I played both Arkham Asylum and Arkham City earlier last year and found them both to be a lot of fun. And although the basic gameplay was very similar (and fun) which involved a smooth as silk combo criminal beating system where you could fly between guys kicking and punching their faces in building up combos and performing various special moves to take out specialist enemies. Once you earned the skills, you could also employ gadgets mid combo like throwing Batarangs to stun and such. Arkham Origins carries over the same combat system but this time throws in some new moves and new gadgets into the mix.
Although all the Arkham games had the same basic combat, gadget, skill and levelling systems, the first was very linear being set inside an Asylum. Apart from a few large open areas in the asylum, you were pretty much on a rail in the first game. However, city was different and had a much touted "open-world" where you could freely move around Arkham City using your gadgets and go after side quests and such having more freedom before. Origins adopts a very similar system. So much similar of a system that it almost feels like a redoing of Arkham City with with a different plot, some different environments, weapons and gadgets. It reminds me of the large feeling of similarity between Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed 2.
As the name implies, this is a prequel and according to the in-game dialogue, this takes place in Batman's second year of being the bat and about 6 years before the original Arkham Asylum. So this sets you up to be meeting a lot of the main villans for the first time. And although this is interesting to see how things begin, it also means that a lot of the Batman villans are re-used. There are some that haven't been in the games before, but there's a fair few that we have seen before. The game also takes place between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day (although I don't actually recall ever seeing daylight at any stage) and apart from a few Christmassy set pieces and a couple of mentions in the dialogue, it does not feel terribly Christmassy. Which is a bit sad because I would have liked Christmas to come into it more.
The gameplay itself as mentioned, remains the same as the previous games and is a tremendous amount of fun. You have the usual out and out gang fights, and the predator sections where you must take out rooms undetected and a selection of very varied boss fights each needing unique tactics and thinking to take out. One thing I did notice in this is that Batman has a lot of inner dialogue telling you what he has to do next. This is clearly meant as an aid to help show you how to progress next but I don't remember him helping out this much in previous games and it felt a bit too hand-holding at points. But then at times when you really were stuck on how to proceed he would be very quiet. Which was a tad annoying. He does have some cool and new interesting gadgets this time round like glue bombs which can be used to stick goons, remote wire shooters that can make ziplines and an EMP like disruptor which can shut down electronic devices from afar. These and some new combos and moves are some of the few new elements that mix the system up and add new things into it.
Despite being almost a complete redo of the previous game, I would still recommend this to anyone who has played or enjoyed either Arkham games, or anyone who likes Batman, or anyone who likes beating up lots of dudes. It is a lot of fun, but the developers seem to have realised what big hits the previous two games were and have taken a "if it's not broke, don't fix it" attitude. So just don't expect anything shockingly different to what came before it.
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