I was thinking about the future of Batman games the other day. The Arkham series will be missed. They started out by telling Spiderman what we all already knew, “NO ONE BEATS THE BAT” and went on to introducing a free flowing combat system like no other accompanied by great stealth mechanics. They were Batman done right. The 4 Arkham games are going to be a tough act to follow.
While thinking about the Arkham games I was notified by my Nintendo 2DS XL that there was a 5th game. I looked at the game which was named Arkham Origins: Blackgate and ran to Steam to see if it was available, it was! Better yet, it was a side scroller, even better: it price as Arkham Origins itself! SOLD! I have spent the same amount of money on a lot of bad games so getting an Arkham game at that price was a deal.
Two things before we start: Noel Fernandes is not allowed to review Arkham games since they would all get perfect scores, hence I’m doing it. Second: Review is based on the PC side of things though I did wander around a lot on the Nintendo 3DS side too and they seem to be identical.
Let’s see a lesser known member of the Arkham Family.
Story:
Stuff is going on at Blackgate after a riot lets Two-Face, Penguin and the Joker take control of the prison. For some reason this is being watched by what I can only guess is Amanda Waller. Batman goes in to see what’s up and has to deal with Cabwoman’s overly flirtatious lines.
The writing is incredibly bad, especially the dialogue.
Sound:
Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamil must have wanted a longer holiday than expected so they had to find new voice actors. The cast seems to be the same as Arkham Origins just with worse writing and worse recording equipment. Times must have been tough at Warner Bros.
The sound track isn’t great either, feels like it is straight from the 90s and isn’t really noticeable. The levels don’t have any background music at all except for a grim groan.
Graphics:
The graphics seem dated by any standard but I guess the developers, Armature Studios were a small studio with an overwhelming task in front of them. The most obvious of this is Batman himself who looks pretty poorly detailed and sometimes a little too shiny, he looks much better on the 3DS though.
The textures are really low too, I’m starting to think this game was portables first and Steam/Desktop second. You can see the pixels and some of them blur when you are too close.
The full world is 3D with a 2D playing space which seems to be a good idea in some product managers mind but is very rarely pulled off correctly. In this game for example; the camera randomly switches angles which can get very annoying since you don’t know which way is forward and which is back.
Gameplay:
Arkham games are known for their gameplay, they have their different elements which we all love like the freeflow combat which is in a class of its own, the stealth which might as well be Metal Gear Solid and the open world navigation which is really fun. Any game carrying the Arkham name has that.
I take back what I said in the last paragraph. This game has replaced all of those with really poor similes.
The freeflow combat is present with Batman dancing around the screen but in 2D you can’t control who he is going it hit, there could be someone right in front of him at point blank and he won’t hit him because that character is in the background or too close. The game doesn’t seem to detect the counter key so you keep tapping it hoping to counter which breaks from the main Arkham family by giving you a bonus on the combo for keeping the counters tight. The counter key is also tied to the quick throw key so you will occasionally throw a batarang in the wrong direction while trying to counter. The countering is better on the 3DS version since the keys are separate and it seems to track better for some reason.
You do get a lot of enemies coming for you but the since you can’t attack who you want or correctly counter you get overpowered. This is frustrating especially for me who got nearly a 1000 combo in Arkham Knight.
The stealth is so bad, especially since the enemies keep a very small gap between them. To add to confusion the drop takedown makes a ton of sound. Even the vanishing is tough since you can’t quickly move between ledges seamlessly. If you go for a silent takedown from behind you get noticed and shot by the time the animation is done . This ends up making the stealth sections a brawl with the hope that you can drop the enemies before they drop you.
The gliding and grappling hooks were awesome in City and beyond, I loved their combination. They got downgraded to long jump and high jump. The gliding is used to get over small gaps and the grappling hook is used to get up to higher areas, seems like the Batsuit is too heavy for batman to jump. The hook also changes its targets according to where you are standing rather than where you are looking, 2 steps to the left or right and he will grapple the wrong ledge.
The detective stuff is incredibly annoying. When you toggle to detective mode you see the enemies lines of sights but environmental objects need you to hover the mouse over them at which point they are analysed for 5 seconds before you can interact with them even if you know what to do to them.
I wasn’t fond of vents in any of the Arkham games till I learnt I could slide into them to get in quickly. I can’t do that here since they are usually in the background so I need to stand in front of them, in an exact position and ruin my keys till it’s open.
The last thing is the level layouts. In the main games the levels are straight forward and you get your gadgets when you need them. Here you can chose where you want to go but you don’t know what you need in each level nor do you know which level has it so you spend a ton of time backtracking.
The map is for some reason in 3D with parallel routes which you have no idea how to get to, this is another height of bad decisions.
Conclusion:
I know I said I wanted another Arkham game but not this. This is the perfect example of too much money, too much in executive expectations and too much of product manager design rather than game design.
I’ll disagree with IGN and say It’s fuckall, buy it at $0.50 or ₹24 since you can then make a profit on Steam Cards.
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