Batman: Arkham Origins

Rocksteady’s heritage lives on in Batman: Arkham Origins and for that alone it’s worth playing; it still empowers in all the same ways Asylum and City had done before it. But if you had hoped for more in a fashion similar to the evolution that Arkham City brought to Arkham Asylum’s core then you will be sadly disappointed. Still, a strong imitation, one that will tide us over until the Man Of Steel inevitably gets here.

At its best, it rivals anything in City. At its worst, it's comfortably the weakest of the three Arkham games. It was a lot harder to recommend a couple weeks ago, when it was a more broken, but now it's certainly worth checking out if you're a bat-fan. Just don't go in expecting anything fresh, new or groundbreaking.

It's all there - fun and intuitive combat, challenging stealth gameplay and an engaging story - but Warner Bros. Montréal never truly hits Rocksteady's mark. At times the game feels rushed, empty and frankly, uninspired. It's an enjoyable title, to be sure, but it's nowhere near as good as its predecessors.

While still a good game, it remains overshadowed by those previous entries. Rocksteady got right all the little things that WB Montreal seemed to miss.

But for all that it still stands head and shoulders above a lot of the equivalent open world action games out there, and for those happy to go back to the well one more time in this generation, there will be lots to enjoy here. For everyone else Arkham Origins is exactly the game you thought it would be, for better and for worse.

If you're itching to suit up and fight some crime for the first time, then it's probably best to zipline straight to the game's superior predecessors.

All in all, it was a hard game to play through because I felt like I had done it all before. That isn’t to say that Arkham Origins is a bad game, not by a long stretch. On its own, Arkham Origins is a good game. But Origins is a good game because Arkham City was a great game, and it does nothing to create its own identity.

Even if the story isn’t as entertaining or believable, even if the villains feel like B-team bottom-of-the-barrel fodder for Batman’s continuing crusade against darkness, Arkham Origins still succeeds in empowering players and making them feel like the greatest detective in the world.

Perhaps the developers were too focused on not breaking all those wonderful toys, or perhaps they were bound to a tight deadline, but the game feels slightly flat as a result.

Buggy, tired and rushed are just some of the examples why Arkham Origins is the weakest title in the Batman trilogy. This isn't the game that Gotham deserves, nor the one that it needs right now.

I really hope that Rocksteady can still teach an old bat new tricks, because WB Games Montreal failed to advance the series. What we have here are old gameplay mechanics – which still work fine by the way – sold to us for the third time and supplemented with a bit of fresh ideas that don’t have a sufficient impact on the whole game (and sometimes are simply bad). [13/2013, p.56]

For players like me who felt that City went astray, Origins is definitely worthy of attention… Just make sure it’s fully patched before starting

Initiation is a very regular package, which relies on the idea of the origins of the bat and retrieves the imagination of Batman Begins, but then binds the player into a series of challenges from a widely known flavor.

The third game in the Batman trilogy is both a prequel and a sequel, but rarely feels like either. Even though Origins is set five years before Arkham Asylum, the game features an experienced, skilled crime fighter and a Gotham that’s as infested with lawlessness as Arkham City. Origins also leans too much on old, familiar mechanics to really excel as a full blooded sequel, but luckily those mechanics still manage to squeeze out some fun.