Posted on: February 1, 2024
kanamor392
Verified ownerGames: Reviews: 60
Better than City, worse than Asylum
Arkham Asylum (the 1st game) is still better because it has the right balance of fight, exploration and story. Arkham City (the 2nd) felt lackluster and rushed, it had UI and UX issues, and just wasnt' a worthy sequel. If you really have to play something Batman this will do but it's just meh, despite having some good points. This game, Origins, misses the mark because it uses grindy fights and first-attempt location design to be bigger rather than better. It also has an inadequate UI and could use better help in using your gadgets. Without giving spoilers, the story is interesting if a bit simplistic, making you move all around Gotham (there is some fast travel). This would have been interesting if the city wasn't mostly dead, with only scattered, interchangeable groups of enemies you can fight to grind XP points. The city grind is optional, but locations will have lots of grindy fights too. It feels like the game was forced to fill a large number of mandated hours. In Arkham Asylum you couldn't avoid most fights -so they were made meaningful, and interesting, even if they were just thugs. Riddler is still criminally underused like in the previous games, but Asylum's Riddler was interesting at least. Origin lacks the atmosphere Asylum had, the city is large but mostly dead, and its grindiness means I don't care that much -removing the entire city and making everything fast travel would be better. Having less thugs at not-so-linear locations would also be an improvement. I don't like the recent "killer" Batman from movies, but killing enemies by knocking them out of rooftops or ledges would at least make the grind funnier, but you can't do that -just interrogation torture. Cinematics, voice acting and modeling are all good, which saves the game from catastrophe. It's just an OK Batman game you'll forget after playing once and never will want to come back to.
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