Batman: Arkham Origins Review - Good, But Not Good Enough

[irequirefood]

Kinda sad they didn't comment on the absolutely horrendous framerate drops when you fast travel or go too quickly from place to place when you're outdoors.

 

[JonB]

Kinda sad they didn't comment on the absolutely horrendous framerate drops when you fast travel or go too quickly from place to place when you're outdoors.

I didn't experience these, and so cannot comment. Many of the bugs, to my understanding, are extant only on console releases.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Why is everyone saying it's better than AA but not as good as AC? That doesn't even make sense. AA was quite a bit better than AC, and I thought that was the common opinion.

I get the same feeling. When AC came out, most people were of the opinion that it wasn't as good as AA. Now everybody's saying AO isn't as good as AC, but not as bad as AA. What!? I expect if we ever get a fourth Arkham game, "it won't be as good as AO, definitely better than AA, but not as bad as AC". Obviously everybody has their opinion about each game but there doesn't seem to be a consistent majority about anything in this series.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

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I find I'm using the Beatdown attack more than just about anything else. It lets me focus on one guy, usually the jerk with the knife, and funnels everyone else into pretty much a straight line. Beatdown, counter, keep beating, counter, keep beating, finish, take out enemy with charged attack, repeat. Combat in the first two games was a lot more fun, because I kept experimenting to find ways to make it look like an elegantly choreographed fight scene, and when AA and AC were on, you came out of a big battle feeling like a total badass. In Origins, any time I don't play it safe, I get caught up and juggled between a bunch of cheap hits. The countering is a lot less responsive. Not on hard mode yet, but I don't think it makes a difference. Most of the time, my successful counters happen when I'm already on the button before the icon shows up. If I wait for the game to tell me I should counter, I usually end up taking the hit.

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Have to agree with this. The combat to me would be vastly improved with one simple tweak - countering cancels whatever animation you're locked into. As it is, fights often become a repetitive trudge of just constantly hitting counter. Even using the grapnel quick-gadget move always seems to get me smacked in the face.

 

[Echopunk]

Have to agree with this. The combat to me would be vastly improved with one simple tweak - countering cancels whatever animation you're locked into. As it is, fights often become a repetitive trudge of just constantly hitting counter. Even using the grapnel quick-gadget move always seems to get me smacked in the face.

I also don't understand what they did to the targeting of certain attacks and counters. It feels like they tried to make the controls crisper, but botched the whole directional control aspect. The weapon destroy combo completely ignores most attempts at aiming and just auto-targets a nearby threat. I really noticed it in the 100-1 challenge map where it seemed like I had to break all the bats/pipes before I could target the knives, all the knives before I could target the shields, and all the shields before the guns. This version of Batman has some strange priorities!

I've also noticed a number of enemies get homing attacks. There were a few times I've been caught diving away from an enemy, or attacking someone else to take myself out of range of an attack, only to have the game lock the enemy onto me mid animation and force the hit to land. There is one sliding lock on attack I refer to as the Ice-Capades kick that has been the bane of my existence in several high threat encounters.

For all the negative stuff I have to say about the changes to the combat flow, I do have to say that they seem to have made the blade takedown much more forgiving this time around. I could barely get them off in AC, but here they seem much easier to execute.