Batman Arkham Origins

[illdog]

Whut no Rocksteady? Burn it.

Its ok, its good, honest. And it doesnt feel like there's been much change. Infact, so far it feels exactly like Arkham City, just earlier in time. Its been a while since I played that so forgive me if I havent picked up on some mind bending change but it seems the WB Montreal have done their homework. It feels the same, looks the same (Batman seems beefier though) and you have the same stuff to do. He fights the same, walks the same, has the same move set (so far). Voice sound the same even though its a different voice actor (same guy that did Ezio from Ass Creed and does Sonic's voice). Ive only played an hour but I can pretty much say that if you enjoyed Arkham City I can see no reason why you wont enjoy this.

Its the same. So far.

[retroed]

Boo. If it had gone back to the more linear style of Asylum, I'd have been all over it. Hearing it's more of City puts me off.

[Manicm]

I do want this game, only 2 things put me off, 1 the last 2 batman games have killed my 360, i don't know why or how but it seems i pop batman in the console and red ring of death. Now i know my new xbox doesn't get red ring of death but im sure it has some sort of fault batman can take advantage of. Secondly all my pennies this month are set aside for ps4 and a couple of games.

Nice to know its plays well! might get someone to get me a copy for christmas.

[Pikman]

I'm only a couple of hours into City and I keep getting stuck in buildings, not the nice structure of Asylum which I think I prefer. I'll see how that plays out before picking this up I think.

[DANGERMAN]

if we're all just sharing excuses, I'm probably getting a new graphics card, and Batman seems to be one of the games that comes with graphics cards

[illdog]

Its actually a massive misjustice (league) to a great game that no-one is playing this but I can sort of understand why people arent. But you are missing out on what is still a really good game. The only real new feature is a crime reconstruction process - Batman takes in the crime scene and works out what's happened and it plays out in front of you in the first person view using silhouettes. You can rewind and replay it and the game will ask you to look for a "red" trail, which will point you to an overlooked piece of evidence. This alone is not enough reason to buy the game.

Its Christmas Eve in Gotham City. There's decorations up here and there. Thats's different.

[Manicm]

Ordered this today, i really shouldn't of but its on its way in the post!

[illdog]

This is getting really good, story wise. Ive met the Joker for the first time, followed by Bane, climbed to the top of a huge hotel Joker had taken over, beat the shit out of Bane and aprehended the Joker, who in turn has just met a certain Harleen Quinzel. You even get to be the Joker for a tiny little while.

Its hard to tell how far I am in to the game as the percentage it shows you on your save file includes overall completion, taking in to account Enigma riddles, Most Wanted cases and all that ill na na. Time wise Raptr tells me Ive spent 13 hours, but i have been fucking about quite a lot in the open world, I reckon only half that time has been on the story.

[illdog]

I finished this last night without really expecting too. I mean I thought the story was coming to an end, it just seemed too soon and I didnt expect the boss fight I was involved in (and not particularly enjoying) to be the final boss fight.

As per usual you can carry on buggering around in the city afterwards, there's still lots to do and I have enough interest in the game to resolve some of the unfinished side missions. Then there's New Game Plus which I'm not sure i'll bother with. The only incentive to finishing NG+ is that it unlocks I Am The Night mode, which is NG+ hard (no counter, increased difficulty) but... when you die, thats it, start the whole game again. No thanks.

So I enjoyed it. I think I enjoyed it just as much as Arkham City (it's been a while, cant remember it brilliantly) which makes sense as the game mechanics are exactly the same but I may have enjoyed Origins story more, meeting well known characters for the first time was pretty cool.

illdogs final thought: Just thinking about the fact that I cant remember Arkham City's story too well without looking it up and in contrast, depsite it being a few years and having played two games in the series since I can remember alot of Asylum quite vividly still. Speaks volumes about the quality of Asylum I suppose.

[DANGERMAN]

I've been playing this and I agree with illdog that it's good. there's a few moments where you could argue it lacks polish but it's otherwise very good. The % complete has me a bit worried, fair enough I've put a decent number of hours in (about 7 hours) but a lot of that early on was spent destroying cameras (relays as they are in this) and beating up informants to save myself having to do it later. So while I still feel very early in (I've just been to the police station which was a good mission) I'm a decent percent through the game

Maybe this is over-familiarity causing a problem, but you have to hack some radio towers, one in each area, so you can land the batwing, as far as I can tell there's some you just can't do early on in the game, which is a bit annoying as the city otherwise feels more open than in AC.

