Batman: Arkham Origins

Batman’s always made the shadows his ally, but in Batman: Arkham Origins, he finds the shadow of his own previous games impossible to escape from. It’s as good as Batman: Arkham City in most ways, having inherited an outstanding combat system, but it lacks interesting ideas of its own, and it’s missing the polish and attention to detail that makes Arkham City and Arkham Asylum great action games.Its name, “Arkham Origins,” is a flagrant misnomer - it may be a prequel, but this story is neither about Arkham, nor is it an origin story in any significant way. It’s more of a traditional Batman plot that retreads some of The Dark Knight’s most familiar themes over its roughly eight hours of main story content: a self-destructive insistence on working alone, and how far he’ll go to avoid taking a life - a concept the final battle cleverly toys with. It’s a respectable plot that even concocts a plausible reason for Batman to face so many villains all in one night – a $50 million bounty on his head. But it’s the kind of prequel that screams “What were we thinking when we killed off that incredibly popular character? Undo! Undo!”Meanwhile, in the stealth fights where Batman picks off armed thugs one by one, there’s another somewhat dirty-feeling win button: a remote grapple that strings up thugs without them even having to walk under a gargoyle. I found myself deliberately avoiding either of those gadgets, because I’m not in this to not fight criminals.Even so, I could live in the challenge rooms for days, trying to string together the ultimate, uninterrupted flow that includes each of the dozen or so moves and gadgets in Batman’s arsenal. With the gamepad in the right hands (which every so often, mine are) it looks like elaborate fight choreography. And Predator still makes me feel like a ninja, particularly when playing in challenge mode where I can disable certain gadgets or enable other handicaps.

Out in the expanded and snow-covered open world, I found Gotham City beautiful but lifeless. In Arkham City, the excuse is that this part of town has been walled off and given to the criminals. Without that (admittedly far-fetched) scenario, the absence of any hint of civilian life makes Gotham feel eerily barren, especially next to Origins’ open-world peers and their populated streets. It may be the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, but streets teeming with nothing but decidedly un-jolly criminals are still weird.

The northern half of the map, which is largely recycled from Arkham City, is connected to a new southern island by a tediously long bridge that your quest marker will frequently make you cross as you chase the next mission waypoint. The bridge stands out as crumby and inconvenient map design and I rushed to skip it with fast travel at every opportunity. Gotham is also full of annoying blockages that seem like Batman should be able to easily grapple or climb over, yet prove frustratingly insurmountable. Also, the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii U versions all suffer from framerate problems while gliding around the city. Those slowdowns are most pronounced on the Wii U, where I also ran into mid-game loading pauses. On PS3, I encountered audio glitches that got worse the longer I played – most noticeable during fast-travel animations.