Batman™: Arkham Origins

Not a whole lot to say but that it had my favorite Batman, a sick looking and playable Slade and the look and direction of the cutscenes was just really kool to me.

This had big shoes to fill, not only as a prequel, but also as a follow up to what some may argue to be the best in this series. Not having Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill was certainly a strange choice, but in the end it wasn't a descision that broke the game by any means. As far as story goes, it's as compelling as the Rocksteady titles and fits perfectly into the universe established with the prior two games. However it's once we get to the combat that this game feels somewhat lacking. See, this game borrows very heavily from Arkham City, something many would see as a good thing, yet it feels hollow in its attempts to capture that magic again. Nothing feels terribly new, rather it just feels a bit too familiar. Overall it's a very enjoyable expierence, but it does feel less polished than City and a bit slower by comparison.

I've tried to play Arkham Origins twice before. Once on PS3 and again on PC not long ago. Both times, with the game in it's original state, I just couldn't stick with it due to the combat feeling hollow and janky compared to the other Arkham games (even Asylum), along with the story feeling like it just drags along in the beginning. That was until I realized there were mods available for this game... With a few select mods and tweaks to the game files, I finally followed through to the end of the game, completing all of the side missions, and enjoyed every minute of it. I now hold it in high regards, contemplating whether it surpasses Arkham City as being my favorite in the series, and highly recommend others to play it - as long as they're able to play it on PC and don't mind adding at least one mod to the game. My recommended mods: Arkham Origins Community Patch Restored Animation Variety (the most essential mod) Origins Graphics Mod These mods are all Dx11 friendly and still retain the intended experience of the original game. Restored Animation Variety was the proverbial "meal ticket" that kept me playing. This one fixes the combat, making it much more fluid like the other games in the Arkham series, and enables multiple attackers in free roam/story mode. If you plan to install AO Community Patch, that needs to be installed first. It fixes several bugs and adds a handful of custom suits. The only drawback to this is that it unlocks extra suits early in the game rather than after completing story mode for the first time. AOCP installs it's own custom version of BmInput.ini, which conflicts with RAV. So, you'll need to locate BmInput.ini in your game folder, then copy the line of text in RAV's BmInput.ini and add it to the one in your game folder, under the appropriate category in the .ini file. Then, follow RAV's readme to enable the combat enhancements each time you start the game. Worth it! Origins Graphics Mod increases draw distance and visual clarity.

I have not played such a buggy mess since AC Valhalla. There are bugs everywhere - when you fly, your cape sometimes doesn't properly render, it's as though you're about to land and you're flying at the same time and it's one of the ugliest things imaginable. Sometimes, especially during predatory encounters the textures get all messed up and half of your screen is the texture of a table or whatever else the game likes. During the Deadshot encounter, I had to redo it a few times because you're supposed to take down Deadshot and get a cutscene. I didn't get the cutscene, Deadshot is just staying down and I can't progress, when I leave the room and come back I have to start the whole encounter all over again. There are random sound drops sometimes. The Croc fight is straight up unable to render properly, you either don't see Croc and/or you have no sound during the fight. Oh, and it crashed like 5 times on me until I finally beat it. The Bane fight on top of the Gotham Hotel crashed 2-3 times. It's just way too frustrating to play and I unistalled and reinstalled because these bugs piss me the hell off. The rest of the game is good, they reused a lot of the same Riddler puzzles from Arkham City without any great variation but it's still somewhat fun. The story is interesting although I prefer Asylum and City Joker way more but it's evident the developers at least put a lot of work and care in creating their own version of the villains and they largely succeeded. The gadgets are mainly reused from City with only 1 new toy and even then it's mostly a different variantion of the tightrope. If I didn't have the bugs, I'd consider this game a solid 4/5, good story but a lot of reused content and very little innovation in terms of gameplay. But with these god damn bugs which have costed my a few hours of my life, f*ck you WB and fix your goddamn games before you release them to the public. Final score 2/5, go fix your game.

Origins is much less polished and refined when compared to other entries of the series. While I was able to play through Asylum and City and get some fun out of those, I churned somewhere in the later second part of Origins. The narrative is not exciting and the amount of filler and repeated busy work to reach next milestones is a bit too much for my liking. UI is too obtuse and tiring to navigate. Completing objectives and combat arenas is too reliant on Batman vision and gets old extremely fast. Metroidvania tools (controlled batarangs) are not fun to use and inprecise. Open world activities are not rewarding. After a couple of months of yet another break from trying to finish the game, I give up and I don't feel I'm losing out. I'd rather replay City or Asylum for the second time.