. It made me think WB Montreal put more thought into the beginning of Batman and I saw that in the fighting.

As you level up, you are limited to what you can upgrade because you can only upgrade certain abilities as long as you follow the upgrade trees. I liked this because you can’t start off getting the combo finishers after a 5x hit combo as soon as you level up and pick it. This means you’re stuck with 8x hits before using a combo finisher for awhile. There is no such things as perfect hits anymore as well (which is replaced by an alternative later in the game). It made gang fights a lot more challenging and made me think "this is perfect" since this is a prequel. Batman should not be an expert yet and this made me feel like Batman was "learning" and grew into the fighter he was in AA and AC.

3. Story: Seems like a lot of people are finding the story boring and ill admit at the start it felt boring until there was a good turning point within a few hours of game play. I thought the voice acting is also incredible. I knew Mark Hamill had retired from the Joker’s voice and they were using someone new for Batman as well. I had to look up the voice actors as I was playing it because Joker sounded identical. I could tell the difference with Batman, but the actor was still great for him.

Final Thoughts:
The game has its ups and down and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I’m looking forward to multiplayer and challenge maps. If you liked AA and AC, this is worth a buy. I think most of the down sides is…

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