Batman crouches still and silent atop a stone gargoyle, a swirling snow-filled sky above him, the dank labyrinthine streets of Gotham scattered below.
With a hiss, the voices of some nearby thugs fills your ears with inane chatter: complaining about the cold, complaining about their fickle bosses, and exchanging doubts about you. Flicking on your detective vision you identify them through the blizzard, shivering away in the abandoned streets just below you. Taking careful aim, you drop a blinding smoke bomb between them and, unfurling your cape, swoop down from above to rain crushing blows on the panicking goons. In that moment Arkham Origins has you feeling every inch the invincible super hero. But you could swear it feels so familiar.
And that’s probably because it, er… is. If you played 2011’s Batman: Arkham City at all you’re immediately in familiar territory with Origins. Developers WB Montreal, who were in charge of last year’s Wii U port of City, evidently took a lot of inspiration from the work of series creator Rocksteady Games. Their lack of involvement in this project was seen as a worrying sign by fans but they really needn’t have fussed. Most of the time you’d be hard-pressed to tell you were playing a different game at all.
Plot goes something like this: A younger, rougher round the edges Batman is all set to kick back enjoy his Christmas Eve when the notorious Black Mask puts a $50million bounty on his head. As you’d imagine this causes all manner of unsavoury characters to descend on Gotham for the night, all intent on killing the Bat. As you fight to survive and get to the bottom of things there are cameos from a fair few familiar faces, as well as a handful of new ones.
It all ticks along at a fair pace, but most players are likely to feel a little put out by the rogue’s gallery on offer here. The likes of Deadshot, Electrocutioner, and Anarky aren’t exactly going to excite many beyond the most hardcore Bat-fans, especially compared to the revolving door of immediately recognisable villains in City. But really Arkham Origins’ plot is simply an access point to the sprawling city of Gotham, and the wide array of wonderful toys available to mess around with.
Gotham’s urban playground is larger this time around, with a second island added to the existing streets, connected by what feels like the world’s longest and dullest bridge. Fast travel points are a welcome addition then, but you have to unlock them via some Far Cry 3-style radio tower scrambling, and even once you do the chugging load times can make it feel like you needn’t have bothered.
The streets are still packed with a never-ending line of shivering thugs, and thankfully it’s still just as much fun to lay into them with Batman’s punchy and gadget-heavy approach to combat. Building up a flow of quickfire counters and combos as you jump from enemy to enemy remains immensely satisfying, and the drip feed of unlockable skills and perks helps to keep the difficulty curve steady as you begin to encounter trickier foes. It strikes a neat balance between empowering and challenging, as do the stealthy shifts of the Predator Rooms, which again see you flitting between hiding spots to pick off a group of thugs one by one.
For those feeling overcome by a sense of déjà vu there are a handful of new bits here to freshen things up. Crime scene investigations take on a new interactive quality thanks to a neat but underused virtual replay mechanic, which reconstructs crimes for you to muse over. A couple of new gadgets in the form of the remote claw and electric gloves spice up fights a bit, while a couple of new enemy types give you something to use them on. What else…? Er, you can visit the Batcave, complete with nattering butler Alfred and some distracting training missions. There’s a multiplayer mode too, though nobody seemed to be playing it.
But really that’s about it. Everything else is much the same as it was in City, with a few bugs and balancing issues thrown in for good measure. The similarities can leave Origins feeling more like a glorified expansion pack than its own standalone game, and for that reason it’s not the easiest to recommend. Fans of the series will either celebrate having more Arkham to play through, or bemoan the fact that the follow-up to City falls so short of that mark. With standards having been set so high it’s a shame to come in expecting something great, and leave disappointed that it was merely OK.
