- Nov 16, 2006
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My thoughts on Arkham Origins
Arkham Knight is good. Its DAMN GOOD. If you liked any of the prior Arkham games, you'll love Arkham Knight. Unless you don't like driving in your games.
I was honestly left wondering after Arkham City, what can they do next? Arkham World? Arkham Solar System? Arkham Galaxy? Well they made Arkham Origins. They of course not being Rocksteady, but the B-studio WB Montreal. It was more Batman, yes, but it felt more like an expansion pack for City than it did its own thing. But I guess that's why Rocksteady is in the driver's seat for the franchise. I would not have suspected that the next place to take the series is... Batmobile. But they did. And it works. Mostly.
So Gotham is under threat... AGAIN. Why even live there? Honestly? Scarecrow is threatening to release a bunch of fear toxin that basically makes people go crazy. He's paired up with this para military guy who goes by Arkham Knight (there it is, there's the title of the game!) who is clearly a figure from Batman's past, who knows how Batman thinks and how Batman fights. The game seems to get bored of its own mystery about half way through when it pretty blatantly telegraphs who is under the helmet.
Oh yeah, and most importantly, Joker is dead from the whole Titan fiasco so don't worry you won't be seeing that guy at all in this game outside of a somber intro.
Arkham Knight looks incredible, runs great after a very rocky launch, plays incredibly with its free flow combat. It also involves a whole helluva lot of driving with the Batmobile, which definitely resulted in some divisiveness from the fanbase because the skills to play a batman brawler and the skills to play a Twisted Metal-esq racing game are not the same and I can certainly see it being very easy to like one side of the game and bounce off the other completely.
The Batmobile can be used in addition to the traditional gliding to maneuver around the city. Then there are situations where the batmobile has to be used as a tank to defeat waves of unmanned enemy tanks (I'm not entirely certain what Batman would have done if anyone thought of strapping a hostage to the front of these things), or to chase down and "immobilize" enemy troop carriers, or chase a certain boss through the streets of Gotham. Most comically, there are a set of Riddler Challengers where Riddler somehow built massive underground puzzle courses for batman to race the Batmobile on to... somehow prove his intellectual superiority?
Anyway, if you play AK and the batmobile stuff just isn't working for you... well its not going to go away throughout the game, so there's that. In its defense, Rocksteady managed to more or less nail the implementation and essentially made a Batman game and a Batmobile racing game and a Batmobile tank game and crammed them all into AK which is absolutely nuts.
There are tons of bat gadgets. Tons of Bat Upgrades. Good mix of the more traditional Batman villains/frenemies are there as well of some newer, more obscure ones.
If I had to nitpick, I'd say I took issue with how ridiculously crowbarred in the Batmobile was at times. Additionally, the game requires you to collect ALL the Riddler trophies to see the final/true ending of the game (after 96% the game I gave up and just went and watched a Youtube Video for the Knightfall Protocol) . Lastly, one of the main villians doesn't even get any kind of meaningful resolution or anything. I mean, Jason Todd/Red Hood/ Arkham Knight shows up, shoots off Batman's cuffs, then just... what he disappears I mean what the hell happens?! He isn't even mentioned again.
Anyway, you like Batman? You'll love the Arkham series. You like the Arkham Series AND Twisted Metal? You'll love Arkham Knight.
Arkham Knight is good. Its DAMN GOOD. If you liked any of the prior Arkham games, you'll love Arkham Knight. Unless you don't like driving in your games.
I was honestly left wondering after Arkham City, what can they do next? Arkham World? Arkham Solar System? Arkham Galaxy? Well they made Arkham Origins. They of course not being Rocksteady, but the B-studio WB Montreal. It was more Batman, yes, but it felt more like an expansion pack for City than it did its own thing. But I guess that's why Rocksteady is in the driver's seat for the franchise. I would not have suspected that the next place to take the series is... Batmobile. But they did. And it works. Mostly.
So Gotham is under threat... AGAIN. Why even live there? Honestly? Scarecrow is threatening to release a bunch of fear toxin that basically makes people go crazy. He's paired up with this para military guy who goes by Arkham Knight (there it is, there's the title of the game!) who is clearly a figure from Batman's past, who knows how Batman thinks and how Batman fights. The game seems to get bored of its own mystery about half way through when it pretty blatantly telegraphs who is under the helmet.
Oh yeah, and most importantly, Joker is dead from the whole Titan fiasco so don't worry you won't be seeing that guy at all in this game outside of a somber intro.
Arkham Knight looks incredible, runs great after a very rocky launch, plays incredibly with its free flow combat. It also involves a whole helluva lot of driving with the Batmobile, which definitely resulted in some divisiveness from the fanbase because the skills to play a batman brawler and the skills to play a Twisted Metal-esq racing game are not the same and I can certainly see it being very easy to like one side of the game and bounce off the other completely.
The Batmobile can be used in addition to the traditional gliding to maneuver around the city. Then there are situations where the batmobile has to be used as a tank to defeat waves of unmanned enemy tanks (I'm not entirely certain what Batman would have done if anyone thought of strapping a hostage to the front of these things), or to chase down and "immobilize" enemy troop carriers, or chase a certain boss through the streets of Gotham. Most comically, there are a set of Riddler Challengers where Riddler somehow built massive underground puzzle courses for batman to race the Batmobile on to... somehow prove his intellectual superiority?
Anyway, if you play AK and the batmobile stuff just isn't working for you... well its not going to go away throughout the game, so there's that. In its defense, Rocksteady managed to more or less nail the implementation and essentially made a Batman game and a Batmobile racing game and a Batmobile tank game and crammed them all into AK which is absolutely nuts.
There are tons of bat gadgets. Tons of Bat Upgrades. Good mix of the more traditional Batman villains/frenemies are there as well of some newer, more obscure ones.
If I had to nitpick, I'd say I took issue with how ridiculously crowbarred in the Batmobile was at times. Additionally, the game requires you to collect ALL the Riddler trophies to see the final/true ending of the game (after 96% the game I gave up and just went and watched a Youtube Video for the Knightfall Protocol) . Lastly, one of the main villians doesn't even get any kind of meaningful resolution or anything. I mean, Jason Todd/Red Hood/ Arkham Knight shows up, shoots off Batman's cuffs, then just... what he disappears I mean what the hell happens?! He isn't even mentioned again.
Anyway, you like Batman? You'll love the Arkham series. You like the Arkham Series AND Twisted Metal? You'll love Arkham Knight.
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