It's good though, the combat feels heavier, although maybe that's because I reset my sound system the other day and the bass is up too high or something. And while I got this with my new graphics card I don't actually have the card yet, it might have been better to wait as it can get a little framey in some places. Oddly though it seems to be less to do with the card and more to do with it loading areas in or just glitches. Looks pretty good still, they've done things like have more items flying around and have your breath show in the cold

[DANGERMAN]

I finished this Friday night, I've really enjoyed it, it might even be better than City. Kind of not a surprise as it's basically that game with a story, but they've also done some stuff like reduced the number of electric batons you face, although I guess venom users have replaced them on the annoying scale.

the story is great though, really well done, although it does take a little bit to get going. I've done just about everything (ish) too, I've got a couple of skills left to get, I'm most of the way done on the challenge stuff in game (annoyingly it's twice not counted me defeating a high difficulty predator situation without being spotted). I've done the rouges gallery stuff except the bonus one that opens up, and I've cleared 3 districts of Riddler trophies. But then I noticed that it doesn't show the ones inside buildings or sewers on the main map so there's actually loads left to do, so fuck that

Good game, but I hope it's another 2 years until the next Rocksteady one

[Manicm]

Started playing this today, firstly no one and i mean no one i know is on xbox live, will admit when i go onto ps4 only a few online but no one is on xbox live.

Back to batman, it ermm lacks something, i can't figure out what but it feels like something is missing. Other half is having a go now but she seems to like the beaty up bits but gets confused on which way to go after she has attacked some innocent bad guys doing gun trades on the streets lol!

I might start to like it putting more time in.

[Manicm]

This fighting bane is really getting on my nerves, the gamepad has been thrown round the room a far bit today, this game is good in parts but in others its bloody frustrating!!

Finished this now, and tbh it really wound me up at a few points, the previous few games you could glide for longer or it felt like longer and im sure i could always find a grapple point even when gliding. In this one i quite often found myself on the street level searching for a way back up. The bane thing as well, why did i have to fight him over and over, there was 6? assassins? surely a bigger fight with one of those would of been better.

If i was to school teacher grade it, C+ just not as good as the previous 2, although they did try.

[Sly Reflex]

http://www.destructoid.com/arkham-origins-progression-blocking-bugs-won-t-be-fixed-270256.phtml

Got bugs preventing you from progressing in the game? Well fuck you, there's DLC that needs to be churned out and that's more important.

[DANGERMAN]

the dlc for this is out, it's called Cold Cold Heart and it's Mr Freeze based. It seems decent enough so far, a bit buggy, and one of the earlyish fights is pretty difficult, it's a predator fight only without the obvious predator fight type stuff like gargoyles. It's a bit buggy too, the steam forums have loads of people complaining about crashes, I've not had that, just moments where the AI has broken

my graphics card lets you stream to twitch automatically, this seemed like a decent enough test of that, and it's come out pretty good quality. The video is pretty much the first hour of the game, I die

http://www.twitch.tv/goukiband/b/522367728

[illdog]

I cant watch your video because I'm at work but I am officially recognising you have made it.

I bought this DLC and Blackgate Deluxe Edition on the 360 yesterday, gonna pound on it asap.

[DANGERMAN]

I wanted Blackgate on the handhelds when it came out, but apparently it wasn't great. You'll have to let us know if it is any good

[DANGERMAN]

Finished, and it's not bad. It's not up there with the best dlc ever made, but it's better than the other Batman stuff. The length isn't too bad, it's not going to last you days or anything, and when it starts to wrap up it gets to it fairly quickly, but all in all there's a lot there. Most of your time is spent inside, so it does feel a bit like they've slowed your progress with predator rooms, but they're generally the most interesting part of the Batman games anyway, there's also a bit towards the end where it sends you to a few different places, again it feels like what it is, lengthening, but it's not like there's a lot of it.

The thing that surprised me, and the thing I think they got right, is that Cold, Cold heart is fairly difficult. It's not as hard and frustrating as some moments from the main games, but you're dealing with gun men, shields, and the new enemy type pretty early. It means you aren't plodding through the same tutorial gameplay you've gone for 3 full games already, it's maybe a steep slope if you haven't played Origins since release, but it's preferable to losing an hour or a 3 hour dlc to gameplay you could do in your sleep.

There's not a lot to do other than the main gameplay, there's guards to rescue, which you can't do until some way in to the game, and there's Anarchy symbols to find, which isn't all that much fun. There's also riots to break up, they maybe should have stuck a couple more of these in, as there's not a lot else to do in the overworld

I'm not sure quite how good I actually think it is, I would say that it could easily slip in to one of the main games and no one would complain, so they've done a good job with it. It just isn't essential, although part of that might be that we've had a lot of Batman over the last few years

[AndyKurosaki]

I tried Blackgate on Vita, it looked impressive enough, but I didn't get far into it. The map wasn't much help, couldn't figure out where I was supposed to be going.

[DANGERMAN]

after talking about it, Batman Blackgate is £3.75 from Uplay. Apparently it kicks out a steam code so you don't actually have to use uplay if you don't want

http://shop.ubi.com/store/ubiemea/en_GB/pd/ThemeID.8605700/productID.300541000/Batman-Arkham-Origins-Blackgate-Deluxe-Edition