Chris Redfield dons the cape and cowl.
It’s easy to forget that it’s actually been two years since Rocksteady’s excellent Arkham City, the ambitious follow-up to its breakthrough bat-hit Arkham City. These guys understand Batman, his rogue’s gallery, and the mythology of the franchise to an incredible degree. They got Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill reprising the roles they cemented in the Batman Animated Series. In Arkham City, Batman flew across the dilapidated prison city by alternating between gliding and slingshoting into the air with his grapple. While Asylum was focused mostly on the Joker, City opened up to embrace more familiar friends and foes: Catwoman, Ra’s Al Gul, Clayface, Dr. Hugo Strange, and the Penguin. And the shocking ending of City left a lot of room for the sequel to go in brave new directions.
How are you going to top Arkham City?
Warner Bros. Montreal’s answer to that question is to not even try. Arkham Origins is a somewhat misnamed prequel. It takes place during Batman’s second year of crime-fighting, and Arkham Asylum doesn’t even enter into the picture. This time, Batman is soaring around a larger Gotham City in an effort to track down mob boss Black Mask, who has put a bounty on his head. Eight assassins answer the call, among them Deathstroke, Deadshot, Copperhead, and Bane. In addition to worrying about those baddies, though, Batman also gets his first encounter with the Clown Prince of Crime. The second the Joker turns up, the game’s plot pivots to focus on him, and everyone else becomes a sidequest.
To me, this is somewhat disheartening. All three Arkham games are now Joker-centric, with other villains appearing in supporting roles. I like the Joker as much as the next guy, but there are plenty of other compelling Batman villains who deserve a chance in the spotlight. Now, to be completely fair, WB Montreal’s treatment of the Joker is rock-solid and his fascination with the Dark Knight manifests in disturbing but interesting ways. Troy Baker, substituting for Mark Hamill, does a superb job in the role. If you didn’t already know that Hamill had retired, you’d think it was him. Can’t say quite the same for Batman, though. Maybe it’s because I’ve played way too much Resident Evil, but Roger Craig Smith (who plays Chris Redfield) in place of Kevin Conroy is distracting. He does an admirable job, however, in portraying a rawer, angrier Batman who’s still green in unexpected ways and maybe a little bit crazy.
The game plays essentially like Arkham City did two years ago, almost to a fault, although Gotham City is twice as big as it used to be, and that is WAY too big. Yes, there are fast-travel drop points now, but in order to access them, you have to have the right equipment, so they’re not all available from the get-go. As in City, there are a lot of ways to waste time: destroy security cameras, collect Riddler extortion files (instead of “?” tropies), interrogate suspects, stop crimes in progress, stop Anarky from blowing things up, find and neutralize weapons caches—the list goes on. These sidequests bring XP points (which you can use to upgrade your equipment), and sometimes you may end up with new gadgets.
One brand-new, rarely-used gameplay mechanic is the way Batman handles crime scenes. No more does he simply scan for DNA or follow footprints—our boy uses Detective Vision to reconstruct the crime scene, and you’ll often have to pay close attention to see critical details, like where a briefcase was dropped or where a bullet came from. Once the crime scene is complete, you can watch it unfold forwards and back until you find what you’re looking for. There’s even some GamePad interaction in that you hold up the GamePad and move it around like some kind of CSI scanner.
My biggest issue with the game is that WB Montreal placed enormous gangs of random dudes every ten feet (even on rooftops), so whenever I touch down to do something, I have to go through a two or three-minute fight sequence before I can do whatever I wanted to do. And it’s not like there are three or four thugs—we’re talking an entire gang. You’ll spend more time mashing the X button (counter) than the Y button (punch) because there’s always somebody swinging a crowbar at Batman’s face. The rhythm of these fights seems off compared to City as well.
You may have heard about the game’s menagerie of bugs and glitches. Thankfully, it’s the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions that seem to be having the most trouble. I’m not saying the Wii U version is without fault, but so far it’s the most stable. That said, while I’ve yet to experience something game-breaking, I’ve noticed a lot of random framerate issues and sudden, but short-lived, freezes. You can’t use the GamePad to select fast-travel locations—you have to press Select to bring up the map, then manually scroll to a fast-travel spot and press A. Some players are also reporting not being able to do crime-scene investigation when using Off-TV play, which is kind of a mystery, because it works for me. But it sounds like the developers are aware of the problems and are promising one or more patches.
Despite the fact that Arkham Origins sticks painfully close to the formula established by Arkham City, it’s still a wonderful game that Bat-fans will adore. And hey, when’s the last time you could say the Wii U version of a multiplatform game turned out to be the best one? It’s a point of pride, folks.
Batman: Arkham Begins
