Game Review ~ Batman Arkham Origins

Finished the main Batman Arkham Origins Game, though I don't have a 100% completion yet.

The Batman Arkham series ~ Asylum, City & now Origins ~ is one of our favorite video game series, and though Origins was fun, it was also the weakest of the 3.

There were good points of the game and overall it was quite enjoyable. As it's the Origins of Batman, it's great to see the first meeting of some of these characters that we have known for years. The storyline, 8 assassins come to town on Christmas Even for a 50 Million bounty put on Batman's head is a good one. The story moves and flows well, while still letting you have time to do all those side missions that this series is known for. As with the other games, the story is fun, engaging and keeps your attention. They also introduced "Fast Travel" where, after towers in the area are unlocked, you can now use the Batwing to travel faster than flying through the map. In addition, they introduced a new rating system for fights. After each fight you get experience points based on your performance during the fight, the better you did the more XP and the more weapons and gadgets you can open.

The main part where this game lacks is in the glitchy gameplay, which it is known for. The controls do not respond nearly as well as the previous two, leaving you open to attacks because you are frantically pushing the buttons but actions aren't responding right away. There are also some well known glitches that when you get to them annoy the hell out of you to the point where you finally have to look it up and find out that it is indeed a major glitch and the solution is quite simple, thankfully. There are different challenges you do through your gameplay that will open up more gadgets. This was a neat system, but flawed. First, you had to do things in order, which stinks because you might be able to do all of them but 1 gives you trouble, but it's the 3rd one so you can't move on to another. Plus, it's glitched. In my own gameplay, I very specifically would do the challenge multiple times and it wouldn't accept it, so I never got through many because it was caught up on one. :(

Overall, I enjoyed the storyline, the characters and most of the regular gameplay. I was mildly annoyed with some of the fighting scenes when the controls wouldn't respond the way that I wanted them to, and was quite annoyed at some of the glitches that I encountered, both with gameplay and with the challenge system. I'm glad we didn't pay for it when it came out and waited instead until I found it at a fantastic price ($13 GameFly sale). I'll definitely play it again and am glad that we got it.

Now if only Arkham Knight would come out when they first said. I HATE when they give dates, then push it back. I'd rather they didn't give dates at all, if they are going to do that. Arkham Knight already looks fantastic and I can't wait to play it, though I do wish it wasn't the last one! I LOVE this series!